The AI Red Scare is only harming artists and needs to stop.

[tomBitonti]

Having spent a few years teaching elementary music and 5-6 classroom...

Yeah, the process we use in classroom looks a lot like that used in describing AI training. Repeatedly show correlated materials, and sooner or later, those correlations sink in. Reward successful output of the expected material given the input.

It's also interesting to note that the same training mode used with AI small multilayer nets works with ex-vivo neural cell organoids for playing videogames...

Which makes the LLM look like it may be even closer to how things work in the brain than many think.

The fundamental issue: Many humans believe humans are a unique clade with a unique place in the universe. This is known by several names... but the one I prefer is "Humanocentrism"... and "Exceptionalism of Humanity" has been used by a few researchers recently...

The evidence coming out of animal research is, more and more, humans are different in ability from other apes only as a matter of degree, not a matter of fundamental structural differences. And that many mammals are much closer than most people are comfortable thinking about. Many birds in the 1.5-5kg range are a lot smarter than people want to think, and the humanocentrists in the review process block a lot of papers from publication, simply by being overly dismissive with citing "clever Hans" and "pareidolia."

It is much easier for many people's world view to see humans as exceptions than to accept that we're just really smart animals, different only in degrees.¹ And for a great many, it's religious in origin.

To be clear — arguing that people and computers “think” differently is not the same as arguing that computers can or cannot achieve consciousness, either in practice or in principle. I believe the first (computers think differently) but not the second (I believe that computers can achieve consciousness, in principle. Although, I don’t think they are that close to it yet.)

TomB

 

[aramis erak]

One common issue with LLMs (Large Language Models - AI writing) is what they are now calling "hallucinations". I'm not fond of that as a descriptor but it's in common usage. If they have information, they can use the information. If they don't have the information, they often will make up information. Not so different from human - except that they can't tell they made up the information. They can sprinkle falsehoods and incorrect information in, and don't know.

5th and 6th graders often have similar errors to the "hallucinations"... or at least my students the 4 years I was working with the same class whole year... (my long term subbing jobs)... Sample size of about 95 students... not counting the 6th grade reading group another couple years.

... and it's not really that uncommon in humans at higher levels, either. I've seen fellow students on a team project in my MA program completely get wrong what an author was pointing out.

I've seen (and graded) geography tests on the undergrad level where, despite citing specific passages from the text, they got the meaning dead «bleep»ing wrong. On an open book test, at that!

 

[LordEntrails]

(nothing here)

 

[Aldarc]

Not the one I learned.
I learned that industrialization and automation have allowed the average blue collar job to be reduced in hours per week. Reduce in the number of injuries and career ending injuries. Reduction in toxic exposures. Increase in food production.

What actually allowed the average blue collar job to be reduced in hours per week was Socialism, unions and labor movements, and concessions made to labor by those in power who were scared of Socialist movements. Otherwise we would be working more than 40 hours per week on average and on weekends. This is also what reduced the number of injuries and career ending injuries due to worker's protection laws and a whole host of issues. You're thanking the disease for someone else inventing medicine to cope with it.

 

[CleverNickName]

How many human artists that have learned from your art paid you for helping them learn? How many human artists pay other artists for showing them what's possible? Or are human artists special?

First question: Zero. I am not a teacher, and never have been.
Second question: Art professors are a thing. Check your local university for more info.
Third question: Define: "special."

 

[CleverNickName]

Why not try to protect all these others?

It's not either/or. We are already doing both, through copyright laws, labor unions, OSHA, workers' rights, and more. Nobody is suggesting we favor artists over any other labor force.

Why are artists special? Everyone continues to completely ignore this issue every time I bring it up. I know it's uncomfortable. But until we can address why artists are more special than all the other workers I've mentioned, I'm not going to be convinced that artists should be more important than other humans.

Artists aren't the ones who are calling themselves "special." We aren't asking for special treatment or privilege. We only want payment for the services we provide. It's weird that people think that makes us "special."

Seriously, I don't really know what else I'm supposed to say here. If someone doesn't think artists deserve to be paid for the art they create, it says more about them than it says about artists.

 

[aramis erak]

Artists aren't the ones who are calling themselves "special." We aren't asking for special treatment or privilege. We only want payment for the services we provide. It's weird that people think that makes us "special."

Seriously, I don't really know what else I'm supposed to say here. If someone doesn't think artists deserve to be paid for the art they create, it says more about them than it says about artists as a whole.

To be blunt: without political intervention, your job will become as obsolete as shorthand stenographers and calculators (persons paid to work out calculations). The only way it won't is if the great filter is "High tech civs blow themselves to smithereens before becoming multi-planetary." The question isn't "if" but is "when?"

Several direct parallels for high skill work replaced by tech...

• Gregg Stenographers - replaced by the dictaphone and stenotype stenographers.
• Stenotype Stenographer: being replaced by taped and digital audio.
• Dictaphone transcriptionist: slowly being replaced by automated transcription.
• Human Computer (person paid to manually do mathmatics): started being replaced in the 1880's with tabulators; finally died in the 1970's.
• Punchcard/punchtape typist. Displaced out of use by the 1990's as computer mass storage devices and file systems on disks (floppy and hard) improved the UX.
• Telegrapher (be it Morse or other such encodings): replaced by phones, and later computers.
• Film Projectionist: went from one per screen per shift to one per shift, then to one or two per complex. Why? changes in multi-reel movie projection. Pushbutton switching, then to platten systems. Currently, the projectionists mostly set up the rooms projection hardware, and splice the film into a big loop for the platten systems. And further, it's going away due to digital projection tech. Most of which can be set up once, and then national can load it with video remotely... or by sending a suitably large thumb drive...

 

[Swanosaurus]

5th and 6th graders often have similar errors to the "hallucinations"... or at least my students the 4 years I was working with the same class whole year... (my long term subbing jobs)... Sample size of about 95 students... not counting the 6th grade reading group another couple years.

... and it's not really that uncommon in humans at higher levels, either. I've seen fellow students on a team project in my MA program completely get wrong what an author was pointing out.

I've seen (and graded) geography tests on the undergrad level where, despite citing specific passages from the text, they got the meaning dead «bleep»ing wrong. On an open book test, at that!

"Not getting it" is very different from a hallucination. It happens to people all the time, due to oversimplification, misreadings, differing core assumptions ... but whoever wrong a human might get things, if, for example, you give them a list of Star Trek episodes and ask them to write an essay about Star Trek, they will not come up with the number and title of a non-existent episode to prove some point (apart from lying consciously to deceive the reader).

 

[Senior_WotC_Janitor]

capitalists don't want to pay the fair worth of labor but still profit from it.

 

[CleverNickName]

To be blunt: without political intervention, your job will become obsolete

So you do understand.

This is about artists struggling to protect their livelihoods and demanding government action...not about people getting free D&D character sketches. Since you understand the artists' plight, maybe you can help and support them instead of dismissing them as a lost cause, or suggesting they're being greedy or unreasonable.

As for me, I think I'm going to be okay. I changed careers about 15 years ago, went back to school in my 30s and became a civil engineer. But I was both very lucky and very privileged...I lack the audacity to suggest anyone else can do the same. I changed careers but I didn't stop being an artist, or stop loving art, or stop caring about the art community.