Generative AI is the biggest heist in the history of human life, where artistically untalented people stole from the work of all the talented ones, so that they could use math functions to approximate the art of others and calling it their owns.
Prove me wrong…
Thanks for posting!
I do want to try to present the other side, let me gather some info and post tomorrow.
Obviously there are a lot controversy here, so I’m not sure everyone will agree on one viewpoint.
more to come!
I disagree.
At the moment Ai is a tool like any other. An artist using water colours, pastels, charcoal has no exclusive claim on producing their material, nor do they have any claim on the subject matter.
The gripe is that this new tool makes art (among other things) a lot more accesible than was previously possible with any other medium.
If the artistically challenged can produce a better product as a result, imagine what a trained or experienced artist can do.
Artists should be embracing this change and exploiting it instead of complaining. Art is, and will always be, subjective; whereas people in other fields impacted by Ai that are not subjective will have something to complain about, esp by those caught standing still.
This ‘heist’ view is the same perspective ppl had when CAD, VR, Power tools, Printing Press, Loom, typwritters, etc… joined the equation. The nature of things is to make them easier to do over time. This is no different and is also making up for some lost time in one fell swoop.
As an artist, I disagree. Tools like Canva are some of the recent displacers in the artistic field. Before that was digital art in general, cameras, the printing press, etc.
AI has opened the court to those without skill to finally create something, but those that can create (and are intelligent enough to notice AI as a tool) will also be using it to improve their workflow. The quality of output is near enough to be gorgeous works of art, but many of the things created are soulless money grabs by people looking to make it big quickly.
Heavy agree, you wrote what I had posted but better haha. AI will surely displace jobs, automated systems in place etc, but it’s no heist. Those that refuse to learn are left behind.
I can’t prove you wrong; I completely agree with you. Additionally, they might discover a profitable way to exploit generative copy machines without giving due credit. This trend might persist and continue to grow, for decades countless creative individuals share their work on the internet. from movies, to music, the possibilities seem limitless. And who knows, perhaps even future politicians writer will adopt this approach. I don’t believe it can be controlled or stopped anymore. One potential advantage lies in the fact that many artists I know have experienced poverty and disrespect. Consequently, I anticipate that white-collar jobs may face significant challenges due to AI, especially for those lacking creative skills.
Yeah dude youre right. This goes for text as well. I never willingly accepted my 9001+ Iq post on reddit to be scraped to train an LLM. Had I been asked I would of said yes but I was never asked.
Im not sure what this means for humanity. People training these models have done insane progress in making an AI that already helps people with general text related tasks. These LLM can already output human level work when it comes to text. They are being used to write novels that are being sold for profit. These machines are already coworkers. Bro sometimes when Im doing a text exchange with these LLM it feels like im talking to a smart human that can walk me through debugging software issues. It is insane. I dont know how far companies like OpenAI will go but this is insanely intesting.
I also know companies will use fancy wording to move the goal post, and to try to gas light people (George Orwell 1894). But I know where companies like OpenAI already are and what they are aiming for. I can see the writing on the wall. I think most debate on youtube is pointless. As I dont know whats going to happen in the future and anyone who says they 100% know what is going to happen, just check them by asking them for the lotto numbers this will give you all the info you need to know.
If humans learn art by looking at different artists’ styles, nature, storing that information inside their brains and creating their mix of those styles of art.
Why should this be any different from an AI looking at different artists’ styles, nature, storing that information in a database and creating a mix of those styles of art?
AGI will make redundant copyright and patents in favour of decentralised individual capability - this includes art/media.
This is beneficial for everyone as we transition to an “open source” economy where the masses are able to ever improve the quality, and economy, of all products and services, in a format that allows others to inspect (there will always be a need for diligence) and iterate on them into their next generations.
This is an important step towards a utopian future and the gradual dissolving of capitalism into a mutually beneficial “economy of plenty”.
A metaphor for this evolution: With more skilled hands and minds collaborating, the cream will rise to the top quicker, of higher quality, and in abundance.
Copyright and patents will be barriers to utopia, and it’s not stealing if everyone gives openly. Art should be free.
I think the only thing that I’d hard disagree with here is the ‘untalented’ part of the post. My feelings and thoughts are very mixed on the whole ‘theft and copyright’ part of the equation - as I do very much believe that people should be compensated for their work, and art is deffo work, but also not sure how their use of it stands in the eyes of the law - so I’m gonna say pass on that part, but I do hard disagree that the people who produce the AI are talentless. They are extremely talented and it’s because of that talent that they’ve made such a good tool.
But this is gonna get interesting! And I can very much see your PoV here. My mother is an artist, I’m a writer and the one thing we can all guarantee is that world’s most certainly changing. 
New tools open possibilities for new forms of art. The goalpost just has been moved.
You are welcome…this post was intentionally " controversial", the intent being to start a conversation on who owns the value of the data used to train AI, which ultimately is not just copying creative intellectual property, but it is in fact stealing the skills required to use it,…we’ll see where it goes.
Thanks for setting this up
The “art” has never been in the brush, it’s always been in the spark. AI has made it possible for people who have the spark to express themselves in infinitely more varied ways, leap frogging what has traditionally been years of discipline, but there is no spark in the millions of Van Goghs that have been generated in the last year, which is why they sit forgotten on people’s hard drives. Many artistic “skill sets” suddenly have no value, it’s certainly true. But we don’t own the style we create, we only get the claim on creating it, and easier-to-emulate-than-anyone-could-have ever-imagined, doesn’t equate to theft.
Please notice I said artistically talented, not just talented… I have been in the high tech industry since before cellphones…we are not artistically, socially nor philosophically sensitive people. Of course there are many exceptions…but the reality is that the industry is driven by blind profit and has no issue bulldozing anything on its path… greatest example of all, the social and psychological devastation brought on to millions of teenagers by the social media algorithm.
Are there talented people? Of course…most leaders in the industry are math, science and engineering talents… However, ask Ian Lacun to admit that the Facebook algorithm is responsible for using the worst of people to make money, regardless of the fact that it has empowered all forms of extremism, and he will start pulling excuses …
AI now is stealing from the whole of humanity…and yet the companies pushing it aren’t by any stretch willing to talk about why they think they shall not pay for what they take.
Let me give an example: how many of the leaders in the AI industry can make an original painting, like those that our human ancestors painted in caves 30’0000 years ago and are still today part of our human heritage?
As to legality, American jurisprudence is very clear: employers DO NOT OWN the skills of the employees…they only own the work of the employees.
Using art work to create a machine that replicates the artistic skills is theft, because it steals the skills, not just it uses the art without paying for it. The same can be said for any AI that replicates programming skills.
… It’s a complicated issue, I will give that 
We are talking about companies selling AI that replicates skills, for which they didn’t pay, that they legally do not own.
…
I think the argument that you can’t trespass the eyes might apply here. Or maybe a better way to put it, if an artist goes out and COPIES nature because they lack the talent to come up with their own images isn’t it the same thing as what a.i. is doing?
If the eyes can see it, then they can try to copy it. That’s how it works for humans.
Think of a.i. like the invention of the gun (or most any weapon). It made it so that the weak and strong were now equal when both armed. That’s all a.i. is doing, it’s making low IQ, and less talented equal to more talented, higher IQ people. That is a good thing for most of us. So, so, sorry for you elites…
Woops! My dumb 6am dyslexic brain skipped over the fact that you said artistically, my bad!
I completely agree that this is a hugely complex issue and that, yes, really really bad stuff has happened as a result of tech advancement. It seems as if this is an inevitability as we don’t have the imaginative capacity to anticipate all problems beforehand and stop them from happening, and I also agree that money and profits drive everything in a capitalistic society. As society is right now (in the west, at the very least) we’re majorly screwed up by social media and tech, but we’ve also come a long way because of it as well.
Beauty, in the end, lies in the eye of the beholder, but law can’t. Law has to be objective and where art, creativity and imagination meet law, a big heckin’ mess is gonna be found (I suspect). And AI is now causing us to look directly at that mess.
I 100% agree that there are VERY profit driven people behind this (as well as some very well-intentioned people) and that they will bulldoze over people. There will be casualties and a lot of people won’t care about them, either because they don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with the pain those thoughts will cause, or because they genuinely don’t care as long as they get their bag.
Any calculation about what’s going to happen/is happening/should happen, has to account for the fact that people have limited empathy. My work is being directly impacted by this very thing, and I don’t know what’s going to happen as a result, but looking back at what happened to, say, the weaving industries of the past when everything went mechanised, I’d summarise that art and art creation by hand/hand drawn on a computer will become a cottage industry that can supply human made things.
I think, in the end, it boils down to trust and who we place it in. People will always people, and people will always create, it just depends what the person on the receiving end wants, I suppose. If people continue to want human-made art, then it will continue to exist in some form. If they don’t, it’ll go away, and for a lot of people that will be sad. For some, it’ll be a moment for celebration, but I suspect that I will keep on writing, my mother will keep on drawing, weaving and painting, and her friends will keep on sculpting. Our lives will just be…different. I’m not sure yet if I want to be OK with that, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I’ll have to be.
Art is the expression of an idea, and ideas change the world, so, who knows, perhaps we will find an artist that can sum up the sentiment better than any have before and spread their message to the world. But also, that may be the coffee talking. Either way, great great talking point!
I don’t think you can copyright skills. And if you want to withdraw your art from the training data of some models, I don’t see the problem with that.
But I think you’re more concerned with the direction that the evolution of art is taking.
The same happened with the printing press.
But the positive thing with AI is that it gives everyone the chance to become an artist by lowering the skill requirement.
Will it obsolete painters or illustrators?
Nah, they will still be novel, and perhaps gain a higher status among artists.
Not suggesting to copyright skills… I am saying AI is shifting the foundation of the post industrial society from a free market economy based on a free workforce ( that doesn’t own the product of its work, but owns the skills needed to do the work, even when the employer paid for developing the skills) to a of society in which corporation basically end up owning people. If your skills can be taken from you without being paid for acquiring new skills…you are no longer a free person.
That’s how radical AI really is. It question the usefulness of people…and nobody is even questioning where this is going.
Do you wonder why Microsoft has invested $8B in a startup that was meant to be non for profit? Yeah…
My point is…AI should not be private property, even if it was developed using private money.
Of all the shit Elon Musk has been giving us in social media, he saw this one coming before anybody else.
Oh…by making a machine that can think for you, all you get is making you more stupid.
Necessity is the reason humans evolved an IQ… Eliminate the necessity to be smart for survival…and then what?
Of course, if AI was a right to have for everyone…open with no secrets, then you’d be right because the competition would shift to how do better than everyone by leveraging AI, in an open flat playing field.
Right now, AI is going to be available only to those, who can pay for it… making all those, who cannot, slaves of those who can… concentrating power and wealth in an ever shrinking number of people, not necessarily smarter, just richer (you know…like they were some kind of royals) …who will then own and control everything.
Example: just go to China and see what is AI used for… Then again, some Americans right now would love to see in the US what is the CCP doing in China, where I remind, nobody has any personal nir human right whatsoever…