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The simple answers to the questions that get asked about every new technology:
Will [blank] make us all geniuses? No
Will [blank] make us all morons? No
Will [blank] destroy whole industries? Yes
Will [blank] make us more empathetic? No
Will [blank] make us less caring? No
Will teens use [blank] for sex? Yes
Were they going to have sex anyway? Yes
Will [blank] destroy music? No
Will [blank] destroy art? No
But can’t we go back to a time when- No
Will [blank] bring about world peace? No
Will [blank] cause widespread alienation by creating a world of empty experiences? We were already alienated
Yep, this comic did not age well. This technology literally targets artists. That’s pretty new.
Don’t worry, artists were already destroyed. Pop music destroyed music, visual artists destroyed themselves .
Tech death musicians compose pieces on the level of Bach and have to have day jobs, museums have blank canvases and bananas taped to walls.
But it will not destroy art or music.
Often times I see people discuss art and music, and I wonder if they see creative literature as art, or if it’s forgotten.
I mention this because AI has been devastating on the literature world.
This brought to mind a 2012 interview with Eric Wolpaw, writer of Valve games and Psychonauts:
Interviewer: “People take for granted that writing is easy. It’s not.”
Erik Wolpaw: “Yeah. Everybody can write. I mean, you’re a writer. But everybody thinks that they can, because everybody can to a certain extent.”
I think of writing as a form of art, but it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word.
Man I really hope so. But the vast majority of people consume mass produced formulaic media already, I don’t see AI helping that trend.
No amount of people doing that will ever destroy art or music, the only thing that can is reducing artists living conditions enough to where they can’t make art.
commercial incentives already ruined art if you’re worried about this ruining art.
But now Spotify and co have a financial incentive to generate as much slop as possible and to push it to their users aggressively. Why? Well cause if their users only listen to slop, they won’t have to pay any actual artists anymore. So you know it’s guaranteed to happen. This is capitalism after all.
Spotify makes more money from artists trying to promote their work than they do from people paying to stream music.
That will mean people make music for the love of the craft again, music has sucked because of commercial incentive, maybe this will revive the craft.
I have noticed a profound lack of political commentary in music nowadays. There are a few fringe artists but that is about it.
I know artists who use AI to help them design something, but then they go out and actually manifest the physical thing…be it a mural or a sculpture or a tattoo. So no, it likely won’t harm the artists who can use it to their advantage, not for a long time.
Isn’t that literally the last line, but for art? The average person gave very little fucks about “art” before AI, and most art happened for purely base reasons, like marketing or porn. Fancy shmancy art will continue to exist.
Art is a fundamental human drive. In fact, not even human - neanderthals also made art. The fact that we can make cool looking pictures really easily with a computer will no more destroy art than photography did.
It will (and already has) HURT them, certainly. But that’s still a far cry from “destroy”.