I've put a lot of thought into this. At the risk of dying on the stupidest hill imaginable, I hate calling LLMs "plagiarism machines" because from my own political perspective the entire notion of private property needs to be done away with. Including intellectual property and the royalties collected on it. I also hate the ethical arguments surrounding their tendency to put artists out of work, which I am seeing a lot of in this thread. I know not everyone here is explicitly Marxist. There's a lot of syndicalists, anarchists, etc. But in my understanding there is no ethical consumption OR production under capitalism. Working class people producing primary necessities like food have been put out of work by machines for nearly two centuries now. At the beginning of all this there was a luddite movement that destroyed machinery, but this destruction of machinery did not result in their re-employment, because a few scattered and frustrated actions against technology, not grounded in any political theory, cannot turn back the clock of the historical development of technology. If the luddites, who showed up at factories and actually burned and wrecked machines were not successful at stopping the tidal wave of technology, how much less successful will you be with scattered boycotts against indie steam games that use AI art here and there? The proliferation of means of production drives down the price of labor power, because it decreases the socially-necessary (average) labor time required to produce goods. Artists are just the latest victims of what machines have been doing for two centuries. Your disappointment and moral indignation will not stop the ruthlessness of capital in finding the cheapest sources of labor power possible in order to maximize profits and minimize turnaround time. Your aesthetic disgust with the face melt and extra fingers will not make most consumers care, because consumers of video games are by and large not a political block perfectly aligned with the interests of downwardly-mobile artists. Your meme desire to initiate some kind of "butlerian jihad" against the thinking machines will prove no more successful than the luddites in the textile mills 2 centuries ago. What AI really represents is the inherent instability of the capitalist system as a whole. It is a crisis of overproduction. They pump out commodities so quickly and so cheaply that their price falls to nothing, but they throw so many people into unemployment at the same time. I don't say this to be cruel to artists. I have been an artist. I've never made money from it. It's something I've only been able to cultivate in my free time. I understand the frustration. I just think the AI is not going back in the box and the political mobilization needs to be revolutionary mobilization against the mode of production as a whole and not desperate disorganized attacks at particular features of it, like particular technological advances.
I leave you with Marx (Capital: Volume 1)
About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used.
(if it's any consolation I also disagree with the take that LLMs "bring means of production to the workers" or whatever because workers don't actually own the LLMs.)
(I do however think it allows disabled people to do art)
Friendly disagreement. What allows disabled people to do art is bullying the snobs and bullies in art circles that drive disabled people out.
I don't see how the two things (tools for people to use and prevention of discrimination) are mutually exclusive
The plagiarism machine was a flippant way of spicing up the title on an-offhand post, not a coherent analysis,
Apologies. I had no way of knowing which of these things it was supposed to be and shouldn't have begun by assuming it was supposed to be a coherent analysis.
Of course I don't love property rights either and think they are a drag on society, the artist as a job thing is also meh - which correct criticism as part of a political platform would identify.
Got ya. Makes sense.
I have not developed a final assessment of art production, but LLM story telling is fundamentally not creative
I think it's a matter of outlining/brainstorming vs. actual creative work. Instead of telling it to write for you, you ask it to give you options and then you either come up with a better option, or choose an option and write it yourself. It can maximize the amount of time you do art and minimize the amount of time you spend working on bullet pointed outlines and other "office work" that you do before you do art. Also a tool is only as creative as its user. You can use these things creatively. You ask it questions like "what are some common frameworks to tackle problem X" and then you still research and choose and use the framework you want. It just lists concepts you may not have previously been familiar with. As for it using a lot of fossil fuel, that is more of an infrastructural problem. We aren't exclusively using renewable energy as a society, so everything we do with electricity uses fossil fuel.
(something it shares with capitalist forms of art production in tendency, but by eliminating the subject of the artist, moves to another qualitative level). The same goes for other artistic production. The possibility for new styles to emerge and for breaks in cultural communication will be further restricted, culture will become more stream-lined and dominated by bourgeois needs. It's not "luddite" or "anti-progress" to point that out. I remind you that a part of Gramsci's theory of Hegemony is identifiying the ruling block's position with "progress".
I don't think it eliminates the subject of the artist though. It's a tool that will get used by artists. People said the same thing about photoshop, 3D editors. etc.
The possibility for new styles to emerge and for breaks in cultural communication will be further restricted, culture will become more stream-lined and dominated by bourgeois needs
this is built into the mode of production itself, not the tools people use
It's not "luddite" or "anti-progress" to point that out.
The following is intended to be read in a neutral tone: I don't understand why quotes are around "anti-progress" since I did not use those words in my original post which you are responding to. I am unsure what part of my post you're responding to. I hope you don't think I was calling you a luddite. I wasn't calling you a luddite: Which I don't view as a pejorative in any case. I was pointing out that the luddites had a very good reason to be mad and their methods proved ineffective. They weren't against "progress" they were against losing their jobs. They lost their jobs because of capitalism, not machinery. I don't view technology as some kind of moral or ethical progress. I just think it's impossible to make everyone stop using a tool once it has been invented. It's "pandora's box". The only way technology stops getting used is if the means of producing it dry up.
Artists, and there are a lot of artists with left sympathies (do you think most people that do furry commissions make their main living out of that?), will not lead the revolution and we most likely will have your scenario happen to most extent unless AI collapses under a profitability crisis. Sure. But in the right now, the only way LLM will be able to "replace" the workers is when capitalists think they can browbeat writer studios with the threat of them to weaken labor struggles or by putting pretty off-putting pictures in there instead of shoving $500 at an art student. We don't live in the time where AI junk has finally killed the arts. We live in the now.
I wasn't speculating that AI junk killed the arts nor was I speculating what would lead to revolution.
In total, I find the response of "it's gonna happen anyway" to be defeatist and missing the point.
I'm not defeatist, I just think we should organize against the mode of production and not the means of production. I thought that was clear in my original post.
I've put a lot of thought into this. At the risk of dying on the stupidest hill imaginable, I hate calling LLMs "plagiarism machines" because from my own political perspective the entire notion of private property needs to be done away with. Including intellectual property and the royalties collected on it. I also hate the ethical arguments surrounding their tendency to put artists out of work, which I am seeing a lot of in this thread. I know not everyone here is explicitly Marxist. There's a lot of syndicalists, anarchists, etc. But in my understanding there is no ethical consumption OR production under capitalism. Working class people producing primary necessities like food have been put out of work by machines for nearly two centuries now. At the beginning of all this there was a luddite movement that destroyed machinery, but this destruction of machinery did not result in their re-employment, because a few scattered and frustrated actions against technology, not grounded in any political theory, cannot turn back the clock of the historical development of technology. If the luddites, who showed up at factories and actually burned and wrecked machines were not successful at stopping the tidal wave of technology, how much less successful will you be with scattered boycotts against indie steam games that use AI art here and there? The proliferation of means of production drives down the price of labor power, because it decreases the socially-necessary (average) labor time required to produce goods. Artists are just the latest victims of what machines have been doing for two centuries. Your disappointment and moral indignation will not stop the ruthlessness of capital in finding the cheapest sources of labor power possible in order to maximize profits and minimize turnaround time. Your aesthetic disgust with the face melt and extra fingers will not make most consumers care, because consumers of video games are by and large not a political block perfectly aligned with the interests of downwardly-mobile artists. Your meme desire to initiate some kind of "butlerian jihad" against the thinking machines will prove no more successful than the luddites in the textile mills 2 centuries ago. What AI really represents is the inherent instability of the capitalist system as a whole. It is a crisis of overproduction. They pump out commodities so quickly and so cheaply that their price falls to nothing, but they throw so many people into unemployment at the same time. I don't say this to be cruel to artists. I have been an artist. I've never made money from it. It's something I've only been able to cultivate in my free time. I understand the frustration. I just think the AI is not going back in the box and the political mobilization needs to be revolutionary mobilization against the mode of production as a whole and not desperate disorganized attacks at particular features of it, like particular technological advances.
I leave you with Marx (Capital: Volume 1)
(if it's any consolation I also disagree with the take that LLMs "bring means of production to the workers" or whatever because workers don't actually own the LLMs.)
(I do however think it allows disabled people to do art)
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ayy no worries
it's always for whoever's interested
get well soon!
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I don't see how the two things (tools for people to use and prevention of discrimination) are mutually exclusive
Apologies. I had no way of knowing which of these things it was supposed to be and shouldn't have begun by assuming it was supposed to be a coherent analysis.
Got ya. Makes sense.
I think it's a matter of outlining/brainstorming vs. actual creative work. Instead of telling it to write for you, you ask it to give you options and then you either come up with a better option, or choose an option and write it yourself. It can maximize the amount of time you do art and minimize the amount of time you spend working on bullet pointed outlines and other "office work" that you do before you do art. Also a tool is only as creative as its user. You can use these things creatively. You ask it questions like "what are some common frameworks to tackle problem X" and then you still research and choose and use the framework you want. It just lists concepts you may not have previously been familiar with. As for it using a lot of fossil fuel, that is more of an infrastructural problem. We aren't exclusively using renewable energy as a society, so everything we do with electricity uses fossil fuel.
I don't think it eliminates the subject of the artist though. It's a tool that will get used by artists. People said the same thing about photoshop, 3D editors. etc.
this is built into the mode of production itself, not the tools people use
The following is intended to be read in a neutral tone: I don't understand why quotes are around "anti-progress" since I did not use those words in my original post which you are responding to. I am unsure what part of my post you're responding to. I hope you don't think I was calling you a luddite. I wasn't calling you a luddite: Which I don't view as a pejorative in any case. I was pointing out that the luddites had a very good reason to be mad and their methods proved ineffective. They weren't against "progress" they were against losing their jobs. They lost their jobs because of capitalism, not machinery. I don't view technology as some kind of moral or ethical progress. I just think it's impossible to make everyone stop using a tool once it has been invented. It's "pandora's box". The only way technology stops getting used is if the means of producing it dry up.
I wasn't speculating that AI junk killed the arts nor was I speculating what would lead to revolution.
I'm not defeatist, I just think we should organize against the mode of production and not the means of production. I thought that was clear in my original post.
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