Creative people actually do feel this way. There are huge discussions about it going on by actual creative people. Why are you hand waving that away and saying if they are discussing it they must not be adding any value, therefore their discussion is discarded? It's definitely a convenient position for you to take, but it doesn't seem like a real position when objectively great talent are taking the position you say only poor talent would take?
If AI gets good enough to replace them, then we can have a different discussion - but I don’t think you get truly great art without the full spectrum of human emotion and experience - that is, full AGI. In that case, all jobs are toast and we don’t need to have this discussion.
I wouldn't be so sure. During the writers strike I heard the producers where hoping to replace a lot of their work with AI.
> but I don’t think you get truly great art without the full spectrum of human emotion and experience
The movie industry is in the business of selling tickets, and the TV industry is in the business of getting people to look at ads. Creating "truly great art" is not the priority, but sometimes happens because people are still involved.
Our choices as consumers are constrained. If they all get compromised at the same time, because the producers are following similar incentives, the market won't punish them.
Factory workers didn't worry about cars, but buggy drivers did. Office workers didn't worry about factory automation, but factory workers did.
Things will be fine (it might take another 60 years and a few minor details, but it will all magically work out, like it did then. Not for the buggy drivers though. They were fucked, broken people living on skid row grew so huge it was a popular trope in children's cartoons).
But this idea that you’ve put forth really doesn’t hold up to even the lightest bit of scrutiny when you actually start thinking about what this would look like in reality.
I think exactly the opposite of you because to me consuming from a firehose of slop is the most terrible way you could waste a human life.
- AI never advancing past a "firehose of mediocre slop"
- Consumers as an aggregate "choosing" quality over cost and availability
is a good way to never worry about AI, yes. But that's not the assumptions this article or thread is written on.
> The only people I see handwringing over AI slop replacing their jobs are people who produce things of quality on the level of AI slop. Nobody truly creative seems to feel this way.
Have you ever worked for an American company? They almost always choose slop over quality. Why should an executive hire employ a skilled American software engineer, when he can fire him and hire three offshore engineers who don't really know what they're doing for half the price? Things won't blow up immediately, there's a chance they'll just limp along in a degraded state, and by then executive will be off somewhere else with a bonus in his pocket.
Also, how many people are "truly creative" and how does that compare to the number of people who have to eat?
> then it is a moral imperative that we stop employing human beings in those roles as it’s a terrible waste of a human life.
And what should they do then? Sit around jerking off under a bridge?
There's no "moral imperative" to cast people off into poverty. And that's what will happen: there will be no retraining, no effort to find roles for the displaced people. They'll just be discarded. That's a "terrible waste of a human life."
The only people I see handwringing over AI slop replacing their jobs are people who produce things of quality on the level of AI slop. Nobody truly creative seems to feel this way.