Post by FearCode in Are AI Assets Controversial on Itch io? - itch.io

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FearCode1 year ago (9 edits) (+7)

IA is a sensitive topic because it's being used as a scapegoat when it comes to replacing people's jobs.

Automation, unfortunately (or fortunately?), is unavoidable, as it has been around since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Have you heard about a profession called "Aircraft listener"? No, right? This is how their work used to look like:

That's how things used to work before we had the radar. Do we see people complaining saying we should have no radars anymore so these people could get their job back? No.

People tend to blame automation for the job replacement, but it's not the automation the problem, it's the society context in which we live.

I don't want to get political here, but the way society works nowadays is profit driven. Profit is not just achieved when you sell more or when you sell for a higher price, but also when you spend less to sell the same thing, so if one can fire 90% of their employees to produce the same product (in the same amount and time) in the end, they will.

If society was not profit driven, IA could stay as a tool to help everybody do their work faster and consequently have to work less in the end. Wouldn't you like having to work 4 hours a day and produce as much as you would in 8hrs? So yes, automation can do that, it only depends on the employers to start doing that, but the more they do that, the more they favor the ones that don't do that to profit over them, taking over their market and eventually bringing them down to bankruptcy.

In short, people should worry more about how they want their society to work, rather then just attacking automation itself.

If I could summarize all this in a sentence it would be something like:

- Competion (even with an IA) can be healthy if your career doesn't depend on it.

redonihunter1 year ago(+5)

Ai is wrong word. They should use better word. The controversial thing is not automated computer generation of stuff. As you pointed out, whe have and had that plenty. Any procedural generated content and any computer player is ai driven. The controversial thing is that you train those things with real stuff and they are good at imitating. for copyrighted material that is so problematic by design, that you could have protected material still in the database of the thing. reproducing material is a license issue. And if the "AI" scrambles it and rearranges it, it still is the unlicensed material. One could try some fair use doctrine, but this is thin ice, as an ai is not a person - and that even brings up discussions about copyright of material created by such ai.

well, ok, those are problems, but not the problems people get emotional about. They see two other aspects. The automation, as usual, like you point out, machines taking our jooobs (as if ouotsourcing to chinese sweatshop would be any better). And the existential problem those machines pose. what they do is create art. And if they can do that, it devalues being human, beause it is athing many believe makes us human and not animal.I think it just devalues art, or rather shows that (most) art is not some spiritual gift or has deep meanings.

FearCode1 year ago (1 edit) (+2)

I can't talk about every IA, but lots of IA models do not "scrambles it and rearranges unlicensed material". Neural networks for instance, try to imitate our brain, the same way you take inspiration in an existing game to create your own. And yes if an Art create by an IA is similar enough to another existing art, then that's plagiarism like how lots of humans do the same way.

And No, AI will never replace humans in making art, what will happen is the way we do Art will shift completely. For instance, instead of painting yourself you may now talk to an AI instead and artists in this "new era" will be most likely people that can take the most of the AI to create the best art pieces. It may be quite similar to what already happens nowadays with sculpting (we still have people carving on rocks) but it's way more common to find people sculpting 3D art in their PC (using Z Brush for instance) and 3D printing them or just uploading them.

redonihunter1 year ago(+5)

Thereis examples of AI Art where signature of original artists popped up in the image.Rehashing is precisly what some of those nets do. It learned that for the thing the operator wants, that signature is important. Or those fake pictures of Trump with missing or extra hands. The net was trained with photos, obviously, and on photos hands are often not visible or you see extra hands from different persons.

Those nets that are trained with real stuff are not learning how to do the skill, but to imitate the result by rehashing. With frightenly accurate or creepy results in some cases.

And with copyrighet material that poses legal risks that are not decided yet. To put it blatantly oversimplistic, you can view a trained ai as a filter, like those popular for selfies. And instead of one image you add effects to, you use hundreds images and add a little random and an objective for the result. Like, picture-bot, give me one with that Trump person sitting and eating a burger.

But you still use stuff that you might not have the rights to use or not use in that way. Real persons can do that in some scenarios. But that does not mean that tools (or their operators or the service provider that hosts the tool) are allowed to do that in all scenarios.

FearCode1 year ago(+1)

I do agree there are AIs out there that steal other people work, but again: That's not to blame the AI itself, but the one who created.

If you train an AI using unlicensed material, that's the same of you stealing someone's work using the AI or not.

There are AIs out there that are trained only with CC0 materials, that are benefic specially for artists. Some of my artists colleagues use AI tools to make their texture tileable or to hide undesired imperfections.

So this falls back not to the AI itself but but rather on how people use (or create) it. Like how already happens with any polemic technologies like GMOs, gene editing and so on...

Quantum Qode Studios1 year ago(+1)

But there are some jobs which if replaced by ai can make millions of people lose there job like for example game development job. Like if there is an advanced version of chat GPT people can just ask it to make exactly the game they want like maybe a GTA v clone.

And again in the future not all people will be able to afford ai and advanced technology.

FearCode1 year ago

In your scenario, it's not AI who is firing those people, right? Is a human at the top owning the company that decided to do that. That's what I meant by changing the way we run our society.

And no, AI will not be able to create a game from the scratch any time soon, and when it will (maybe long after we die) game development will be completely different, people may not need to code in the way we code, people may just talk to the machine on how the want their game to be, an actual game developer could be someone that knows how to get most out of this AI? Or someone who understand better how a game mechanics work behind the curtains?

And btw, wouldn't it be awesome to create a GTA-V like game effortlessly? If you stop to contemplate you already create way more complex games a lot easier than what we did 30 years ago that required a team of pro to get super mario working.

Quantum Qode Studios1 year ago(+1)

Well in some years it might be possible for ai to make games by itself like now chat GPT can write simple programs and code for you.

It will be cool if ai can 'help' game developers and not replace them like the other advances in game development softwares.

Like it took 3 days to make the original flappy bird and now any experienced game developer can make it in 15 minutes.

mid1 year ago (1 edit)

To get a Flappy Bird clone, those developers just assemble different modules together; they made a lot less.

redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

Well, considering programming language, ai generated stuff ist just one or two steps higher. I bet almost none of the so called game devs could program a game in assembler. Or even something higher like C or even Java. If you look at renpy code for a vn game, that is mostly writing literally what should happen. gpt is something of a compiler then, just like c compiler generates machine code, gpt generates c code

Or combining modules like you said. The hard part of flappy bird is not programming the thing, given the right tools and even whole engines. It is coming up with the concept.

Those are some huge steps. Doing the same as we’ve done in the past makes no rational sense on its own. Secondly, even if AI is one or two steps higher, you still have to explain why that is a good thing. If you ask me, that most developers don’t know Assembly is a bad thing.

I wouldn’t compare GPT to RenPy at all. The latter is still programming, whereas the former is banging your head against a wall. I don’t want people to be dumbfucks. At some point, a line must be drawn.

redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

I did not mean to liken gpt to renpy. I tried to make concept clear that dev of some renpy games does not know programming, but uses advanced tool to make game development simple. The "evolution" of prorgamming langueges is to make pseudo code actual code.

This is not even ai related. With advanced engine and language to insctruct engine, you could make flappy birds in minutes. I thtough that was what you too meant with the modules.

mid1 year ago (2 edits)

Wouldn’t you like having to work 4 hours a day and produce as much as you would in 8hrs?

Convenience is basically profit as well and, like profit, convenience also brings harm.

FearCode1 year ago (1 edit) (+2)

Convenience maybe harmful only in a profit driven society

mid1 year ago (2 edits)

Convenience can be defined as putting in less for equal or more gain. That differs little to none from the definition of profit.

Furthermore I have seen little to no evidence that more automation generally leads to higher life satisfaction. If a machine does more, then your own actions are less consequential, hence you are lesser as a person.

Giving an aircraft listener as a single example doesn’t prove the general case. There, the person does basically the same overall work with the radar as they did before, so its less of an issue. This is the same reason why digital art isn’t as controversial as AI art.

So no, I don’t agree that it would be great if you could make a GTA V game effortlessly. If that were the case, then you’d be doing almost zero work, hence the game isn’t made by you. And even if it were, nobody would care because they can make their own GTA V game. In your scenario, every person would be a profit-driven entrepreneur.

FearCode1 year ago (1 edit) (+2)

" In your scenario, every person would be a profit-driven entrepreneur."

Again, that's only true in a profit driven society, I don't think you understood the main point of what I said in my original post.

First: from google: Profit = a financial gain, while Convenience = being able to proceed ... with little effort or difficulty. If one could lead to another as that is the discussion, but they are literally not the same.

So what is a profit driven society? If you live in US, then that's your society, a society in which you must profit or you will die (lose your job, go bankrupt, then you can't pay your bills, and eventually you go even homeless) then convenience will be used as a tool for profit, hence it will not bring anything beneficial and you are right as I said in the original post.

However if a society is not profit driven, i.e., profit is nice to have but not an essential part of it, meaning you don't need to profit to survive, then, it's the opposite, convenience will be a tool serving people to have a better life

mid1 year ago (1 edit)

I think I do understand your point, but if you had the convenience of making GTA V effortlessly, then you will have replaced hundreds of people’s jobs, and yourself put in 0 effort (by definition) in return for some gain. Hence that convenience would give you profit.

Somebody profits pretty much anywhere when convenience is involved, irregardless of the kind of society. This is why I equate the two – they’re identical in meaning but are applied in different areas of life. Any time you make use of a convenience, somebody suffers. Could be you, or somebody else. The question isn’t that, but whether that suffering worth it.

I think it’s useful to look deeper into the meaning of convenience. If you don’t then we’ll have to agree to disagree.

FearCode1 year ago (2 edits) (+2)

" if you had the convenience of making GTA V effortlessly, then you will have replaced hundreds of people’s jobs"

Type of jobs die and new are borns, the same professional can upgrade his skills to keep up with the changes, the problem here is people losing their means of income due to how fast these changes happen and the main point of it all: profit driven society.

If a programming language becomes obsolete, the programmer may learn a new language, like how it happened with 16 bit IBM ASM almost no body code that anymore to make games nowadays (differently then how it used to be 30 years ago). Making a complex game effortlessly is already happening for quite a while, if you use an existing game engine you are part of it, the engine itself replaces a lot of people that would be required for you to build a complete game, one like you would say, "it's bad to create a 3D game effortlessly" 30 years ago, and now we can create an FPS game yourself solo in less than a week in unreal.

"Somebody profits pretty much anywhere when convenience is involved"

Yes, I never said profit is bad or unavoidable, someone making profit for a good game is always a good thing. I said if profit is needed for survival, then that is bad.

"I have seen little to no evidence that more automation generally leads to higher life satisfaction"

Do you use a car? or the internet? supermarkets? Online shopping? Aren't these leading to better quality of life?

A car, aka AUTOmobile, like an automated carriage? or on-line dictionaries like wikipedia? Like an automated free dictionary? Even the food you buy at your groceries store is a product of automation.

mid1 year ago (3 edits) (+2)

Type of jobs die and new are borns, the same professional can upgrade his skills to keep up with the changes, the problem here is people losing their means of income due to how fast these changes happen and the main point of it all: profit driven society.

Those same professionals shouldn’t have to upgrade their skills to support the degeneracy of humankind. If millions of people wish to drive trucks, they have that right. Likewise with art.

Wait, “upgrade”? Lol.

Do you use a car? or the internet? supermarkets? Online shopping? Aren’t these leading to better quality of life?

Yes, and people have never felt like they had an emptier life. Only in a very naive, short-term view are these technologies improving quality of life. All technologies attempt to isolate us from eachother, the real world, and dumben us to the point we cannot live without them. That is nothing to glorify, and especially nothing to enforce upon all of us.

And for the record, all of your examples I in fact strive to use minimally. Furthermore, I haven’t used a smartphone since 2017.

It’s the typical technophile rhetoric to suggest that if technology A was replaced by technology B, then it justifies technology C in doing the same, without any regard for all intricacies involved. This fundamental assumption is ridiculous, and has no basis.

Technology is great when it lets us stay sharp and grow sharper, not revert into fetuses. As that technology grows more advanced, the less does that apply.

FearCode1 year ago (7 edits) (+1)

Technology is like knowledge, none of it is bad, the way you use may be the problem (like knowledge). Internet was created for war purposes, and now it's way for people around the world to learn, interact and know new cultures, so something that began with a "bad" purpose becomes good just because we use it differently now.

"Those same professionals shouldn’t have to upgrade their skills to support the degeneracy of humankind. If millions of people wish to drive trucks, they have that right. Likewise with art."

Two things here, professionally speaking if a doctor about to perform a surgery on you refused to upgrade his skills about using new technologies that make the operation a lot less aggressive with way higher chances of success rate to you would you still let him do the surgery on you?

Second, "If millions of people wish to drive trucks" of course, nobody is saying you can't drive trucks, you don't use a smartphone right? And you're happy, so we are all good, but professionally speaking that's not the case, as I said in the doctor situation, if there's a new technology that prevents accident a lot more than driving your own truck and it's way more friendly to the environment, then it's undoubtedly better than professionally hiring a truck driver, but if one still wants to drive his truck, that's up to him to decide.

You are confusing the technology with the use of it. Blaming the technology is the same thing as blaming the car for a drunk driving car accident. If we create a technology that allows us to do clean and sustainable energy, but people use it to make nukes that can destroy the whole planet, it's not the scientists nor the technology to blame, but the way that people that are using.

mid1 year ago (4 edits)

Technology being neutral doesn’t make it harmless. I don’t hate technology. I even said in my last post when technology should be used. But if it is used solely as a convenience, its users will inevitably devolve.

if there’s a new technology that prevents accident a lot more than driving your own truck and it’s way more friendly to the environment, then it’s undoubtedly better than professionally hiring a truck driver,

Disagreed, other than the environment part, which has nothing to do with this.

Of course I meant professionally. That’s what we’re talking about in the first place. Skill and labor should be rewarded, not stripped away. If a producer minimizes all labor and his own effort, that just shows me how little he cares about his product.

A driving accident means a skill deficit, which is solved by improving, not the reverse.

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