I don’t get this. AI bros talk about how “in the near future” no one will “need” to be a writer, a filmmaker or a musician anymore, as you’ll be able to generate your own media with your own parameters and preferences on the fly. This, to me, feels like such an insane opinion. How can someone not value the ingenuity and creativity behind a work of art? Do these people not see or feel the human behind it all? And are these really opinions that you’ve encountered outside of the internet?
I honestly find it fascinating that you view artists as the “rich kid narcissists” in comparison to AI proponents as more of an everyman. My personal experience is those the most engaged in AI stuff are college educated, often in STEM fields, silicon valley with money types, whereas the generally the working artists I know come from middle income or poor backgrounds. I don’t say this trying to attack you, or invalidate your experience, I’m genuinely curious. Would you be willing to elaborate on why you view them this way?
My experience is simply the polar opposite of yours.
Most artists I’ve known are extremely upper class, at the very least they come from very privileged backgrounds, and usually had the safety net required to take gap years for unpaid apprenticeships or to start bands, have capital to invest and can afford to lose it, can live with parents and rely on them financially waiting for publishing deals or comissions money or adrev etc etc.
Come to think of it IRL I actually have never heard of a “working class” artist, other than in the strict Marxist sense in that they’re not an owner class.
Even if they work a low paying or shitty job part-time they almost always have very high QoL due to those privileged backgrounds. One guy who went into the arts I know has a day job that paid half mine out of the gate, but he had way more disposable cash because his parents paid his rent and bills.
Someone I know who’s in theatre just bailed out after school, took a gap year, did an unpaid apprenticeship and later got a day job as a theatre tech, now swimming in cash from being a manager and her published plays, she’s the second richest person I know.
I’m not saying that arts are just a passtime of the rich mind you, (though I do think the rabidly anti-ai types have a “fuck you got mine” streak) I think it’s survivorship bias ultimately, those who can be full-time or even decently part-time professional artists in some capacity are the ones who have privilege.
Meanwhile 99.9% of “Techbros” aka people in CompSci at uni were the hustler-grindset type working folks trying to escape poverty or otherwise move up the ladder, either real career chasers who are all about networking or grifters/scammers/shady characters you’d see betting on horses and hanging out in money laundering candy/barbershops.
They were in it for the money alone because they heard the money is good and that’s because they def needed the money.
Most people had at least 1 job just to afford rent, many had 2 (uni is pretty much free here in the UK).
The only rich people were drug dealers in blacked out BMWs and Chinese immigrants with Rolexes and extremely strong spice vapes and no knowledge of English.
The remaining 0.1% were genuinely gifted kids who pursued PhDs or less talented nerds (me) and they were all usually not super well off locals or they were immigrants from shithole countries of families who could afford to send their kids overseas and not much else, where they prolly didn’t need to work semester time but they couldn’t fuck around either (also me).
Idk about Silicon Valley, I’m not American nor have been, from what I’ve seen people who talk about the “bay area” on Mastodon are either insufferable cunts or some kind of weird internet people/hacking savants/furries though.
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