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Comment by GaggiX | Hacker News Reader

When a machine does what a human artist does, some consider it theft, even though creativity is literally reworking past experiences (including vast amounts of copyrighted data). I have yet to understand what makes one theft and the other creativity.

I feel that the problem is not "theft" but the fear of being replaceable in the workforce.

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The problem is your profession and skill set being (roughly) your only means to a livelihood

I still don't understand why one should be considered theft and the other creativity, unless you're just agreeing with me.

Was mainly agreeing to your final point, no comment on the first :)

Is the one making money the one making the art? The machine doesn’t make money, the owner of the machine does. Thus the owner is committing something closer to theft than creativity. Especially if the machine was trained on copyrighted art. This is very similar to wage theft.

So is it theft because a human is "stealing" from a machine? That seems a bit far fetched, also I'm talking about the creativity of the machine.

> When a machine does what a human artist does

Because a machine is doing it. It's an unfair competition.

Enforce that the machine can only work 8h/day, pays taxes, rent, student loans, has to spend 20 years training, can't be owned by humans...I think there would be fewer complaints.

> I feel that the problem is not "theft" but the fear of being replaceable in the workforce.

Sure that too. If you paid artists regardless of whether they do the job or a machine does it, they'd fear it less. Not zero fear because most people want their work to be useful and have a point, not just pick up a paycheck.

But also generally artists know other artists can learn from their work and they factor that into the price they charge for said work. They never expected machines would learn too - it really changes things.

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