I was thinking about starting a new creative project recently. But then I thought - with how quickly AI is advancing, in just a few years an AI will probably be able to do this in just minutes. So it made me feel kind of apathetic and think, “Why should I bother starting this big project now if an AI could do it for me in a few years?”
I’m curious if others feel this way or if the advancement of AI is making people less motivated to start big, creative projects since the work could just be automated by an AI soon anyways. It could increase apathy and make people feel like “why bother?” Am I overthinking this? Does the possibility of AI taking over certain tasks in the future make you less motivated to start projects and learn new skills? Would love to hear others’ thoughts on this!
The whole generative AI thing bums me out as someone who dabbles in writing, but for more philosophical reasons than the ones you listed. Storytelling is supposed to be something humans do to connect with one another. Art and culture are windows into our psyches. This, to me, is why art makes life worth living. It’s why we go through the hassle of maintaining our dreary and tedious obligations, because when all that is done and over with we can sit captivated and spellbound by a good tale from a talented writer.
This? This makes little sense to me. You’re telling me they made a computer program that uses pattern recognition to write and draw for us? Okay, why? This goes against what I always assumed art was for. There’s more to storytelling than just pattern recognition. There’s themes, emotions, metaphor, allegory, messages, politics, and so much more. A computer program doesn’t understand any of that, it just follows it’s programming.
Tech bros insist that AI is not going to take our jobs, but as long as we live under capitalism I don’t buy it. A lot of the people who work in publishing or producing are just doing it for the money. They don’t give a shit about whether the stories are good, only that they are profitable. If you don’t think that they are going to jump at the chance to create product without paying anyone for it, then I have a bridge to sell you. Creators need to eat too. The phrase “starving artist” exists for a reason.
We were supposed to create robots that would handle manual labor so that we could all be free to pursue our passions. Now they have robots creating art while we continue to do manual labor. It’s not the future I wanted to live in.
There will always be a market for human-made creative products. AI will never take it away. Just like there will always be a market for manual transmission cars/regular bicycles (non-electric), or cellphones that aren’t smartphones, or physical video games.
Production of creative products is in the hands of every human alive, so the only time it will stop being produced is if every human decides to stop being creative. Which will never happen.
I get what you’re saying and there is a market for all that but it’s getting smaller by the day.
Physical game copies are only wanted by collectors and for many it makes more sense to just emulate as you can tweak settings, save any time, swap controls/controllers etc.
Bikes? Less and less. Gone are the days, in my town when you would see droves of youth biking from home to home visiting friends.
Who rides bikes around my area now? Tbh mostly wealthy suburbanites with free time and money. I live in the “sticks” so guess that’s by default, but it’s rare to see a bicycle in our big cities right now too. I travel to one of the biggest cities in the country quite often and it’s all E-scooters at the moment, a bike is seldom seen.
Manual transmissions? It’s rare to see those as well. I work in the automotive field and from what I can see, automatics have taken over. The only sticks I’ve seen in years have been on older work/farm vehicles/equipment and that’s only because the owners can’t afford to upgrade. When I have seen them upgrade, it’s almost always automatic when applicable.
What I’m saying is, sure, maybe these things aren’t officially dead yet but they’re not really thriving either.
Just like these things, give it 20 years and AI will be the default. Those who make “real” art will be a small minority, like a person still receiving calls through a landline or something.
Or maybe it won’t? But this is how it’s usually gone in my lifetime. I’ve yet to see much stop the winds of change, but people do still read paperbacks even though kindles exist so who knows. Just seeing a big push for AI rn and the only way it won’t take over is… well I can’t imagine what would stop it. People are paying to use it, and I’ve yet to see something that’s profitable not be expanded upon.
I buy physical and I am not a game collector. I like to be able to lend my games to friends. Also, used game sales are impossible with digital. Publishers will never allow used digital sales because it eats away their precious profits.
Not sure where you live, but where I live it seems the people and government want to outlaw all cars pretty soon and force everyone onto bikes or trains. Spend any amount of time on Reddit or even here on Lemmy and the users will not shut up about how cars are evil and bikes fix every problem of society.
I’ve been a mechanic for more than 10 years at Hyundai, Kia, and Jaguar Land Rover dealerships. Manual transmission vehicles wwre pretty common, I would say it was about 45% manual transmissions and 55% automatic across the three. I also worked next to a Jeep dealer and they had manuals all the time.
AI will take over. It will not be a bad thing. Human creativity will still exist and will always exist. People will always desire creativity from humans, even with the existence of AI tools.
No one’s saying creativity will completely die, but experience tells me that when a function isn’t completely necessary, many people forget.
When the internet came, libraries became less necessary.
When print came, cursive became unnecessary.
When kindles came, physical books lost value.
We can be optimistic about it, but it will have an impact.
Bad thing? Who knows. Major changes in life? Absolutely.
It’ll make life easier, at the cost of losing certain skills we have, that’s how it’s been happening for a while now.
Give a man a calculator, why would he do math in his head?
Teach print, why write in cursive?
Give me a library on my phone, why have a physical building?
All of these things exist, sure, but to say that all change is positive is… not good. People make mistakes, not all modern advancements are for the good of humanity, or the individual.
Writing is way more than creating outlines or checking the plot for problems. It’s more than even writing a first draft. In fact, it starts with the first round of edits, when characters awake and find their voices etc.
People who think writing with AI is just pushing buttons underestimate the complexity of the process, and using AI for things you’d usually use other writers’ feedback or betas or developmental editors for is just an evolution of tools, the same way we don’t scratch on stone tablets anymore today.
I understand that AI is a complex program and not just pressing buttons. That’s not the issue I have with it. My issue is, what happens when the technology improves significantly? It’s my understanding that LLMs keep improving themselves by continuing to train on (often unethically) acquired data. In its present form, sure, maybe we don’t have to worry. But give it 10 years or so, how much more competent will it be?
Let’s look at just the film industry for a second. We already have a huge problem with Hollywood churning out franchise films at the expense of everything else. But even these cash cows are made via the vision of someone whose name is attached to it. Somebody got paid to write Halloween 36: The Final Halloween for Real This Time. That person may or may not have gave a shit about writing a good story, or they may have just wanted a paycheck. Either way, that paycheck could be used to fund something they care about much more. Once AI reaches the point where it could spit out a passable script, what incentive does Mr. Bigshot the Hollywood producer have to involve a writer at all? And because no writer is receiving a paycheck, less risks are taken in general, because risks don’t guarantee profit
I might just be letting my anxieties get the better of me, and I really hope I am. I just can’t seem to move past the bad feeling I’m getting from this.
I think your right that corporate stuff (including mass market blockbuster stuff) will increasingly be done by AI. But given a lot of it is currently “written by committee” it’s not really that different. The writer of Halloween 47: The Last Killening might have been an indvidual, but it probably got redrafted by another bunch of writers at different times, and studio execs made changes, etc. It’s unlikely the work of a single visionary.
But I believe that parralel is with industrial food. Living through the mid twentieth century, watching people go from cooking at home to buying frozen, freeze-dried and other processed meals. Or eating in fast food chains where all the food is packed full of additives in some factory a thousand miles away. Some of it was good (being able to get certain ingredients year round, or easy access to food from far away) but a lot was pretty depressing, and easy to imagine a time where we forget how to cook and eat real food entirely.
But that’s not what happened. Sure, some people only eat processed crap, but also people have become more and more obsessed with local, handmade stuff, or authentic or fusion recipes from around the globe. In the 80s/90s it felt inevitable that there would end up being basically 3 beers to pick from. Now there’s an endless wave of craft beers, etc, etc.
So with AI. It will take us a while to get used to. Corporations will use it to make money and make our lives worse. But it will also be a useful tool for help actual people be creative and make things for other humans. And in the end, there will always be a demand for the best, or unique, innovative stuff, and that will probably mean human created, not AI.
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Use the AI as a productivity tool, not the final product. Let it write where creativity is not a value - tech doc, contracts, porn, but you use it as a starting point to get more of your ideas out faster