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.

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Yuli-Ban OP t1_j6civfx wrote

To put it another way, it's like how the best chess AIs are so stupidly superhuman that no biological organism could even conceivably defeat the best ones available. The result of this on chess as a game industry? It's actually made humans better players.

It's not a 1:1 comparison because playing a game isn't the same as "the application of higher cognition for entertainment." But I am starting to seriously think that I vastly overcalled the death of the entertainment industry. I suppose I should have been more nuanced, as I still think that the industry as it is now is horribly bloated and exploitative and AI will end that aspect of it.

But, see if you can follow me here, if I had the ability to generate a movie on my computer that looks like it had the entire GDP of Earth put into its budget (but only cost a few cents to generate), and I heard that some filmmakers dedicated to doing things the old-fashioned way were setting out to make movies with actual human actors and practical effects/legacy CGI.... I'd actually set out good time in the day to watch that movie too. Even if I could recreate that exact movie, frame by frame, on my computer.

Even if that movie was terrible, I'd still watch it if I knew it was genuinely human-crafted. Sort of like how I'd pay money even for a crappy glass if it was hand-crafted by a human.

It's nowhere near enough to sustain the industry as it exists now, hence why I have to say "expect downsizing," but I'm completely cutting out my earlier predictions that the entertainment industry is doomed. Even art as career isn't going to die.

All this is really meant to be a reassurance to artists fearing their obsolecense. If "The Synthetic Media Guy" is saying "Lol actually plenty of you are gonna be alright," I'd start calming down.

I like to think of it as a bell curve. On the left end, the uneducated broke take is that "AI will never replace humans completely, even if it's perfect." In the middle, as a result of knowledge and enlightenment and awareness, there's "AI is going to replace creatives first, and the human entertainment industry is going to die, and everything ever will be an anime tailored to my tastes and I'll never look back." And on the right, following the come-down and when you achieve nirvana, there's "AI will never replace humans completely, even if it's perfect." Just expect a lot more AI-generated stuff in the coming years regardless.

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GeneralZain t1_j6cjw6y wrote

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: humans will never stop being creative. we will always do art, its baked into our species.

with that said, the JOB of artist will go away. no company or average person would pay out the nose for art from a human (unless you are rich), when the synthetic media machine can do it much "better", faster, and for free.

humans will literally be too busy to care about all this though. because its not just art that AI is going for, its all jobs. we are all about to be in the same boat. how do people deal with a post money world? how would you get an artist to make your idea if they don't want to without money? heck if I know...maybe you can't...

I do think it will be hard singularity and I think people will probably be too busy freaking out about the super intelligence talkin to them than whether or not art is still a thing people may do anymore.

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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.

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Zermelane t1_j6cqvb1 wrote

No overall disagreement, but a couple of points that I thought were worth sharpening.

> 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.

Consider the possibility that you were previously seeing the situation from afar, and thinking about the long term, but now that you're seeing it from up close, it's harder to emotionally see past the limitations of current technology.

We don't make people dig ditches without excavators not just because it's economically inefficient, but because making people do work that could very cheaply and easily be automated is not compatible with human dignity: The idea of paying artists when you have that magic media machine should feel the same. Maybe it just doesn't right now because where it used to seem like an abstraction but a possible one, now it seems like a reality but an unachievably distant one.

> 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.

The stakes are very low there. We weren't really worried about people freely uploading stuff to DeviantArt being cheated out of anything, as they weren't being paid in the first place. The place you should be looking is how concept artists, visual designers, commissioned artists etc. are doing.

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QuarterFar7877 t1_j6cw11s wrote

ChatGPT summary of ChatGPT summary:

The writer believes that human-created media has value and that AI will not fully replace human creativity. They expect lower-level artists to be affected but higher-level artists to adapt and resist the shift towards automation.

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meyotchslap t1_j6cxtew wrote

Human created media is often edited for clarity and brevity, often but not always…

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turnip_burrito t1_j6cy5lk wrote

There will always be some sort of market for human art based solely on the subjective value of human vs AI made art, as you expressed.

My take:

For commercial art, the amount of fine-tuned customization of the final piece is something that machines can't match (for now), so artists will still be hired if that is a must for the company. Otherwise, the scattershot "close enough" approach of AI will replace much of the rest of commercial art in the short (pre ASI) term.

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FoveatedRendering t1_j6d0j0x wrote

I think almost all creatives will be using AI tools to bring their imaginations to life in the future.

Even when we have a perfect magic media machine, we won't know exactly what we want(unless the AI has our data), so we might often prefer to watch the most popular movies or play games that are made by other humans using this perfect magic media machine instead of doing it ourselves. I suspect media created by professionals using AI will always be better until AGI.

The popular media will eventually be edited to suit our tastes too. I see AI as another tool that humans will use to improve their productivity, it shouldn't be seen as humans vs AI but as Photoshop vs Dreambooth until AGI.

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drekmonger t1_j6d3ll9 wrote

I think it'll be like the holodeck. You'll still have "holodeck writers", creative people who have created interesting programs. But the actual content creation will amount to a natural language dialogue between a human and a marshalling AI that will transparently assign tasks to other AIs to create the overall experience.

"That Klingon's phaser should be bigger and have some cool runic designs on it."

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Slow-Schedule-7725 t1_j6d8frz wrote

also like the point of art is that it’s subjective, eye of the beholder and all that, i think the general idea is to be irrational- both in creating and in viewing

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dr_set t1_j6ddklw wrote

You are making no sense. If the AI art is indistinguishable from human art then you are just asking to be scammed by "being willing to drop a few thousand dollars for an actual human artist's labor". The human "artist" is going to take your money and use AI to generate the fake the art in seconds and laugh his ass off at you.

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SgathTriallair t1_j6dhjuf wrote

We already have a good test case for this, hand created goods. Factory produced good have been around for decades and the individual crafter has been ALMOST entirely driven from the market. However, there is still a thriving group of crafters who are able to sustain themselves selling their wares even though they are three to ten times more expensive. I imagine it will be the same thing after the AI revolution.

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OmManiPadmeHuumm t1_j6drqvc wrote

I personally think AI brings an amazing new element to artistic endeavors. A whole new world of possibilities is open, and human artists can utilize aspects of AI to make things that are brand new. Art may be wholly different from the way we know it today. Midjourney has absolutely blown my mind.

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LoneRedWolf24 t1_j6dzide wrote

"Low-level artists will suffer" then how do they ever become a higher-level if there's no opportunity for experience in real world jobs? I didn't read the whole post, but your TLDR makes it seem like OP has an overly hopeful view of the future for artists. I hope he's right but I'm not confident.

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ertgbnm t1_j6e5hgp wrote

This post is no different than wingeing about cgi effects replacing some practical effects. You are way off base in my opinion. If first gen generative models have taught us anything it's that "human irrationality" is definitely automatable and perhaps it's easier to do than many other seemingly easier tasks.

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Dickenmouf t1_j6ekgrd wrote

Why do people pay for art portraits when they can already take pictures instead? Shoot, clients often give artists pictures to use as reference to make portrait drawings. People can already add graphite drawing filters to their pictures, to imitate the look of a pencil drawing. But why do people still choose artists these days?

The reason as I understand it is because there’s value in having a portrait drawn by an artist. Its singular , flawed and unique, and the technique and skill behind the art gives it value. An AI artist that can imitate that but the end result will be as disposable as a picture taken by an iphone.

So I wonder if the “job” of the artist really will go away. People already don’t buy art for the end result, but the process instead.

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Ivanthedog2013 t1_j6en0ac wrote

i look at it this way.

the AI that is creating the synthetic art is the pinnacle of human creativity and the value i place on the ai art is the same if not greater than if it came directly from a person becuase its literally derived from all the humans that have ever created any art and it resembles the collective consciousness of humanity which in my mind is much more valuable/beautiful concept.

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visarga t1_j6exxh8 wrote

>we will always do art, its baked into our species.

We will always do what we need to improve our lives, with or without help. It's baked into our species. Amazing lack of confidence in our ability to invent new kinds of work with AI! Or maybe lack of imagination about what these future jobs might be. Or just fear of the unknown.

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throwawaydthrowawayd t1_j6eywng wrote

(I believe in a hard take off, so this is just a thought experiment)

If you care about the difference between human vs AI, then it's not the product you are after, but the production, the creation of the art, right? So paying for a product doesn't matter. Instead, there could be a niche where you pay to watch an artist work and apply themselves creatively.

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visarga t1_j6f177f wrote

This is very insightful. In 2023 paintings are painting themselves and books are writing themselves, to someone from the past this would be magic.

The model is a distillation of our culture. It works like a microscope, zooming into any concept or style immediately, and allowing interactive exploration. It is a trip into the mirror house of our imagination. What we see there is our own mind reflecting back.

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ImpossibleSnacks t1_j6fnvag wrote

I didn’t know hyperphantasia was a thing. I have always been lost in my own imagination and I wonder if that’s why.

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Amondupe t1_j6hfo2p wrote

ELI5 by ChatGPT

The writer changed their mind and now thinks that art made by people is special, even with AI around. They think people will still want to see art made by people, and the really good artists will find a way to keep making art. Some not-so-good artists may have trouble, but the really good ones will be okay.

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fjaoaoaoao t1_j6kjmrl wrote

Great points. Only thing is I wouldn’t call it irrationality, as if machines are the opposite… all rational. Machines are literally sourcing data from humans and coming up with irrational conclusions all the time.

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