The carpentry analogy makes a lot of sense. I think I’ll borrow that for future conversations. I also agree that in principle AI can be an artistic tool, provided it isn’t given practically full autonomy (e.g., prompt: “make music”). That said, this particular topic hits pretty close to home. I have someone very close to me who is just beginning their adult life, and in the time it took them to obtain their education, AI art has swooped in and potentially destroyed their career prospects before they even landed their first job. Admittedly they are probably in one of the worst-affected areas, but it’s still devastating.
That said, more and more I’ve been thinking that AI is just the latest (and a particularly large-scale and accelerating) example of how we as a society will work to improve productivity through technology, but the benefit of that productivity is applied in extraordinarily unequal ways. “Workers” keep producing more, but they receive a lopsidedly tiny share of that value. At the end of the day that’s not really an AI issue, it’s a moral and ethical issue that extends to most technology, I think. I imagine if society at large ever gets more benefit from a technology than the company(s) that built it, it was probably just serendipity.
“The means of production…” Channeling philosophies here that I never formally learned.
You're final comment sort of sums it up, I think your problems are more with capitalism. There are winners and "losers" and there is inequality, but there's also progress and technology. What drives innovation, what motivates society to improve productivity if not a motivation for themselves? Why ever try to excel if there's no reward?
It is devastating to be the victim of technological progress though. No high minded questions or navel gazing about economic models really wipes that away. But what is the alternative? Slower progress? More "controlled" progress?
The carpentry analogy makes a lot of sense. I think I’ll borrow that for future conversations. I also agree that in principle AI can be an artistic tool, provided it isn’t given practically full autonomy (e.g., prompt: “make music”). That said, this particular topic hits pretty close to home. I have someone very close to me who is just beginning their adult life, and in the time it took them to obtain their education, AI art has swooped in and potentially destroyed their career prospects before they even landed their first job. Admittedly they are probably in one of the worst-affected areas, but it’s still devastating.
That said, more and more I’ve been thinking that AI is just the latest (and a particularly large-scale and accelerating) example of how we as a society will work to improve productivity through technology, but the benefit of that productivity is applied in extraordinarily unequal ways. “Workers” keep producing more, but they receive a lopsidedly tiny share of that value. At the end of the day that’s not really an AI issue, it’s a moral and ethical issue that extends to most technology, I think. I imagine if society at large ever gets more benefit from a technology than the company(s) that built it, it was probably just serendipity.
“The means of production…” Channeling philosophies here that I never formally learned.
You're final comment sort of sums it up, I think your problems are more with capitalism. There are winners and "losers" and there is inequality, but there's also progress and technology. What drives innovation, what motivates society to improve productivity if not a motivation for themselves? Why ever try to excel if there's no reward?
It is devastating to be the victim of technological progress though. No high minded questions or navel gazing about economic models really wipes that away. But what is the alternative? Slower progress? More "controlled" progress?
And suddenly I feel validated in my perspective that there’s no such thing as altruism. Hooray. Why don’t I feel better?
Fight, flight, feed, and fuck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Fs_(evolution)
Granted, as humans, I think we're capable of a longer view but mostly...we're just animals and not "humans" in the Dune sense of the word:
https://read.ambivalent.dad/p/being-a-human-or-being-an-animal