alt Hacker NewsI initially wanted to downvote you but I can’t because you’re right.
I’d probably be called an anti-ai luddite on this site despite using it all the time for programming. I naturally gravitate to anti-ai viewpoints, but only because the breathless hype of the AI boosters is so nauseating. I have no moral qualms about AI (although I’d like nothing more than Anthropic/OAI/Google dismantled), but I really hate the idea that AI can replace artists, or humans as a whole. I think it’s anti-human to its core.
But AI is obviously useful and we could harness it for good. We shouldn’t give up on it entirely. And the people who are militantly against all usage are scarier than the boosters for sure.
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> I really hate the idea that AI can replace artists, or humans as a whole. I think it’s anti-human to its core.
AI can no more replace artists, than other artists can.
A sunset can be nice to look at yet be created without meaning. Any non-conscious process that produces images can produce beauty that has worth without intentionality. Any conscious process that produces artworks is just another artist.
Most artists would rather there be more artists in the world than fewer. If AI can't make art, it can't replace artists. If AI can make art (of the conscious intent form) then there are more artists.
> I really hate the idea that AI can replace artists, or humans as a whole. I think it’s anti-human to its core.
I've never understood this idea that art is some special, unique domain. We already replaced humans with cameras and yet I don't see a whole lot of "cameras sacrifice our humanity" discourse.
People still enjoy tons of hobbies where humans are clearly worse than machines - they ride horses, they do sewing, there's a whole industry of hand-crafted goods. I mean, goodness, the Olympics is a celebration human triumph, and yet cars make our sprinters look pathetic.
I understand you. As an AI research (actually, despite formally called professor of AI, I have historically always called myself more specifically NLP/IR/ML researcher rather than "AI" researcher, to avoid historic baggage).
I am intellectually curious whether "intelligence" and "consciousness" are simply layers that can be separated from the hardware they operate on or first emerged from, but I never had the urge or saw the point to practically replace human beings by machines.
Not everything that can be done should be done.
When I go to a supermarket, I always avoid self check-out. Why? First, I enjoy human interaction, even if machines may be more efficient (not yet the case). Second, I don't want the people working at the checkout to lose their jobs.
When we purchased a GPU cluster, I felt bad when I learned that the electricity bill was going to be north of 60 000 EUR every year (that number apparently assumes no jobs are running - so 100% idle time).