AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License

Quick, label all the US states: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/label_the_states.png

I've given this map to half a dozen smart/well educated Canadians, who happily engaged in pointing out the states they recognized for several minutes, and not one of them noticed until it was pointed out.

For comparison, imagine someone showing a piece of Picasso to art critics and saying "Could you please describe the artistic significance of this painting by da Vinci?" The critics won't start using terms commonly reserved for Renaissance era; they'll say "What the fuck are you talking about, this isn't da Vinci."

And anyway, is it measurably different from art produced while tripping on LSD or in similar states of altered consciousness, such as schizophrenia, dementia, or even depression, which often produce things many people would not describe as regular?

We also stopped hiring computers (the occupation) and instead pay big tech companies which made computers (the device) available to everyone. And we stopped hiring people to do dangerous manual labor as companies started selling machinery to automate it. Markets change.

Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...

This is what tools are.

Cheap digital tablets have done away with the need for expensive consumables. You can just download a different brush style instead of learning a physical technique. No waiting for paint to dry or smudged pencils. The barrier to entry for painting has dropped to a one time investment of like a hundred bucks. Almost nobody mixes their own paint, nor stretches their own canvas. Those skills aren't needed anymore.

It's possible to build very precise machine parts by hand. It's very difficult and requires great skill, so nobody does that. Some do and are admired for it, but everybody else uses precise machines to make precise parts with nearly no effort.

It's just a tool. Only difference is that we had assumed art would never be automatable.

Objectively, I don't think this is a bad thing. It doesn't change the subjective value of art any more than the average cartoonist devalues the Mona Lisa. It's just a new form of art, there will always be people mixing their own paints and stretching their own canvas, just as there always has been.

It's only a problem because in our society you either have a job or you starve. No one can afford to be an artist. Those that do tend to grind out as many pieces as fast as they can so they can pay the goddamn rent. If not for that, these AI tools would be pretty cool.

* That "_any_ form of creative expression" is a viable creative substitute for people wanting to create in a _specific_ medium of creative expression -- especially those that had a high barrier of technical skills required to be seen as "good enough" to share.

* That a person who has an idea for art will put in the necessary time to become proficient enough to create that "good enough" art through traditional means (IMO demonstrably incorrect), and that is preferred over that person just not expressing a lower-quality version of that idea at all.

* That those who use AI primarily want or expect to "perform at the level of the practiced and talented" (i.e. top-tier art) rather than using it to produce art they otherwise couldn't have, even at low- and mid-level qualities.

* That there is no skill or talent in using AI tools to produce art (or that the skill or talent using AI tools is meant to be a full replacement for traditional artistic skills or talents).

FWIW, I'm a long-time sketch artist and acrylics painter (~20 years). There are many mediums, subjects, and styles that I'm not good at -- and I enjoy using AI to express myself in those areas (and have also liked using AI to create songs to show to my more musicially-adept wife...). But even in my own wheelhouse (landscapes and still life), I also often use AI to brainstorm composition, perspective, colors, textures, lighting, etc. It's a great tool for experts to lean on, but an even better tool for non-artists who couldn't or wouldn't otherwise share their art.

Why is this the line? Where are the complaints about people using pianos to achieve rather precise notes instead of using their own voices? They are just untalented at singing and their use of any tool to create sound is of no net gain to anyone.

This person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 ? They're recording and playing back on a loop! They should record full repeated playings, any use of the recording is of no net gain because it could be achieved otherwise.

Songwriters? If they write lyrics and someone else sings them the result should be cast into the sea - it's of no net gain to anyone because they did not create the sounds themselves.

Composers? Frankly pointless.

> Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works

I hate to break it to you but there are a vast number of terrible works of art out there already.

> What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient)

If it's a necessary thing, of course it's a barrier. That there are two barriers doesn't change that.

That's just a bias.

> natural qualities to their voice

That's the physical limitations I referred to, which isn't something humans tend to be happy about but can sometimes end up being a differentiating benefit.

> What next, are we going to argue that what programmers creating new programs are really trying to do is generate a prompt-weighted average of the bytecode of every program they've ever downloaded

That's a horrible strawman. Do you as programmer often read and write bytecode directly?

Saying they cannot create based off of a vague suggestion is very much in line with that claim. I consider it a vital difference between Stephen King being inspired and LLMs mashing training inputs together.