D&D General DMs Guild and DriveThruRPG ban AI written works, requires labels for AI generated art
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
One study said happiness peaked at $75,000 in income. Now, economists say it's higher — by a lot.
It turns out that money can buy happiness for most people — although some may remain miserable no matter what.www.cbsnews.com
Money can and does buy happiness, but it just caps out well before billionaire status.
That study is unique to employed people in the USA. It is hardly representative of the global population. They only sampled 33,000 working people in the US. Further when they sampled people making more money in a follow on study they found the number rose. Key to this is they asked people how satisfied they were, which is hardly an objective measure of happiness.
Global studies found that wealth is correlated to increased happiness among the poorest specifically:
The main idea is that among those who are struggling to meet their basic needs, more money means greater access to basic goods (e.g. drinking water, food, shelter). In contrast, it is believed that once the basic needs are met, more money does not necessarily help increase one’s happiness
Sources:
Englehart R, Foa R, Peterson C, Welzel C. 2008. Development, freedom, and rising happiness a global perspective (1981-2007). Perspect Psychol Sci. 3 264–285
Vohs KD, Baumeister RF. 2011. What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money. J Consum Psychol. 21: 139–141.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
So you arguments are...
1) a 33k sample size which is several times larger than the standard accepted sample size for polls is somehow not enough. "only sampled 33k..."
2) The people in the USA are unique in the world to being happier when they make money. "That study is unique to employed people in the USA."
3) They found that more people were happier when they make more money = people aren't happier when they make more money. "in a follow on study they found the number rose."
4) They asked people if they were happier which is not an objective measure of happiness, "key to this is they asked people how satisfied they were..."
Um.
First, a 33k sample is waaaaaaaay more than enough to establish what a population feels about something.
Second, the US is not unique in wanting to be happy and being happier when they have luxuries like, "More food than is needed to keep from starving to death, hot water, electricity, cable, etc."
Third, people being happier when they make more money = people being happier when they make more money. That's why the number rose.
Fourth, there is no objective measure of happiness, because happiness is................................subjective. What is objective is that people reported being significantly happier with more money and luxuries up to 200k-500k depending on the study. Certainly waaaaaaaaaay above, "basic water and electricity."
Imagine that! Poor people got a greater increase in happiness due to having more money and luxuries than the middle class and wealthy. It's almost as if money does indeed buy happiness
No. Even in the USA you generally stop "struggling" when you hit 75k(before really) income, so the 200k-500k level means that more luxuries on top of basic needs = happiness.
Oligopsony
Explorer
Drawing a stick figure, snapping a quick picture of someone, and typing “female human warlock casting a spell” are all pretty similar levels of skill and effort; I would call all of them art, but I use the term in a maximalist sense.
This level of skill and effort is just enough for different things with different tools. If you want a picture of a pig with tree bark skin, that’s much easier with AI, takes skill with pen and ink, and would require both some real creativity and effort with photography. If you want a realistic picture of a person you know, that’s trivial with photography, takes real skill with pen and ink, and is very very difficult with AI alone (realistically you’d go through photography.) If you want a frog sitting on a balloon held by a bunny on a unicycle, that’s pretty easy to draw (not draw well, but clearly get the point across), while difficult with AI (you’d at least need to learn some extra features like ControlNet) and nearly impossible with photography. Hands are famously hard for AI; they’re also tricky for many traditional artists, while being a cinch for photography.
If you want to get beyond the basic level in traditional art you’ll want to practice to improve your manual dexterity, especially in how you hold your shoulder and wrist; you’ll want some experience with different tools and how they convert speed and pressure into different lines and hues and so on. (A digital artist working with photoshop, which most people would now class as another trad artist though that was hugely controversial a few decades ago, has some overlapping but still different set of tool-specific skills.) More generally you’ll want to be able to look at things and break them down into fundamental 3D objects, to see value when looking around you, and so on.
You’ll want to develop a whole repertoire of references, and this is basically larger than many human lifetimes. When I started practicing with pen and ink I started looking at tree bark completely differently. This thing I had taken for granted was in fact this whole world to stare at in detail.
If you want to get good at using Stable Diffusion there’s a lot of overlap. 90% of what you’re doing is looking at something you had generated and either saying “this is naughty word,” “I want to explore variations of this,” “let’s bump this up to refine in higher detail” or “this specific part of the picture is bad, let’s fix it.” The observational skills thus are extremely similar; you need to know perspective to notice when the perspective is bad, anatomy to notice when the anatomy is bad, and so on. (You and lay viewers can notice that “something is off” without this, most of the skill difference is in placing the origin of the problem.)
Tool-specific skills: ControlNet if you want any control over composition. Knowledge of models. Ability to do textual inversion and Loras. And yes, prompting - knowing what specific words mean to the model, from fiddly things like how “female sorcerer” differs from “sorceress” to exactly what “volumetric lighting” is to knowing artists and art movements.
I had basically zero interest in art history before, now I’m super into it, in the same way trad art got me into tree bark. I’m glad on both counts even if (as with most of my obsessions) it never results in anything.
My guess is that a lot of the initial reaction to MJ/SD arises from being very impressed, or scared, that a naive user can create something that would objectively require a great deal of skill using traditional methods. The same is true of photography and indeed photography did drive a lot of hardworking artists out of business. In our house we have some inherited oil portraits of some long-dead relatives they had commissioned, my phone background right now is a photo of my son my wife snapped on a whim - that particular use of painting has become far less common. But painting is still a thriving artistic medium today and over the twentieth century many of the interesting movements and innovations in painting were in exploring what it could do that photography couldn’t. I’m an optimist about the long-run future of painting in that sense.
(For another optimistic model, look at chess: computer programs (full computer programs doing the whole process, not just humans using computer tools) objectively play better than any human, but human v human chess has never been more popular, over both IRL and streaming.)
This level of skill and effort is just enough for different things with different tools. If you want a picture of a pig with tree bark skin, that’s much easier with AI, takes skill with pen and ink, and would require both some real creativity and effort with photography. If you want a realistic picture of a person you know, that’s trivial with photography, takes real skill with pen and ink, and is very very difficult with AI alone (realistically you’d go through photography.) If you want a frog sitting on a balloon held by a bunny on a unicycle, that’s pretty easy to draw (not draw well, but clearly get the point across), while difficult with AI (you’d at least need to learn some extra features like ControlNet) and nearly impossible with photography. Hands are famously hard for AI; they’re also tricky for many traditional artists, while being a cinch for photography.
If you want to get beyond the basic level in traditional art you’ll want to practice to improve your manual dexterity, especially in how you hold your shoulder and wrist; you’ll want some experience with different tools and how they convert speed and pressure into different lines and hues and so on. (A digital artist working with photoshop, which most people would now class as another trad artist though that was hugely controversial a few decades ago, has some overlapping but still different set of tool-specific skills.) More generally you’ll want to be able to look at things and break them down into fundamental 3D objects, to see value when looking around you, and so on.
You’ll want to develop a whole repertoire of references, and this is basically larger than many human lifetimes. When I started practicing with pen and ink I started looking at tree bark completely differently. This thing I had taken for granted was in fact this whole world to stare at in detail.
If you want to get good at using Stable Diffusion there’s a lot of overlap. 90% of what you’re doing is looking at something you had generated and either saying “this is naughty word,” “I want to explore variations of this,” “let’s bump this up to refine in higher detail” or “this specific part of the picture is bad, let’s fix it.” The observational skills thus are extremely similar; you need to know perspective to notice when the perspective is bad, anatomy to notice when the anatomy is bad, and so on. (You and lay viewers can notice that “something is off” without this, most of the skill difference is in placing the origin of the problem.)
Tool-specific skills: ControlNet if you want any control over composition. Knowledge of models. Ability to do textual inversion and Loras. And yes, prompting - knowing what specific words mean to the model, from fiddly things like how “female sorcerer” differs from “sorceress” to exactly what “volumetric lighting” is to knowing artists and art movements.
I had basically zero interest in art history before, now I’m super into it, in the same way trad art got me into tree bark. I’m glad on both counts even if (as with most of my obsessions) it never results in anything.
My guess is that a lot of the initial reaction to MJ/SD arises from being very impressed, or scared, that a naive user can create something that would objectively require a great deal of skill using traditional methods. The same is true of photography and indeed photography did drive a lot of hardworking artists out of business. In our house we have some inherited oil portraits of some long-dead relatives they had commissioned, my phone background right now is a photo of my son my wife snapped on a whim - that particular use of painting has become far less common. But painting is still a thriving artistic medium today and over the twentieth century many of the interesting movements and innovations in painting were in exploring what it could do that photography couldn’t. I’m an optimist about the long-run future of painting in that sense.
(For another optimistic model, look at chess: computer programs (full computer programs doing the whole process, not just humans using computer tools) objectively play better than any human, but human v human chess has never been more popular, over both IRL and streaming.)
This is orthogonal to the main topic of the thread, but declining marginal utility of income is a real thing. Going from a hovel to a studio apartment with running water, Wi-Fi, and A/C really does make you significantly happier, moving from that studio to a mansion in a fancy suburb makes a bit happier than that, and by the time you’re buying your second jet it’s meaningless.
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Clint_L
Hero
Going back to the issue that started this thread, one thing that is already occurring is an explosion of new RPG content being made with the assistance of AI, most of it not for sale but by individuals for private use, or just their own entertainment. I've used it, and I bet a lot of folks on this forum have played with it and incorporate elements of it. I think there is a good likelihood that we will see an explosion of human creativity because folks will see less of an expertise barrier to attempting to accomplish goals that may have been previously daunting, like finally writing that fully illustrated campaign setting that's been in their head for years (ahem).
For example, a while back I put together a slideshow of creepy images and settings to enhance a game of Dread that I wrote. This took me quite awhile using content that was freely available on the web, and I couldn't always find exactly what I had in mind. Next time, I will be able to use AI to create exactly what I have in mind. That's pretty cool!
In important ways, this is similar to the rise of other information technologies. When we recently replaced our carpeted stairs with wood, we didn't hire an expert, we did it ourselves (well, with the help of a key brother-in-law). We were able to do it by looking up YouTube videos and other resources online.
In both cases, what was once exclusive, expert skill and knowledge was suddenly in the hands of non-experts. This has significant ramifications for those experts. This is not a new phenomenon, of course - the rise of the automated loom 200 years ago is the classic example. So we cannot pretend that there aren't consequences for real people and their livelihoods, especially in the short term. But I don't think it is possible to stop the spread of information and technology, even if we want to (and I am not sure that we should want to). So I am more interested in looking at ways to maximize the benefits and ameliorate the harms.
I don't think this new policy from DMs Guild and Drivethrough RPG will do much. I doubt it'll even be enforceable in a practical sense. I think that giving individuals access to tools that will allow them greater creative expression is a good thing, but I think the potential harms to working professionals are bad. All these things can be true at once, and I don't think the solution to such an unbelievably complex situation will come from simple answers. It never does. We are not going to come up with practical solutions unless we keep open minds, remind ourselves that we are already wrong about some things and just don't know it yet, and accept compromise.
For example, a while back I put together a slideshow of creepy images and settings to enhance a game of Dread that I wrote. This took me quite awhile using content that was freely available on the web, and I couldn't always find exactly what I had in mind. Next time, I will be able to use AI to create exactly what I have in mind. That's pretty cool!
In important ways, this is similar to the rise of other information technologies. When we recently replaced our carpeted stairs with wood, we didn't hire an expert, we did it ourselves (well, with the help of a key brother-in-law). We were able to do it by looking up YouTube videos and other resources online.
In both cases, what was once exclusive, expert skill and knowledge was suddenly in the hands of non-experts. This has significant ramifications for those experts. This is not a new phenomenon, of course - the rise of the automated loom 200 years ago is the classic example. So we cannot pretend that there aren't consequences for real people and their livelihoods, especially in the short term. But I don't think it is possible to stop the spread of information and technology, even if we want to (and I am not sure that we should want to). So I am more interested in looking at ways to maximize the benefits and ameliorate the harms.
I don't think this new policy from DMs Guild and Drivethrough RPG will do much. I doubt it'll even be enforceable in a practical sense. I think that giving individuals access to tools that will allow them greater creative expression is a good thing, but I think the potential harms to working professionals are bad. All these things can be true at once, and I don't think the solution to such an unbelievably complex situation will come from simple answers. It never does. We are not going to come up with practical solutions unless we keep open minds, remind ourselves that we are already wrong about some things and just don't know it yet, and accept compromise.
MoonSong
Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
I think we havr different ideas of what basic survival is. Bare survival to me means, you have a roof over your head -no walls though- you get a dry spot to sleep - but you need to choose quality or quantity, though you might get neither, just enough so that you don't drop dead-, one set of clothes -though no shoes-, you get to eat once every other day -you can have some high sugar soda though, just so you get enough calories to keep moving-, you own nothing that brings you joy if you have anything to your name, it will be a tool for work. That is what basic survival means to me.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
OK. Now, if instead of going to a live musician I (somehow) convince an AI music generator to play my song idea, does - or should - it matter?
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I think the other way around is more likely. Celebrities will take a while to replace with AI. Song writers are easier. I suspect in the next few years there will start being controversies around pop stars singing AI generated songs that were trained on songs written by human song writers without their consent. Or a major video game company using AI generated music instead of paying artists to make a soundtrack for the game.
And that will be a problem. That does matter. Companies will try to replace creativity with bland, automated "art".
Zardnaar
Legend
My theory is with music and writing (movie scripts) cant get much worse right?
It's already bad
Clint_L
Hero
I mean...have you listened to most popular music? Watched most sitcoms? Read a lot of popular novels? Bland, automated art is extremely popular.
Is consent needed to train humans on songs written by other humans? I play music (badly) - bass guitar. I do so by listening to songs I like and learning to play them through a lot of repetition, sometimes looking up tabs online. There is no consent.
I know that some folks see the methodology as what distinguishes between these processes, with my human methodology for learning through mimicry being permissible because it happens through human methods of remembering and learning. I accept that there is merit to those arguments, yet I am not fully convinced by them. From my perspective, there is not necessarily a huge ethical distinction. There may well be a legal one, which is another matter. I don't think these will be slam dunk cases, but what do I know about law?
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