Don't shout at the cloud and make some feeble attempt at reigning in technology because you think your job is in danger
The San Francisco Ballet is catching heat for promoting its “Nutcracker” performances with AI-generated art. Ok, playing devil’s advocate. Bear with me here, it’ll all come around, I promise.
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
- Salvador Dali, painter
The uproar is centered around the “idea” that the SF Ballet somehow was taking money from an artist, because they chose to use art generated by Midjourney AI. Let’s think about that for a minute. Nearly everyone the SF Ballet employs is an artist. However, because they used AI and it generated art that someone really liked, they were supposed to somehow discard that “art” because Midjourney uses other “art” to train itself, and that, apparently, is stealing.
When I was in high school, I took every art class there was, and the vast majority of those classes, as a young and inspiring artist, were based on the work of famous artists who had preceded me in life (usually). I studied pointillism, pen and ink, watercolor, sculpting, the list just goes on and on. And of course, in doing so, I studied the famous artists in those genres; Picasso, Michelangelo, Pollock, Monet. This led me to see things I liked, use techniques most invented, but other famous artists also used or learn from others as well.
Art noun ˈärt 1: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation
We can go into a very deep conversation on whether or not what an AI does is considered art because the question will arise: can the AI gain a skill by experience, can it “study” and observe? However, the important thing here is that the AI is literally doing the same thing I did as an art student, it’s just far more advanced and can draw from everything on the internet in order to do what it does. Again, the posts and articles say this is “stealing”, yet when I was a student, and when nearly all those artists were students, this was simply called inspiration.
Technology isn’t always welcome, after all, the following jobs have all but disappeared or are on the verge of being replaced by technology: switchboard operators, cashiers, factory workers, warehouse workers, data-entry clerks. This is just a small example of technology replacing humans. Why should Midjourney, or any of the AI, be any different? Is an artist’s job needing to be “human” somehow more important than a factory worker’s job being human? Where were the artists when Walmart had cashier layoffs due to the advent of self-checkout machines? Did we see artists pick up a picket sign and stand in front of Boeing when they started replacing people with robots? No, we didn’t, because the thought was that “art” was human, and could never be replaced.
Yet here we are, in the matter of a couple months, numerous artists are clamoring about how “unfair” it is, how their work is being stolen to train the AI, how their jobs are being taken away by a computer.
Forgive me, but… join the club, artists. Welcome to technology.
I served in the USMC for 7 years as a pilot. I was reading an article the other day about successful unmanned flights. As a pilot, was I upset? No, I was saddened a bit because I can see where this is going. Aircraft will eventually be unmanned, and there will be drawbacks, such as a helicopter leaving when it’s programmed to. It won’t stay one more minute, hoping that Seal Team 6 comes out of the bush a little late like a human might. However, maybe I’m wrong and it may stay longer? After all, no human life is lost if it stays, no one is in danger. There are positives and negatives.
The technology industry is constantly trying to create or invent ways of automating things. It’s what we do. Everyone wants to automate a pentest. Why? Is it better? Right now, no, not even close, because pentesting is an art, believe it or not. In 10 years from now, yeah, you probably will be able to, and someone will make billions selling it, and companies will save loads of money by not having a large staff. But that tool, just like art, must have human input. Midjourney can’t do what it does without artists, or it will never evolve, until true sentient self-aware AI is born. I think were safe for the time being as I see that as some time off. Instead of trying to hold on to the past, perhaps artists would be better off taking a page out of the pentesters book. Use the tools to your advantage, create your art, and utilize the AI to enhance, or give different perspectives of it. Utilize everything you have to “win,” adapt, overcome, improvise. But don’t shout at the cloud and make some feeble attempt at reigning in technology because you think your job is in danger. You didn’t do it before when it wasn’t you…
Change my mind.
(This article proofread by Openai GPTchat)