@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io right, and this is the correct take. See also, photographers when photoshop cam around. You gotta get with the new tools to stay competitive. For the moment, though, the problem is less with the workers than with the MBAs who are, as we speak, buying truckloads of hammers to dump on construction sites while laying off all the carpenters, expecting the house to build itself more or less good enough to sell and move on. The hype has consequences, and for a lot of people it’s going to get darker before it gets lighter. But as always, the problem is the owner, not the laborer.
@thomasfuchs I agree in one sense, but, I mean they kinda are, though, right? At least their jobs are being replaced with shitty AI. The work, the actual quality art, that can't ever be replaced, not by AI or scabs, etc. But the jobs can be, and are.
And under capitalism, where you have to work to survive, and the work is being stolen, that's the differentiator that's at top of mind for a lot of artists who have been "replaced" by shitty AI. That's the definition that matters to them.
@thomasfuchs It sounds like you're thinking of "the work" as a static thing. Like, "an article covering the most recent days of the war in Ukraine to our previous high standards". But when people are replaced with AI like this, "the work" ends up being very malleable, and frequently gets redefined as "500 words on the war in Ukraine, rephrase these sources PASTE PASTE PASTE".
So the job, journalist, is replaced because the work, journalism, is replaced.
@thomasfuchs And that might feel like semantics, but if you are a journalist who has lost their job because an intern with a ChatGPT subscription has been hired to fill the column inches you used to fill, I guarantee you, the PRACTICALITY of those semantics matter.
@thomasfuchs It is not that AI is replacing all writers or all programmers or all artists, but it will definitely replace marginal artists, programmers, and writers. Where that margin is is yet to be determined. When I started in aerospace an engineering organization was task oriented with eight engineers, a secretary, a draftsman, a tech aide, and a supervisor. There was one manager for eight such teams. When I left the business, a team was about 20 engineers with a supervisor or team leader. There was one admin at the next level. The change was all due to process automation with a paradigm shift thrown in for good measure. In the 1970s, when I first drove through metro Chicago on a regular basis, the Chrysler Blevidere plant ran 24/7 with a full parking lot. A few years back, when I went by, they were running one shift with a lot 1/3 full...and making more cars. That was due to automation. That is seen throughout US mfg. It is due to automation.
@thomasfuchs It’s just eats my motivation/my inspirations basically it’s visual litter (with arts) and for text: even I, a non native English speaker, is painful to read the generated text.
@thomasfuchs my company just laid off a fifth of the dev team because someone in management thinks MS CoPilot is going to make the rest of us so much more productive. Ugly rehash of the “do more with less” corporate delusion. I’d tell them they’re crazy, but I don’t really want to look for a new job right now 🫤