Submitted by Yuli-Ban t3_10o4jte in singularity
I'm not saying I know the future 100% and nothing is absolute.
But over the past month, I've absolutely shifted very hard away from my earlier belief that synthetic media will utterly destroy the human entertainment industry.
I'm not saying everyone will feel this way, and it's entirely possible that I've been dwelling on synthetic media for so long that, to use the Black Sabbath lyric, "I've seen the future and I've left it behind."
But in recent days, I have been thinking more about where generative AI tools are heading. I've been using Midjourney, NovelAI, and ChatGPT extensively. And the result is that I've come away with a greater appreciation for human-created media. Not because of AI's deficiencies, but honestly because of its abilities.
The better AI gets, the more I deliberately seek out human-created stuff. The higher value I place on it, I should say. I've reached the point where I've all but accepted that if I had a magic media machine, one that was perfect and utterly indistiguishable from a human and had zero flaws and could create whatever I wanted within a few seconds for fractions of a penny, I'd actually still be willing to drop a few thousand dollars for an actual human artist's labor, and not even just once. I'd absolutely adore to pay good money to see human artists bring my ideas to life, as imperfect and slow as they may be, even if I had an instant, perfect magic media machine on my computer.
Similar with the idea of music. I know that in short order, it will be possible to create literally any sound and any music imaginable, and I put myself in the position of imagining that day has already come as a thought experiment (as I have hyperphantasia, this is ridiculously easy to do). The result is that I wound up actively seeking out human artists.
Now admittedly some of that was a bit exploitative in that I wanted to hear human efforts just to mess with them with generative AI. But when I put myself in that mind space, that economy does spontaneously arise.
I relate it to the perception we have of mass produced goods vs. artisanal ones. Mass-produced goods aren't necessarily "low quality," especially with modern manufacturing methods they can sometimes be of a higher quality than handmade goods. Yet there is just something about the intrinsic knowledge of knowing human hands crafted something specific that gives it greater value.
The shift to automation will make literally all contemporary media "artisanal." That doesn't mean nothing will change— I'd say lower quality artists will suffer, all but forcing them to improve or go purely personal.
But the more I think about it, the less I'm convinced of a media singularity. I absolutely expect something mimicking a media singularity, but human irrationality will prevent AI from achieving 100% saturation.
If even I want to seek out human-made art and I already feel this way, god only knows how much more reactionary people will feel when perfect generative AI is a thing.
This counterintuitivity is something we really ought to have come to expect from humans by now, but I feel people are setting themselves up to be surprised regardless.
I suppose there will be a "trough" period for artists and creators, and the massive studios that rely on major capital to create entertainment (think Pixar, EA, their ilk) will definitely go under. For a brutal period of time, it absolutely will feel like human creativity is going to be obsolete, with AI reaching AGI not exactly causing anyone to think things will ever return to "normal."
Yet no matter how hard I try, I just can't bring myself to believe the idea that human creativity actually will be rendered obsolete once perfect generative AI is achieved. Not unless we get a "hard Singularity" where all humans are converted into computronium (and I'm also leaning strongly away from that possibility in recent days).
It reminds me more than a bit of Gartner's Hype Cycle, as well as the death and resurrection of vinyl, CDs, and the dumb phone, except on an esoterically different level.
I think some part of it also appeals to a sense of freedom of choice. Right now, we're 99% beholden to human-created media, and while there are indeed niches of niches within niches, you can still find gaps and lapses in specific desires and content. But if you had machines to fill in those gaps and flood the rest, instead of humans being submerged, it seems like human-created media will build up and float like islands and icebergs.
I'm not going to lie, I didn't expect this. Even 6 months ago, I was of the mind that once I had a magic media machine, I would eschew all human-created media and leave that to the hipsters. But now I'm increasingly feeling like this fear that all human-created art is dying is a very, very premature call.
Again, low-level artists have reason to fear, and even higher-level artists will suffer until we reach that saturation point, so I expect them to get angry about all this and push back against it. But human irrationality is going to keep human artists afloat.
"How can we even tell if humans created certain art?"
True, there is that caveat. But even there, I don't buy the idea that there's zero hope. For one, from what I've noticed on DeviantArt and ArtStation, 90% to 95% of people using AI-generation tools are actually kind enough to mark their creations as AI-generated. The fear that sinister and lazy techbros will pretend they themselves created Midjourney and DALL-E 2 generations to trick consumers and rob from hard-working artists is just that: a relatively unfounded fear. In the beginning, some definitely didn't mark it down, but that courtesy has grown in recent months.
Second, there is yet another psychological phenomenon I noticed. If something AI-generated is passed off as human-created and the illusion holds, then there won't be much of a problem. But if anything slips and people learn that it's not made by a human, their perception of it will immediately change, no matter how high quality the AI-generated work is. This is the same phenomenon as "Charles Manson's Pen" I noticed, where if you pass a random ballpoint pen around a crowd telling them "This was Charles Manson's pen," they'll react to it with fear, disgust, and reverence. But then if you reveal "Actually, this is just a random pen I found on the table," all of a sudden that reverence fades completely. It's a very irrational quirk of human psychology, and I'm definitely noticing it in the AI vs human art debate. There's no reason this quirk will go away any time soon; if anything, if every pen suddenly belongs to Charles Manson, we'll soon be more keen on doubting your words and instead searching to find his actual pen.
You'd have to engage in gaslighting at that point to claim that the final pen was also a fake, at which point society becomes entirely schizophrenic and believes what it wants to believe and we arrive at the same ends.
"What are you talking about?"
I swear, it makes sense, and I'll let ChatGPT explain:
Synthetic media and AI generated art have been seen as a threat to the human entertainment industry. However, as AI improves, the perception towards human-created media changes. Many people value human-created media more as it carries an intrinsic knowledge of being crafted by human hands. The shift to automation will make all contemporary media "artisanal" and lower quality artists and high-investment groups like big budget movie studios will suffer. However, human irrationality will prevent AI from completely replacing human-created media. There may be a trough period for artists and creators but human creativity won't be obsolete as long as humans continue to have the freedom of choice.
Kolinnor t1_j6ckoaj wrote
ChatGPT summary :
The writer has shifted their belief away from the idea that synthetic media will completely destroy the human entertainment industry. They have come to appreciate human-created media more because of the abilities of AI and the intrinsic value of knowing that humans crafted something specific. They don't believe that human creativity will be rendered obsolete by perfect generative AI due to human irrationality and the freedom of choice to seek out human-created art. The writer expects low-level artists to suffer but higher-level artists will eventually adapt and push back against the shift to automation.