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Comment by Fraterkes | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, these sorts of comments seem kind and well-intended, but we have to be real here and allow for the possibility that an impressive advancement has many (or mostly) negative effects. If you got into art because you enjoy drawing and modeling and wanted to make THAT your job (not just abstractly "producing pictures") then these advancements are just obviously a negative development, no matter how you try to reframe it.

And we can all be like "noone is owed a job doing traditional art, this happened to millions of people during the industrial revolution too", but in that case we have to be honest and not tell art-folks that they are overreacting.

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I'm old enough that I remember musicians panicking about synthesizers and samplers in the 1980s. And there are probably fewer working drummers today than in 1970. But without that tech we wouldn't have hip hop or house, which would be a huge cultural loss.

AI graphic/video art hasn't found its Marley Marl yet, but I believe she's out there and is going to do stuff that will blow our minds.

Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds.

"Prompt engineering" exercise generally involves a few lines of text. It's hard to see how that's going to result in a new kind of highly skilled artist. AI produce the same level of greatness and/or mediocrity for essentially all of their users.

This thread is like fifty variations of "it will work out (waves hand at past)"

> Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds.

Synthesizer instruments, yes. Sequencers, trackers, and modern DAWs like Ableton, absolutely not. They’re entirely different animals and are very much a musical analogue to “prompt engineering.” They have also enabled some incredible art that would be impossible if musicians were limited only to what they could play into a recorded (or midi) tape.

I suspect that the same will prove to be true of generative AI, and that those artists that embrace it will see a golden age of creativity. But there will also be many artists who see their craft diminished in value, much like what has happened to studio drummers. And I could be completely wrong, but either way the genie is out of the bottle, so we’re going to find out.

And specifically the earliest sequencers were step sequencers that were as simplistic as current prompts are (a 16x16 grid with each of the 256 notes set off or on and that's it). But as people explored the medium the tooling changed, which I also expect will happen with generative AI.

But what is art at its core? It's an individual expressing their thoughts, experiences, emotions, a direct connection to their brain. The importance is not the fidelity of yet another painted tree that looks like trees painted before it.

These kinds of tools are democratizing visual expression; with that, we should place even more importance on what is being told and expressed. In some ways I see it as a new form of writing. We're in our duchamp readymade era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp

but is there a market for drummers and saxophone players now that we have Spotify? In some areas of the world, yes. going out to eat, enjoying some live music, and happily paying for it is still how life operates. In other places, we sit at home with our apple vision pros and simulate what it is like to go out to eat and enjoy live music. culturally, something has gone wrong. we're all a bunch of digital addicts looking for a hit of dopamine that isn't going to be found behind the glowing rectangle, but we're too addicted to stand up and get out into the world, and because everyone else is as well, there aren't crowds of people thronging to do the little things anymore. Taylor Swift can command a football stadium's worth of attendees, but where's the Tuesday night crowd for a local unknown undiscovered band?

It's a different market but it's still a market. There are people making money off Spotify and Soundcloud, including saxophonists and drummers. What's disappearing is the old record label A&R process where you "get signed" and are suddenly a millionaire, but that was never most musicians' experience.

Also, people are saying "artist will keep being artists, they will just use a different tool", but IMO this doesn't take into account that prompt engineering is a completely different activity than actually drawing something. Sure, a pencil on paper artist can adapt and use a stylus to keep up with modern trends if they have to; most of their ability with drawing is kept. But describing a scene a thousand times with minor variations until you get what you want... That's a whole new job.

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