is AI gonna take our jobs?
- Thread starter DBP
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ahalpert
Major Contributor
I mean..."AI" is really just a marketing term. There are some new products publicly available such as LLMs and image generators. But most of what's called AI these days has been around for decades.
Your attitude is exactly that of Wall Street. "DON'T YOU DARE POP OUR BUBBLE!!!"
Meanwhile, I'm the Debbie Downer for suggesting that the humans who are the golden goose in this equation will continue to be needed? Please.
Napster and p2p torrent sharing are also an irreversible fact of life now. But no major corporation can profit from them because it's illegal.
And considering the fact that you can't counter the blatant copyright violations I'm pointing out on their merits... And OpenAI probably murdered the whistleblower whose was gonna testify about their copyright violations... I think their current business model is probably doomed.
NorBro
Major Contributor
Personally, I don't accept that they are "blatant copyright violations" and I'm really interested to see what happens.
It would be a tragedy for businesses if the tech (that tech, visuals) gets limited.
Sorry, don't need humans to do that job. (They can click some buttons instead.)
It would be a tragedy for businesses if the tech (that tech, visuals) gets limited.
Sorry, don't need humans to do that job. (They can click some buttons instead.)
coming late to the party... my limited $.02
AI looks threatening to animators. I can type in a few sentences and generate 3d animated characters and scenes lighting fast wheras making them from scratch takes a lot of work and skill. The paid services I've seen limit the generated video clips to 4 or 5 seconds so that is a limiting factor on content creation because not all scenes can be that short in a project.
Some of the stuff generated is near photo realistic.
I do see AI as a valid threat to us content creators. All the sudden, ordinary Joe who may not even own a camera can suddently cheaply make stuff that would otherwise cost a fortune. It even writes scripts for you with only basic input.
I think our advantages as legacy creators lie in the client relationships, story telling abilities, business skills, production skills etc.
A crew with good production gear and post skills will still have a place for clients that want or need such. But I believe AI has cut further into the pie.
First the cameras got cheap and everyone jumped in about 2010. Now It's AI allowing anyone to make high end imaging.
We are working to embrace AI as another tool. Exploring several offerings. Some are better than others at certain things. What all have you guys used or recommend?
AI looks threatening to animators. I can type in a few sentences and generate 3d animated characters and scenes lighting fast wheras making them from scratch takes a lot of work and skill. The paid services I've seen limit the generated video clips to 4 or 5 seconds so that is a limiting factor on content creation because not all scenes can be that short in a project.
Some of the stuff generated is near photo realistic.
I do see AI as a valid threat to us content creators. All the sudden, ordinary Joe who may not even own a camera can suddently cheaply make stuff that would otherwise cost a fortune. It even writes scripts for you with only basic input.
I think our advantages as legacy creators lie in the client relationships, story telling abilities, business skills, production skills etc.
A crew with good production gear and post skills will still have a place for clients that want or need such. But I believe AI has cut further into the pie.
First the cameras got cheap and everyone jumped in about 2010. Now It's AI allowing anyone to make high end imaging.
We are working to embrace AI as another tool. Exploring several offerings. Some are better than others at certain things. What all have you guys used or recommend?
It's another step along the path that has been going on for sometime. When it was all done with film, it was complicated, expensive, and required a lot of people and skills. Then, digital cameras came along and anybody could buy a camera and make ads for the shoe store in town. AI takes it one step further down the 'anyone can do it' road.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
When the machine reproduces copyrighted images (from films or video games) and the likenesses of celebrities, those are blatant violations. The product should not be able to do that.
What's somewhat less obvious but I believe to be the case is that AI can't really generate anything new, just alterations of things it's already seen. Whether that constitutes copyright violation is up to the judges.
What's your explanation of an OpenAI employee feeling motivated to blow the whistle on them for copyright violation? And his information being damaging enough for them to have him killed?
At the least I think it's safe to assume that openai and most other AI companies have scraped information from sources that did not give them permission, such as all of youtube.
NorBro
Major Contributor
People involved with important technology and big dollars are above my status in life and my assumptions with no knowledge or understanding of anything are meaningless.
One could assume there's always some good soul with good intentions who is murdered by evil to protect money - per usual with everything since the beginning of humanity - but I don't know that and have no explanations.
I'm only interested to see where the tech goes and if it's decided by decision-makers that we're in a different time now and the yesteryear copyright violations no longer apply.
One could assume there's always some good soul with good intentions who is murdered by evil to protect money - per usual with everything since the beginning of humanity - but I don't know that and have no explanations.
I'm only interested to see where the tech goes and if it's decided by decision-makers that we're in a different time now and the yesteryear copyright violations no longer apply.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I think that interpretation of the historical moment we're living in is broadly correct. But legal cases don't turn on such things. There was a similar defense of Napster: "Information wants to be free." But movie and music producers decisively won the legal battle. They lost the war of defending their rights. There were too many small fish sharing torrents for them to sue. But the websites hosting torrents are continuously under fire, periodically get shut down, and have to move to new host countries, etc.
It's also worth noting that most of the action with AI is not centered on generating text and imagery. It's in interpreting data. Weather predictions; novel drug designs; algorithms for robot movement. And I think that most of the last crop of Nobel prizes went to teams that included a data scientist using machine learning in their research. Image generators are a big deal to us but not that important to the bigger picture.
Bassman2003
Veteran
Well it needs to be good right? 
Delorean
Member
Agreed.
The colorful ghosts in the coin-op arcade game Pacman (1980), were AI.
The creators of Pacman even describe them as AI in interviews.
"AI" is a computer-algorithm that gives the appearance of 'intelligent' behavior. These computer algorithms have been around for decades. They have merely increased in complexity.
What we are witnessing now is an incredible amount of hype surrounding what is merely old-school complex-mathematics. A stage-trick.
To many people, it seems so miraculous that a computer can generate "art" based on keywords, that appraising the actual artistic-value, or practical need for this imagery is forgotten.
The same goes for ChatGPT etc.
You'd have an infinitely more inspired, factually accurate, and enriching conversation with a hobo.
And I often do.
AI is like the Yo-yo, or Rubiks Cube. In the midst of the hype it seems unthinkable that one day these things might fade from popular attention.
But they do.
For parsing huge-volumes of data, "AI" has a longer-term future.
But as a 'replacement' for human creativity, it's a very expensive dead-end, as a lot of corporations will shortly discover.
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Bassman2003
Veteran
I like this line. But they will never learn will they? The myth of being able to fire everyone and rule the world is too alluring...
The quality is worrisome enough that people demand disclosure when it is used. The pushback here is an example. If it wasn't any good, no one would care. The people who embrace it will be farther along than the people who waste time opposing it.
Bassman2003
Veteran
I do not quite understand this line. I am in the industry and largely see myself as an observer of the AI tidal wave. I generally think it is kind of stupid but have used some AI generated imagery and see its usefulness (with additional editing by myself to make it work). So how much further along would I be if I embraced AI like you mention?
I see experimenting with AI doing my editing (and failing) or picking my meal menu etc... as kind of a waste of time as well!
NorBro
Major Contributor
It's not for you (us)...like what's a one-man band sports videographer towards the end of his career, etc. going to do with AI, you know?
Play around with it a little here and there, maybe read something once a week, month, and that's it.
It is for big companies, lots of projects, services, departments, software, hardware...anywhere you can get it in. Larger than life money.
That's "the people"...at least I think so.
But now if you're planning on changing careers...
Play around with it a little here and there, maybe read something once a week, month, and that's it.
It is for big companies, lots of projects, services, departments, software, hardware...anywhere you can get it in. Larger than life money.
That's "the people"...at least I think so.
But now if you're planning on changing careers...
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I don't see any signs that AI is replacing human creativity. But basically it has the potential to replace craftsmen. Already I'm able to do things in Photoshop that used to require skills and techniques that I do not possess. That being said, the results are very hit and miss. If the machine doesn't readily give me what I want, which frequently happens, then I'm out of luck.
But conversing with ChatGPT for the first time was definitely an aha moment for me because I had never had a back and forth conversation with a machine before that where it readily understood me and then responded with natural language. Very impressive.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
That's a false dichotomy. You can use it while advocating regulation. I, for one, will not unilaterally disarm. But it's clear to me that the products in their current form violate the rights of copyright holders and will also have a detrimental effect on our cultural production.
And, as Elon Musk said, AI is out of data to train on. Which suggests to me that it may not improve further in the near term. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-agrees-weve-exhausted-040148636.html
Apparently Mark Zuckerberg approved the use of unlicensed copyrighted works for the training of his AI (that were illegally downloaded in torrent files) as well as the systematic deletion of their copyright information. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/09/m...-to-train-on-copyrighted-works-filing-claims/
ahalpert
Major Contributor
One of the "best" and most aggressive use cases of the technology is by Spotify steering users towards AI-generated content so they can avoid paying musicians altogether. They have massive influence over who gets recommended to their customers. So the system becomes a closed loop of profit. https://www.fastcompany.com/91170296/spotify-ai-music
But I think in the long-term they may undermine their own dominance. It's interesting to me that fine art photography has risen in value in response to the dawn of AI. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/...to Detect, Photography,in New York and beyond.
"The rise of A.I. image generators makes physical prints feel all the more outmoded, and therefore all the more like fine art objects — rare specimens that ought to be valued for their craftsmanship, luminosity and composition. “New tech has made even digital photography seem somewhat romantic and nostalgic,” Sawyer said.
Several shows are embracing the nostalgia and objecthood of the photograph, highlighting artists who create images through old-fashioned or unconventional means. In November, the gallery Karma, in New York, is presenting 26 cyanotypes — a slow and cameraless photographic process developed in the mid-19th century — by the artist Peter McGough, each capturing a nude male model (or two or three or four) forming the shape of a letter of the alphabet."
So basically the photographic medium gains value as its sense of authenticity increases relative to AI. It's important to remember that music and movies etc are subject to the whims and caprices of the audience, which change over time in response to technological developments and other factors.