I'm not against efficiency improvements, but the value created by these improvements has to flow back towards the society at large in one way or another. I'm not anti-AI, I'm just arguing that artists and other creative professionals should be compensated for their work before their work is included in a for-profit ML model. That's hardly radical.
Current proposals don't have any intention of addressing that, they just silently kick the can down the road. What happens when nearly everything is automated there are no new profitable jobs that people can take on?
The comparison to scribes is a perfect analogy. The 'scribing' of translating the idea of painting to an actual painting is being made more efficient. The actual creativity is what the original idea is, not the skill to put it on paper.
The claim that the real value in art is in the idea rather than the execution seems to be as true as the claim that the real value in a startup is in the idea. Artists are constantly in dialogue with their tools to produce and define their idea, and to discover new ideas and capabilities along the way, in the same way the Intel head Andy Grove advised technologists to be involved in the engineering & production processes.
The value will flow to society via the cheap books (art). Value will also flow to authors (artists)[0] due to the facilitation of creation/distribution/replication. Where that value will come from is from the scribes (painters, sculptors, etc.)[1] whose contribution is rote.
[0]The intentional distinction here is that the value is in the conception of art, not in the execution of it in media.
[1]Imagine how much more productive Mozart or Beethoven could have been had an AI-powered orchestra existed in their time.
Current proposals don't have any intention of addressing that, they just silently kick the can down the road. What happens when nearly everything is automated there are no new profitable jobs that people can take on?