566
In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
So AI is invalidating capitalism because it's showing that people's value shouldn't be tied to what they can produce... And you're mad at that too? It's so weird to me to see people mad that AI is not allowing them to participate in capitalism when they themselves have a dislike for capitalism. Like... I understand the immediate problem is because of AI... but it's highlighting so beautifully the main problem of capitalism. Which is the real problem.
AI is like the climate change of the economy. We all knew automation was coming and would be the death knell for capitalism. But now that it's one or the other, people are choosing capitalism because it's what they know. Even people that are still outspoken anti-capitalist! What we should be fighting for is more open sourced models and AI projects.
To be fair, people are choosing capitalism because they have to make money, buy food, and pay rent.
Graphic designer, writer, commissioned artist, were jobs people could do entirely online. And a lot of highly online people did one or the other, or have friends who did one or the other, and they see AI as the existential threat to their livelihoods that it, in fact, is.
And I feel for them. I really do. If you bought food and paid rent by making art online - especially if you're neurodivergent or disabled or trapped in an abusive relationship and couldn't hold a normal job - AI tools have destroyed your career. And it sucks. There's no getting around that.
But the core of the problem is not AI. The core of the problem is the lack of a safety net. Some of the enormous profits from the AI boom should be funneled back into society to support the people who are put out of business by the AI boom. But they won't. Because capitalism.
I was all three and AI would have let me get the capital to escape one of those things. Too bad people were too busy frothing at the mouth over it when it would have helped me the most.