> It is difficult to think that someone who writes for pleasure would abandon it simply because of the exponential volume of AI-generated text.
But the "exponential volume of AI-generated text" turns "writing for pleasure" into a solitary act. There's no chance you'll be able to quit your day job, because people like what you do any will pay for it. So many people faking it with AI means that it'll be struggle to get any attention at all for what you've put so much effort into.
The truth is much "pursuit of art" is a status exercise by those with the leisure capacity to do so, and this only maintains status because most people do not have the spare time and energy to put into it.
In the event everyone is sitting around with time on their hands wondering what to do and we have machines that spit out endless reams of anything it is a very curious question what exactly it is most people would end up doing, which would probably be some new status seeking exercise.
Whoa, fascinating: what to call this paradox I'd never considered before?
From the blog post:
> In my dream world, the robots do all the boring jobs and humans spend all their time being creative, connecting with one another, learning about the universe, and sharing our ideas and creations in a great big prosperous circle.
But with this and your other comment [0] about humans churning out 10 articles a day and changing the idea of what's "valuable" leads me to a bit of a conundrum I can't quite unwind:
If AI took over all the boring jobs (chores, labor, etc.) and we had all the time in the world to be creative, and we did just that, to the effect of humans generating dramatically more from "creative" ventures, have we created the same scenario, from a different approach? What then?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122692
> From the blog post:
>> In my dream world, the robots do all the boring jobs and humans spend all their time being creative, connecting with one another, learning about the universe, and sharing our ideas and creations in a great big prosperous circle.
In the world we're actually building, it's the opposite. We're on track for the robots to take the creative jobs, leaving boring and dirty jobs for the humans. It does he design and writes the code, while you're stuck with endless code reviews and monitoring.
It's because they're building technology for its own sake, not for people living in this world.
My guess is energy gets redirected towards sport, and everything associated with it. It's already often an abstracted form of things that used to be work (sailing, hunting etc.), but it's also something more unique that a machine participating in makes no sense.
Writing has always been a solitary act.
'act' as in a play, but now with no audience. So all that hard work of memorizing lines, rehearsing, and vocal lessons becomes an experience only the actors can enjoy by themselves.
I've never heard about writers writing with an audience. A real one at least. Of course there's always an imaginary reader.
Performing and writing couldn't be any more different or attract different types of people.