OpenAI's latest image-generation update has taken social media by storm, as users are flooding X, Instagram, and Reddit with Studio Ghibli-style images
The bigger problem here is the loss of jobs and we are talking about a huge loss of employment that will affect economies really hard.
I would say that’s a tangential problem. Because, you know, in theory…
But the deeper problem is ultimately in expertise as a learned skill developed over time and through practice. If you’re de-skilling work, you’re dismantling the tools by which we train the next generation of artists and production crews. If we were just replacing humans with machines for some route manual labor (like Pixar replaced Disney’s old hand drawn animations with a newer CGI look), the result would be a new style and perhaps less tendentious from route reproductions.
But we’re gutting the whole process of development which means you’re losing the pool of skilled professionals who know how to create CGI (or even flip-book style 60s animation) from first principles. That means sacrificing whole fields of specialized expertise for… what? This?
That will only happen if a society completely is reorganized to get rid of money or if they introduce universal basic income (at a rate that actually allows people to live).
Realistically I can’t see either of those things happening.
Just shifting the tax burden from salaries toward capital should make it less of a problem. When capital income is taxed less than salaries wealth concentration gets worse as workers are replaced.
But hey, GDP line goes up, so it must be good right?
Or, more broadly, when individuals are recognized as valued participants in the community rather than obsolete expenses to try and scratch off the books.
Realistically I can’t see either of those things happening.
Not under current business and political leadership, no. But with a strong union movement leading a next generation of working class people… maybe.
Because this will take time to happen, and the thing about not eating because you have literally no money, is it’s a rather immediate concern. You can’t just wait a decade or so for everyone to sort it out.
I think it’s intentional. Where you had to think to do something, you’d inevitably learn to think. Where you had to put soul and wisdom and aesthetic feeling into your work, you’d inevitably touch those things for other parts of your life.
There are people higher in the society, who think lower castes shouldn’t have that and will be fine with knowledge and expertise just sufficient to do their jobs.
They wouldn’t be so hellbent on this particular technology, if they didn’t see how relatively recent progress changed that curve of expertise for radio, electric engineering, all engineering, computer science, automobiles, home appliances, and what not. So they see this consistently works for 25+ years.
So they work to deprive us of practice that allows to do more in all those directions. There’s a moat that could as well be an abyss between what we know and what we’d need to know to make relevant things. That moat wasn’t there 25 years ago. The path from a novice computer user to someone knowing all DOS interrupts and what DMA and IRQ are was less than the path from a novice computer user today to making a simple GUI application.
(I’ve got executive dysfunction, so feel these things more, but I’m certain they are true.)
I would say that’s a tangential problem. Because, you know, in theory…
But the deeper problem is ultimately in expertise as a learned skill developed over time and through practice. If you’re de-skilling work, you’re dismantling the tools by which we train the next generation of artists and production crews. If we were just replacing humans with machines for some route manual labor (like Pixar replaced Disney’s old hand drawn animations with a newer CGI look), the result would be a new style and perhaps less tendentious from route reproductions.
But we’re gutting the whole process of development which means you’re losing the pool of skilled professionals who know how to create CGI (or even flip-book style 60s animation) from first principles. That means sacrificing whole fields of specialized expertise for… what? This?
That will only happen if a society completely is reorganized to get rid of money or if they introduce universal basic income (at a rate that actually allows people to live).
Realistically I can’t see either of those things happening.
Just shifting the tax burden from salaries toward capital should make it less of a problem. When capital income is taxed less than salaries wealth concentration gets worse as workers are replaced.
But hey, GDP line goes up, so it must be good right?
Or, more broadly, when individuals are recognized as valued participants in the community rather than obsolete expenses to try and scratch off the books.
Not under current business and political leadership, no. But with a strong union movement leading a next generation of working class people… maybe.
What about the transition.
Because this will take time to happen, and the thing about not eating because you have literally no money, is it’s a rather immediate concern. You can’t just wait a decade or so for everyone to sort it out.
It’ll likely be a bloodsoaked mess, given the history of these things.
I think it’s intentional. Where you had to think to do something, you’d inevitably learn to think. Where you had to put soul and wisdom and aesthetic feeling into your work, you’d inevitably touch those things for other parts of your life.
There are people higher in the society, who think lower castes shouldn’t have that and will be fine with knowledge and expertise just sufficient to do their jobs.
They wouldn’t be so hellbent on this particular technology, if they didn’t see how relatively recent progress changed that curve of expertise for radio, electric engineering, all engineering, computer science, automobiles, home appliances, and what not. So they see this consistently works for 25+ years.
So they work to deprive us of practice that allows to do more in all those directions. There’s a moat that could as well be an abyss between what we know and what we’d need to know to make relevant things. That moat wasn’t there 25 years ago. The path from a novice computer user to someone knowing all DOS interrupts and what DMA and IRQ are was less than the path from a novice computer user today to making a simple GUI application.
(I’ve got executive dysfunction, so feel these things more, but I’m certain they are true.)