Time to master drawing skills is equivalent to money in this scenario, and that's assuming any human being can become a skilled artist with practice, which is not something I'm sure I believe.
You don't have to believe it, it's objectively true. We're not magical fairies born with legendary talents bestowed to us by gods, we just worked really hard and became better at a craft. People without arms make art. People without full mental faculties make art. Also, you specifically said "afford," so don't go shifting the goalposts now. The reason people don't have time to pursue art is because of Capitalism, not because of some terrible Creative Class Strata they're just not "talented" enough to become a part of. And what's more, artists release our art free for everyone to see, on the internet, constantly, because sharing art for other people to experience is the whole point of the enterprise. This is obviously the case because that's where all the scraped art came from.
I am not shifting goalposts, you're the one that used "art tools are very cheap" and I just engaged with that.
You can observe all the art you want, for free, in tidal waves; what you can't have is bespoke personal art in the style of someone else who put in the work to be that good at it. This is the definition of a luxury.
I'm not arguing against that, I'm arguing that making more luxuries easily available for more people (specifically in this example, those who would not have commissioned an artist otherwise) is a way this technology has of making things better.
The other artists I know– creative people who have released thousands of images for free and work for peanuts compared to what their work is worth already– are currently becoming more and more destitute because commissions have dried up in the face of this "net win for humanity." The opportunity costs exist, and they have devastated human beings who have no other prospects in a system that demands they sell their labor. You can't tell me otherwise because buddy, this is my business, it's my whole life. I know better than you, and I'm telling you that someone getting a nice little treat ain't worth this.
Again, I'm not arguing otherwise. If you'll go back and read my original post I specifically point out that I'm not ignoring that a change in automation always causes pain to those it displaces. This is a situation that was just as true in the industrial revolution as it is today.
Same for a million other things people enjoy because automation has made them widely available. James Earl Jones recently retired and gave permission for AI generation of his voice to be used for Darth Vader in the future, and while it's a small and geeky thing, I'm happy it happened and that AI generated media made it possible.
That was a post replying to a specific issue, if you go back to my original post you'll see I'm referring to AI art generation once the issue of intellectual property has been settled.
Bit of a tangent, I wish there was a better way to find artists who do commissions. I'm in the position of wanting some art created in a specific style and I've actually got the money to pay, but other than trawling social media and hoping for the best, there's no way to connect. In the past you just kinda gave up, now AI is right there. If I wasn't so committed to not using AI art in my projects I'd definitely be tempted.
Bit of a tangent, I wish there was a better way to find artists who do commissions. I'm in the position of wanting some art created in a specific style and I've actually got the money to pay, but other than trawling social media and hoping for the best, there's no way to connect. In the past you just kinda gave up, now AI is right there. If I wasn't so committed to not using AI art in my projects I'd definitely be tempted.
Are there artists in Fiver or whatever that is? Surely there are places where you can be put in touch with artists for commissions. Etsy at least must have a section for that.
I feel like there's a bit of mismatch comparing the jobs generative art will replace to something like whale oil production or weavers. We're not just talking about replacing one specialized trade. We're talking about replacing the entirety of creating visual art. Right now 2d, but it won't be long until 3d (both digital and physical).
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I feel like there's a bit of mismatch comparing the jobs generative art will replace to something like whale oil production or weavers. We're not just talking about replacing one specialized trade. We're talking about replacing the entirety of creating visual art. Right now 2d, but it won't be long until 3d (both digital and physical).
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I mean, it depends on how you divide it. Once upon a time the vast majority of the human race was engaged in agriculture and now in the US it's about 10%. This caused immense problems and suffering in the short term, but in the long term the economy adapted - now many people who find fulfillment working with plants either find jobs in the now shrunken sector or perhaps garden as a hobby, while others have found careers in jobs that often didn't exist before such levels of automation caused the economy to expand in new directions. I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar happen here long term - there will always be a market for some hand made artwork, and that's making the assumption that AI generated art gets much better since I feel it can't compare right now.
Bremen on
0
MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
Bit of a tangent, I wish there was a better way to find artists who do commissions. I'm in the position of wanting some art created in a specific style and I've actually got the money to pay, but other than trawling social media and hoping for the best, there's no way to connect. In the past you just kinda gave up, now AI is right there. If I wasn't so committed to not using AI art in my projects I'd definitely be tempted.
Not much help, but there was a site mentioned that was a site for artists - it was on the social media thread, I believe.
I feel like there's a bit of mismatch comparing the jobs generative art will replace to something like whale oil production or weavers. We're not just talking about replacing one specialized trade. We're talking about replacing the entirety of creating visual art. Right now 2d, but it won't be long until 3d (both digital and physical).
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I mean, it depends on how you divide it. Once upon a time the vast majority of the human race was engaged in agriculture and now in the US it's about 10%. This caused immense problems and suffering in the short term, but in the long term the economy adapted - now many people who find fulfillment working with plants either find jobs in the now shrunken sector or perhaps garden as a hobby, while others have found careers in jobs that often didn't exist before such levels of automation caused the economy to expand in new directions.
Still don't think that's a fair comparison. Farm work (as a career rather than a home garden) has and continues to be intensive manual labor that virtually no one enjoys and would choose if they had a career choice. This is not true of art. Plus farm workers can shift over to a different manual labor. Their job isn't "farm worker" but "manual laborer", which can include farm work. Those jobs are mostly about being human robots anyway (and being treated like faulty machinery when the worker can no longer perform).
I feel like there's a bit of mismatch comparing the jobs generative art will replace to something like whale oil production or weavers. We're not just talking about replacing one specialized trade. We're talking about replacing the entirety of creating visual art. Right now 2d, but it won't be long until 3d (both digital and physical).
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I mean, it depends on how you divide it. Once upon a time the vast majority of the human race was engaged in agriculture and now in the US it's about 10%. This caused immense problems and suffering in the short term, but in the long term the economy adapted - now many people who find fulfillment working with plants either find jobs in the now shrunken sector or perhaps garden as a hobby, while others have found careers in jobs that often didn't exist before such levels of automation caused the economy to expand in new directions.
Still don't think that's a fair comparison. Farm work (as a career rather than a home garden) has and continues to be intensive manual labor that virtually no one enjoys and would choose if they had a career choice. This is not true of art. Plus farm workers can shift over to a different manual labor. Their job isn't "farm worker" but "manual laborer", which can include farm work. Those jobs are mostly about being human robots anyway (and being treated like faulty machinery when the worker can no longer perform).
I suspect the people involved in what you call "human robot" jobs would have very much disagreed with you. That's where we get stuff like the story of John Henry. People found those jobs fulfilling.
You can observe all the art you want, for free, in tidal waves; what you can't have is bespoke personal art in the style of someone else who put in the work to be that good at it.
I mean, why not? I can have a nice watch without having to seek the services of a watchmaker, or a nice dining room set without a carpenter. These are luxury items that were once the province of bespoke artisans, but are now mass produced and commonly available. This is/was bad news for watchmakers and craftsmen of furniture, but it's (imo) hard to argue it's a bad outcome for society.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I feel like there's a bit of mismatch comparing the jobs generative art will replace to something like whale oil production or weavers. We're not just talking about replacing one specialized trade. We're talking about replacing the entirety of creating visual art. Right now 2d, but it won't be long until 3d (both digital and physical).
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I mean, it depends on how you divide it. Once upon a time the vast majority of the human race was engaged in agriculture and now in the US it's about 10%. This caused immense problems and suffering in the short term, but in the long term the economy adapted - now many people who find fulfillment working with plants either find jobs in the now shrunken sector or perhaps garden as a hobby, while others have found careers in jobs that often didn't exist before such levels of automation caused the economy to expand in new directions.
Still don't think that's a fair comparison. Farm work (as a career rather than a home garden) has and continues to be intensive manual labor that virtually no one enjoys and would choose if they had a career choice. This is not true of art. Plus farm workers can shift over to a different manual labor. Their job isn't "farm worker" but "manual laborer", which can include farm work. Those jobs are mostly about being human robots anyway (and being treated like faulty machinery when the worker can no longer perform).
I suspect the people involved in what you call "human robot" jobs would have very much disagreed with you. That's where we get stuff like the story of John Henry. People found those jobs fulfilling.
The most likely origin of the John Henry story tell us he was a prison laborer who died of silicosis.
It's easy to romanticize hard labor when you're not the one doing it. Almost to a person, people wouldn't do it if they had a choice.
But the people at fault are the end users of these generative AI tools, not their creators. We don't place liability on Photoshop when people use it to create and distribute infringing works
Photoshop isn't designed to trawl the Internet and suck up all the art it finds regardless of whose it is. The AI is.
Like, I'm not missing something glaringly obvious here, right? This is a dumb comparison.
The companies that program the AI are absolutely at fault.
It could very well be. Add a clause to the 50+ sites of TOS that nobody reads and it could suck up the files and projects people are currently working on. Heck, you couldn't find a better tutor for a "A.I." how to "draw" or generate pictures.
I mean, why not? I can have a nice watch without having to seek the services of a watchmaker, or a nice dining room set without a carpenter. These are luxury items that were once the province of bespoke artisans, but are now mass produced and commonly available. This is/was bad news for watchmakers and craftsmen of furniture, but it's (imo) hard to argue it's a bad outcome for society.
I really don't know how many more times I'm going to have to explain this. You are comparing the production of objects we need in order to function in everyday life like "sitting down" or "knowing what time it is" to "I would just be entertained to have a personal painting made by this specific artist of the subjects I choose."
You know what? Since you guys seem to think all automation is good no matter what, how about I make a robot that f***s your wife? I mean it's more efficient, more available, and you apparently can't argue that it would be bad for humanity, so let's just do away with it. What's that?? You don't want a robot to f*** your wife??? Something about "some things should be left for humans to do?" Nah, nah, sounds like you're one of those horse and buggy makers to me, man, just get out of the way so my robot can f*** your wife. Afterwards it'll enjoy ice cream and watch the sunset for you. Why are you such an enemy of progress?????
I mean, why not? I can have a nice watch without having to seek the services of a watchmaker, or a nice dining room set without a carpenter. These are luxury items that were once the province of bespoke artisans, but are now mass produced and commonly available. This is/was bad news for watchmakers and craftsmen of furniture, but it's (imo) hard to argue it's a bad outcome for society.
I really don't know how many more times I'm going to have to explain this. You are comparing the production of objects we need in order to function in everyday life like "sitting down" or "knowing what time it is" to "I would just be entertained to have a personal painting made by this specific artist of the subjects I choose."
You don't need a fine dining table to sit down or a nice watch to function in society, but that doesn't mean it can't be nice that they're more available.
You know what? Since you guys seem to think all automation is good no matter what, how about I make a robot that f***s your wife? I mean it's more efficient, more available, and you apparently can't argue that it would be bad for humanity, so let's just do away with it. What's that?? You don't want a robot to f*** your wife??? Something about "some things should be left for humans to do?" Nah, nah, sounds like you're one of those horse and buggy makers to me, man, just get out of the way so my robot can f*** your wife. Afterwards it'll enjoy ice cream and watch the sunset for you. Why are you such an enemy of progress?????
I feel like you're getting too heated here for this to be actual discussion. That's understandable given the personal nature of the subject, but it still means maybe it would be best to take some time away from the thread for a bit.
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
I mean, why not? I can have a nice watch without having to seek the services of a watchmaker, or a nice dining room set without a carpenter. These are luxury items that were once the province of bespoke artisans, but are now mass produced and commonly available. This is/was bad news for watchmakers and craftsmen of furniture, but it's (imo) hard to argue it's a bad outcome for society.
I really don't know how many more times I'm going to have to explain this. You are comparing the production of objects we need in order to function in everyday life like "sitting down" or "knowing what time it is" to "I would just be entertained to have a personal painting made by this specific artist of the subjects I choose."
I don't think you really have explained it; you've said that laypeople creating art with some sort of AI-Art-Creation-Machine would be bad for working artists and maybe it would be, but it's far from clear to me that the interests of working artists should outweigh everyone else's.
A perhaps better example is music; for most of history if you wanted to hear music you had to go to a place where people were playing it (or pay them to come to you, if you were very wealthy.) Modern technology of course means anyone can have a recording and play it whenever they want, which no doubt has reduced the demand for live musicians at (say) pubs. But it seems a rather difficult argument to put the economic interests of those musicians above everyone else's desire to hear recorded music.
I also think it's pretty damned specious to argue that people would somehow stop making art if AI rendered it commercially non-valuable; almost everyone who's ever lived has created art and almost none of it was or ever became commercially worthwhile (nevermind enough so to sustain a career.)
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
1. I think it's kind of cool that I can use AI to create pictures.
2. Any pictures created by AI absolutely are not and should not be copyrightable. Only humans can hold copyrights.
3. As I understand it, the AI models use datasets of images scraped willy nilly from the web for training; like showing the model thousands of images of cats with the tag cat attached so it can associate the word cat to what one looks like. Clearly the web scrapers have copied the images in order to feed it to the AI (it's not as if the model is going around scraping the web itself), so that would seem to fall afoul of copyright laws.
4. Trying to use Fair Use as a defence for that copyright breaking needs to be tested in court; also, many different countries have their own differing Fair Use laws (or none at all for some countries), which I'm sure the webcrawlers probably haven't taken account of.
5. Setting aside the copyright legality and looking at the concept in general;
My Mum loves to knit. She'll go out and buy a pattern and some wool and spend hours of her time to create a cardigan for her granddaughter. Factoring in the raw materials and the cost of her time it would have been much cheaper and easier to just buy a cardigan made in some factory by an industrial knitting machine, but she enjoys doing it and likes the pleasure it gives to others. She knits as a hobby, and for people who make art as a hobby I imagine they can see the AI in much the same way my Mum sees those industrial knitting machines, they're kind of a non-issue. Sure, someone can press a button somewhere and get a cardigan in minutes, that's not what she's knitting for, though. But for people who make art as their job, this is more like the industrial revolution sweeping in. You used to be able to knit or spin or weave in your own cottage and make a living, but now you have to move to the city and find a job in the massive weaving factories, and for a time it was hell for everyone. So if the AI can work out all the kinks (and sort out the legality), are we heading for a mechanical-artistic revolution, where the only way regular artists can get paid for their work is to join the factories churning out pictures to train the AI on? Worrying thoughts. If you've spent years honing your craft and someone comes along and says "Sorry, your craft has been superseded, looks like you wasted your life"... no wonder people are upset. But perhaps it won't be that bad. After all, people still go to see live musicians, we haven't replaced all of them with synthesisers. I'm not sure where I was going with this.
It's hard to see how a win for the artists doesn't lead to an even more restrictive copyright regime than the one we operate under currently.
"training" the current generative models doesn't involve violating copyright any more than viewing any image on the internet does; unless rightsholders (e.g. in the Stable Diffusion suit) can show that the output of the model infringes, they are essentially asking to have a license applied retroactively.
the current body of copyright law is poor ground to litigate this issue; per usual technology has advanced faster than law so really we need a legislative solution, but yanno, good luck with all that
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I feel like you're getting too heated here for this to be actual discussion. That's understandable given the personal nature of the subject, but it still means maybe it would be best to take some time away from the thread for a bit.
No, what you're interpreting as heat is just a demonstration of how ludicrous your position actually is; it sounds extreme because it is extreme; you only realize this as soon as I make you the subject instead of me. Automating tasks done purely for pleasure is not a wonderful idea, it's something you include in the prologue to a movie to explain why everyone is murdering each other.
I don't think you really have explained it; you've said that laypeople creating art with some sort of AI-Art-Creation-Machine would be bad for working artists and maybe it would be, but it's far from clear to me that the interests of working artists should outweigh everyone else's.
We're going to set aside the ghoulish avarice required to insist that I become destitute and irrelevant so that you may be entertained in a slightly more convenient format. Instead, I will explain why you do not want this thing you apparently think is going to improve humanity.
Let's say AI keeps going, and you are one day able to perfectly recreate my and every other artist alive's skills. You can have any picture we would have made, with the touch of a button.
You will grow bored of this.
Why will you get bored of it? Take a look at your steam list. You probably have way too many games to play. Is it that they're not good games? No. It's that there's too many, numerically. There being so many options makes your brain regard them as less valuable. This works for everything, especially pleasure. If you eat cookies all the time, you don't feel anything when you eat one. If you masturbate three times a day, you don't get anything out of it.
Artists already have to contend with the fact that seeing other artists' works on the internet has made them self-conscious of their own abilities. AI made this worse.
You know what people used to say when they saw a digital painting? "WOW! That's so impressive, it looks so pretty! This must have taken so long!"
You know what they say now? "Hunh looks like AI, a computer probably did it." Do you understand what I'm saying? It has already swallowed alive an entire very difficult medium, and it is turning its hungry eyes toward every other one.
The fact that it takes time and you can't have it instantly is what makes it valuable. This is true of art, of music, of movies, of games. It is the reason why anything can still wow you. And if you remove that wait, you will have dulled yourself to the only pleasures available to you. There will be nothing left, nowhere left to turn to make life worthwhile.
And with that, I'm done. I'm through explaining this over and over. Good luck, you gullible starry-eyed fools, you'll need it.
I feel like you're getting too heated here for this to be actual discussion. That's understandable given the personal nature of the subject, but it still means maybe it would be best to take some time away from the thread for a bit.
No, what you're interpreting as heat is just a demonstration of how ludicrous your position actually is; it sounds extreme because it is extreme; you only realize this as soon as I make you the subject instead of me. Automating tasks done purely for pleasure is not a wonderful idea, it's something you include in the prologue to a movie to explain why everyone is murdering each other.
I don't think you really have explained it; you've said that laypeople creating art with some sort of AI-Art-Creation-Machine would be bad for working artists and maybe it would be, but it's far from clear to me that the interests of working artists should outweigh everyone else's.
We're going to set aside the ghoulish avarice required to insist that I become destitute and irrelevant so that you may be entertained in a slightly more convenient format. Instead, I will explain why you do not want this thing you apparently think is going to improve humanity.
Let's say AI keeps going, and you are one day able to perfectly recreate my and every other artist alive's skills. You can have any picture we would have made, with the touch of a button.
You will grow bored of this.
Why will you get bored of it? Take a look at your steam list. You probably have way too many games to play. Is it that they're not good games? No. It's that there's too many, numerically. There being so many options makes your brain regard them as less valuable. This works for everything, especially pleasure. If you eat cookies all the time, you don't feel anything when you eat one. If you masturbate three times a day, you don't get anything out of it.
Artists already have to contend with the fact that seeing other artists' works on the internet has made them self-conscious of their own abilities. AI made this worse.
You know what people used to say when they saw a digital painting? "WOW! That's so impressive, it looks so pretty! This must have taken so long!"
You know what they say now? "Hunh looks like AI, a computer probably did it." Do you understand what I'm saying? It has already swallowed alive an entire very difficult medium, and it is turning its hungry eyes toward every other one.
The fact that it takes time and you can't have it instantly is what makes it valuable. This is true of art, of music, of movies, of games. It is the reason why anything can still wow you. And if you remove that wait, you will have dulled yourself to the only pleasures available to you. There will be nothing left, nowhere left to turn to make life worthwhile.
And with that, I'm done. I'm through explaining this over and over. Good luck, you gullible starry-eyed fools, you'll need it.
Fine then, I'll engage you with this. If someone made a sexbot, it would be entirely up to my wife if she preferred it over me. I wouldn't try to outlaw sexbots so she wouldn't leave me for it. Steam has, in my opinion, been one of the greatest increases in my quality of life in the 40 years I've been alive. I don't agree with you that making a luxury more restricted than it has to be improves happiness.
Basically, my point of view is this: Anything that automates a job, or in other ways makes a good cheaper and more plentiful, is a net good. If every job on Earth got automated, we could live in a post-money paradise like the Federation in Star Trek, and those that wanted to make art for pleasure could make art for pleasure. The problem comes when only some jobs get automated - that makes things much worse for the people doing the jobs getting automated while making them slightly better for everyone else. This has held true for all of human history, and is one of the main reasons we live what we call a modern way of life including debating on the internet instead of struggling for basic necessities. I don't disagree with your position on the effects of what this change will do to artists, and have repeatedly noted that I acknowledge this is pretty horrible for them - I just don't agree that that alone is sufficient reason to stand in front of progress that will be a net benefit and yell "stop!" I'd prefer to focus on ways to ameliorate that harm for them in the short term while holding true that it's a change that will improve things in the long term.
Stealing another person's creative work for your own benefit is wrong. Both morally and legally.
Prove me wrong.
I'll note once again I've never once disagreed with this, I just feel copyright and AI generated art are separate issues. Even if the courts/government decide that you can't train an AI on a picture without a specifically signed contract from the artist, companies will just get that contract - either through paying the artists, or perhaps more likely, setting up all services so you have to sign those contracts to use them.
"training" the current generative models doesn't involve violating copyright any more than viewing any image on the internet does;
I think it's worth repeating because it's very easy to lose sight of this, but a person copying the bytes of an image from the internet to their local device and perceiving the results with their eyes is very much not the same thing a commercial organization using a machine to copy the bytes of images en masse and adding them to a massive set of data, and then using that data to freely and instantly generate unlimited similar works.
I truly wish that we could discuss this without analogies, because any time anything contentious starts getting talked about by comparison to other things, you start to lose sight of the actual thing being discussed. This isn't about agriculture or knitting or wife-fucking robots, this is a unique situation with details that make it inherently different from however you want to rephrase it in a way you think makes an easier argument.
I understand and somewhat agree with the position that "eventually everything tedious can and should be automated to improve our lives, and society should just catch up to get over the idea of people needing jobs", in fact, I've made that argument myself one of the billion other times this debate came up in this forum.
I also understand, agree with, and have made the argument that it's nice for people without talent to be able to make stuff for fun without having to bug an artist about it: like how I, who cannot draw a decent circle much less a realistic coastline for a map, can use Campaign Cartographer's fractal tool to draw a better coastline for a map I would use in a TTRPG.
All that said though, I am becoming increasingly convinced that art itself always involves some communication between two minds. If no one but the artist ever sees it, or the artist makes it without any thought whatsoever of who would look at it, I don't know that art took place. And if it wasn't made by a mind, if there is nothing to communicate to the viewer, I just don't think you're actually getting art.
The way the internet works is that the more useless stuff we put on it, the less useful everything becomes. AI content of all kinds is garbage and does not do what art does, to a degree far beyond "ikea tables are worse than hand crafted ones". That is a threat independent of copyright and usage and theft and all these other legitimate concerns. The threat we are experiencing every day when we realize the capacity of machines to churn out so much jetsam that we'll drown before we ever find anything useful or compelling anymore.
I feel like you're getting too heated here for this to be actual discussion. That's understandable given the personal nature of the subject, but it still means maybe it would be best to take some time away from the thread for a bit.
No, what you're interpreting as heat is just a demonstration of how ludicrous your position actually is; it sounds extreme because it is extreme; you only realize this as soon as I make you the subject instead of me. Automating tasks done purely for pleasure is not a wonderful idea, it's something you include in the prologue to a movie to explain why everyone is murdering each other.
I don't think you really have explained it; you've said that laypeople creating art with some sort of AI-Art-Creation-Machine would be bad for working artists and maybe it would be, but it's far from clear to me that the interests of working artists should outweigh everyone else's.
We're going to set aside the ghoulish avarice required to insist that I become destitute and irrelevant so that you may be entertained in a slightly more convenient format. Instead, I will explain why you do not want this thing you apparently think is going to improve humanity.
Let's say AI keeps going, and you are one day able to perfectly recreate my and every other artist alive's skills. You can have any picture we would have made, with the touch of a button.
You will grow bored of this.
Why will you get bored of it? Take a look at your steam list. You probably have way too many games to play. Is it that they're not good games? No. It's that there's too many, numerically. There being so many options makes your brain regard them as less valuable. This works for everything, especially pleasure. If you eat cookies all the time, you don't feel anything when you eat one. If you masturbate three times a day, you don't get anything out of it.
Artists already have to contend with the fact that seeing other artists' works on the internet has made them self-conscious of their own abilities. AI made this worse.
You know what people used to say when they saw a digital painting? "WOW! That's so impressive, it looks so pretty! This must have taken so long!"
You know what they say now? "Hunh looks like AI, a computer probably did it." Do you understand what I'm saying? It has already swallowed alive an entire very difficult medium, and it is turning its hungry eyes toward every other one.
The fact that it takes time and you can't have it instantly is what makes it valuable. This is true of art, of music, of movies, of games. It is the reason why anything can still wow you. And if you remove that wait, you will have dulled yourself to the only pleasures available to you. There will be nothing left, nowhere left to turn to make life worthwhile.
And with that, I'm done. I'm through explaining this over and over. Good luck, you gullible starry-eyed fools, you'll need it.
if it's true that 'time is what makes it valuable,' then 'free' art made by AI (or whatever technological means) will never displace human-created works anyway. I suspect however that (at least for many consumers of art) it's not actually true.
There is already more art (in whatever category) than anyone can consume in a lifetime, and more being created all the time. I doesn't seem likely to me that there's some point of 'art saturation' at which people become bored with the whole enterprise.
I'm not without sympathy for people whose chosen field is made less economically viable by automation, I just don't think their existence is a per se argument against automation.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I understand and somewhat agree with the position that "eventually everything tedious can and should be automated to improve our lives, and society should just catch up to get over the idea of people needing jobs", in fact, I've made that argument myself one of the billion other times this debate came up in this forum.
I'm not entirely convinced that it would even be good for humanity if we no longer needed jobs. We may like to assume that, freed from the drudgery of jobs, everyone would just be free to do great and marvelous things and that society would only benefit from it. Maybe I just have a bleak world view, but I think the truth is that many people would spend most of their time not doing much that is of benefit to anyone other than themselves. I also feel that many would lose all sense of purpose in life. If we remove the purpose that is their job -- sad as that statement may be -- not everyone is going to be able to find a new purpose easily.
Taking myself as an example, I would like to believe that I would do things that would help at least my community if I didn't have to work five days a week to keep food on the table and a roof over my head. But if I'm being honest with myself, if all my needs for food, shelter, etc were met by other means, I would probably get into the habit of sitting around on the internet, reading, or playing video games for a lot of the time. I say that because I already do that NOW when I know there are other more productive things that I could be doing when I'm not working. Heck, even sitting writing this post is not the most productive thing I could be doing at this moment.
This kind of societal upheaval is so massive, that I think few people can even grasp what they are saying. Much of the world runs on the model that people produce for society via a job, they get paid for that effort, and then they use that money to provide for their needs. Is it a perfect system? Not at all. But there is so much involved with the process of moving away from that model. It's going to take much more than A.I. making jobs obsolete to get from this model into an entirely new one. I fear there's too much focus on "please make it so I don't have to have a job anymore" and not enough on how much the world would need to change for people to no longer need a job, but yet for everyone to still get all they need to live happy lives.
RatherDashing89: I'm not necessarily trying to predict what you do and do not advocate here. It was just the comment about people needing jobs that compelled me to post about my personal thoughts and reservations about these things.
"It's just as I've always said. We are being digested by an amoral universe."
I understand and somewhat agree with the position that "eventually everything tedious can and should be automated to improve our lives, and society should just catch up to get over the idea of people needing jobs", in fact, I've made that argument myself one of the billion other times this debate came up in this forum.
I'm not entirely convinced that it would even be good for humanity if we no longer needed jobs. We may like to assume that, freed from the drudgery of jobs, everyone would just be free to do great and marvelous things and that society would only benefit from it. Maybe I just have a bleak world view, but I think the truth is that many people would spend most of their time not doing much that is of benefit to anyone other than themselves. I also feel that many would lose all sense of purpose in life. If we remove the purpose that is their job -- sad as that statement may be -- not everyone is going to be able to find a new purpose easily.
Taking myself as an example, I would like to believe that I would do things that would help at least my community if I didn't have to work five days a week to keep food on the table and a roof over my head. But if I'm being honest with myself, if all my needs for food, shelter, etc were met by other means, I would probably get into the habit of sitting around on the internet, reading, or playing video games for a lot of the time. I say that because I already do that NOW when I know there are other more productive things that I could be doing when I'm not working. Heck, even sitting writing this post is not the most productive thing I could be doing at this moment.
This kind of societal upheaval is so massive, that I think few people can even grasp what they are saying. Much of the world runs on the model that people produce for society via a job, they get paid for that effort, and then they use that money to provide for their needs. Is it a perfect system? Not at all. But there is so much involved with the process of moving away from that model. It's going to take much more than A.I. making jobs obsolete to get from this model into an entirely new one. I fear there's too much focus on "please make it so I don't have to have a job anymore" and not enough on how much the world would need to change for people to no longer need a job, but yet for everyone to still get all they need to live happy lives.
RatherDashing89: I'm not necessarily trying to predict what you do and do not advocate here. It was just the comment about people needing jobs that compelled me to post about my personal thoughts and reservations about these things.
Not trying to drift too far off topic here, but while I'm not advocating for no jobs at all, necessarily, my thoughts recently have been that most of the big accomplishments throughout human history were not done out of motivation not to starve. And, in fact, many of the people we currently remember as great minds: scientists, artists, political thinkers, were essentially "idle": noblemen and monks who were motivated to accomplish things specifically because they had the time to do so and never had to worry about their next meal.
Not trying to drift too far off topic here, but while I'm not advocating for no jobs at all, necessarily, my thoughts recently have been that most of the big accomplishments throughout human history were not done out of motivation not to starve. And, in fact, many of the people we currently remember as great minds: scientists, artists, political thinkers, were essentially "idle": noblemen and monks who were motivated to accomplish things specifically because they had the time to do so and never had to worry about their next meal.
I'd just hazard against blithely assuming that the luxury of "idleness" alone is the only way or even a good way of inducing accomplishment. They had lives with expectations made of them well before those accomplishments. Idleness at best is a byproduct of who they were and their actions prior to that. What made them exceptional was the demonstrated ability to ignore the temptation to just be nothing other than idle when having the choice.
Just look at how many lotto winners have really bad outcomes (even outside of externally induced ones motivated by the greed others) if one wants an example of how just handing someone idleness alone does not act as a guarantee of anything good.
Because devaluing labor makes life worse for the people that rely on providing it for survival and that does not change until *after* one is already well into a post scarcity model.
I'm not entirely convinced that it would even be good for humanity if we no longer needed jobs.
Have you ever read Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano? This kind of dystopia - and they do find it to be a bad outcome - is what the novel is all about. Jobs are prized very highly because they are so scarce, and almost everyone is just on public assistance. It's told in Vonnegut's typical slightly surreal style, so it's not exactly hard scifi. But I read it around 25 years ago and still think about it.
Back on the subject of art, I just feel like it's a mistake to lump painting a landscape in with building a car (and more specifically, being the person who welds fenders all day). Art is not a means to an ends. Art is itself the ends. Yes, you can get paid for doing it, but every artist I've ever run into is primarily interested in creating art regardless of their ability to monetize it. I'm sure there are exceptions, like Andy Warhol. But even with his mercantile approach to art, I think there's still probably a kernel of art for art's sake.
However, as touched on earlier, there's the concept that art needs an audience. This has been debated a lot for a long time, so I don't have the answer to that question. But usually artists need an income, and if their main skill is art that's going to come from an audience of some sort.
And we're not just talking about automating visual art. We're also talking about (eventually) automating making movies (acting, directing, everything), writing, scientific discoveries, etc. At some point, I have to wonder what's left for humans. This is a subject that's been touched on in plenty of scifi. But just imagine if in Star Trek the computer flew all the ships, did all the diplomacy and fought off alien lizardmen. What's left for people? Just a drip of opioids until we die?
And we're not just talking about automating visual art. We're also talking about (eventually) automating making movies (acting, directing, everything), writing, scientific discoveries, etc. At some point, I have to wonder what's left for humans. This is a subject that's been touched on in plenty of scifi. But just imagine if in Star Trek the computer flew all the ships, did all the diplomacy and fought off alien lizardmen. What's left for people? Just a drip of opioids until we die?
So The Culture? I never saw that as a particularly dystopian setting, myself.
I'd be a fool if I said I knew for sure what the future would bring. But I do get the impression I don't find these possibilities as ominous as you do.
And we're not just talking about automating visual art. We're also talking about (eventually) automating making movies (acting, directing, everything), writing, scientific discoveries, etc. At some point, I have to wonder what's left for humans. This is a subject that's been touched on in plenty of scifi. But just imagine if in Star Trek the computer flew all the ships, did all the diplomacy and fought off alien lizardmen. What's left for people? Just a drip of opioids until we die?
So The Culture? I never saw that as a particularly dystopian setting, myself.
I generally find that reality falls short of what someone writing an exciting piece of fiction might project it to be.
On the subject of AI, GPT-4 seems to have read probably like every PA newpost ever up til its training cutoff date, like it knows who Jerry is and can imitate him rather well:
Another one. "A semi-gelatinous honeydew melon lounged insouciantly in a corner" is great lmao, you can basically just tell it to write like Jerry and it'll give you all this really interesting imagery and such regardless of subject matter
Posts
I am not shifting goalposts, you're the one that used "art tools are very cheap" and I just engaged with that.
I'm not arguing against that, I'm arguing that making more luxuries easily available for more people (specifically in this example, those who would not have commissioned an artist otherwise) is a way this technology has of making things better.
Again, I'm not arguing otherwise. If you'll go back and read my original post I specifically point out that I'm not ignoring that a change in automation always causes pain to those it displaces. This is a situation that was just as true in the industrial revolution as it is today.
That was a post replying to a specific issue, if you go back to my original post you'll see I'm referring to AI art generation once the issue of intellectual property has been settled.
Are there artists in Fiver or whatever that is? Surely there are places where you can be put in touch with artists for commissions. Etsy at least must have a section for that.
PSN:Furlion
I think that makes those analogies fall apart, and we're in completely uncharted territory.
I mean, it depends on how you divide it. Once upon a time the vast majority of the human race was engaged in agriculture and now in the US it's about 10%. This caused immense problems and suffering in the short term, but in the long term the economy adapted - now many people who find fulfillment working with plants either find jobs in the now shrunken sector or perhaps garden as a hobby, while others have found careers in jobs that often didn't exist before such levels of automation caused the economy to expand in new directions. I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar happen here long term - there will always be a market for some hand made artwork, and that's making the assumption that AI generated art gets much better since I feel it can't compare right now.
Not much help, but there was a site mentioned that was a site for artists - it was on the social media thread, I believe.
Edit: Artstation
Still don't think that's a fair comparison. Farm work (as a career rather than a home garden) has and continues to be intensive manual labor that virtually no one enjoys and would choose if they had a career choice. This is not true of art. Plus farm workers can shift over to a different manual labor. Their job isn't "farm worker" but "manual laborer", which can include farm work. Those jobs are mostly about being human robots anyway (and being treated like faulty machinery when the worker can no longer perform).
I suspect the people involved in what you call "human robot" jobs would have very much disagreed with you. That's where we get stuff like the story of John Henry. People found those jobs fulfilling.
I mean, why not? I can have a nice watch without having to seek the services of a watchmaker, or a nice dining room set without a carpenter. These are luxury items that were once the province of bespoke artisans, but are now mass produced and commonly available. This is/was bad news for watchmakers and craftsmen of furniture, but it's (imo) hard to argue it's a bad outcome for society.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The most likely origin of the John Henry story tell us he was a prison laborer who died of silicosis.
It's easy to romanticize hard labor when you're not the one doing it. Almost to a person, people wouldn't do it if they had a choice.
It could very well be. Add a clause to the 50+ sites of TOS that nobody reads and it could suck up the files and projects people are currently working on. Heck, you couldn't find a better tutor for a "A.I." how to "draw" or generate pictures.
I really don't know how many more times I'm going to have to explain this. You are comparing the production of objects we need in order to function in everyday life like "sitting down" or "knowing what time it is" to "I would just be entertained to have a personal painting made by this specific artist of the subjects I choose."
You know what? Since you guys seem to think all automation is good no matter what, how about I make a robot that f***s your wife? I mean it's more efficient, more available, and you apparently can't argue that it would be bad for humanity, so let's just do away with it. What's that?? You don't want a robot to f*** your wife??? Something about "some things should be left for humans to do?" Nah, nah, sounds like you're one of those horse and buggy makers to me, man, just get out of the way so my robot can f*** your wife. Afterwards it'll enjoy ice cream and watch the sunset for you. Why are you such an enemy of progress?????
You don't need a fine dining table to sit down or a nice watch to function in society, but that doesn't mean it can't be nice that they're more available.
I feel like you're getting too heated here for this to be actual discussion. That's understandable given the personal nature of the subject, but it still means maybe it would be best to take some time away from the thread for a bit.
I don't think you really have explained it; you've said that laypeople creating art with some sort of AI-Art-Creation-Machine would be bad for working artists and maybe it would be, but it's far from clear to me that the interests of working artists should outweigh everyone else's.
A perhaps better example is music; for most of history if you wanted to hear music you had to go to a place where people were playing it (or pay them to come to you, if you were very wealthy.) Modern technology of course means anyone can have a recording and play it whenever they want, which no doubt has reduced the demand for live musicians at (say) pubs. But it seems a rather difficult argument to put the economic interests of those musicians above everyone else's desire to hear recorded music.
I also think it's pretty damned specious to argue that people would somehow stop making art if AI rendered it commercially non-valuable; almost everyone who's ever lived has created art and almost none of it was or ever became commercially worthwhile (nevermind enough so to sustain a career.)
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
1. I think it's kind of cool that I can use AI to create pictures.
2. Any pictures created by AI absolutely are not and should not be copyrightable. Only humans can hold copyrights.
3. As I understand it, the AI models use datasets of images scraped willy nilly from the web for training; like showing the model thousands of images of cats with the tag cat attached so it can associate the word cat to what one looks like. Clearly the web scrapers have copied the images in order to feed it to the AI (it's not as if the model is going around scraping the web itself), so that would seem to fall afoul of copyright laws.
4. Trying to use Fair Use as a defence for that copyright breaking needs to be tested in court; also, many different countries have their own differing Fair Use laws (or none at all for some countries), which I'm sure the webcrawlers probably haven't taken account of.
5. Setting aside the copyright legality and looking at the concept in general;
My Mum loves to knit. She'll go out and buy a pattern and some wool and spend hours of her time to create a cardigan for her granddaughter. Factoring in the raw materials and the cost of her time it would have been much cheaper and easier to just buy a cardigan made in some factory by an industrial knitting machine, but she enjoys doing it and likes the pleasure it gives to others. She knits as a hobby, and for people who make art as a hobby I imagine they can see the AI in much the same way my Mum sees those industrial knitting machines, they're kind of a non-issue. Sure, someone can press a button somewhere and get a cardigan in minutes, that's not what she's knitting for, though. But for people who make art as their job, this is more like the industrial revolution sweeping in. You used to be able to knit or spin or weave in your own cottage and make a living, but now you have to move to the city and find a job in the massive weaving factories, and for a time it was hell for everyone. So if the AI can work out all the kinks (and sort out the legality), are we heading for a mechanical-artistic revolution, where the only way regular artists can get paid for their work is to join the factories churning out pictures to train the AI on? Worrying thoughts. If you've spent years honing your craft and someone comes along and says "Sorry, your craft has been superseded, looks like you wasted your life"... no wonder people are upset. But perhaps it won't be that bad. After all, people still go to see live musicians, we haven't replaced all of them with synthesisers. I'm not sure where I was going with this.
"training" the current generative models doesn't involve violating copyright any more than viewing any image on the internet does; unless rightsholders (e.g. in the Stable Diffusion suit) can show that the output of the model infringes, they are essentially asking to have a license applied retroactively.
the current body of copyright law is poor ground to litigate this issue; per usual technology has advanced faster than law so really we need a legislative solution, but yanno, good luck with all that
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
No, what you're interpreting as heat is just a demonstration of how ludicrous your position actually is; it sounds extreme because it is extreme; you only realize this as soon as I make you the subject instead of me. Automating tasks done purely for pleasure is not a wonderful idea, it's something you include in the prologue to a movie to explain why everyone is murdering each other.
We're going to set aside the ghoulish avarice required to insist that I become destitute and irrelevant so that you may be entertained in a slightly more convenient format. Instead, I will explain why you do not want this thing you apparently think is going to improve humanity.
Let's say AI keeps going, and you are one day able to perfectly recreate my and every other artist alive's skills. You can have any picture we would have made, with the touch of a button.
You will grow bored of this.
Why will you get bored of it? Take a look at your steam list. You probably have way too many games to play. Is it that they're not good games? No. It's that there's too many, numerically. There being so many options makes your brain regard them as less valuable. This works for everything, especially pleasure. If you eat cookies all the time, you don't feel anything when you eat one. If you masturbate three times a day, you don't get anything out of it.
Artists already have to contend with the fact that seeing other artists' works on the internet has made them self-conscious of their own abilities. AI made this worse.
You know what people used to say when they saw a digital painting? "WOW! That's so impressive, it looks so pretty! This must have taken so long!"
You know what they say now? "Hunh looks like AI, a computer probably did it." Do you understand what I'm saying? It has already swallowed alive an entire very difficult medium, and it is turning its hungry eyes toward every other one.
The fact that it takes time and you can't have it instantly is what makes it valuable. This is true of art, of music, of movies, of games. It is the reason why anything can still wow you. And if you remove that wait, you will have dulled yourself to the only pleasures available to you. There will be nothing left, nowhere left to turn to make life worthwhile.
And with that, I'm done. I'm through explaining this over and over. Good luck, you gullible starry-eyed fools, you'll need it.
But let's get back to the point.
Stealing another person's creative work for your own benefit is wrong. Both morally and legally.
Prove me wrong.
Fine then, I'll engage you with this. If someone made a sexbot, it would be entirely up to my wife if she preferred it over me. I wouldn't try to outlaw sexbots so she wouldn't leave me for it. Steam has, in my opinion, been one of the greatest increases in my quality of life in the 40 years I've been alive. I don't agree with you that making a luxury more restricted than it has to be improves happiness.
Basically, my point of view is this: Anything that automates a job, or in other ways makes a good cheaper and more plentiful, is a net good. If every job on Earth got automated, we could live in a post-money paradise like the Federation in Star Trek, and those that wanted to make art for pleasure could make art for pleasure. The problem comes when only some jobs get automated - that makes things much worse for the people doing the jobs getting automated while making them slightly better for everyone else. This has held true for all of human history, and is one of the main reasons we live what we call a modern way of life including debating on the internet instead of struggling for basic necessities. I don't disagree with your position on the effects of what this change will do to artists, and have repeatedly noted that I acknowledge this is pretty horrible for them - I just don't agree that that alone is sufficient reason to stand in front of progress that will be a net benefit and yell "stop!" I'd prefer to focus on ways to ameliorate that harm for them in the short term while holding true that it's a change that will improve things in the long term.
I'll note once again I've never once disagreed with this, I just feel copyright and AI generated art are separate issues. Even if the courts/government decide that you can't train an AI on a picture without a specifically signed contract from the artist, companies will just get that contract - either through paying the artists, or perhaps more likely, setting up all services so you have to sign those contracts to use them.
I think it's worth repeating because it's very easy to lose sight of this, but a person copying the bytes of an image from the internet to their local device and perceiving the results with their eyes is very much not the same thing a commercial organization using a machine to copy the bytes of images en masse and adding them to a massive set of data, and then using that data to freely and instantly generate unlimited similar works.
I truly wish that we could discuss this without analogies, because any time anything contentious starts getting talked about by comparison to other things, you start to lose sight of the actual thing being discussed. This isn't about agriculture or knitting or wife-fucking robots, this is a unique situation with details that make it inherently different from however you want to rephrase it in a way you think makes an easier argument.
Oh, great, now I'm being targeted.
I also understand, agree with, and have made the argument that it's nice for people without talent to be able to make stuff for fun without having to bug an artist about it: like how I, who cannot draw a decent circle much less a realistic coastline for a map, can use Campaign Cartographer's fractal tool to draw a better coastline for a map I would use in a TTRPG.
All that said though, I am becoming increasingly convinced that art itself always involves some communication between two minds. If no one but the artist ever sees it, or the artist makes it without any thought whatsoever of who would look at it, I don't know that art took place. And if it wasn't made by a mind, if there is nothing to communicate to the viewer, I just don't think you're actually getting art.
The way the internet works is that the more useless stuff we put on it, the less useful everything becomes. AI content of all kinds is garbage and does not do what art does, to a degree far beyond "ikea tables are worse than hand crafted ones". That is a threat independent of copyright and usage and theft and all these other legitimate concerns. The threat we are experiencing every day when we realize the capacity of machines to churn out so much jetsam that we'll drown before we ever find anything useful or compelling anymore.
if it's true that 'time is what makes it valuable,' then 'free' art made by AI (or whatever technological means) will never displace human-created works anyway. I suspect however that (at least for many consumers of art) it's not actually true.
There is already more art (in whatever category) than anyone can consume in a lifetime, and more being created all the time. I doesn't seem likely to me that there's some point of 'art saturation' at which people become bored with the whole enterprise.
I'm not without sympathy for people whose chosen field is made less economically viable by automation, I just don't think their existence is a per se argument against automation.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I'm not entirely convinced that it would even be good for humanity if we no longer needed jobs. We may like to assume that, freed from the drudgery of jobs, everyone would just be free to do great and marvelous things and that society would only benefit from it. Maybe I just have a bleak world view, but I think the truth is that many people would spend most of their time not doing much that is of benefit to anyone other than themselves. I also feel that many would lose all sense of purpose in life. If we remove the purpose that is their job -- sad as that statement may be -- not everyone is going to be able to find a new purpose easily.
Taking myself as an example, I would like to believe that I would do things that would help at least my community if I didn't have to work five days a week to keep food on the table and a roof over my head. But if I'm being honest with myself, if all my needs for food, shelter, etc were met by other means, I would probably get into the habit of sitting around on the internet, reading, or playing video games for a lot of the time. I say that because I already do that NOW when I know there are other more productive things that I could be doing when I'm not working. Heck, even sitting writing this post is not the most productive thing I could be doing at this moment.
This kind of societal upheaval is so massive, that I think few people can even grasp what they are saying. Much of the world runs on the model that people produce for society via a job, they get paid for that effort, and then they use that money to provide for their needs. Is it a perfect system? Not at all. But there is so much involved with the process of moving away from that model. It's going to take much more than A.I. making jobs obsolete to get from this model into an entirely new one. I fear there's too much focus on "please make it so I don't have to have a job anymore" and not enough on how much the world would need to change for people to no longer need a job, but yet for everyone to still get all they need to live happy lives.
RatherDashing89: I'm not necessarily trying to predict what you do and do not advocate here. It was just the comment about people needing jobs that compelled me to post about my personal thoughts and reservations about these things.
-Tycho Brahe
Not trying to drift too far off topic here, but while I'm not advocating for no jobs at all, necessarily, my thoughts recently have been that most of the big accomplishments throughout human history were not done out of motivation not to starve. And, in fact, many of the people we currently remember as great minds: scientists, artists, political thinkers, were essentially "idle": noblemen and monks who were motivated to accomplish things specifically because they had the time to do so and never had to worry about their next meal.
I'd just hazard against blithely assuming that the luxury of "idleness" alone is the only way or even a good way of inducing accomplishment. They had lives with expectations made of them well before those accomplishments. Idleness at best is a byproduct of who they were and their actions prior to that. What made them exceptional was the demonstrated ability to ignore the temptation to just be nothing other than idle when having the choice.
Just look at how many lotto winners have really bad outcomes (even outside of externally induced ones motivated by the greed others) if one wants an example of how just handing someone idleness alone does not act as a guarantee of anything good.
Have you ever read Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano? This kind of dystopia - and they do find it to be a bad outcome - is what the novel is all about. Jobs are prized very highly because they are so scarce, and almost everyone is just on public assistance. It's told in Vonnegut's typical slightly surreal style, so it's not exactly hard scifi. But I read it around 25 years ago and still think about it.
Back on the subject of art, I just feel like it's a mistake to lump painting a landscape in with building a car (and more specifically, being the person who welds fenders all day). Art is not a means to an ends. Art is itself the ends. Yes, you can get paid for doing it, but every artist I've ever run into is primarily interested in creating art regardless of their ability to monetize it. I'm sure there are exceptions, like Andy Warhol. But even with his mercantile approach to art, I think there's still probably a kernel of art for art's sake.
However, as touched on earlier, there's the concept that art needs an audience. This has been debated a lot for a long time, so I don't have the answer to that question. But usually artists need an income, and if their main skill is art that's going to come from an audience of some sort.
And we're not just talking about automating visual art. We're also talking about (eventually) automating making movies (acting, directing, everything), writing, scientific discoveries, etc. At some point, I have to wonder what's left for humans. This is a subject that's been touched on in plenty of scifi. But just imagine if in Star Trek the computer flew all the ships, did all the diplomacy and fought off alien lizardmen. What's left for people? Just a drip of opioids until we die?
In other words, distraction while shuffling towards the grave.
I'll take the opioid drip.
So The Culture? I never saw that as a particularly dystopian setting, myself.
I'd be a fool if I said I knew for sure what the future would bring. But I do get the impression I don't find these possibilities as ominous as you do.
I generally find that reality falls short of what someone writing an exciting piece of fiction might project it to be.