This is another facet of the fierce opposition to AI by a swath of the population: it’s quite literally destroying the last bit of enjoyment we could wring from existence in the form of hobbies funded through normal employment.
Think of the PC gamers, who first dealt with COVID supply shocks, followed by crypto making GPUs scarce and untenable, then GPU makers raising prices and narrowing inventory to only the highest-end SKUs, only to outright abandon them entirely for AI - which then also consumed their RAM and SSDs. A hobby that used to be enjoyed by folks on even a modest budget is now a theft risk given the insane resale priced of parts on the second-hand market due to scarcity.
And that extends to others as well. The swaths of folks who made freelance or commission artistry work through Patreons and conventions and the like are suddenly struggling as customers and companies spew out AI slop using their work and without compensation. Tech workers, previously the wealthy patron of artisans and communities, are now being laid off en masse for AI CapEx buildouts and share pumps as investors get cold feet about what these systems are actually doing to the economy at large (definite bad, questionable good, uncertain futures).
Late stage capitalism’s sole respite was consumerism, and we can’t even do that anymore thanks to AI gobbling up all the resources and capital. It’s no wonder people are pissed at AI boosters trying to say this is a miracle technology that’ll lift everyone up: it’s already kicking people down, and nobody actually wants to admit or address that lest their investments be disrupted to protect humans.
I think this started a lot earlier actually. A few generations back, many people played an instrument, or at least could sing. It didn't matter that none of them was a Mozart, because they didn't had to be. For making music or singing together in a family or a friend group, it was wholly sufficient to be just good, not necessarily great.
But when everyone has access to recordings of the world's best musicians at all times, why listen to uncle Harry's shoddy guitar play? Why sing Christmas songs together when you can put on the Sinatra Christmas jazz playlist on Spotify?
That’s definitely part of it as well, this sort of general distillation into a smaller and smaller pool of content or objects or goods that cost ever more money.
Like how most of the royalties Spotify pays out are for older catalogue stuff from “classic” artists, rather than new bands. Or how historical libraries of movies and films are constantly either up for grabs (for prestige) or being pushed off platforms due to their older/more costly royalty agreements.
With AI though, it’s the actual, tangible consumption of physical goods being threatened, which many companies involved in AI may argue is exactly the point: that everyone should be renters rather than consumers, and by making ownership expensive through cost and scarcity alike, you naturally drive more folks towards subscriptions for what used to be commodities (music, movies, games, compute, vehicles, creativity tools, TCGs, you name it).
It’s damn depressing.
> why listen to uncle Harry's shoddy guitar play?
Uncle Harry is not playing guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXzz8o1m5bM
THIS! Instrument-playing capability of a social environment: By today, I know only of one person playing a piano regularly in his club, he is the only one I know. When I was young, you had some basic instrument introduction in music classes at school - I do not know if these still exist today.
Regarding singing - I do not know a single perso who can "somehow" sing at least a little bit.
The society is loosing these capacities.
"Comparison is the thief of joy" as they say. Some dude has the world's highest score in Pac-Man in the Guinness Book Of World Records. It doesn't mean that I can't play Pac-Man to beat my own personal high score and enjoy the process because the game is fun in it's own right.
That's sure true in theory, but given the prevalence of status symbols, many people thrive on comparing themselves to others. I'd argue society was better off when the only people you could reasonably compare yourself to were the three neighbours down the street (out of which only one would be into Pac-Man), not the world's ten thousand best players showing off only their best streaks on your Instagram feed all day.
This is all temporary scarcity. GPUs becoming scarce and expensive today is exactly what we want to make future GPUs (and other electronics) cheap and abundant tomorrow. This is what happens when any capital intensive industry runs into a capacity ceiling it needs to push through.
Apologies for being glib but I never thought I’d see a sincere “think of the gamers” comment.
Your whole post is a bit vague and naive. If people enjoyed real art more than AI art, then the market will decide it. If they don’t then we should not be making people enjoy what they don’t.
The market might not be able to tell the difference. It takes effort to count fingers and toes in art. Part of the problem is also: So many companies are doing it now, that it doesn't seem effective to call people/companies out for the use of AI slop.
A big part of the problem is also: AI art is usually not labelled as such. The market can not make an informed decision.
If people can’t tell the difference, perhaps it doesn’t matter
We're discussing an article about the human externalities of AI progress. It absolutely matters in this context.
The free market is not some universal force of balance. It is a system of systems that is routinely influenced, disrupted, damaged, manipulated, and controlled overwhelmingly by a small cadre of wealth and asset-owners with disproportionate influence after a century of government policies against market intervention or regulation.
C'mon, be better than some "lol free market" quip.
Think of the PC gamers
The battlecry of the new revolution?
I mean, what was once an accessible hobby that taught folks how computers worked to a degree is now an RGB-lit target for thieves who know they can flip that memory and GPU for a grand or so pretty easily.
That's a pretty big turnabout that could get some more folks thinking about and discussing the impacts of AI on non-AI systems or markets.
> PC gamers
There's a pretty deep back catalog of PC games that will run on integrated GPUs.
> The swaths of folks who made freelance or commission artistry...
Those are people turning their hobby into a side hustle. If it's a hustle they depend on, this sucks. If it's actually a hobby, meh. You're drawing for you. Who cares if AI can also do it.
The fact you're nitpicking specific details instead of actually absorbing and discussing the core argument (that AI is having negative impacts on multiple systems, sectors, and markets beyond narrow verticals like programming, and that this is something worth acknowledging and discussing) really reveals that you're not here to discuss things seriously and are just looking to feel right about your personal positions.
Be better.