4.2 Gigabytes, Or: How to Draw Anything
Vonnegut wrote some about the effect of recording technology &amp; mass media on the value of individual artistic talent—in short, that it all but obliterated both the monetary and, perhaps more importantly, social value of all but (literally) world-class skill. Fewer sing-alongs around the piano at home. No more small-time performance troupes (say, vaudevillians) making enough money to get by. That uncle who&#x27;s an <i>amazing</i> story-teller just can&#x27;t compete with radio programs, so the social value of that skill plummets, and it&#x27;s like that for <i>every</i> medium that puts the ordinary in competition, if you will, with not just the world&#x27;s most talented people, but, as fields advance, with entire <i>teams</i> dedicated to making those already-top-notch folks seem better-than-human.<p>The benefits of this are clear, but the problem is that artistic expression and being able to receive small-scale rewards and genuine encouragement—at least in one&#x27;s family or social circle—for even minor talent seem to be very healthy and fulfilling things for people to do. Taking that away came at an ongoing cost that none of the beneficiaries of that change had to pay. A kind of social negative externality.<p>Relatedly, consider the sections of Graeber&#x27;s <i>Bullshit Jobs</i> where he treats of the sort of work people tend to find fulfilling or are otherwise proud to do, or are very interested in doing (sometimes to the point that supply of eager workers badly exceeds demand and pay is through the floor, as in e.g. most roles related to writing or publishing). What kind of work is it? Mainly plainly pro-social work (to take one of Graeber&#x27;s examples, the disaster-relief side of what the US military does, which is <i>by no coincidence</i> often heavily featured in their recruiting advertising; or teaching, for another one) <i>or</i>: creative, artistic work.<p>Graeber notes an apparent trend whereby these jobs tend to pay pretty poorly either due to the aforementioned over-supply of interested workers, or because there&#x27;s some societal expectation that you ought to just be glad to have a job that&#x27;s obviously-good and accept the sacrifice of poor pay, and that you must be bad at it or otherwise unsuited if you want to make actual money doing it (teaching&#x27;s a major case of the latter—I&#x27;ve seen that &quot;if you care about being paid well you must be a bad teacher&quot; POV, and the related &quot;if we raised teacher pay it&#x27;d result in worse teachers&quot;, advanced on this very site, more than once—it&#x27;s super-common).<p>People <i>really, really want</i> plainly-good and&#x2F;or creative jobs, but those don&#x27;t pay worth a damn unless you&#x27;re at the tip-top, either of talent level, or of some organization. This seems like another blow to the creative category of desirable jobs, at least.<p>My point is: I wonder and worry about the effect this latest wave of AI art (in a broad sense—music and writing, too) generation is going to have on already-endangered basic human needs to feel useful and wanted, and to act creatively and be appreciated for it by those they&#x27;re close to. There&#x27;s already a gulf between the among-the-best-in-the-world art we actually enjoy and, should our friends present their creations, how we &quot;enjoy&quot; those these days, with the latter being much closer to how a parent enjoys their child&#x27;s art, and everyone involved knows it. Used to be, hobby-level artistic talent and effort was useful and valuable to others in one&#x27;s life. Now, that stuff&#x27;s just for yourself, and others <i>indulge</i> you, at best.<p>Why, with this tech, you can&#x27;t even get by doing very-custom art, such that the customization, rather than the already-devalued-to-almost-nothing skill itself, is what delivers the value. Now the customization is practically free, too, and most anyone can do it.<p>Getting real last-nail-in-the-coffin vibes from all this. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;ll enable some cool things, but I can&#x27;t help but think we&#x27;re exchanging some novelty and a certain kind of improved productivity, for the loss of the last shreds of a fundamental part of our humanity. I wonder if we&#x27;d do this (among other things) if we could charge the various players a fair value for harm to social and psychological well-being that happens as a side-effect of their &quot;disruption&quot;—alas, that pool&#x27;s a free-for-all to piss in all one likes, in the name of profit (see also: advertising)