I´m a musician, since 1983, and I learned audio engineering + music publishing
I have been through cd-burning, filesharing, downloads and streaming.
Oh well that´s just life capitalism took all my chances to work in the field that I
wanted to work in.
It also made me kind of bitter / sarcastic
and that comes through when people talk about ethical consumers
Consumers are not ethical, we are all not ethical and this is "oh well that´s just life"
and i'm a college dropout watching the art industry fall apart. i'm not unsympathetic but i also know that small changes add up and there's still more to do it's just a matter of action. i'm no paragon of gung-ho go getter spirit and i can relate to feeling bitter but i'd rather make effort out of spite and try to encourage others to do the same than go "oh well guess i can't do that anymore"
at this point tapping out but i'll drop this
I found my offline way to live on art.
One part of it is teaching kids how to draw with pencil and paper.
It gives me piece of mind and also hope for the future 
Exactly.
The world is more intertwined than we'd like to admit. It's the same as 'boycotting' products from certain countries, not realizing that most of what we use come from raw materials from at least half a dozen areas. Any product, any company can have deplorable connections with a source material that's either sourced badly or made with inhuman labor practices; it's naive to think otherwise. People didn't stop buying phones even when the lithium in their batteries came from abusive mines, or when the factory workers that made them have frequent suicides. They didn't stop buying in-season clothes and shoes made by kids in some far-away sweatshop.
Web services, banking, apps… you're probably already using AI in one form or another, you just aren't aware of it yet. Partial code written and updated by AI. Some programmers would tell you that a beautifully written piece of code can be considered 'Art' as well. Sorry to break it to you, but if you have been using any social media or any of the majority of websites on the web powered by Microsoft Azure servers or AWS, you HAVE been using AI.
When push comes to shove, loud voices will always be drowned out by consumer choices. People are hypocrites. People won't just stop using social media just because they're using them in their code.
Older families members won't stop using facebook/ messenger/ instagram just because of Zuck's Llama AI model is being trained on their sites, nor people would stop complaining on twitter/ X just because of Elon's Grok model. Young people still uses Tiktok even with privacy concerns in their EULA. People and corporations would still use Windows and Mac computers, even if their design and code are now done with help from machine learning.
People talk the talk, but have shown time and time again they'll keep using and buying things that are convenient for them. Even when those companies are already saving money by hiring less people due to those models. History proves that.
I honestly hate all this AI nonsense. I'm hoping it's just a fad that ends up dying a slow and painful death. Everything about it is so lifeless and everything (people seem to be catching on to that so maybe there's hope that it may no longer be a thing)
History also proves that when people band together things can actually change for the better. All this cynical "it is what it is" rethoric is so damned tiresome.
Honestly can't remember when that happened though, especially when it comes to consumer products and services. And with companies being able to slash off expenses.
Like I said, even though there were condemnation at the start with sweat shops, terrible labor practices, shady material sources… people didn't stop buying tech and clothes made from them. All companies like Apple, Nike, Nestle, Amazon had similar controversies before. They didn't care then, they sure won't care now. And they've just been chugging along just fine, and most people still patronize their products.
Would you honestly stop using social media just because they're using AI in their code or having everything you post on them being scraped for training for their own models? Most wouldn't even consider dropping them.
They would still use their electronics made with batteries from lithium mined by minors, they would still wear their levi's, shein's & nike's made from sweatshops. People would cry out loud against amazon and their anti-union rules, but are still eagerly awaiting their next prime delivery package.
Therein lies the hypocrisy of the common man.
Would be glad to be proven wrong from my cynical views, but things actually reversing like that are either few and far between and often only temporary until the heat dies down.
Am old enough to remember when a lot of our consumer electronics were actually repairable, when software were one-time payments and not subscriptions, when buying something means actually owning the item and not some weird lease to use agreement.
But you don't see them going away anytime soon, do you? Neither do companies.
It only hurts people when it´s their own business which is in danger or affected,
otherwise people go with the flow and don´t care.
How much do you think people care and band together for musicians, studio musicians, producers, recording engineers,
small and big record labels and the people who work there, record shops etc.,
they all say "it is what it is"
Coming out of my cave a bit, I wanna drop my view about Gen AI because I wanna get this out. In the wake of what is going on with NaNoWriMo at the moment, I mostly lean on the negative side. Don't get me wrong, there are some uses for it but at the current state, unless there are regulations. It is going to be a constant issue.
Talking about in a writer's view, I know when I experimented with Gen AI stories ( never posted them) just to see how good the tech is. Each test story I put it through, it felt like it's not a story that I would write or feels mine. Unless you kept on generating different outcomes, it felt more time-consuming rather than if you just wrote yourself. Plus, it would not help you understand your characters and lore. To put it simple, you can't really call it your story if just press the button and generate it. It's not enough to generate the story. You have to understand it inside and out.
That's just in my opinion. The artist's side is probably the same view. You can make the "perfect" AI art, story, or music. But it will never feel like yours at all. It takes away the sense of process and accomplishment.
Using AI to write your stories or create your art is like putting a Joe Satriani CD in the player and saying that you’ve created music.
It did happen in history, people went on strikes when their business was affected
and you are just proving my point that people don´t care about it and you just said
"it is what it is" to me with your comment and showed me that you don´t care
no coz my issue is what feels like an acceptance and loss of fight. like okay it didn't work out but why not keep at it. to say it didn't work it's never gonna seems dumb or at the least counterproductive. i'd rather keep making art in whatever way i can till i die than just go "ah well this exists now so guess there's no point' coz even prior to ai there's still the whole "oh well there's always someone better than you" and even in those instances i still kept at it out of pure spite and determination to prove that i and the things i care about are worth a damn.
i'm not trying to talk down but i hate the defeatist mindset that keeps cycling around and cant wrap my head around the idea of quitting coz something went wrong. i'm literally already actively in a phase where i once again hate everything i'm making and am constantly questioning if i even wanna keep at it even tho i loathe the idea of being stuck in some other job i hate so even tho i struggle with things like visibility or getting any kind of finance from i art i refuse to just drop it because "other people or a computer can do it better"
maybe its coz so much of the media i consumed growing up insisted on never quitting till all options have genuinely been exhausted and that it aint over till your heart stops beating but i refuse to bend to the mindset of it is what it is coz yeah life sucks but what can i do but keep on pushing and if i can get that concept through at least a few thick skulls than maybe that makes the effort worth a damn
I´ll never give up until I die, I have been making music and drawing since 41 years,
first live concert in 1983 and that was also the year I started drawing.
I always fight my way through but I´m also a realist, there is no banding together
well i guess that just makes me the irritating optimist coz that mindset sounds draining and lonely but if its your path good luck
Writers and actors went on strike just this past year and instead of showing solidarity the public lost their shit because their TV shows got delayed.
At it bloodiest, the labour movement was only fought by the people most affected. Everyone else thought the protestors were being inappropriate.
The American state of Oklahoma passed a law that protects anyone who drives down a protestor blocking traffic.
Those are just a few examples. It'd be great if the public would show some sort of solidarity for their peers. Even the truth that labour's win is also their win does not sway them. The public simply can't be trusted to show good judgement, and that means their politicians are even more selfish, cruel and stupid.
It's sensible to see all fights for societal improvement as small scale and largely futile because history shows this to be the norm.
What is the optimistic message?
My optimistic message is that I have found my niche and that kids still love to draw with pencil
and paper and that I found a way to keep on making music. I achieved that through my hard
work and made the impossible possible. There was no banding toether involved
Pff it's like with the US elections. The average person would rather believe the news at face value than dig deeper and do research, or directly watch the full campaign speeches from both parties. Studying is too poopy!
Admittedly I don't care as much about Gen AI as the mass majority of artists, but it's because I'm using optimistic nihilism for survival. If I weren't bogged down by two jobs and 4 hours of sleep during the work week, housework, pet care, I probably would have time to care more, since my stuff can get stolen too. (Probably has, wouldn't be surprised.) Still, I do understand the fears and hatred everyone else has, especially artists whose livelihoods have been threatened thanks to AI.
youre talking to a black woman who lives in the southern us if you think i'm ignorant to reality by way of blind optimism then thats quite the assumption to make. i'm not ignorant to any of these realities or the consistent lynchings the recent murders or anything else going on. i'm actively following the animation guilds ongoing strike loosely kept track of what was going on with actors and have been painfully aware of the realities of my own personal struggles but the simple fact is despite it all i'd like to try and hold onto some kind of hope that maybe just maybe shit can get better but if i'm going to have to deal with people still talking down at me perhaps it'd be in my best interest to forgo speaking here in general permanently
