While I completely agree that care should be taken if we try to slow down AI capabilities, I think you might be overreacting in this particular case. In short: I think you’re making strawmen of the people you are calling “neo-luddites” (more on that term below). I’m going to heavily cite a video that made the rounds and so I think decently reflects the views of many in the visual artist community. (FWIW, I don’t agree with everything this artist says but I do think it’s representative). Some details you seem to have missed:
I haven’t heard of visual artists asking for the absolute ban of using copyrighted material in ML training data – they just think it should be opt-in and/or compensated.
Furthermore, I ask: is Dance Diffusion “less-aligned” than Stable Diffusion? Not clear to me how we should even evaluate that. But those data restrictions probably made Dance Diffusion more of a hassle to make (I agree with this comment in this respect).
Though I imagine writers could/might react similarly to visual artists regarding use of their artistic works, I haven’t heard any talk of bans on scraping the vast quantities of text data from the internet that aren’t artistic works. It’s a serious stretch to say the protections that are actually being called for would make text predictor models sound like “a person from over 95 years ago” or something like that.
More generally, as someone you would probably classify as a “neo-luddite,” I would like to make one comment on the value of “nearly free, personalized entertainment.” For reasons I don’t have time to get into, I disagree with you: I don’t think it is “truly massive.” However, I would hope we can agree that such questions of value should be submitted to the democratic process (in the absence of a better/more fair collective decision-making process): how and to what extent we develop transformative AI (whether agentic AGI or CAIS) involves a choice in what kind of lifestyles we think should be available to people, what kind of society we want to live in/think is best or happiest. That’s a political question if ever there was one. If it’s not clear to you how art generation AI might deprive some people of a lifestyle they want (e.g. being an artist) see here and here for some context. Look past the persuasive language (I recommend x1.25 or 1.5 playback) and I think you’ll find some arguments worth taking seriously.
Finally, see here about the term “luddite.” I agree with Zapata that the label can be frustrating and mischaracterizing given its connotation of “irrational and/or blanket technophobia.” Personally, I seek to reappropriate the label and embrace it so long as it is used in one of these senses, but I’m almost certainly more radical than the many you seem to be gesturing at as “neo-luddites.”
While I completely agree that care should be taken if we try to slow down AI capabilities, I think you might be overreacting in this particular case. In short: I think you’re making strawmen of the people you are calling “neo-luddites” (more on that term below). I’m going to heavily cite a video that made the rounds and so I think decently reflects the views of many in the visual artist community. (FWIW, I don’t agree with everything this artist says but I do think it’s representative). Some details you seem to have missed:
I haven’t heard of visual artists asking for the absolute ban of using copyrighted material in ML training data – they just think it should be opt-in and/or compensated.
Visual artists draw attention to the unfair double standard for visual vs audio data, that exists because the music industry has historically had tighter/more aggressive copyright law. They want the same treatment that composers/musicians get.
Furthermore, I ask: is Dance Diffusion “less-aligned” than Stable Diffusion? Not clear to me how we should even evaluate that. But those data restrictions probably made Dance Diffusion more of a hassle to make (I agree with this comment in this respect).
Though I imagine writers could/might react similarly to visual artists regarding use of their artistic works, I haven’t heard any talk of bans on scraping the vast quantities of text data from the internet that aren’t artistic works. It’s a serious stretch to say the protections that are actually being called for would make text predictor models sound like “a person from over 95 years ago” or something like that.
More generally, as someone you would probably classify as a “neo-luddite,” I would like to make one comment on the value of “nearly free, personalized entertainment.” For reasons I don’t have time to get into, I disagree with you: I don’t think it is “truly massive.” However, I would hope we can agree that such questions of value should be submitted to the democratic process (in the absence of a better/more fair collective decision-making process): how and to what extent we develop transformative AI (whether agentic AGI or CAIS) involves a choice in what kind of lifestyles we think should be available to people, what kind of society we want to live in/think is best or happiest. That’s a political question if ever there was one. If it’s not clear to you how art generation AI might deprive some people of a lifestyle they want (e.g. being an artist) see here and here for some context. Look past the persuasive language (I recommend x1.25 or 1.5 playback) and I think you’ll find some arguments worth taking seriously.
Finally, see here about the term “luddite.” I agree with Zapata that the label can be frustrating and mischaracterizing given its connotation of “irrational and/or blanket technophobia.” Personally, I seek to reappropriate the label and embrace it so long as it is used in one of these senses, but I’m almost certainly more radical than the many you seem to be gesturing at as “neo-luddites.”