| HN Mirror

I'll be honest, I think that this line of "everyone creative is going to be out of work" is parroting exactly the same lies that VC are selling about genAI. At the end of the day, that's what VCs want people to think. There is, to date, basically no reason to use a generative AI system other than if you buy what the VCs are selling. And they reallllly want to sell genAI systems.

I certainly don't buy it, and IIRC only 15% of the broader workforce use genAI for their jobs. Offices are having to force people to use it, and even then people don't like it. Programming is an outlier in this regard because, it turns out, most of what we've been doing is solving the same tasks over and over again in different domains (which is what A Pattern Language was designed to solve). Most other work is not like this.

For the arts, and for most media, what humans have been craving for about a decade now is authenticity. They want a real person they can connect to, an artist whose work makes them feel seen. The artists who have recognized this with a good command of media have been growing sustainably and there's a big industry in this now. There is a certain proportion of people who like the slop, sure. But the actual fact of the matter is that the younger generations, 20 - 30yros, can smell slop from a mile away, and adding slop to advertising, to your media, to your art, actually makes it sell worse. Exactly because it is inauthentic. Talk to literally anyone in advertising whose company tried AI ads. You see an uptick among 50-60 year olds, and a massive, massive downturn among 16 - 30 yros.

From a media executive standpoint, most of the media properties that are inauthentic have been failing massively, with a handful of them able to turn a quick buck before they fail. Execs are verrrry slowly learning the fact that media produced for a very quick ROI and for the branding and marketing potential tend to fizzle out quickly, whereas passion projects are sustainable income, a well you can keep going back to. Whether or not they value that well as much as independent creatives do... ehhhh.

For programming, there's not much to stop people from using the stuff because barely any higher-up supports "building bridges safely". What executives want from programming is a quick ROI, they don't even care if customers complain. So what I forsee for programmers is that the field is going to be gradually flooded with people using genAI. This will drive the cost of our labour downwards, while people are expected to give 10x or 20x the output that they did 5 years ago "because AI makes them fast". This turns every job into a rush job which makes the software system as a whole much less stable. I forsee a number of Horizon IT level problems in the next 10 years. But by then, programming will be much more on the level of a truck job where you have to piss in a bottle and keep driving, or a sales call job where your manager will pull you up if you're 5% under par. Just remember, everyone jumping on the AI train did this to our field.

But, it's not inevitable. It's only inevitable if we all keep shouting that the AI bros have won, from the rooftops. That's the hype keeping this bubble alive. The entire AI bubble currently rests on marketing, and the first step in bursting that bubble is to simply not believe the lies that you are being sold.

I'm a little off being thirty years old. I've played musical instruments of my own accord since I was 3 years old learning violin in an orchestra. I did folk music through my teens. I know about 5+ instruments and I've gigged at pubs, fields, parks, events, and a wedding. I have never touched genAI for music, and I really do not need to. I've listened to the output of genAI for music. It's samey, repetitive, and bland. "Slop" is a very good descriptor. Frankly I can't see a single reason why I would want to destroy my entire creative process and have it output by a black box. Why would I contract someone else to play my own music, let alone a machine?! Baffling. Most of the people around my own age are getting super into vinyl and cassettes and records because they like the fact that you can hold something in your hands. Because they like connecting to an artist. AI slop does not give them that, cannot give them that, and artists who think that the AI slop is better than them are a) obviously not very good in the first place, b) foregoing their own personal development as an artist in service of chasing trends. Trend chasers have never lasted long in creative work, and honestly, they're selecting themselves out of the pool. They're selecting for an audience who no more likes their work than the work of any other sloptist. You can't see me but I'm giving a biiiiig fucking shrug right now, like the jurassic park guy. Nobody cares about sloptists, sloppers, soupies. They don't care about the art, they only care about the profit, and people can smell that a mile off.

"You need to learn that the product of your writing is yourself. You are the artwork. The time you spend writing will change you, it will make your better at expressing yourself. You'll have a wonderful time, but you'll also grow as a person, you'll become more empathetic. The product of your writing is you. You are the artwork." - Brandon Sanderton

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9ldrFvp0RO1HNyPg8Xafh0NYlC2...