Poll of the Day > It disgusts me that are games and other media intending to use AI...

(+) Yeah! (+)

..."creatively" and no legislative body seems intent on stopping them from doing so.

It's one thing if businesses want to use it to compile data and generate reports, things like that. It's your company and your numbers at the end of the day.

But for things like art, music, and character models... That is inevitably someone else's(or a lot of people's) work being used like clay and there's no way for them to get paid for it, or to get credit for it. This seems especially bad with the potential future of AI-generated voices and the voice-acting industry.

And I know this has been the one of the end-goals of AI technology from the start, but now that we're actually seeing games literally in development and nothing seemingly stopping them, it's REALLY irritating to me. Especially this Sims-esque game that uses it to generate characters. That's inevitably someone's likeness that the AI is sourcing to generate them.

AI has a lot of potential for good but right now it is exclusively being designed for either controlling people, spying on people or rent seeking behavior. Only the wealthy and powerful can truly benefit from AI under our system.

It just seems that we, as humans, increasingly are not enough in love with ourselves... Not in any egotistical/narcissistic way... But rather, we are not enamored enough with our species, so much so that we would actually prefer to create simulations of us, or simulated intelligence, even intelligence that will surpass us eventually.

Where does this leave human creativity?

I'm looking forward to AI running everything. It can't possibly do a much worse job than humans have.



VioletZer0 posted...

AI has a lot of potential for good but right now it is exclusively being designed for either controlling people, spying on people or rent seeking behavior. Only the wealthy and powerful can truly benefit from AI under our system.

You do realize you've just summed up most of human history there, yes?

It's why I always laugh when people talk about anti-aging drugs making humans immortal, as if the average person would ever see those treatments. As opposed to being shipped off to the mines or farmed for spare organs while the rich elites hoard it all to themselves and become immortal technocratic god-emperors.



Krow_Incarnate posted...

And I know this has been the one of the end-goals of AI technology from the start

It's been a goal since long before AI was even a thing. Phasing out other people's jobs has been part of automation in general from the very beginning.

It's also why I do not even remotely give a fuck when actors whine about losing their jobs or artists whining about AI doing their work or stealing from them. No one cared when blue-collar factory workers lost jobs to robots. No one batted an eye when phone operators were replaced by automated call systems. No one cared about cashiers when self-checkout aisles were added to stores. No one cared when McDonalds installed computer touchscreens to place your order, so they can reduce their counter staff. Most people are still fondly looking forward to a future with self-driving cars that would put a lot of taxi, bus, delivery, and Uber drivers out of business. Hell, if Amazon's delivery drone idea had worked, we'd be losing delivery and postal jobs as well.

The only reason there's suddenly such a huge outcry over AI art and stuff like ChatGPT is because people in the media who've always assumed their livelihoods were immune to getting replaced by machines are finally getting smashed in the face with the realization that they're just as replaceable. It's not a question of whether or not computers can compose music, draw art, write articles or stories, or perform both vocally and physically. Now it's just a question of how long it will be before we manage to perfect the AI to do it well, as opposed to the sort of half-assed work it churns out now.

Basically, all the people who hid behind the idea that "No computer will ever be able to replace the human soul!" have suddenly discovered that the soul doesn't mean shit, and we're ALL replaceable.

And honestly, fuck those people. They didn't care about anyone else until AI suddenly became a threat to them personally, so fuck them.

It's basically the "Hah hah, learn to code" meme, just applied to the entire human race.

I heard Miyazaki said something along the lines of "we've lost our faith in humanity" and I think he hit the nail on the head there. Everything now is being commodified to an ever-greater extent, and society pressures people to disdain anything that isn't easy to commodify or inducive to material gain - like emotions, art, history, philosophy, etc. so many people - especially the people at the top- are either not properly equipped to appreciate the humanity of expression, or they actively disdain it: they see the artist as just another worker to be downsized to maximize profit margins.

Because when you're inhuman, you can't appreciate the difference between human art and AI art. Nothing is supposed to mean anything anymore.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You do realize you've just summed up most of human history there, yes?

It's why I always laugh when people talk about anti-aging drugs making humans immortal, as if the average person would ever see those treatments. As opposed to being shipped off to the mines or farmed for spare organs while the rich elites hoard it all to themselves and become immortal technocratic god-emperors.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/205ad59b.jpg

Is there a way to realistically restrict it via legislation? Based on my limited understanding of how it works, trying to prove that any specific piece of intellectual property was included in a training dataset sounds impossible. Given that, trying to enforce restrictions would likely cause more problems than it solves.

funkyfritter posted...

Is there a way to realistically restrict it via legislation? Based on my limited understanding of how it works, trying to prove that any specific piece of intellectual property was included in a training dataset sounds impossible. Given that, trying to enforce restrictions would likely cause more problems than it solves.

There's no way it doesn't. AI doesn't just "know" how something looks or sounds like. It pulls from a naturally growing database of information from the web.

That's my understanding of it, at least. Put "superhero" in any given image generator and count how many Bat/Superman symbols you come across. Some generators might be designed to filter those out, but I can say for certain that plenty don't.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm looking forward to AI running everything. It can't possibly do a much worse job than humans have.

Are you some kind of comic book villain?

It's been bothering me for a long time. To me, using AI is cheating and dangerous.

Krow_Incarnate posted...

That's inevitably someone's likeness that the AI is sourcing to generate them.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how generative AI works.

AI doesn't take someone's face and just... give it a new hair or different coloured eyes or something. If an AI generates a human face and it winds up making someone who looks like an existing person it's entirely coincidental (unless you've specifically asked it to copy/modify an existing face). When an AI scans a bunch of human faces to seed its database, it's not creating a library of faces to pull from, it's analyzing those pictures en masse to look for patterns so it can figure out what the heck a "face" is, and what it's supposed to look like. It then draws something that matches the parameters it's come up with.

It's one of the reasons why artists have not seen much success trying to challenge AI on copyright grounds. AI isn't actually copying or reproducing their work - just analyzing it to build and test a programming model. Which, notably, is the digital equivalent of what human artists do all the time - if I commission an artist to, say, draw the cast of Dragon Ball Z in the style of Monet, the first thing the artist I've commissioned is going to do, presuming they're familiar with neither DBZ or Monet, is head over to Google to look up the DBZ characters (ideally with artist guides) and some examples of Monet's work so they understand the assignment. What AI does isn't any different, it just requires a larger body of data to work with because AI is still much more primitive than a human brain.

People who like AI are scrubs XD

VioletZer0 posted...

AI has a lot of potential for good but right now it is exclusively being designed for either controlling people, spying on people or rent seeking behavior. Only the wealthy and powerful can truly benefit from AI under our system.

the last sentence is true for a lot of things in life.

People said AI is good because it means it take over the jobs that no one wants to do and let people focus more on learning to make to art.

funkyfritter posted...

Is there a way to realistically restrict it via legislation? Based on my limited understanding of how it works, trying to prove that any specific piece of intellectual property was included in a training dataset sounds impossible. Given that, trying to enforce restrictions would likely cause more problems than it solves.

You can prove that anything was used in training. The problem becomes that what the AI produces isn't from the original work, it is just what the AI thinks something is based on the original work.

It would be like if a musician grew up listening to Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Taylor Swift, and Snoop Dog. If the end result is the musician produces music that sounds kind of like a mix of those 4 but isn't distinctly any of them, can the original artists sue the musician? Of course not.

So I could see preventing an AI from using only one type of (copyrighted) work, since that would essentially force the AI to produce something that only the original artist would make. But once you start using 3 or 4 different artists worth of work, it essentially becomes original work.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

People said AI is good because it means it take over the jobs that no one wants to do and let people focus more on learning to make to art.

Yeah, no one actually liked drawing or doing art. They want to be superseded by intelligent mold.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's basically the "Hah hah, learn to code" meme, just applied to the entire human race.

With the rather critical difference that there no longer are new skills that one can learn to adapt to the changing environment. Workers in certain fields being made obsolete by evolving technology? That sucks, but that has generally come with opportunities in other fields (including the creation and maintenance of that technology) that made it possible to pivot into new careers. Workers in every single white-collar field being made obsolete? There are no new opportunities coming out of that, aside from increased investment into robotics to wipe out the remaining jobs that require physical labour, and there's no analogous "learning to code" option that will allow those people to find new jobs. There are simply not enough physical labour jobs to accommodate everyone that's been pushed out of anything computer-based, so there are really only three options for solving this problem:

• Establish firm limits on the extent to which AI and automation can replace people
• Establish UBI to ensure that people can survive despite the lack of job opportunities
• Massive depopulation

The third option should be considered a non-starter by any sane person (and wouldn't actually solve the problem because the relative proportions of white- and blue-collar labour needed would remain similar regardless of the number of people involved). The second is viable, particularly given that all of the revenue from the work that's now being done by AI is still being generated and could therefore be redistributed, but faces significant lobbying pressure from those hoarding an ever-increasing portion of the wealth AI is positioned to generate. That really only leaves the first.

But hey, if you want to sit there and whack it to the idea of 60% of the current job market vanishing because you feel that a couple of artists and code monkeys weren't sympathetic enough when some factory workers got laid off means everybody deserves to suffer the same fate, I guess you do you.

AI has its uses, such as detecting cancer. That is an entirely different type of AI from generative "AI."

GenAI needs to stay the FUCK away from the creative industries.

Yellow posted...

Are you some kind of comic book villain?

I mean, we established that like 20 years ago.

There's a reason why the Geek topics always used to give thanks that we don't actually live in a universe where comic book logic applied... because if we did I'd absolutely have a orbiting satellite death ray or have bio-engineered some sort of ultraplague by now.



adjl posted...

With the rather critical difference that there no longer are new skills that one can learn to adapt to the changing environment.

Which is sort of the whole point. "Learn to code" was a garbage answer from garbage people even then.

We've been on a steady progressive path to total elimination of most jobs for decades now (and arguably even longer than that). It's why support for the idea of a UBI has been increasing, along with discussions about how you can run a consumerist society when no one has a job. We're rapidly reaching a point where we probably have to start reconsidering how economies work, and just trying to stop the steamroller of history is more likely to result in a lot of flat people than it is to actually fix anything.

But yes, I have very little sympathy for people who happily supported the inevitable forces in play right up to the point where it suddenly became something that affected them as opposed to other people. To sum it up as another meme, "I never thought leopards would eat MY face". So no, I don't give a fuck if actors and journalists have to eat out of a dumpster because they helped create the very conditions that ultimately made them superfluous, all while arrogantly assuming they were invulnerable because they thought no one would ever be able to teach a computer to play pretend.

There are certainly discussions to be had about various technical/ethical/moral/practical facets of the potential of AI (and automation as a whole), and theoretical limitations that should potentially be applied for any number of reasons. But I don't give a single solitary shit about protecting "entertainment media" or anyone who is part of it. I feel far more sympathy for all the other people who've lost jobs or found themselves in crisis because technology has made them redundant and cost them careers.

VioletZer0 posted...

AI has a lot of potential for good but right now it is exclusively being designed for either controlling people, spying on people or rent seeking behavior. Only the wealthy and powerful can truly benefit from AI under our system.

Damn. Real talk too. =/

I don't understand why we are giving dream jobs out to AI and not all the bs ones. Ideally we should get to a point where AI does everything except the fun dream jobs. Let musicians, authors, athletes, etc. remain human and make plumbers, cashiers, stockers, etc. be taken over by AI/automation. At that point we won't need jobs but people will still have passions to pursue.

who makes the machines that make the machines though

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which is sort of the whole point. "Learn to code" was a garbage answer from garbage people even then.

It's less than sympathetic, certainly, but the core idea of "accept that the inevitable progress of technology has killed your old career and try pivoting into a new one" isn't invalid advice. Having to pivot sucks, but so long as pivoting is an option, you're going to be better off doing so than hoping that technology rolls back enough to make you no longer obsolete.

That's no longer valid advice, however, when there aren't new careers anymore, and that is the bigger picture here. If AI can recreate creativity to such an extent that it can take the place of artists, it can take the place of any person whose job consists of devising solutions to problems, which is most jobs. We're reaching the endgame, which means that pivoting into new careers is no longer an option for those being displaced. That's a massive paradigm shift from any previous instances of employee obsolescence, and a much, much greater problem.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

So no, I don't give a f*** if actors and journalists have to eat out of a dumpster because they helped create the very conditions that ultimately made them superfluous,

Do you genuinely not understand that individuals are different from the collective and from other individuals? Or are you actually going for a "you drive a car made by robots and not fully manual labour and therefore you're as much to blame for this outcome as the corporations that chose to cut those costs" sort of line of reasoning?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But I don't give a single solitary s*** about protecting "entertainment media" or anyone who is part of it.

You spend an awful lot of time whining about how media these days is all uninspired and derivative for somebody who doesn't care about a paradigm shift that will make media even more uninspired and derivative and make it significantly harder for people with original ideas to carve out a slice of the pie for themselves.

Muscles posted...

I don't understand why we are giving dream jobs out to AI and not all the bs ones. Ideally we should get to a point where AI does everything except the fun dream jobs. Let musicians, authors, athletes, etc. remain human and make plumbers, cashiers, stockers, etc. be taken over by AI/automation. At that point we won't need jobs but people will still have passions to pursue.

You don't understand that because you seem to cling to the belief that some higher power wants to ensure people's happiness and will shape progress accordingly. Investment is being made in automation according to what will maximize the return on that investment, as decided by those with the resources to be able to make that investment. Creative jobs are being replaced instead of labour ones because AI is simpler to create than robotics (to translate these advancements into labour jobs, you need to harness the same ability to process data and develop machinery that can effect the output the AI provides, and generalist robots are extremely complicated) and yields a better return on investment. It's as simple as that. Executives don't care about people losing dream jobs, they care about making money, and they spend the money they have according to that goal.

Quite simply, this is late-stage capitalism: Wealth has concentrated among a relatively small number of individuals and corporations, there's little remaining room or need for meaningful competition among them, and they're leveraging the power granted by that concentrated wealth to enable them to keep growing it further while making everyone else's lives worse.

adjl posted...

You spend an awful lot of time whining about how media these days is all uninspired and derivative for somebody who doesn't care about a paradigm shift that will make media even more uninspired and derivative and make it significantly harder for people with original ideas to carve out a slice of the pie for themselves.

he does that with everything he claims to not care about

adjl posted...

Executives don't care about people losing dream jobs, they care about making money, and they spend the money they have according to that goal.

They should care. When it gets to the point where the average person has no option to pursue their dream but we still need human cashiers and plumbers so they don't even get the benefit of being in a post labor society there will be crazy revolutions and all those rich people will be eaten. It's like the rich never look back on history and learn from all the previous rich people that abused the people under them until they get French revolution'd. At what point will rich people learn that they should probably try increasing the QoL, or at least not make it worse, for their own benefit?

Krow_Incarnate posted...

And I know this has been the one of the end-goals of AI technology from the start, but now that we're actually seeing games literally in development and nothing seemingly stopping them, it's REALLY irritating to me. Especially this Sims-esque game that uses it to generate characters. That's inevitably someone's likeness that the AI is sourcing to generate them.

How do you think Sims generated new characters?

Muscles posted...

They should care. When it gets to the point where the average person has no option to pursue their dream but we still need human cashiers and plumbers so they don't even get the benefit of being in a post labor society there will be crazy revolutions and all those rich people will be eaten. It's like the rich never look back on history and learn from all the previous rich people that abused the people under them until they get French revolution'd. At what point will rich people learn that they should probably try increasing the QoL, or at least not make it worse, for their own benefit?

Notice that the response to Luigi has not been for corporations to become less greedy, it's been for them to hire better security. They're not concerned about a hypothetical long-term extreme, they're concerned about getting as much as they can in the short-term.

adjl posted...

Notice that the response to Luigi has not been for corporations to become less greedy, it's been for them to hire better security. They're not concerned about a hypothetical long-term extreme, they're concerned about getting as much as they can in the short-term.

That response shows they don't pay attention to history, better security won't save them forever. They need to learn that a rising tide raises all ships and helping the average person isn't just some silly altruistic ideal but a good way to not get murdered by starving, disillusioned masses.