Banana Peel Pirouette: On AI art (Remember, we asked for this)

I'll re-post my comment here:

> We don’t get sentimental about the traffic cop obsolesced by the traffic light

But the traffic cop did something very mechanical meant to save lives and prevent accidents: pointing traffic batons this way and that. Of COURSE we're happy with this part of life being automated. The traffic cop didn't make art. But we also didn't like when the traffic cop made mistakes.

I know the violinist only moves their bow "this way and that" to make music, but they're making art.

OTOH, if my AI composes me a beautiful violin piece, and I'm moved by it, should I or the violinist be any angrier that it wasn't composed/performed by a human? Maybe not. But should all violinists get a royalty if an AI somewhere makes a piece of violin music because it was trained on all violin music? Maybe YES!?

It's hard to enforce this, which is why I'd like to see some of the profits and dividends from the AI companies go towards a basic universal income for all artists.

Salient point about the social media MMORPG potentially becoming a solo experience. That was my experience with World of Warcraft; made some friends early on (2005), and ended up almost entirely alone in the game years later, surrounded by people-as-avatars who may as well benn well-enough-programmed bots. (I've since quit all Blizzard games/variable-reward schemes)