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Post by RAVENEYE on Feb 22, 2023 10:42:12 GMT -6
With as far as AI has come in the last two years, in five years they'll have AI's that can write whole books from a single prompt. If you AREN"T using it to help with your writing, then you're going to be left behind. I wrote a whole story with it. Almost 10,000 words. It was more like directing than writing. It isn't great, but it's cohesive, and I could make it better if I took the time. I likely won't, cause I have no follow through, but now that story is out of my head and on a Word Document. It never would have gotten there without it. Though, to be honest, I probably won't use it that extensively again. PROBABLY. The main reason I say that is because I actually like writing my thoughts down. I might use ChatGPT to help me plot a book, to write a blurb, or querry letter, or to even write stories here and there, but when I used it to write a story...it wasn't MY story. I mean, it was my plot. It was most certainly my plot. And a lot of what it wrote is very close to what I would have written. But it's not...it scratches a different itch. Does that make sense? It feels like directing, more than writing. I can see why publications will need to change in order to deal with the influx of new submissions. I can tell ChatGPT to write a 500 word piece and give it an outline of what I want and it'll be done in ten seconds. And that's just right now. In five years, it'll be worse. And I feel for them and I feel for authors (as I am one) who are now going to be competing with that... But...you know...scribes lost their jobs when Literacy became popular. My mom has had a book in her mind since she was a teenager, and never got it on the page because she couldn't get the first paragraph right. I had her put a prompt in to ChatGPT, and it wrote her first page. And she was delighted. Her thoughts, and they were her thoughts, were now written down, and she had a place to start. She's 62 years old, and finally has her first page written down. And I dare any of you to degrade her because she didn't write it herself. It was her prompt, it was her direction, it was her story. The program just helped get her idea on a page. Cause that's what it does. It doesn't just write crap. You have to tell it what scene you want. You have to explain the characters, the setting, the plot. It'll do it's own thing if you let it, but it's so much better when you keep creative control and it just does the hard part of writing. Some people struggle with perfectionism and will never get their story on a page because they can't get passed the crippling doubt. Well, now those poeople can take their idea, give it to ChatGPT, and say "Write the opening scene." And then their story is on a page. And that's great for them. And I might use it for those stories I have in my head that, let's face it, will never actually make it on a page. And I'm not going to feel guilty for that. It has been a long time since I've given up on the whole publishing thing. I write for me. I come up with ideas because it's who I am. I don't know if anyone will want to read what I write. But I do need to get these stories out of my head. I hate how so many of my babies will never be born. Or will be stillborn, because I have no followthrough. ChatGPT got me out of that funk for a bit. It helped. And I'm currently working on two things, editing an old manuscript I never finished but is the closest to being complete, and worldbuilding an entirely new story because I come up with a new idea every three weeks and I can't help but work on it. I figure if I do just a teeny bit on each every night, then maybe one day they'll be done, lol. Because of this, we're going to have implement a new contest rule. Even us, here at little ol' LF. Zero, absolutely zero, stories written by a machine. I have no problem with writers using an AI to help flesh out ideas, but to leave a machine to do the actual writing and calling it good? That's a bloody insult to those of us who have spent decades sitting at a screen learning how to string words together in way that produces a desired result. And then dumping a bunch of machine-written stuff into the few professional-paying markets we struggling artists NEED to make a buck, forcing those markets to shut down until they figure out how to keep the markets safe for purely human-written content??? Yeah, that pisses me off. And it's an insult to the editors for anyone to think they can't tell the difference between something written by a human and something put together by a machine. In actuality, the person is the programmer, the machine is the writer. An AI ghost writer. So, yeah, it's hard to call a person who didn't actually sit down and spend years writing the story a writer, so I'm daring. Not to degrade, but to be upset over the whole AI thing. As you yourself say, your mom didn't write. She programmed.
"It just does the hard part of writing..." Seriously? This. This right here. Yeah, being a writer is HARD fucking work. And this AI makes a mockery of the whole lifelong process the rest of us struggle through on a daily basis. The constant sacrifice of everything else for this singular goal of writing something meaningful that will outlast the author, the 100% literal sweat and tears, mental breakdowns, therapy, medication, regrets, damaged relationships, everything in the LIFE OF WRITING. So, hmm, let's plug in a few prompts and look, we can skip all the HARD FUCKING WORK part and call ourselves writers. No wonder publishers are shutting their doors to learn how to use software that detects content written by machines. Because these editors are writers too, and they get it. It's lovely that your mom gets to see her idea in written form, and even better if it gives her the opening she needs to write the rest herself. |
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Bird
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Post by Bird on Feb 22, 2023 13:30:58 GMT -6
I'm back to ruin all your fun! This post is a ChatGPT/chatbot rant only. Thank you Raveneye for your fantastic response, and for standing firm on no machine writing!!! I really appreciate that. ChatGPT and other chatbots (they aren't AI, let's be honest about that, they just remix their database of often ripped content from copyrighted sources, and there's no fact-checking on anything they output) are a problem. Outputs tend to pump out plagiarized material and outright lies that humans then have to painstakingly show is a lie (heck, even some of the "recommendations" the chatbots give are of non-existent books or articles that librarians and researchers like me have to then show don't actually exist). IT'S A MAJOR PROBLEM. The programming needed to try to install some sort of fact-checking is not at all present, and currently the direction of these chatbots seem to be away from ethical considerations of their impact. Tech companies aren't doing this to help us. They're doing this for a quick buck - it's a grift mostly.
A lot of magazines are closing submissions because they are being flooded with ChatGPT and chatbot generated stories. It's gotten bad. Even Clarkesworld has closed submissions, and they are one of the best science fiction magazines as well as one that always had their submission open to any writer. So here I am, someone who actually works hard and writes my own damn work, and I can't submit to a lot of the science fiction magazines that would fit my story because of ChatGPT. So I don't give a flying fuck if folks like the damn thing. I want ChatGPT and every little chatbot in existence to be erased from the Internet. It's just another techboy grift that's harming creators.
Chatbots don't need to exist. They are habitual liars and have no checks in their programming to verify anything they output. The fact they are being used to flood always-open-to-submission markets that pay well HURTS US. So yes, I'm all for burning down the chatbots.
I already spoke about AI art - that is a very different story and there may be a way to make that one ethical. But there is NO ethical way to make a chatbot useful. They are flooding the Internet with mindless drivel, plagiarism, misinformation, and harmful tsunamis on always-open-markets. Just get rid of them.
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Post by Caulder Melhaire on Feb 22, 2023 15:24:50 GMT -6
Yeah, these are very good explanations of where I find myself falling on this as well, TBH. Knee deep in personal edits, itching for a little extra cash to survive, and pretty friggin' hot under the collar that the market just slimmed remarkably. I can't afford to jump ship at my job right now, and had any of them taken my work, I could have really used all that cash from the magazines that are now slamming their doors.
Like ChatGPT as an accessibility feature? Absolutely. I'll never (intentionally) crap on something that enables folks to get over some pesky issue that can't just simply be pushed through. And I'm not degrading anyone who needs to use it like that. Have at it. AI your heart out. Virtually and/or vicariously are sometimes the only way that we can live out the dream of doing things we otherwise wouldn't or couldn't. That's one of the best things technology has given us. And honestly, I love the idea of using it to do a little worldbuilding, especially for games or DnD, or the kind of details that your brain gets stuck on even though they probably won't make it into the story in some grandiose way. Using it to generate a way around the roadblock, or pop out that opening chapter, and then molding that and everything that comes after into an amazing tale? Go off, wig.
But my God, letting a chatbot do all the hard work is so disrespectful to the names and faces in those magazines. I read through every magazine I submit to so I can get an idea of the caliber of folks I need to compete with. I want to know how far I still have to go in the craft to live up to those tales. I wanna feel out the echelons of the group I'm probably gonna get rejected from but it doesn't matter because EVERYTHING that I've written these last few years is an extension of the shit I've lived through, fought through, survived through. And the weight of an entire dictionary does not hold enough words to describe how insulting; what an absolute spit-slap in the face it is, to find out that these stories have to sit up on a dusty shelf for even more years now because a bunch of people want to cut corners entirely. Give the purely-AI authors their own corner of the market to get published and make money off of so the rest of us can grind out the craft. And if they wanna enter that market, then fine, but they better bust ass to edit all that generated material into something they can call uniquely theirs. Same as the rest of us do. They shouldn't get to just sidle into our side of things and supermarket sweep us because it's the way of the future, and convenient and easy.
If the market wants to leave me behind because I prefer to sculpt my work in the same fashion as the folks I long to call my peers, then throw my clay in the river and hand me a trade tool. Because why do I give a fuck about competing in a market where someone can mash a bunch of buttons and rake in the cash for directing a story that I've spent 13 years training myself to learn how to write. And again, this is not a critique of anyone who needs to use it, but personally? I can't do it. I've tried before, with crappier chatbots. Even just suggestions that people give me for plot points or general ideas that sound great at the time, and then my particular brand of perfectionism throws it all out because I didn't come up with it. It makes me feel like a damn fraud lol. "You need to come up with something equally great or you're gonna have to scrap the whole thing." Dumb attitude? Probably.
And to touch on Bird's points, yeah. I spent way too much time in my CS studies, writing paper after paper on why the CSSE field needs a strong lesson or two in ethics, because the tech bros around me were legitimately frightening. Beginning my CS career hasn't instilled much more confidence in their ability to recognize fallout and side effects from "a cool idea." And the collateral damage from crap like this is exactly why.
Again. This is solely hate for largely > completely AI generated story content. As a tool, don't mind it. As the whole damn product? Ridiculous.
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Post by Valhalla Erikson on Feb 22, 2023 15:39:03 GMT -6
I agree with Clauder that it can be a useful tool. I don't mind AI art as I couldn't draw worth a damn and AI art is the best way to get a better visualization of my characters. Also, I don't have the finances to have someone do a book cover and I don't trust Amazon in doing a book cover the way I want it.
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Post by Caulder Melhaire on Feb 22, 2023 15:43:26 GMT -6
Oh same. And as someone who also can't draw all that well, I'm totally going to use it to see what my characters look like! I already have so much about them fleshed out that I can punch it all in and finally visualize them without having to scour pinterest for sort of similar pics lol.
Well. And that one really crappy sketch I drew of my MC. I keep it around cause it's like "eh. Close enough" but I hate it. LOL
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Post by Valhalla Erikson on Feb 22, 2023 15:45:23 GMT -6
Oh same. And as someone who also can't draw all that well, I'm totally going to use it to see what my characters look like! I already have so much about them fleshed out that I can punch it all in and finally visualize them without having to scour pinterest for sort of similar pics lol. Well. And that one really crappy sketch I drew of my MC. I keep it around cause it's like "eh. Close enough" but I hate it. LOL That one hits me where I live because I've sooo been there  |
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Bird
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Post by Bird on Feb 22, 2023 15:49:53 GMT -6
Yeah, these are very good explanations of where I find myself falling on this as well, TBH. Knee deep in personal edits, itching for a little extra cash to survive, and pretty friggin' hot under the collar that the market just slimmed remarkably. I can't afford to jump ship at my job right now, and had any of them taken my work, I could have really used all that cash from the magazines that are now slamming their doors. Like ChatGPT as an accessibility feature? Absolutely. I'll never (intentionally) crap on something that enables folks to get over some pesky issue that can't just simply be pushed through. And I'm not degrading anyone who needs to use it like that. Have at it. AI your heart out. Virtually and/or vicariously are sometimes the only way that we can live out the dream of doing things we otherwise wouldn't or couldn't. That's one of the best things technology has given us. And honestly, I love the idea of using it to do a little worldbuilding, especially for games or DnD, or the kind of details that your brain gets stuck on even though they probably won't make it into the story in some grandiose way. Using it to generate a way around the roadblock, or pop out that opening chapter, and then molding that and everything that comes after into an amazing tale? Go off, wig. ChatGPT and other chatbots aren't accessible though. Please don't throw that term around without consideration of disabled folks' needs here. Let me explain (as I'm not angry, just a little frustrated).
The interface design is not particularly good with screenreaders nor does it have any options to up the font considerably for low-sight readers or adjust colors for high contrast. Some chatbots I tested include pictures with their responses, and NONE of the pictures had AltText. WTF. It's randomized responses could help with idea generation - sure, but as an accessibility feature? The developers aren't even bothering to improve its interface design and output for disabled folks.
So no, it's not an accessibility feature. It's a grift that's ill thought out in regards to impact and how it's designed. Until these developers get ethics shoved into them and they rewrite the whole dang thing in an actually ethical and accessible way, then the entire chatbot design is causing more harm than good. If you want idea generation, then limit the thing to shorter output responses so no one can dish out several thousand words of shit. So instead, you get a bullet list of generated ideas. That would make more sense as a tool for worldbuilders/writers.
I tried to use ChatGPT to see how it functions, and it was not fun to use. None of the chatbots were as they failed considerably on all accessibility tests I did. So accessibility is the wrong word here.
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Post by Valhalla Erikson on Feb 22, 2023 15:57:19 GMT -6
Yeah, these are very good explanations of where I find myself falling on this as well, TBH. Knee deep in personal edits, itching for a little extra cash to survive, and pretty friggin' hot under the collar that the market just slimmed remarkably. I can't afford to jump ship at my job right now, and had any of them taken my work, I could have really used all that cash from the magazines that are now slamming their doors. Like ChatGPT as an accessibility feature? Absolutely. I'll never (intentionally) crap on something that enables folks to get over some pesky issue that can't just simply be pushed through. And I'm not degrading anyone who needs to use it like that. Have at it. AI your heart out. Virtually and/or vicariously are sometimes the only way that we can live out the dream of doing things we otherwise wouldn't or couldn't. That's one of the best things technology has given us. And honestly, I love the idea of using it to do a little worldbuilding, especially for games or DnD, or the kind of details that your brain gets stuck on even though they probably won't make it into the story in some grandiose way. Using it to generate a way around the roadblock, or pop out that opening chapter, and then molding that and everything that comes after into an amazing tale? Go off, wig. ChatGPT and other chatbots aren't accessible though. Please don't throw that term around without consideration of disabled folks' needs here. Let me explain (as I'm not angry, just a little frustrated).
The interface design is not particularly good with screenreaders nor does it have any options to up the font considerably for low-sight readers or adjust colors for high contrast. Some chatbots I tested include pictures with their responses, and NONE of the pictures had AltText. WTF. It's randomized responses could help with idea generation - sure, but as an accessibility feature? The developers aren't even bothering to improve its interface design and output for disabled folks.
So no, it's not an accessibility feature. It's a grift that's ill thought out in regards to impact and how it's designed. Until these developers get ethics shoved into them and they rewrite the whole dang thing in an actually ethical and accessible way, then the entire chatbot design is causing more harm than good. If you want idea generation, then limit the thing to shorter output responses so no one can dish out several thousand words of shit. So instead, you get a bullet list of generated ideas. That would make more sense as a tool for worldbuilders/writers.
I tried to use ChatGPT to see how it functions, and it was not fun to use. None of the chatbots were as they failed considerably on all accessibility tests I did. So accessibility is the wrong word here.
Yeah don't believe the Youtube videos you'd see about ChatGPT. It's not the Wizard people are hyping it up to be. At its worst it acts like someone going through ADD. |
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Post by Caulder Melhaire on Feb 22, 2023 16:03:21 GMT -6
Ooops, yeah, wrong word there on my part. Hmm. I think I went there because (unethical as it may be) I was mistakenly thinking it makes it easier for folks to generate their way over the parts that keep them from making progress in the story or whatever they're writing. But for sure, there's gotta be a better word for that because yikes. That sounds like the least accessible thing to navigate. My bad!
Maybe just grift. LOL Call it what it ultimately does.
EDIT: actually, this makes for a good callback to my point about ethics. It's not that hard to include accessibility in your programs, folks. Gotta consider the full range of who might be using your program, and some of these AI's simply aren't taking that into account.
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Post by havekrillwhaletravel on Feb 22, 2023 19:29:12 GMT -6
I agree with Raveneye, Caulder and Bird here. I don't mind if hobbyists use AI for their art, but I don't think someone who wants to sell their writing is a "writer" if most of the heavy lifting is being done by an AI. Because if you take away the shiny lustre of ChatGPT, it's basically a ghostwriter. We don't lump people who use ghostwriters with writers. We don't put Prince Harry in the same box as Stephen King and Tolkein. I don't see how any of this changes simply because you're dictating to a software instead of a person.
On a personal level, I think of art like sports. We're not drawn to 100m sprints and marathons because Usain Bolt is the fastest thing on the planet. I know I can hop into a car and easily go faster than any Olympic runner. We're drawn to sports because we know that a human has put in the work, the discipline, the mental fortitude to go slightly beyond our human limitations. The human is the essential element.
I'm not really interested in AI art, no matter how good it gets. Like, I can see the Midjourney artwork in the Litterbug thread. They're pretty. There's a "Huh, that's cool" thing going on, because AI art is a new thing. But that's the extent of my interest and engagement with it. For me, a huge part of writing's appeal (or any other artform) is the fact that a human did it. A human experienced the same things I experienced. But by the messy process of sitting down, struggling over words and sentences, they've managed to articulate that common experience in a new, different way.
I don't know where this AI thing is heading. Maybe there'll just be a flat-out ban on AI writing. Or maybe art will adapt and grow, much like how the impressionists were partly spurred on by photography. Maybe we'll have new baselines for what makes great writing.
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Post by Valhalla Erikson on Feb 22, 2023 19:51:25 GMT -6
I agree with Raveneye, Caulder and Bird here. I don't mind if hobbyists use AI for their art, but I don't think someone who wants to sell their writing is a "writer" if most of the heavy lifting is being done by an AI. Because if you take away the shiny lustre of ChatGPT, it's basically a ghostwriter. We don't lump people who use ghostwriters with writers. We don't put Prince Harry in the same box as Stephen King and Tolkein. I don't see how any of this changes simply because you're dictating to a software instead of a person. On a personal level, I think of art like sports. We're not drawn to 100m sprints and marathons because Usain Bolt is the fastest thing on the planet. I know I can hop into a car and easily go faster than any Olympic runner. We're drawn to sports because we know that a human has put in the work, the discipline, the mental fortitude to go slightly beyond our human limitations. The human is the essential element. I'm not really interested in AI art, no matter how good it gets. Like, I can see the Midjourney artwork in the Litterbug thread. They're pretty. There's a "Huh, that's cool" thing going on, because AI art is a new thing. But that's the extent of my interest and engagement with it. For me, a huge part of writing's appeal (or any other artform) is the fact that a human did it. A human experienced the same things I experienced. But by the messy process of sitting down, struggling over words and sentences, they've managed to articulate that common experience in a new, different way. I don't know where this AI thing is heading. Maybe there'll just be a flat-out ban on AI writing. Or maybe art will adapt and grow, much like how the impressionists were partly spurred on by photography. Maybe we'll have new baselines for what makes great writing. On the other hand, in the event, ChatGPT improves enough that you need it to proofread the story that you've written, use it. One time I had it improve an old fan fic I did years ago and the end results were much better than I expected. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2023 21:00:20 GMT -6
With as far as AI has come in the last two years, in five years they'll have AI's that can write whole books from a single prompt. If you AREN"T using it to help with your writing, then you're going to be left behind. I wrote a whole story with it. Almost 10,000 words. It was more like directing than writing. It isn't great, but it's cohesive, and I could make it better if I took the time. I likely won't, cause I have no follow through, but now that story is out of my head and on a Word Document. It never would have gotten there without it. Though, to be honest, I probably won't use it that extensively again. PROBABLY. The main reason I say that is because I actually like writing my thoughts down. I might use ChatGPT to help me plot a book, to write a blurb, or querry letter, or to even write stories here and there, but when I used it to write a story...it wasn't MY story. I mean, it was my plot. It was most certainly my plot. And a lot of what it wrote is very close to what I would have written. But it's not...it scratches a different itch. Does that make sense? It feels like directing, more than writing. I can see why publications will need to change in order to deal with the influx of new submissions. I can tell ChatGPT to write a 500 word piece and give it an outline of what I want and it'll be done in ten seconds. And that's just right now. In five years, it'll be worse. And I feel for them and I feel for authors (as I am one) who are now going to be competing with that... But...you know...scribes lost their jobs when Literacy became popular. My mom has had a book in her mind since she was a teenager, and never got it on the page because she couldn't get the first paragraph right. I had her put a prompt in to ChatGPT, and it wrote her first page. And she was delighted. Her thoughts, and they were her thoughts, were now written down, and she had a place to start. She's 62 years old, and finally has her first page written down. And I dare any of you to degrade her because she didn't write it herself. It was her prompt, it was her direction, it was her story. The program just helped get her idea on a page. Cause that's what it does. It doesn't just write crap. You have to tell it what scene you want. You have to explain the characters, the setting, the plot. It'll do it's own thing if you let it, but it's so much better when you keep creative control and it just does the hard part of writing. Some people struggle with perfectionism and will never get their story on a page because they can't get passed the crippling doubt. Well, now those poeople can take their idea, give it to ChatGPT, and say "Write the opening scene." And then their story is on a page. And that's great for them. And I might use it for those stories I have in my head that, let's face it, will never actually make it on a page. And I'm not going to feel guilty for that. It has been a long time since I've given up on the whole publishing thing. I write for me. I come up with ideas because it's who I am. I don't know if anyone will want to read what I write. But I do need to get these stories out of my head. I hate how so many of my babies will never be born. Or will be stillborn, because I have no followthrough. ChatGPT got me out of that funk for a bit. It helped. And I'm currently working on two things, editing an old manuscript I never finished but is the closest to being complete, and worldbuilding an entirely new story because I come up with a new idea every three weeks and I can't help but work on it. I figure if I do just a teeny bit on each every night, then maybe one day they'll be done, lol. Because of this, we're going to have implement a new contest rule. Even us, here at little ol' LF. Zero, absolutely zero, stories written by a machine. I have no problem with writers using an AI to help flesh out ideas, but to leave a machine to do the actual writing and calling it good? That's a bloody insult to those of us who have spent decades sitting at a screen learning how to string words together in way that produces a desired result. And then dumping a bunch of machine-written stuff into the few professional-paying markets we struggling artists NEED to make a buck, forcing those markets to shut down until they figure out how to keep the markets safe for purely human-written content??? Yeah, that pisses me off. And it's an insult to the editors for anyone to think they can't tell the difference between something written by a human and something put together by a machine. In actuality, the person is the programmer, the machine is the writer. An AI ghost writer. So, yeah, it's hard to call a person who didn't actually sit down and spend years writing the story a writer, so I'm daring. Not to degrade, but to be upset over the whole AI thing. As you yourself say, your mom didn't write. She programmed.
"It just does the hard part of writing..." Seriously? This. This right here. Yeah, being a writer is HARD fucking work. And this AI makes a mockery of the whole lifelong process the rest of us struggle through on a daily basis. The constant sacrifice of everything else for this singular goal of writing something meaningful that will outlast the author, the 100% literal sweat and tears, mental breakdowns, therapy, medication, regrets, damaged relationships, everything in the LIFE OF WRITING. So, hmm, let's plug in a few prompts and look, we can skip all the HARD FUCKING WORK part and call ourselves writers. No wonder publishers are shutting their doors to learn how to use software that detects content written by machines. Because these editors are writers too, and they get it. It's lovely that your mom gets to see her idea in written form, and even better if it gives her the opening she needs to write the rest herself. So, I get that. I really do. It's frustrating to teach yourself how to do something for decades, only for technology to come along and make what you did obsolete. My dad had that problem. He was halfway through an Archetecture degree, and in one of the classes, where he was learning how to scetch archetectural designs on specialized graph paper, which was HARD, the teacher, back in the early 80's, said "By the way, all this stuff you're learning is going to be obsolete in a couple years cause computers can do it quicker and easier than you can sketch it on paper." And he was absolutely correct. Entire classes, entire degree fields, completely wasted. Scribes lost their jobs when literacy became widespread. They were important people, and now here all these peasants are writing their own words in their chicken scratch not giving the written word the respect it deserves. How dare they think they can just write to each other when they haven't spent literal YEARS learning how to write in such a way as to be legible for all people. And what about Midjourney? Everyone here has been saying "Oh, yeah, I can make my own book covers cause I don't have the money and I can see my characters". You just put a graphic designer out of a job. These people spent their whole lives studying graphic design, and this program can make something faster than they can. And it's in it's infancy. Give it a few years, and Graphic Design will be out the window. But you know what? Paint Artists considered Graphic Designers to be young upstarts who didn't put in their dues, too. They didn't spend years and yeasr learning brushstrokes. They just find a good picture on the computer and mix and match (I'm aware that much more goes into it than that). People respect conventional artists more than they do graphic designers...but there's a much, much larger market for graphic designers than conventional artists. It's more usable in more forms. I'm right there with you about studying the craft of writing for decades. I've literally been doing this for 20 years. I love writing. I love getting my thoughts down on a page. I like seeing the story take shape. I used to have follow through and I'm trying to develop it again cause it got lost somewhere along the way. And I totally see how some people would take advantage of this. Writing a good 1,000-5,000 word story is hard, and here come a bunch of people who just type a prompt into a chat box and poof, they have a short story! And it doesn't even need proofreading! That's going to be frustrating. It's going to make things harder for the artists who spent the time to learn the craft, especially as it gets better at doing it. I get the frustration. I do. I want to be published one day. I want my books to be in book stores, and I want it to be because I'm a good writer. But this is the how the world has always worked. People study something for their whole life, only for progress to make their studies obsolete in the market. At that point, you cease doing the art because it'll make you money, and you do it because you enjoy the art. Conventional artists, people who sculpt or paint or whatever, used to be able to make money. If you wanted some kind of art on your wall or designs made or whatever, you needed an artist. But they don't make a lot of money anymore. Or at least, most don't. The main way they make money is selling their works, and few people have the cash to make that lucrative. Graphic Designers took most of the market. And now there's Midjourney, who takes it from the graphic designers. Why pay a Graphic Designer when you can just do it yourself? There's an old story about railroads. In the 1800's Railroads were king. They spent all their money on building railroad systems. Making better engines. Designing stops. Etc. it was ALL the money. But what the railroad kings didn't understand was there is no market for Railroads. The market was for moving people and moving freight. And the moment there was a better, cheaper way to move people or freight, Railroads would go out of business. Planes and cars came along, and what happened? Railroads became a distant not an option for people for travel. The only reason they're still around is for freight. There is no market for a painter. There is a market for an image. The moment someone came up with a better, cheaper way to make an image the client wants, the painter is out of a job. First it was a Graphic Designer. And now it's Midjourney and other AI's like it. Lots of clients win, and lots of graphic designers lose. But what are we going to do? Purposefully ban progress so some people can keep a specific job? Retard the progression of everyone else because that guy likes doing graphic design and wants to keep making money off it instead of learning something else? I mean, we could. But you're literally making life hard on the average person just so a select few can keep feeling good about themselves and keep making money when they aren't needed anymore. Like Oil Companies trying to make sure everyone still uses oil instead of switching to electric. Artists will never go away. You'll always have sculptures and painters and authors. Being able to make money from your art has always been a luxury few artists EVER get. It's why websites like Patreon have gotten so big for artists. It bypasses the 'market' and goes straight to the source: people paying you just so you can make art. My dream is to be able to make a living writing fiction. But...it isn't likely to happen. It really hurts to type that, but it's very likely the truth. I'll keep working at it, but it just isn't likely to happen. I agree that a publication should be able to say "No AI Generated Content" and have that be respected, and it really, really sucks that people are going to try to abuse that. So I hear you. I get you. Your frustrations are valid and your feelings are real. But...saying "I had to work for it so you should too"...I don't know. Feels kinda gatekeepy to me. |
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Bird
Counselor
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Post by Bird on Feb 22, 2023 22:47:30 GMT -6
<deleted but she wrote awesome things here> But this is the how the world has always worked. People study something for their whole life, only for progress to make their studies obsolete in the market. At that point, you cease doing the art because it'll make you money, and you do it because you enjoy the art. Conventional artists, people who sculpt or paint or whatever, used to be able to make money. If you wanted some kind of art on your wall or designs made or whatever, you needed an artist. But they don't make a lot of money anymore. Or at least, most don't. The main way they make money is selling their works, and few people have the cash to make that lucrative. Graphic Designers took most of the market. And now there's Midjourney, who takes it from the graphic designers. Why pay a Graphic Designer when you can just do it yourself? There's an old story about railroads. In the 1800's Railroads were king. They spent all their money on building railroad systems. Making better engines. Designing stops. Etc. it was ALL the money. But what the railroad kings didn't understand was there is no market for Railroads. The market was for moving people and moving freight. And the moment there was a better, cheaper way to move people or freight, Railroads would go out of business. Planes and cars came along, and what happened? Railroads became a distant not an option for people for travel. The only reason they're still around is for freight. There is no market for a painter. There is a market for an image. The moment someone came up with a better, cheaper way to make an image the client wants, the painter is out of a job. First it was a Graphic Designer. And now it's Midjourney and other AI's like it. Lots of clients win, and lots of graphic designers lose. But what are we going to do? Purposefully ban progress so some people can keep a specific job? Retard the progression of everyone else because that guy likes doing graphic design and wants to keep making money off it instead of learning something else? I mean, we could. But you're literally making life hard on the average person just so a select few can keep feeling good about themselves and keep making money when they aren't needed anymore. Like Oil Companies trying to make sure everyone still uses oil instead of switching to electric.
What the hell, Tglassey. No that is not how the world has "always worked." For heavens sake, get your head out of your ass and read about actual history for once in your life. A great one to read that debunks your entire claims here with THOROUGH research of what is ACTUALLY KNOWN by anthropologists and researchers is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It's a great starter text with a wonderful bibliography that has even more stuff to read about the actual history of humanity.
Your entire argument hinges on this mythical concept of "march toward progress," as if every technology made makes prior things obsolete, which is a falsehood that doesn't match up with history (again read the book). And you seem to just be repeating yourself ad nauseam here (you rephrase things you said in your original comment here that doesn't address most of the concerns and rebuttals others including myself gave you).
March toward progress has never existed within human history. Throughout human history technology has been invented, sometimes used, sometimes abandoned. For example, agriculture was invented but it didn't stay invented -- some societies used it and then decided to not use it. It's right there in the evidence of history (again that book really hits on it). There's also oral history - that exists still today in a lot of places and even in our own families. Scribes were not made obsolete either with the printing press. They still exist today in some parts of the world depending on the region and the belief systems within that region.
Your claim about railroads has no basis in fact, Tglassey. If you bothered to look outside America, you would notice that the vast majority of the world has left America behind with trains that go up to speeds of 220 miles per hour. You can travel by train in Europe and visit nearly all the countries in the European Union in a DAY. Trains are the hallmark of travel there and in China and in India and in many African countries and in Japan. Cars and planes didn't make them obsolete as that's not how the world actually works. Trains, cars, and planes coexisted and worked well in synergy in nearly all parts of the world -- it's America that's behind the times on this.
It's the same with these chatbots/ChatGPT and AI Art generation engines -- they are the grifts of unethical tech dudes wanting to make a quick buck, and like all grifts, they are being revealed to be ethically flawed and harmful. Editors are shutting down submissions out of frustration and anger at how these ChatGPT/chatbots are flooding their submissions. So no, these things aren't part of your mythical march of progress, and as more and more people point out their flaws, their unethical design, and their problems, the more they'll start to fall by the wayside as companies realize investing them is harming them more than helping. Chatbots aren't some amazing new innovation - they're a rehashed poor version of a concept that was briefly explored late 90s/early 2000s then abandoned because of ethical concerns and the inability to code chatbots to have any sort of diagnostic on outputing actual facts instead of lies. Today developers still have no way to actually program the things to be factual.
As for the claims about AI Art, I already made it clear the problems I have with them, but I notice you tried to paint everyone on LF under the same brush as if we're one strawman for you to knock over. Fallacies aren't helping you. There is indeed a way to make an ethical art generator that would not harm artists, and with the furor of copyright lawsuits being issues to fight the AI art engines, it's likely to happen, but that won't make art obsolete either. (Which ironically you even admit, so you undermine your own argument here).
And no, it's not gatekeepy to ask people to do their own work. Gatekeeping is a term that references a subject or topic or field that is actively preventing a minority group from accessing it, and asking people to not have a machine write their stories is not the equivalent AT ALL. Those are apples and oranges being compared and its insulting to us minorities who struggle to gain headway in markets that are predominantly white cishet men or similar privileged groups.
Getting a chatbot to do the work for you is what would be called cheating if one was in school; it's a form of trying to avoid spending energy to do actual work and then trying to shove that through the system to get a hard-earned slot in a writing magazine or writing site as if that writing was your own (it's not your own actually, it's the machines at that point, and sharing it under your name could be rendered as plagiarism, which if you examine what those chatbots/ChatGPT push out, most of what they generate IS plagiarism.). That's harming those that struggle to access those markets and do the hard work of trying to write their own stories and submit them.
I suspect if you bother to answer me, it'll be to complain about my tone, which is tone policing, so I'll say it now: I'm angry and I have every right to be angry at your frustrating and irritating misrepresentations of what people I care about have said here and your blatant misinformation being peddled as "history." Please go read that book I mentioned as I think it'll help expand your horizons.
So have a good day, sir.
P.S. I wrote this response mostly for the sake of others reading this thread and not with any intention of arguing further. Any further attempts to try to argue with me by demanding "proof" or repeating ad nauseam things I already rebutted will be ignored. I stated my proof (it has an extensive bibliography too), and I have no further intention of continuing this. Thanks for reading.
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Post by havekrillwhaletravel on Feb 23, 2023 2:57:48 GMT -6
So, I get that. I really do. It's frustrating to teach yourself how to do something for decades, only for technology to come along and make what you did obsolete. My dad had that problem. He was halfway through an Archetecture degree, and in one of the classes, where he was learning how to scetch archetectural designs on specialized graph paper, which was HARD, the teacher, back in the early 80's, said "By the way, all this stuff you're learning is going to be obsolete in a couple years cause computers can do it quicker and easier than you can sketch it on paper." And he was absolutely correct. Entire classes, entire degree fields, completely wasted. Scribes lost their jobs when literacy became widespread. They were important people, and now here all these peasants are writing their own words in their chicken scratch not giving the written word the respect it deserves. How dare they think they can just write to each other when they haven't spent literal YEARS learning how to write in such a way as to be legible for all people. And what about Midjourney? Everyone here has been saying "Oh, yeah, I can make my own book covers cause I don't have the money and I can see my characters". You just put a graphic designer out of a job. These people spent their whole lives studying graphic design, and this program can make something faster than they can. And it's in it's infancy. Give it a few years, and Graphic Design will be out the window. But you know what? Paint Artists considered Graphic Designers to be young upstarts who didn't put in their dues, too. They didn't spend years and yeasr learning brushstrokes. They just find a good picture on the computer and mix and match (I'm aware that much more goes into it than that). People respect conventional artists more than they do graphic designers...but there's a much, much larger market for graphic designers than conventional artists. It's more usable in more forms. I'm right there with you about studying the craft of writing for decades. I've literally been doing this for 20 years. I love writing. I love getting my thoughts down on a page. I like seeing the story take shape. I used to have follow through and I'm trying to develop it again cause it got lost somewhere along the way. And I totally see how some people would take advantage of this. Writing a good 1,000-5,000 word story is hard, and here come a bunch of people who just type a prompt into a chat box and poof, they have a short story! And it doesn't even need proofreading! That's going to be frustrating. It's going to make things harder for the artists who spent the time to learn the craft, especially as it gets better at doing it. I get the frustration. I do. I want to be published one day. I want my books to be in book stores, and I want it to be because I'm a good writer. But this is the how the world has always worked. People study something for their whole life, only for progress to make their studies obsolete in the market. At that point, you cease doing the art because it'll make you money, and you do it because you enjoy the art. Conventional artists, people who sculpt or paint or whatever, used to be able to make money. If you wanted some kind of art on your wall or designs made or whatever, you needed an artist. But they don't make a lot of money anymore. Or at least, most don't. The main way they make money is selling their works, and few people have the cash to make that lucrative. Graphic Designers took most of the market. And now there's Midjourney, who takes it from the graphic designers. Why pay a Graphic Designer when you can just do it yourself? There's an old story about railroads. In the 1800's Railroads were king. They spent all their money on building railroad systems. Making better engines. Designing stops. Etc. it was ALL the money. But what the railroad kings didn't understand was there is no market for Railroads. The market was for moving people and moving freight. And the moment there was a better, cheaper way to move people or freight, Railroads would go out of business. Planes and cars came along, and what happened? Railroads became a distant not an option for people for travel. The only reason they're still around is for freight. There is no market for a painter. There is a market for an image. The moment someone came up with a better, cheaper way to make an image the client wants, the painter is out of a job. First it was a Graphic Designer. And now it's Midjourney and other AI's like it. Lots of clients win, and lots of graphic designers lose. But what are we going to do? Purposefully ban progress so some people can keep a specific job? Retard the progression of everyone else because that guy likes doing graphic design and wants to keep making money off it instead of learning something else? I mean, we could. But you're literally making life hard on the average person just so a select few can keep feeling good about themselves and keep making money when they aren't needed anymore. Like Oil Companies trying to make sure everyone still uses oil instead of switching to electric. Artists will never go away. You'll always have sculptures and painters and authors. Being able to make money from your art has always been a luxury few artists EVER get. It's why websites like Patreon have gotten so big for artists. It bypasses the 'market' and goes straight to the source: people paying you just so you can make art. My dream is to be able to make a living writing fiction. But...it isn't likely to happen. It really hurts to type that, but it's very likely the truth. I'll keep working at it, but it just isn't likely to happen. I agree that a publication should be able to say "No AI Generated Content" and have that be respected, and it really, really sucks that people are going to try to abuse that. So I hear you. I get you. Your frustrations are valid and your feelings are real. But...saying "I had to work for it so you should too"...I don't know. Feels kinda gatekeepy to me. This post is going into politics, but ...
Firstly, graphic design and Midjourney are not comparable. Graphic designers and digital artists spend thousands of dollars going to school. They're working with a computer, but they're still sitting there and working. My sister is a digital illustrator. She spent thousands of dollars for college. She spends days and days on projects. There is a skill and labour that goes into graphic design and digital art that just isn't there with AI. To try and equate the two just doesn't make sense.
I echo Bird's sentiments. This isn't progress. ChatGPT has limited utility ... for the consumer and employee. It's a nice tool for hobbyists. Maybe it has niche applications. And that's it. The only entities going to reap enormous benefits from this are companies. Why hire a copywriter when you can use a software? Or if you're a content creator like Netflix, why hire a scriptwriter when you can throw a few prompts at ChatGPT's way? It's just another way for these ginormous corporations to add more zeros to their shareholders' accounts.
The progress you're talking about has a cost. In the past two decades, we've seen automation and AI pushing people out of jobs. We've seen this with manufacturing and service jobs. Most of those jobs are not coming back (and asking people who've spent thousands of dollars in college, and/or years of their life building a career in their field to "learn something else" is a really flippant thing to say). This "progress" has led to stagnant wages and increasing wealth disparity.
Things are inevitable only if we let them be. This is going to get much, much worse unless we all do something about it. And using this inequitable tool to push people out of jobs and racing each other to the bottom isn't it.
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Post by Alatariel on Feb 23, 2023 14:19:13 GMT -6
Yea....reading through ALL of this and ultimately I agree with Bird, Raveneye, Caulder, and Valhalla when it comes to this complex topic because research and science backs them up. I understand what you're saying Tglassy and there are some parts I agree with you about...but the general concept of progress erasing certain aspects of our society is not really true.
This is very relatable.
I greatly agree with this.
My thoughts boil down to: ChatGPT is a tool, not a replacement and never will be a replacement for actual humans. People always seem to think technology is going to make people obsolete in some vector or another but that hasn't really happened, it just shifts/hones jobs. It doesn't erase, it uplifts.
Change and progress is inevitable. But the human variable and our needs (including the need to create art) will always be relevant. Even with technology. It'll just reshape and hone things to give us better tools.
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You add them to your profile as you do them around the forum.
