LogFAQs > #972524531

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No, it's because the artists finally realized they're not safe.

It's a little more than that. A future where all jobs are automated was always inevitable, barring intervention from the handful of people with enough power to intervene (none of whom are on the worker side of the equation, unfortunately), but automation to date has been fairly predictable. Factory workers were automated into obsolescence because designing a machine to do repetitive mechanical tasks is pretty easy. Phone operators were automated into obsolescence because designing a machine to play a recording when somebody hits a button is pretty easy. Self-checkout or other forms of obsoleting cashiers are the natural evolution of everything that's helped cashier's jobs become easier over time (namely, if all they're doing is scanning the item and telling you your total, that's nothing you can't do yourself). These are all what people are fond of calling "unskilled" jobs in that they're relatively simple (distinct from "easy," but that's another discussion) and pretty much anyone can learn to do them if they meet whatever physical requirements are there.

Art is different, as much as you'd like to cynically pretend it isn't. There's a lot of nuance involved and it's very much not something anyone can pick up. The human element behind creativity is something most people believed was a long ways off being able to automate. In truth, it still is, but AI research has produced a serviceable facsimile of it (turns out perfect emulation of the creative process isn't necessary to produce something commercially viable, which isn't all that surprising given how overtly derivative mainstream art tends to be) much sooner than the vast majority of people realized was possible, which has come as a very unwelcome surprise. That's more than just art that's now immediately threatened: Any job relying on creative problem solving is about to become pretty much obsolete because a computer system that can quickly and cheaply come up with a solution by looking at how similar problems have been solved in other cases means there's no reason to pay somebody to do that. That's all of accounting and finance, a good chunk of law, a good chunk of the practical side of medicine, a good chunk of IT... Pretty much the only jobs that are safe from this particular bit of evolution are the ones that rely on too many complex physical movements for it to be practical to replace workers with machines and those on the cutting edge of their respective fields (where there isn't a sufficient body of knowledge available yet to train a NN), and that isn't that many.

Certainly, the fact that those most immediately affected by this development have more expressive skills than many of those previously displaced by AI has made it a particularly vocal and colourful backlash, but it's still definitely not the same as previous examples of automation replacing jobs. This is a big deal, which has come sooner than most people expected and sooner than the world is ready for.

It's also made even worse by the fact that this isn't a matter of new technology being developed that business owners looking to cut costs can order and have installed once it's cost-efficient. Previous examples of losing jobs to automation tended to be gradual, due to the front-end costs, the time it takes to install the new equipment, and the willingness of many business owners to keep long-time employees on instead of min/maxing them out of work. This is happening more or less overnight, thanks to the tools being available digitally for free (or a very low cost) and most of the affected people being freelancers with no fixed employer. A year ago, AI-generated art was just a matter of "hey look at this derpy rocketship made of fish," but now it's generating entire novels and producing visual art that's perfectly possible to sell if you don't ask it to draw hands. This has come insanely fast.