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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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Ok, dumb question time. I'm assuming no one has any significant issues, legal or otherwise, with a person studying all Van Gogh paintings, learning how to reproduce them, and using that knowledge to create new, derivative works and even selling them.
But when this is done with software, it seems wrong. I can't quite articulate why though. Is it because it takes much less effort? Anyone can press a button and do something that would presumably take the person from the example above years or decades to do? What if the person was somehow super talented and could do it in a week or a day?
There's a simple argument: when a human studies Van Gogh and develops their own style based on it, it's only a single person with very limited output (they can only paint so much in a single day).
With AI you can train a model on Van Gogh and similar paintings, and infinitely replicate this knowledge. The output is almost unlimited.
This means that the skills of every single human artist are suddenly worth less, and the possessions of the rich are suddenly worth more. Wealth concentration is poison for a society, especially when we are still reliant on jobs for survival.
AI is problematic as long as it shifts power and wealth away from workers.
Just as an interesting "what if" scenario - a human making the effort to stylize Van Gogh is okay, and the problem with the AI model is that it can spit out endless results from endless sources.
What if I made a robot and put the Van Gogh painting AI in it, never releasing in elsewhere. The robot can visualize countless iterations of the piece it wants to make but its only way share it is to actually paint it - much in the same way a human must do the same process.
Does this scenario devalue human effort? Is it an acceptable use of AI? If so does that mean that the underlying issue with AI isn't that it exists in the first place but that its distribution is what makes it devalue humanity?
*This isn't a "gotcha", I just want a little discussion!
It's an interesting question! From my point of view, "devaluing human effort" (from an artistic perspective) doesn't really matter - humans will still be creating new and interesting art. I'm solely concerned about the shift in economic power/leverage, as this is what materially affects artists.
This means that if your robot creates paintings with an output rate comparable to a human artist, I don't really see anything wrong with it. The issue arises once you're surpassing the limits of the individual, as this is where the power starts to shift.
As an aside, I'm still incredibly fascinated by the capabilities and development of current AI systems. We've created almost universal approximators that exhibit complex behavior which was pretty much unthinkable 15-20 years ago (in the sense that it was expected to take much longer to achieve current results). Sadly, like any other invention, this incredible technology is being abused by capitalists and populists for profit and gain at the expense of everyone else.