AI is stealing writers’ words and jobs…

[trappedslider]

Stealing water too:
View attachment 348471

Using more water is now theft?

Yeah. Watch out for Nestle, too. They’re buying all the water rights they can.

yup same song and dance as the annual water usage reports of Corporate farming/agribusiness.

 

[trappedslider]

AI in this context was created for a reason, and that reason was to avoid paying creatives fairly (or at all) avoid paying anyone. Thus, people are outraged (and rightly so, in my opinion.) Pretty cut-and-dry. Folks aren't outraged by "the system," they are outraged by a very specific practice that was built in a very specific way for a very specific purpose.

, fix that for you

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I think AI has demonstrated itself to be viable. If it was producing subpar images, it wouldn't endanger any job. If it wasn't cheaper, there would be no reason to hire an aAI user over a traditional artist or a photoshop user. The fact that AI is seen as a threat for some jobs (and in fact, it should be seen as a threat to all jobs by anyone with a modicum of foresight) is the proof that it is viable.

The new thing with AI is that it is threatening a new category of jobs. Few people cared about tailors when adopting factory-made clothing, then the factory jobs disappeared in relative general indifference. But now AI is lowering the price of a new category of services, threatening people who didn't feel threatened before.

I think AI does produce subpar images. But like so much in tech, they're "good enough," or in this case good enough to avoid paying a person for something, and often something better.

The best example of that so far might not be in image generation, where if you're throwing some shovelware 5e adventure onto Kickstarter, and your art is generic AI slop, who really cares—chances are it was going to be that or public domain or royalty-free art anyway, or maybe nothing. But companies keep getting caught publishing AI-generated garbage articles, which are fully wrong or just terribly written, and they simply don't care that the quality is completely subpar...because they don't understand or value quality. That AI content isn't beating humans in the marketplace, in a fair fight. It's allowing companies to sweep away the marketplace or any sense of a fair fight, and just bury everything in garbage, at scale.

In other words, AI content doesn't just devalue human creators. It devalues the entire concept of content, until everything is just low-quality, "good enough" slop that's measurably much worse than what it supplanted.

 

[Ryujin]

I think AI has demonstrated itself to be viable. If it was producing subpar images, it wouldn't endanger any job. If it wasn't cheaper, there would be no reason to hire an aAI user over a traditional artist or a photoshop user. The fact that AI is seen as a threat for some jobs (and in fact, it should be seen as a threat to all jobs by anyone with a modicum of foresight) is the proof that it is viable.

The new thing with AI is that it is threatening a new category of jobs. Few people cared about tailors when adopting factory-made clothing, then the factory jobs disappeared in relative general indifference. But now AI is lowering the price of a new category of services, threatening people who didn't feel threatened before.

I wouldn't refer to it as viable until it can produce images, without strip mining the work of artists. Something that can stand alone is viable.

 

[CleverNickName]

, fix that for you

 

[trappedslider]

so basically we need the world to stop the tragedy of the commons.

I didn't say i fixed it for the better.

 

[Art Waring]

Ignore this if you like, but it takes a very long time to publish a ttrpg. Many take years to complete. Countless sleepless nights lay behind me as I have labored endlessly on my own artwork, writing, and layout. I am not doing this for money, I am trying to create the best game that I can with my own two hands that can stand the test of time.

I spent the entire year of 2023 staying up until 4-5am every day working on illustrations for my project. That is just working on my own stuff. I have also worked with over a half dozen artists to commission additional artwork.

By the time I am finished (creating a book of professional quality at my own pace), there will be countless ai-generated games flooding the market. There is really no way to compete with the coming deluge of ai-slop, and the lack of regulation, oversight, and ethical boundaries will only make things worse.

I am still going to finish my project regardless of the outcome, but I think I am starting to ask the question of:

If it takes all of this extreme effort to publish, and it amounts to nothing (being swept aside by ai-generated garbage), what really is the point? What I am saying is that we will be seeing a gradual decline in the quality of projects, because ai-generated content is "good enough." This will push out creatives that are trying to make their games the right way.

I have no illusions that I will make a dime off of this project. The artists have already been paid, and they are likely the only ones who will get paid for their work. I know that I can't afford to pay myself for the thousands of hours spent trying to make a professional publication. I accept that.

Furthermore, while I have worked with a lot of amazing artists this last year, I also had the displeasure of hiring several artists who did not reveal that they were using ai-gen images until they were already under contract. This cost me a significant amount of money and time, as I had to fire them from the project (and still pay them as they were under contract), and then hire new artists to fill in for the artists I had to let go for their failure to reveal their use of ai tools in a project that I have regularly stated will not use ai-tools of any kind.

AI-gen users have actually cost me a lot of time and money. Time and money that could have been given to a traditional working artist (who actually relies on their skills to earn a living, rather than stealing them from real artists).

To restate my position, I am absolutely against the unethical use of ai tools, including data scraping without consent, credit, or compensation for artists. The music industry has proven that you can create ethical models and still pay artists, the fact that they refuse to pay illustrators for their work is a harmful exploitation of loopholes in the law. Artists deserve protection under the law, just like musicians, writers, and actors do.

 

[Scribe]

Honestly a viable system would very much depend on the socio-economic conditions. Without falling into the political, I think I am still within the rule that pointing out that an artist making, say, 1,000 USD per month in the current condition that would be reduced to 500 USD per month due to increased AI competition would be in a very different situation depending on whether he was living in a high-expense country (and living in his car, from what I understand about the cost of living), living in a country with a very high level of social security (barely making ends meet, but not starving by far thanks to the subsidies and social discount he'd get) and living in a least-developped country but able to compete on the worldwide market through the Internet, and where such a sum could be twice the average salary. All would suffer from the reduced income source, but not in same proportions, and the willingness to adopt solutions would be very different as well.

Not sure if I follow, but if you are asking if a 50% cut in income matters?

50% of people in my province are $200 dollars a pay period, from being in the red and unable to pay their bills. So a 50% decrease would be, life changing to say the least.

 

[Scribe]

Using more water is now theft?

Some real 'water is not a right' vibes.

 

[Scribe]

Hah, and I just came across an article (coal this time) regarding drought, and water usage.

I dont know who needs to hear this but...

We live in a closed system, resources are finite, and its not like we have the option to just pick up and move as a species.