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Comment by DeathArrow | Hacker News Reader

I am afraid that rise of generative AI will result in a lot of junk being released and advertised as quality.

It shouldn't be like so, I think generative AI can yield great results if there is enough human supervision, I think it can be great if used to augmenting creative work. But I think many will chose the shortest path towards money and they will put in the least amount of work possible.

Imagine tens of thousands of movies spitted by AI based on sub mediocre screenplays, imagine millions of songs generated by AI based on sub mediocre lyrics.

Somewhere, in that ocean of junk, there is something valuable. Good luck finding it.

If we use CGI analogy I can say that all pre CGI Tom and Jerry cartoons are works of art but many of the cartoons released after aren't so great, while some are. And CGI still requires some effort, so not everyone is be able to release movies. Generative AI will require far less effort and knowledge.

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No, generative AI will raise the quality bar of user-produced content. Pros will have even more to work with. I suspect that we may be somewhat overwhelmed by all the amazing images and videos that will be available. I get that sense already while browsing through user generated images.

My own experience as an amateur writer is that my writing is now far better because I can add relevant images much more easily.

Where are you finding these amazing user-generated images?

One example: https://reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion

I'm working on something myself to help users with the process, see another message I posted for this story.

This is already happening - SD unleashed an absolute torrent of content that is technically amazing but artistically boring.

Hopefully it all eventually settles down and becomes just another tool for skilled artists, rather than thousands of nerds churning out the visual equivalent of elevator muzak.

To be fair, visual muzak from nerds has at least one redeeming quality: it's fun popcorn-munching while watching artists go on tirades about how it violates their consent.

The real fun starts when the AI comes for those same nerds' coding jobs. Want to see someone's opinions go through a 180 turn?

The consequences of anyone being able to create any software they want cheaply are so enormous that I think coder employment would be among the least of our concerns.

It's called no-code(this time around at least). Quickly turn out a decent-looking app, then hitting a brick wall when the least amount of unexpected requirement turns up. Scares you the first time you see it, but both devs and artists will be fine long term.

The whole point of programming is automation. Having a tool that would make programming much more efficient is not a failure condition for programmers.

Right up until programming becomes so accessible that it isn't even a job any more, it's just something that everyone does.

Wasn't that the entire goal of the "computers to empower the masses" movement in the first place?

It already has, and as with art AI, I've seen worse from beginners and it's got certain failure modes and there are copyright/moral rights[0] issues and it is still obviously useful.

[0] I saw this in a few of my UK job contracts in the context of signing away that right, and it seems to be "the right to be identified as the author of a work", but IANAL.

I'm ready to change careers from programmer to AI code prompt writer.

Depending on what the compiler and microcode are doing, maybe you already are!

Thomas Kinkade certainly made a living off the visual equivalent of muzak.

> Somewhere, in that ocean of junk, there is something valuable. Good luck finding it.

If the marginal cost of content is zero, then the curators will become important.

The great irony is that the most popular and powerful curators and docents will be AIs. Private models used to guide users for commercial purposes. In all honesty, if you haven't already begun working on such curation models, it's probably too late, because I'm positive the big guys have been working on them for a while. While Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix may come out with some decent docent models, I'd be willing to bet that Google and Apple will have the best ones by a big margin. And unlike stable, they won't share.

If this is the case then we'll just find a way to bundle the curator AI with the art-generator AI to improve the quality of the art generated in the first place.

They’d first need to create a meta curator that will help you find a curator that is at least somewhat aligned with your taste.

The only things that are working for me are Apple music and YouTube recommendations, both algorithmic (but also both with very low downside of recommending bad content due to short length in general)

sure people will flood YouTube with their creations, that no-one will ever watch, but isn't that already happening kinda? Early with Stable Diffusion every creation was just "wow", now it's hard to even get someone to look at your image.

The quality bar will be raised, but if you want an audience, you will still need to produce something that stands above the rest. And the way to do that is the same as today, put in more effort than the others. Make something that's better, that's worth peoples time.

> Early with Stable Diffusion every creation was just "wow", now it's hard to even get someone to look at your image.

Eventually we will only generate art for personal, one time use, or for small groups sharing an interest.

> all pre CGI Tom and Jerry cartoons are works of art

You clearly haven't seen some of the Hanna-Barbera's later works. They weren't called "illustrated radio" without a reason.

Yeah I didn't like those even as a kid. Not just drawing was uglier/cheaper but stories also seemed to take turn south

Until the AI is smarter than us and then all but the best human films we be viewed as junk.

Sooner or later platforms will filter purely AI generated content as it collides with IP rules or bore the hell out of people.

Humans won't be able to tell the difference. If another AI is able to tell the difference then we'll just use this as in adversarial model to make sure the bar is raised even more.

I understand there will be a race much like in it security. But platforms have an interest filtering out the fakes as the y are inherently „boring“.

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