If you look at the history of work in the US though, there was only a short window of time that you had that extra time. Unless you were wealthy, your kids started to work at a very young age. Have you seen the pics of kids where they look like they could haggle with you and rob you? The teenage years are a relatively new concept.

Also, most of the boomer and older generations:

• Had no therapy
• Had no entertainment or education to let them know what's possible. It was by who you had contact with.
• If you were a POC, your life was most likely hell
• If you were gay, your life was most likely hell.
• If you were a woman, you life was most likely hell.

Yes, the goal is for everyone to get back to the lives of upper middle class, white men.

But wait, there's more:

Houses cost so much that people don't have space to do hobbies they used to. There's no garage or shed to set up as a maker space or studio or to setup drums or a weaving loom or painting canvases.

Intensive parenting is now the norm and the expectation. Kids can't play in front of the house like they used to. They can't go out and knock on friend's doors and go to the playground without a parent from every household going along. The only time children can be left is with a screen, and you're a villain if you do that.

Expectation from romantic partners also comes into the mix. After all the time and energy drain from the things above, there is nothing left in the tank. My wife would then not be a happy camper if I told her I'm going to be in the garage for an hour for my creative hobby.

Some disposable income is also required (variable amount depending on which hobby you take up).

When a single salary could comfortably support a whole family, people had more time

was there really time like that tho? just sounds like rose tinted glasses tbh. maybe because i'm not US based but people here were poor af back then and things got much better these days.

What the fuck is an "AI music career"? Like, they're writing prompts for AI songs and then hoping people will pay money for this songs?

I was in on Suno super early. I write my own lyrics and beats and music but couldn't record voice (poor), so I'd put it in there and it's shocking how well it works.

So I figured, let's defraud a bunch of people on Spotify and get money, and then I thought about it and was like, what kind of scumbag would do such a thing, and dropped the idea and stopped using suno.

Try getting through to them by generating a song calling them a loser.

Disgusting. I'd crawl out of my grave and strangle someone if they pulled this.

Truthfully you sound like you’re trying to bring someone down who is having a good time. I’m a pro artist from before AI and doing even better now that people can being their ideas to me in a way that looks better than scratches on napkin.

AI didn’t make it so you can’t make money off music and writing. That ship sailed long ago. You do that shit for the love of the game. A human doing it makes it worth more now not less.

That's why the zeitgeist needs more time to settle on the perception of LLMs. It's a cool toy, but people shouldn't be getting it in their head that it gives them a shortcut to becoming a professional.

I literally havent considered that. Probs should. It was really fun for me for a short while, but I never wanted to share my creations or pass it off as my own.

"Make a tank out of liqorice allsorts but have Big Bird hanging out the top using a stick of liquorice as a cigar" "hahahahaha thats really funny".

It got boring fast though.

I HATE LLMs

But it can be fun, a little part of the problem specifically for LLMs they are addicting. Image generation version less so unless it's for porn

But I mean these things are great for shit posts

It's still theft. Nobody gave permission for their work to be used as training data.

If people got a proper art education they would know drawing is more fun.

I think AI can be great for this. It can make so many thing accessible to people that could not otherwise. Your example here is good and there are some legitimately fun AI songs.

The key is being able to discriminate something you've done for fun and being a serious artist. The problem becomes when people conflate something they've done as a fun hobby as being worthy of sitting next to human created art.

I've used AI to code lots of things for personal use that I wouldn't have had the time to complete otherwise. The difference is, I use them personally and don't release them as a serious software product.

Sir and or madam, I would like to subscribe to Nuanced Opinions Regarding AI facts.

I think AI is interesting for studying emergent behavior from highly dynamic systems. I’ve looked — we humans don’t really have a formal scientific study of emergence. The subject is broke up

It's pretty great for learning.

It’s not fame they seek. It’s validation.

Anecdotally, having spoken to a few people who do this; they seemed to enjoy getting results without the effort of learning the skill. Like a cheat code in a videogame. Plus the experience of playing with a new toy.

Have you considered the end result is not the purpose? The doing of art is what gives it meaning, to the artist and the viewer. It's what makes it satisfying, even if it didn't turn out how you wanted exactly.

AI is so wildly popular because it's cheap, and through the lens of the consumer (read untrained eye), the best of it evokes emotions they get from a piece that would go for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I just went to an art museum that had a bunch of Van Gogh's sunflower pieces on display, and I can assure you, AI art will never be able to invoke the kind of emotional response as I got from looking at those paintings. I'm not an artist, I haven't taken an art class since high school, so my eye is pretty damn untrained. But even I can appreciate the history of the pieces, the artist behind the work, the headspace he was in and how it affected the finished piece, the extreme conditions he had to overcome just to finish some of the pieces. That's a huge part of what evokes emotion in an art piece - knowing the story of the art and the artist. And that's something AI art will never have.

AI art is cheap, sure, but it's hollow, and people will always be able to tell that.

Stolen valor

Arts in state schools isn't about mastering a particular medium, it's about introducing learners to the different forms art can take and giving access to specialised equipment that's too expensive for them to buy without committing to the art form. Sketching and lyrics writing are fine for some, but others won't learn they want to learn more about photography, or sculpture, or pottery, or an instrument, or any number of other things if they don't actually get the opportunity to try it. If more people understood art, AI artists wouldn't get that adoration in the first place.

Not sure why you got a downvote (at time of writing this). It’s absolutely the truth that using AI is laziness, not an accessibility tool. It’s unfortunate though. I find its use morally reprehensible and yet can’t help but be charmed by some of the batshit garbage it spits out. It’s definitely a 7-fingered sword.

I don't think that stage ever stops for anyone

I keep wanting to get more into music, but can never find the time/motivation to practice my scales.

I also tend to pick an instrument and abandon it every few years. I have nieces and nephews who occasionally get a second hand instrument.

But you know how to play dodgeball. Do you know what composition is?

If not, or even the fact that question is tricky for people, is to illustrate my point. People want to be able to draw, and we aren't being taught how.

They’re hacks. They don’t want to consume more art. They want to pretend to be skilled artists. They are trying deity validate themselves through pretending to have a skill.

If you had the education, you'd know how to do all the things you say you want to do.

Is ai the only tool which makes a form of artwork “not count” for you or anything else?

Accidental downvoting (esp on mobile) is pretty easy, plus some users downvote posts that are in competition for visibility with their own posts (loser behavior, but it happens).

4 downvotes on a post with 163 upvotes is basically just noise.

C'est la vie

Or better, check out a book from the library because ai will give you the art equivalent advice if putting glue on pizza

Sure... If the AI could consistently give accurate, relevant answers and not conflate everything it has been trained on together resulting in incorrect or even entirely made up garbage.

I think this is it. I don't think people are making music for the love of the art and all that. I think they're taking a shortcut to potentially produce some sort of side hustle. It's presumably a "make a song that sounds like a mix between artist X and artist Y," and then a fine tuning via prompts from there. We live in a generation of hustles and influencers, and AI is great for both of those things. Those things are, unfortunately, just terrible for society on the whole.

It's cool though, it'll all come to a head, and we'll see what happens!

I didn't think this is true at all. People love making stuff and there's a lot of younger people who are into things like crochet.

I've got two kids in their teens. They learn and work harder than I did at that age.

Then suck at it. Make bad art. Art isn't a competition. So, who cares if it is bad?

You can get better at it, and if you want some good tutorial books I have recommendations!

I don't think that it fills a creativity gap. It circumvents it. It's a parasite. It gets in the way of you actually being creative and gives you a cheap dopamine hit instead of anything of substance. People learning how to do the things they want to do is what actually bridges that gap.

No amount of AI in the creation of music is good. Learn how to not use it.

Ya, I enjoy playing guitar and making little finger picking riffs. I also enjoyed using music gen to mix different styles together and writing lyrics for them (eventually, it gets a bit old though).

I never even considered uploading those songs and sharing them, nor starting to churn out slop to make 5 bucks on Spotify. It's legit asshole behavior imo. Spotify itself makes it hard enough to make money when you are a proper musician, I'm guessing it's even harder now.

Ai isn't their hobby

This... this is the reasonable course that's shunned by our divisive culture nowadays. I personally don't have the time or the space, but I do have a computer, so I use what tools I have. Local models ftw

That's actually a really illuminating analogy.

I can't say I understand what people get out of playing with LLMs, but if they view writing code or drawing pictures like I view using a calculator then that explains a lot of the disconnect between the two camps.

If that were true, there would be people saying they are engineers for doing this.

There aren't.

But there's people saying they're artists and musicians for making slop....

Here's how to draw in two point perspective kids!

Sit fuming in the back fucking capitalist pigs trying to shove America down my throat fuck you Mrs. Dotterson I'm too woke to learn how to draw

I mean... yeah and so? Public schools exist specifically to create a baseline of knowledge and experience in the population. It's part of a social contract that says, "by the time they reach adulthood, a person should be able to read, write, do math, and not want to burn everything down or kill people."

Those values are shared by most of the world. It's not surprising that schools reinforce those things, because that's very specifically what they were created for. The alternative would be what? Not have schools?