My Response to Open Source “Creative” Generative AI

I have a grayish dual position regarding generative art and, well, basically, generative creativity. One view is extremely cynical, and the other perspective is hopeful. I wrote earlier about this topic <a href="https://medium.com/the-thinkerers/strong-ai-for-what-purpose-53b619b16bda" rel="noopener">here</a> (note: a bit gloomy). Let me start with the cynical view, hyperbolized for ease of communication. <h1>Cynical Me</h1> <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*VJ8U4meQOxLlB_V0WDyjBQ.png" style="height:700px; width:700px" /> “The face of a very cynical man.” Created with DALL-E. This man is real and is probably complaining about me using his image. <h1>Lower Wages, Please</h1> I see this as a big tech effort to lower tech wages, reduce negotiation positions of creative workers, push the commoditization of art, create a new scaleable consumer market, and more holistically drive society towards transhumanism. Basically, <a href="https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Booking.com%2CAdyen%2CUber&track=Software+Engineer" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">heftily paid adolescents</a> are creating tools to make themselves redundant, which they can afford because they are (just barely) on the right side of history. People hardly realize that the people pushing this technology to ‘democratize’ a skill are themselves at low risk of suffering any negative consequences because they are paid in the order of 400K per year. That is, this push comes from billionaires and is executed by millionaires, a morbid dance of the haves that hypnotizes the have-nots. The flocking techies that follow think they will be the next millionaires when they are working on their own redundancy. It is a rat race to get off the ship (called human labor) before it sinks. <a href="https://betterprogramming.pub/response-to-open-source-creative-generative-ai-e83a5d66e335">Read More</a>