LLMs and image generation models make it even more difficult for artists and thinkers, who are already in a precarious situation, to make a living from their work. This is not a recent development, as evidenced by the fact that they have been referred to indiscriminately as merely content producers for decades, which gives the loss of value of their important work a telling name even in today’s logic.
This professional group has not received adequate financial recognition for its work, - tbh they never did - but their situation has become way worse since the advent of the World Wide Web.
Still: Today’s technology in the form of so-called AI intensives this problem to an unprecedented degree.
So: Have we reached the end of culture and are we now entering an age of absolute dullness in which there can no longer be a critical spirit, but only amateurish work and industrially mass-produced corporate views? All that however far removed from the craftsmanship that has so significantly shaped the culture of all civilizations throughout the world’s history for so long?
Fascism supersedes AI in all aspects here, imo.
For example, fuck whatever AI is doing if your art is publicly funded, or you can live on UBI because humanity progressed towards truthful discoveries rather than the multi-billion dollar complex that keeps the rich & powerful where they are.
If AI would be in the hands of the people at large, this technology would in many ways not be causing so much trouble.
But as we are entering into increasingly more fascist territory in the west, that means little hope for effective controls. If anything the interest to use it to aid oppressing those that fascism intends to oppress fits more in line.
It means legal, financial and other freedoms are limited as people are to be sucked dry and controlled and not get any dangerous ideas. So not a whole lot of freedom around creating arts and/or creating thoughtful stuff. Wanna hang out with that interesting non-obeying person, hm Social Score? How’s the art scene and all those great writers in North Korea? Wanna philosophize about the creation of Israel, genocide and moral duty, publicly in Germany?
So that great craftsmanship you speak of, might require resources and ideas that will not be permitted in that combination in the future.