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Comment by halkony | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of AI naysayers neglecting the comparative advantage part.

If AI completely eliminates low skill art labour from the job pool, it's not like those affected by it are gonna disintegrate, riot, and restructure society. They have the choice of filling an art niche an AI can't or they can spend that time learning other, more in-demand skills. This also ignores that fact that some companies would rather reallocate you to more profitable projects even if your art skills don't change.

Selling a product with relative value like a painting or a sculpture will always be an uphill battle. Now that there's more competition from AI, it just gives artists/businesses incentive to find what people want that an AI can't deliver. Worst case scenario, employment rates in this sector are rough while the market recalibrates. Interested to see how these technologies develop.

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That seems a bit like wishful thinking.

People don't have unlimited ability to learn new skills. Training takes time, and someone who spent several years honoring their craft won't be able to pick up a new skill overnight.

On top of that, people have preferences regarding their work – even if someone has the ability to do a different work, they might find it less meaningful and less satysfing.

Finally, don't ignore the speed at which AI capabilities improve. Compare GPT-1 with the current model, and how quickly we got here. Eventually we'll get to a point where humans just won't be able to catch up quickly enough.

Agree 100%. When I was young and idealistic I believed in the "learn new skills" mantra, but learning completely new skills would look a lot different at 50 than it did at 20. When career choices were being made 30 years ago it would have been hard to predict the current & upcoming AI-driven destruction of lower-end "thinking" jobs. Attempting to retrain after ~30 years puts you at a massive disadvantage vs a new graduate (I mentor some of our companies graduates & trainees & I've been assigned a guy in his mid-40s, after a few months I just don't see how he'll get to a point where he's adding value). Not really a personal whinge, as my skillset isn't under immediate threat from any AI I've heard about, though the rate of change in the field is something to behold.

I agree that intentional retraining doesn’t really work, but I don’t think it matters. As I said, all that matters for whether you have a job is the Federal Reserve. If you hire random people to do a computer job, some of them will just turn out to magically learn everything on the job.

I think specifically in the area of creative "products" such as art and music you have to think about the customer as well. I have zero interest in AI-created art or music. None. The value of art is its humanity; its expression of the artist's message, vision, and passion. AI doesn't have that, so it's not of any interest to me.

I don't know how many custoners feel the same way, but I won't be purchasing any AI art or music or knowingly giving it any of my attention.

The AI is a tool the human used to make it. Sometimes clumsily, but sometimes they write poems as text prompts and it's an illustration, or things like that. If an AI is making and selling art by itself, it's probably become sentient and not patronizing it would be speciesism.

Although personally, I think using "AI art" to create impossible photographs is more interesting and doesn't compete with illustrators as much.

I think it's an interesting perspective but I will be very surprised if it's one that is common when this becomes more of a real choice. If there's two mp3s and one of them is more enjoyable to listen to, very few people will stick with the song they enjoy less because it's not AI generated.

Maybe a parallel would be furniture; there are people who buy hand crafted furniture but it's kind of a luxury. Most people just have Ikea and wouldn't pay more for the same (or have less good furniture) just to get some artisanal dinner table chair.

How would you even know? Vast majority of art you don't purchase directly, but as a part of some product. At most you get a line in the credits and what's stopping anyone from inventing a pseudonym for AI.

> I have zero interest in AI-created art or music.

I'm afraid in near future we will all bombarded with AI-created music, art and text whether we want it or not.

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