THIS motivated the “current largest labor action in USA”? Not the countless other reasons but THIS?
US petty burgies at Sigliberalism are apparently mad their comission-fueled comfortable life are being endangered and are trying to twist Marx to defend it. Also they suddenly started to love IP and cry crocodile tears about poor artists being ripped.
Also lol the donwnvotes in this thread are something entirely else, guy just shared his (admittely non-40k style) pics and every positivity for him is being dogpiled.
I agree art needs more workers who are paid fairly and don’t need to be so competitive to get a decent wage. The gig economy is toxic and offers people less for their work than its true value. A lot of young artists will spend 6-8hrs on a work and charge $30 for it. That’s $5/hr! Far lower than minimum wage.
Due to this demand for cheap art, AI turns people who don’t do any labor into salesmen who “sample” the labor inputs of others so that they have a product to sell. In this case I side with the artists, and not the wannabe capitalists trying to use technology to wrench the means of production away from the productive forces.
This will be achieved under socialism only i’m afraid. Although most likely even then there will be no turning back, just as there is no tuning back from any form of automation to any form of pre-automation outside of subsidized niches.
You do need to put time and labour in the AI generation. Currently generating something decent require dozens of tries and most likely also post processing to remove artifacts. Unless you mean the thing that really gatekeep art from the workers: talent. But if we talk about this, then labour is not the issue. Because if we talk just about labour, then that argument is the same one that was on for centuries by now.
Hard agree
Talent doesn’t actually exist. Getting good at art just takes the motivation and resources to spend thousands of hours practicing. It’s labor like any other labor. The “talent” that people perceive in artists is just an inclination to pursue that particular form of labor, or the privilege of having the free time to learn it. What differentiates art from other kinds of labor is the manner in which capitalists value it. Most human beings are driven to produce some art or craft, many dream of it as a hobby or mythical career path. But only sellouts usually make it, and the highly competitive market artists exist in ensure only those who are willing to work with the bourgeoisie rise to the top, while those who want to pursue art for pleasure or escapism are barred from popularity. Plenty of artists who charge a pittance for their work can create things just as well as any “pro”, the difference is that they grew up proles and didn’t win the lottery. It’s the same game the bourgoisie pulls with sports players. Plenty of people around the world are absolutely jacked and spend all their free time thinking about sports. But the ones who make it sell their performance to the bourgeoisie.
Key word: currently. As they get more refined, they will learn what humans find proper and what we don’t, and those roles will be automated out too, or someone will design tools specifically for the purpose of automating them out.
Agree about the talent, this makes things even simpler and further puts the entire issue in materialist context.
Last paragraph: i think people panic because while the futurists been predicting total automation of society for many decades (even Marx predicted that it could possibly happen and that would be the moment when capitalism ironically abolish itself), the general opinion was always “we will still have jobs which are impossible to automate”. But suddenly basic part of this iron base is endangered.
Remind me for some reason of Frank Herbert’s Dune: a universe where the automation was reversed, and it not only plunged entire humanity into the depths of slavery, but they literally needed magical tech and even literal magic not to regress into barbarism.