Comment by csnover | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csnover | Hacker News Reader

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> Society is built by and for humans.

These machines are also built by and for humans.

> If we want to empower humans over machines, that seems perfectly acceptable.

But that’s not what’s happening here. This is a faction of humans fighting to maintain their power and control over how the rest of humanity is allowed to produce artistic works.

Creatives who fight against generative AI are trying to empower themselves over everyone else. Corporations who develop closed-source AI like OpenAI are also trying to empower themselves over everyone else. The main problem in both cases is the way a select few are trying to amass power for themselves.

Generative AI has fundamentally shifted the scope of what it means to be creative, and prohibiting it from being trained on the collective works of humanity doesn’t empower humans over machines. It empowers some humans at the expense of other humans. Big AI companies acting exploitatively and trying to figure out how to build their own moats so only they are allowed to control the technology does the same thing, so this shouldn’t be allowed to happen either.

This is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, that a major disruption happened in creative arts due to technology. The invention of the phonograph decimated live musicians. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in cinemas, radio stations, and restaurants were permanently lost[0], but I don’t think anyone today would argue that we’d be better off if record labels hadn’t been allowed to reproduce the works of other artists.

Instead of retreading the same tired arguments about generative AI itself, let’s instead focus on how to ensure creatives can adapt and not end up homeless and penniless, and on how to ensure a few giant tech companies don’t monopolise an otherwise democratising technology. That, more than anything, will ensure that we are empowering humans over machines.

[0] https://slate.com/transcripts/RS94QUlwS0ZsSnZnakE4UVUzR2loUV...

Once again people think they can productivity their way to results as if it's a quantifiable and profitable resource. Culture, Creativity and Art are HUMAN expression of a HUMAN condition. To generate it with a computer means to create 'content' for the sake of profit. Not ART for the sake of expression. At the start of every argument reducing any human output to nothing more than a repeatable and reducible resource is the same arrogant fallacy thinking that, and anything we create just will appear in a vacuum. The worlds people benefit from standing on each others shoulders. This reduces that to the company with the biggest pockets. Otherwise, why secrets?

Everything you argue facilitates the reach of human expression. This pilfers and silences it. This plagiarism machine cannot even deal with 'current stimuli' in ANY way what so ever so it cannot express anything. It can only remember what you've told it, and it can barely do that successfully. It can't hold a fact for 2 messages. It cannot feel, it cannot predict, it cannot agree or disagree. It outputs based on master's filter and its expression based on financial agenda.

To think artists want to retain control over their own voice and ideas, and not have a company steal the aesthetics of it and sell its skeleton at a discount, and not realise the hypocrisy of trying to shift the power away from the individual to a private single for profit company is just... Beautifully poetic in its own right.

> the invention of the phonograph decimated live musicians

What history have you been smoking? The invention of a technology that could mechanically reproduce the message of an artist only sought to spread awareness and increase musical access and interest. It cannot replicate the aura of art which is why people to this day squeeze into expensive live shows. You argue the phonograph has completely cleaned live music off the table. It hasn't. It facilitated its growth.

You can replicate the art, but you can't create the artist. If ever I hear a balanced argument from the other side that includes the word 'aura' I'll have known they didn't just spend half a night researching these matters and deciding it's easier to remain ignorant.

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

"in the age of mechanical reproduction and the absence of traditional and ritualistic value, the production of art would be inherently based upon the praxis of politics."

I never said generative AI was itself capable of creativity. Generative AI is a tool, not an entity. I said it enables more people to be creative, in the same way that other tools like Photoshop enable more people to be creative. Using a sampler to create a song rather than arranging and playing all the instruments doesn’t make it less creative, or devoid of creativity. It’s just a different, more accessible form of expression, enabled by technology.

I agree that generative AI, due to its nature, trends toward the average and thus is incapable of engaging with the extremes of human experience—but not every creative expression has to be at the extreme. Every Marvel film, every shovelware game, every summer pop jam, panders to the average. There’s enormous value in having a tool that allows professional artists to work more quickly at the average—and, perhaps more critically, for everyday people to approach the average in the first place. I don’t believe it is fair to suggest that such things are valueless “not ART”, but I’m not definitely not here to engage in philosophical discussion of the definition of “art”.

As far as history goes, I did provide a citation, which I encourage you to actually look at (and it cites several dozen more books and other articles if you need more primary sources). You are objectively incorrect in your assertion that the phonograph facilitated the growth of live music(ians), but I suspect you may not even understand what is meant by “live musicians”—not because of you, but because the phonograph was so revolutionary that it fundamentally changed what it meant to be a musician—and even redefined what a “song” is[0].

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that you can state so confidently that audio recording is a net benefit to music. Many felt that the phonograph was an abomination at its conception. They claimed that the essence of music was in its ephemeral nature, that the uniqueness of each performance contained the creative expression and the sheet music itself was just a skeleton for creativity. They said mechanical recordings deprived listeners of the true experience, and that individual artists lost their autonomy. They spoke in terms exactly like you are now, and those ideas were wrong then, and they are almost certainly wrong now.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/phonograph-chang...

Hindsight being the premise for confidence in this context is precisely why the hubris of factual speaking on the what-if's of the future can be pretty easily ignored as self infatuated authority. The rest of your arguments are still conflating the problem. One enhances the voice of an individual the other extinguishes it.

Regardless your semantics on your phonograph argument the reality remains. The artist remained as part of the contract of societys growth. Once again, this isn't a blank vinyl or a canvas or an empty parking lot where freedom of expression takes priority. The priority is the financial incentives and retaining control.

For you to argue there's any creativity that would come out of that is like arguing I'm being creative when I put coins into a vending machine and receive cigarettes. I'm as creative as the conditions the puppets of profit have allowed me to be. Money doesn't own this world despite its deep and confused hope. It steals from it.

> They spoke in terms exactly like you are now, and those ideas were wrong then, and they are almost certainly wrong now.

No, they were right then and they're right now. Otherwise based on your argument anything beyond a phonograph would be unnecessary. So why do people seek anything beyond their MP3? Why do they go to live shows? Why do people still visit the Mona Lisa even though they can see it at home for free with a google? Please, as much as you refuse to debate philosophy and art, those are the exact things being debated. So either listen to those who've spent their lives in their domain (it's why I don't falsify my Python accolades) or pretend you know better. But don't conflate. Do read Walter Benjamin's essay from 1935 on Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I know, you won't.

Next you're going to tell me AI hip-hop has the same value, incentive and understanding as the people from Cabrini Greens trying to escape poverty and violence by creating something beautiful and relatable out of the human condition. Then you'll tell me it's not your fault they haven't 'out created' themselves to keep up with the theft of their very self. If the vultures could at the very least just fuck off until the person isn't alive enough to bare witness to it, you could at least feign some IP argument. It's otherwise just hot air hoping.

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