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Comment by Qworg | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused about your point RE: infomercials et al - that's poor quality "content" that's been proliferating for, as you say, more than 50 years.

Is that not the work of commercial creative workers? Did it not exist pre AI? There's an argument to scale, certainly, but the idea that "things were better in the past before these <<new technologies>> came out" is generally a suspect argument.

To your broader point - new tools for creating creative work come out all the time. Did we suffer greatly at the loss of image compositors when Photoshop arrived? On the flip side, did digital art gut painting and sculpture? Isn't this just another tool for creative expression?

Art is a way of seeing, not a way of creating. I don't think the technology is taking that away.

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>Is that not the work of commercial creative workers? Did it not exist pre AI? There's an argument to scale, certainly, but the idea that "things were better in the past before these <<new technologies>> came out" is generally a suspect argument.

The fact that all of that stuff was crap is central to my point. You might just need to give it another read.

> Art is a way of seeing, not a way of creating. I don't think the technology is taking that away.

I'm really sick and tired of the tech industry's bumper-sticker-level-reductive pseudo-philosophical generalizations about "what art is," what it means to be an artist, the acceptable ways to be an artist, and all of that. Art is a whole fucking lot of things, and chief among them in this context is a class of professions. Glib decrees based on a razor-thin slice of one of the broadest topics in the human experience that conveniently exclude or dismiss the stakes of those with the loudest criticism and the most to lose is obviously self-serving. If you're going to take the libertarian "well that's the market for ya" stance," at least be honest about it. If you're going to try to carefully define the entire universe of ideas and practices that comprise art to conveniently exclude the concerns of the people getting screwed over because you think the optics are better or you feel less icky about it, well you better expect to get some really pissed off responses from them.

There's no glib decree - a new technology has arrived. I'm being very honest about it - you can't put it back in the bottle, any more than you could put jacquard looms or machine woodcarving of trim could be. The position between art and craft can be endlessly debated and I put my stake in the ground.

You can disagree! Folks who are impacted have every right to be pissed, organize, take action. All of these creative endeavors existed _post technology updates_ though - that's my entire point. The need for art doesn't disappear - it changes. Standing athwart the change is a choice, but I'm not sure it is an effective position.

Well gosh, good thing someone in big tech gave me permission to be mad about many in my field being screwed by big tech! Too bad that won't help pay for my cancer treatment because there's no way in hell they'll push out a cure soon enough when they're dumping billions of dollars into figuring out how to sell other people's artwork. At least people won't have to waste an uncomfortable few minutes writing a thoughtful note to my wife in the aftermath when they can just "Ok, google" it.

>> Art is a way of seeing, not a way of creating.

> There's no glib decree

This is a glib decree and it completely ignores most of what art actually is in our world, rather than the quaint little box that most people in the NN business try to stuff it into. Your patronizing tone doesn't lend any authority or add depth to your initial analysis, which you essentially just restated using more words. The "art vs craft" dichotomy doesn't even approach the depth and complexity of the interplay of art and commerce in the worlds like video game development, music, cinema and television, and writing... hell even advertising. Like most tech dudes that assume their incredible mental might gives them some kind of pan-topic expertise allowing them to casually dismiss subject matter experts in other fields based on a few a priori thought exercises, you simply don't know how much more you need to learn to make informed decisions about this topic.

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