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Comment by lrantf | Hacker News Reader

The AI aversion has several reasons:

1) The output, while impressive on the surface, is bland and recycled. It will drag down the general level in the same manner that CGI has destroyed movies.

2) People don't want to consume AI generated content in the same manner that they generally don't watch Stockfish vs. Stockfish.

3) It is not phobia, it is disgust at humans being dehumanized.

The phobia seems to be on the side of AI corporations, who quickly step in any discussion that questions their business model.

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Regarding point #3.

The problem people have with AI is that it is cheapening the things that make us "special". If anything I can draw, paint write, create, and pour my heart and soul into can be acceptably approximated by a "bot" in five seconds or less, then what do I have to offer to the world beyond my "work" output? The things that creatively inspire me have been commoditized in a way where it's exponentially harder for me to generate value doing them.

Artists and musicians have famously struggled for centuries. A technology that raises the bar on an already exceedingly difficult path (making money doing creative things) makes that particular situation much worse.

A painting or story made by artificial intelligence is not human because it does not have a life story behind it. I still enjoy reading the artist's biography, some of his correspondence, trying to understand his creative process. If you pour your heart into your work we can bond through human experience, maybe we can even sit down and talk. An AI does not fear death or loneliness. Sometimes I think that part of this site's audience only considers art from a consumer-product perspective. For me it goes a little further.

> Sometimes I think that part of this site's audience only considers art from a consumer-product perspective

Imagine you are an artist. You as a patron connect and talk about a piece of art, you walk away happy and feeling connected. He does not sell any art because they are indistinguishable from what the AI can produce with the cost of electricity. Now if you are willing to pay for "bonding over human experience", GPT can probably be trained to do that as well. Generative AI eliminates the livelihood of almost all artists eventually.

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