Dishes and laundry aren’t the same as art. One is manual labor that just has to be done and has tangible utility. The other is creative work that has value to a large part because a human made it.
Tangible? How did you decide to draw that arbitary line? Is it tangible if you can touch it? How about writing code? Is the artisan’s output not tangible? Is creativity not found in other industries? Is the baker not creative?
Your argument against this is essentially the sophistication involved by devaluing those who do manual labour. You’re arguing for the path toward labour aristocracy/petite-bourgoisie to be unobstructed. This is a very reactionary take.
Noone is stopping anybody’s “want” to do art and writing. You just want to just tie that to the above.
Where’s the “inherent patriarchy” in the image?
Who does the unpaid labour here? Why is that normalised? Why use that as a juxtaposition here?
I decided to draw the “arbitrary” line at the clear implication of the person who wrote the text in the image that they want to do writing and art. If someone actually wants to do laundry and dishes, sure. But please, show me a noteworthy number of people who like doing those things as much as an artist likes to do art. People don’t usually do their dishes for the fun of it, but because it needs to be done to maintain hygiene and stuff. That’s the tangible utility I meant. Of course a baker can be creative, or even just like baking. If someone wants to bake bread, let them go nuts. But we still should socialise bread baking because we also need tons and tons of bread to feed people who do something else. We don’t need writing and art, not in the same fundamental way at least. We don’t need huge, industrial-scale quantities of art and writing. Sure we need an industrial scale of books in some circumstances, but the original writing can still be done by a human. Of course, if you want to read AI novels and watch AI movies, listening to AI music, nobody’s stopping you.
How is saying that art is not something that should be AI-generated arguing for a labor aristocracy?
The simple fact a woman is person complaining about having to do chores does not make for “inherent patriarchy”. I’m a guy. I do my own laundry and dishes. I’d rather I’d not have to do that and focus on something else. Is that inherent matriarchy now? And even if the patriarchy in this situation isn’t just a figment of your imagination, why is the woman saying that she would prefer not having to do the chores a bad thing?
All labour should be socialised. Laundry, dishes, writing, art - it doesn’t matter what.
If one wants to create art, let them have at it.
The argument made here that we should gatekeep skilled labour by fighting against mechanisation or automation is reactionary and regressive.
Attempting to draw an arbitary line for the artisan by distinguishing their creativity from other’s is not possible without alluding to idealism and mysticism. It is made more obvious when examples of creativity, including in other fields and industry where automation has happened, is recalled.
Division of labour through gender means women disproportionately end up doing unpaid labour including laundry and dishes. The emancipation will include the socialisation of these roles and thereby abolishment of gender. It is irrespective of your personal ability as a man to do the same work.
If this socialisation was helped by automation would you then be saying we should destroy the machines to help preserve the employment of those that do this work for a living? Of course not but you want to apply that standard to artisans by drawing arbitary lines by apparently appealing to the mysticism of creativity.
There’s a clearly a recognition of this inferred from the quote. However, that is then juxstaposed with the fact that the labour of artisans should not be socialised. So the writer wants to preserve gatekeeping of the ability to make art in order for some artisans can remain being paid for it.
This reeks of bourgoisie “feminism”. The emancipation here is for individual liberty at the expense of class consciousness. The individual wants socialisation of domesticated labour not for universal emancipation but so they could gatekeep who gets to do art. It is individualism for reactionary ideals. Patriarchy is a structural concern, it is not a synonym for misogyny.
It’s ok if your excuse is that you are uneducated about this. We are all learning.
The argument made here that we should gatekeep skilled labour by fighting against mechanisation or automation is reactionary and regressive.
The argument of gatekeeping art only works in a society where art is not taught to people. If we were taught how to express ourselves artistically, the need for AI art would not exist outside of mass production and cost cutting. There’s much more to art than just labor. A common argument I see artists use is that the process of creating art is in itself fulfilling. GenAI takes that away to spit out a done image that at the present moment is made from the unpaid labor of artists worldwide that never consented to their labor being used that way.
You are right that fighting against mechanisation and automation is reactionary and regressive, and that’s why we shouldn’t do that, but instead help artists organize to fight for their rights in this hellhole of a system that is throwing them under the bus.
It is art with its relationship to paid labour that is at stake here. People are free to make art irrespective of being paid.
We are in agreement that it is reactionary to hold back automation.
The argument that automation in fields were creativity is involved is acceptable except for artisanship is reactionary and often relies on metaphysical and idealistic concepts of where the artists’ creativity comes from. Creativity has a materialist root if one is to do away with unscientific notions.
Paid labour is undone by unemployment due to automation and so that only leaves the defense of proprietorship as a means of income, which again is reactionary and regressive. It is this bourgoisie ideal that is being defended and claimed authentic because it happens at a smaller scale.
If ones wants authorship without payment that again is a problem with capitalism and not the technology. The bourgoisie own the means of production - they claim rights on ownership de facto or de jure. However, that is not what is being argued against here; it is the technology itself.
(As you were hopefully alluding to AI art can save time and thereby increase productive capacity. For example a software engineer who wanted to make a game now has lower barrier to entry for say the production of glyphs, a revolutionary as lower threshold to make agitprop, a civil engineer with interior design etc etc. Furthermore a world where everyone can do art is already a world where there is less paid labour for art. We consider making the abstract concrete to take a more dialectical materialist approach.)
However, the argument that automation in fields were creativity is involved is acceptable except for artisanship is reactionary and often relies on metaphysical and idealistic concept of where the artists’ creativity comes from.
I see what you’re saying, but this is not something I have been seeing for a while. Rather, all I have been seeing are artists refusing to use genAI and usually the arguments that pops up are about theft, which I don’t think is a good argument to use.
The argument I use however is that artists resisting genAI in its current iteration are not wrong. This automation is taking away their jobs and fighting back against that is rational since they now see their lively-hood threatened. What they usually lack is the notion that fighting against the tech itself is not feasible, we can’t turn back the wheel of time and prevent it from being developed. Here in Brasil at least, there is UNIDAD, which is organizing artists and fighting for regulation of AI.
Also, a lot of big brands have already started using AI generated videos for advertising in here that not only most of the time look awful, but that also affect other jobs besides art, I see it all the time on youtube ads.
AI art can save time and thereby increase productive capacity. For example a software engineer who wanted to make a game now has lower barrier to entry for say the production of glyphs, a revolutionary as lower threshold to make agitprop, a plumber for his logo decal on his van etc etc.
That would be true right now if genAI was at the level of actually being able to do that decently, which it is not. At the present time you need to have someone editing the spitted image to correct the mistakes the genAI did, otherwise it looks bad, and this can take time. Of course that doesn’t mean people will do that, and there’s already a ton of AI generated slop on Steam for example.
Also, while I’m only talking about AI art here, there’s also issues with AI in general like the enshittification of the web with AI sites, news, etc, that I don’t even know how to address. I don’t remember the correct video to link here, but the communist Brazilian tech-channel TeClas has talked about some other issues too like how the race for AI has these big tech companies pushing out models in the wild to be the first in a “tech breakthrough” without being ready, properly tested and secure.
Rather, all I have been seeing are artists refusing to use genAI and usually the arguments that pops up are about theft, which I don’t think is a good argument to use.
That’s what the defense of proprietorship means.
This automation is taking away their jobs and fighting back against that is rational since they now see their lively-hood threatened. What they usually lack is the notion that fighting against the tech itself is not feasible…
This is ludditism. Why are so-called marxists acting like this? Why is the automation of every other industry acceptable but theirs is not? It is such a common phenomenon, as exemplified on this thread, one then needs to consider a deeper class phenomenon. They, like others, fear proletarianization. And the argument in defense against this devolves into essentially into two things: proprietorship and the metaphysical idealism of where creativity comes from.
There needs to be introspection to the inherent nietzschen elitism in all of this if one is doing the above while calling self a marxist. Read up and expand one’s horizon and burst the myopic liberal bubble.
…AI slop…
The quality of output of AI as a defense against the technology in the first place is a poor defense because all that means if it was to reach the level that is acceptable then that means one would be for the technology? Instead what is inferred by this is that it can never reach an acceptable quality because there is something inherently mystical about human creativity that the machine cannot create.
I have no problem against organising against capital. The solution to the problem of unemployment produced by automation is the equitable redistrubution of resources, the end of the rentier economy, and at the scale of genAI it will end up needing to be a dictatorship against capital. That is the point here.
(Socdem compromises such as regulation is nearly not enough. You need to own the means of production. We are marxists. We should know why reform over revolution does not work)
Paid employment could mean retraining under socialism. Remember communism is moneyless, stateless and classless. The aim of society is the socialisation of all labour to free up time to do more leisure including art. People will still want art from humans without AI but there’s a difference between that and the preservation of regression through ludditism to maintain less productive paid labour.
Equating anti-capitalism to anti-corporatism, the appeal to ludditism, the defense of proprietorship, or the appeal to metaphysical creativity is not going to cut it, and that is a low bar to clear for marxists.
I think you’re misunderstanding me, I’m not going against you here.
This is ludditism. Why are so-called marxists acting like this? Why is the automation of every other industry acceptable but theirs is not? It is such a common phenomenon, as exemplified on this thread, one then needs to consider a deeper class phenomenon. They, like others, fear proletarianization. And the argument in defense against this devolves into essentially into two things: proprietorship and the metaphysical idealism of where creativity comes from.
I’m not defending being a Luddite. I have expressed that when I said that fighting against the tech is not feasible. It’s like you said, it’s reactionary and regressive.
I was describing that it is normal for artists to feel that way because their jobs are being taken away. Fighting against AI generated art doesn’t necessarily mean wanting to destroy the tech, like I mentioned, fighting for regulation so that they can secure the bare minimum of rights to not get fucked is one way of doing it. And since by doing that they are also organizing the artists, I see it as the right way to approach this issue. I should also have mentioned that the movement I mentioned earlier, UNIDAD, talked with marxist channels on youtube for example.
I don’t believe this is going against anything you talked about.
The inherent nietzschen elitism in all of this pathetic if one is doing the above while calling self a marxist. Read up and expand one’s horizon and burst the myopic liberal bubble.
I don’t know if you meant this to insult me or not, but I did no such thing to you, so I’ll pretend I didn’t read it.
The quality of output of AI as a defense against the technology in the first place is a poor defense because all that means if it was to reach the level that is acceptable then that means one would be for the technology?
I was being descriptive. It is a fact that current genAI makes images that have issues that need to be corrected by hand. Again I’m not talking against the tech, I’m simply listing the issues it has.
Instead what is inferred by this is that it can never reach an acceptable quality because there is something inherently mystical about human creativity that the machine cannot create.
No, it means that on a technical level it is not on par yet. These models produce hallucinations and wrong outputs. Such things either end up needing to be touched up, which takes work and time to correct, or are used as is, which is currently bad, and as I said, slop.
I have no problem against organising against capital. The solution to the problem of unemployment produced by automation is the equitable redistrubution of resources, the end of the rentier economy, and at the scale of genAI it will end up needing to be a dictatorship against capital. That is the point here.
Yes, and to achieve that you need organization. Workers organizing is a good thing since it shows them that they can fight. It them becomes easier to shows them that the issue is capitalism and that only through organization it can be toppled.
Paid employment could mean retraining under socialism. Remember communism is moneyless, stateless and classless. The aim of society is the socialisation of all labour to free up time to do more leisure including art. People will still want art from humans without AI but there’s a difference between that and the preservation of regression through ludditism to maintain less productive paid labour.
I think before we discuss this we we should get our definitions clear? Someone workings as freelance logo designer is different from someone working as an employed illustrator, is different from a “free” artist painting in their atelier etc. A website or UX/UI is different from a picture you hang on your wall; a movie poster might be somewhere in between and is still pop culture unless it’s idk some indie movie?
Sometimes “art” or broadly being-creative becomes a commodity which can be sold, too (my wording here is not exact but you get my point). Art courses, cross-stitching, sewing, like, hobby stuff. Modding games can be seen as a new kind of prosumer culture indutry, externalizing costs while reaping the benefits of a more valuable product, indirectly by creating a fanbase/ecosystem or directly by claiming rights on UGC. It’s also used to find new talent.
“Art” is just an umbrella term for different kinds of work, and different kinds of products. There’s different distribution channels, different degrees of independence and a range of ways on how it interacts with the market.
Metaphysical nonsense.
There’s a certain spark in human craft I won’t deny, but I agree that a Marxist, or generally a more “cold”, view on “art” is usually the way to go. Ultimately humans instruct their LLMs and Diffusion models to create slop, and they will do it and have always done it without them.
There’s no need to have a “cold” perspective to be marxist. Nothing human should be alien. Capital has countless references to nature.
The importance here is not to mystify here to metaphysical nonsense. We should not resort to idealism of where human creativity comes from.
Art is clearly subjective and it is the relationship between the viewer and the art that defines it as art; whether it is exchanged for money or not.
However, what is effectively being requested here is to gatekeep who gets to make that art (only those skilled enough) and that art should be paid for; the defense of proprietorship. It is this that is reactionary while appealing to ludditism.
This reply is probably not directed at you but for anyone who is lurking.
Metaphysical nonsense.
Tangible? How did you decide to draw that arbitary line? Is it tangible if you can touch it? How about writing code? Is the artisan’s output not tangible? Is creativity not found in other industries? Is the baker not creative?
Your argument against this is essentially the sophistication involved by devaluing those who do manual labour. You’re arguing for the path toward labour aristocracy/petite-bourgoisie to be unobstructed. This is a very reactionary take.
Noone is stopping anybody’s “want” to do art and writing. You just want to just tie that to the above.
Who does the unpaid labour here? Why is that normalised? Why use that as a juxtaposition here?
No. I’m a marxist. What’s your excuse?
I decided to draw the “arbitrary” line at the clear implication of the person who wrote the text in the image that they want to do writing and art. If someone actually wants to do laundry and dishes, sure. But please, show me a noteworthy number of people who like doing those things as much as an artist likes to do art. People don’t usually do their dishes for the fun of it, but because it needs to be done to maintain hygiene and stuff. That’s the tangible utility I meant. Of course a baker can be creative, or even just like baking. If someone wants to bake bread, let them go nuts. But we still should socialise bread baking because we also need tons and tons of bread to feed people who do something else. We don’t need writing and art, not in the same fundamental way at least. We don’t need huge, industrial-scale quantities of art and writing. Sure we need an industrial scale of books in some circumstances, but the original writing can still be done by a human. Of course, if you want to read AI novels and watch AI movies, listening to AI music, nobody’s stopping you.
How is saying that art is not something that should be AI-generated arguing for a labor aristocracy?
The simple fact a woman is person complaining about having to do chores does not make for “inherent patriarchy”. I’m a guy. I do my own laundry and dishes. I’d rather I’d not have to do that and focus on something else. Is that inherent matriarchy now? And even if the patriarchy in this situation isn’t just a figment of your imagination, why is the woman saying that she would prefer not having to do the chores a bad thing?
I don’t know what I would need an excuse for.
All labour should be socialised. Laundry, dishes, writing, art - it doesn’t matter what.
If one wants to create art, let them have at it.
The argument made here that we should gatekeep skilled labour by fighting against mechanisation or automation is reactionary and regressive.
Attempting to draw an arbitary line for the artisan by distinguishing their creativity from other’s is not possible without alluding to idealism and mysticism. It is made more obvious when examples of creativity, including in other fields and industry where automation has happened, is recalled.
Division of labour through gender means women disproportionately end up doing unpaid labour including laundry and dishes. The emancipation will include the socialisation of these roles and thereby abolishment of gender. It is irrespective of your personal ability as a man to do the same work.
If this socialisation was helped by automation would you then be saying we should destroy the machines to help preserve the employment of those that do this work for a living? Of course not but you want to apply that standard to artisans by drawing arbitary lines by apparently appealing to the mysticism of creativity.
There’s a clearly a recognition of this inferred from the quote. However, that is then juxstaposed with the fact that the labour of artisans should not be socialised. So the writer wants to preserve gatekeeping of the ability to make art in order for some artisans can remain being paid for it.
This reeks of bourgoisie “feminism”. The emancipation here is for individual liberty at the expense of class consciousness. The individual wants socialisation of domesticated labour not for universal emancipation but so they could gatekeep who gets to do art. It is individualism for reactionary ideals. Patriarchy is a structural concern, it is not a synonym for misogyny.
It’s ok if your excuse is that you are uneducated about this. We are all learning.
The argument of gatekeeping art only works in a society where art is not taught to people. If we were taught how to express ourselves artistically, the need for AI art would not exist outside of mass production and cost cutting. There’s much more to art than just labor. A common argument I see artists use is that the process of creating art is in itself fulfilling. GenAI takes that away to spit out a done image that at the present moment is made from the unpaid labor of artists worldwide that never consented to their labor being used that way.
You are right that fighting against mechanisation and automation is reactionary and regressive, and that’s why we shouldn’t do that, but instead help artists organize to fight for their rights in this hellhole of a system that is throwing them under the bus.
It is art with its relationship to paid labour that is at stake here. People are free to make art irrespective of being paid.
We are in agreement that it is reactionary to hold back automation.
The argument that automation in fields were creativity is involved is acceptable except for artisanship is reactionary and often relies on metaphysical and idealistic concepts of where the artists’ creativity comes from. Creativity has a materialist root if one is to do away with unscientific notions.
Paid labour is undone by unemployment due to automation and so that only leaves the defense of proprietorship as a means of income, which again is reactionary and regressive. It is this bourgoisie ideal that is being defended and claimed authentic because it happens at a smaller scale.
If ones wants authorship without payment that again is a problem with capitalism and not the technology. The bourgoisie own the means of production - they claim rights on ownership de facto or de jure. However, that is not what is being argued against here; it is the technology itself.
(As you were hopefully alluding to AI art can save time and thereby increase productive capacity. For example a software engineer who wanted to make a game now has lower barrier to entry for say the production of glyphs, a revolutionary as lower threshold to make agitprop, a civil engineer with interior design etc etc. Furthermore a world where everyone can do art is already a world where there is less paid labour for art. We consider making the abstract concrete to take a more dialectical materialist approach.)
I see what you’re saying, but this is not something I have been seeing for a while. Rather, all I have been seeing are artists refusing to use genAI and usually the arguments that pops up are about theft, which I don’t think is a good argument to use.
The argument I use however is that artists resisting genAI in its current iteration are not wrong. This automation is taking away their jobs and fighting back against that is rational since they now see their lively-hood threatened. What they usually lack is the notion that fighting against the tech itself is not feasible, we can’t turn back the wheel of time and prevent it from being developed. Here in Brasil at least, there is UNIDAD, which is organizing artists and fighting for regulation of AI.
Also, a lot of big brands have already started using AI generated videos for advertising in here that not only most of the time look awful, but that also affect other jobs besides art, I see it all the time on youtube ads.
That would be true right now if genAI was at the level of actually being able to do that decently, which it is not. At the present time you need to have someone editing the spitted image to correct the mistakes the genAI did, otherwise it looks bad, and this can take time. Of course that doesn’t mean people will do that, and there’s already a ton of AI generated slop on Steam for example.
Also, while I’m only talking about AI art here, there’s also issues with AI in general like the enshittification of the web with AI sites, news, etc, that I don’t even know how to address. I don’t remember the correct video to link here, but the communist Brazilian tech-channel TeClas has talked about some other issues too like how the race for AI has these big tech companies pushing out models in the wild to be the first in a “tech breakthrough” without being ready, properly tested and secure.
That’s what the defense of proprietorship means.
This is ludditism. Why are so-called marxists acting like this? Why is the automation of every other industry acceptable but theirs is not? It is such a common phenomenon, as exemplified on this thread, one then needs to consider a deeper class phenomenon. They, like others, fear proletarianization. And the argument in defense against this devolves into essentially into two things: proprietorship and the metaphysical idealism of where creativity comes from.
There needs to be introspection to the inherent nietzschen elitism in all of this if one is doing the above while calling self a marxist. Read up and expand one’s horizon and burst the myopic liberal bubble.
The quality of output of AI as a defense against the technology in the first place is a poor defense because all that means if it was to reach the level that is acceptable then that means one would be for the technology? Instead what is inferred by this is that it can never reach an acceptable quality because there is something inherently mystical about human creativity that the machine cannot create.
I have no problem against organising against capital. The solution to the problem of unemployment produced by automation is the equitable redistrubution of resources, the end of the rentier economy, and at the scale of genAI it will end up needing to be a dictatorship against capital. That is the point here.
(Socdem compromises such as regulation is nearly not enough. You need to own the means of production. We are marxists. We should know why reform over revolution does not work)
Paid employment could mean retraining under socialism. Remember communism is moneyless, stateless and classless. The aim of society is the socialisation of all labour to free up time to do more leisure including art. People will still want art from humans without AI but there’s a difference between that and the preservation of regression through ludditism to maintain less productive paid labour.
Equating anti-capitalism to anti-corporatism, the appeal to ludditism, the defense of proprietorship, or the appeal to metaphysical creativity is not going to cut it, and that is a low bar to clear for marxists.
I think you’re misunderstanding me, I’m not going against you here.
I’m not defending being a Luddite. I have expressed that when I said that fighting against the tech is not feasible. It’s like you said, it’s reactionary and regressive.
I was describing that it is normal for artists to feel that way because their jobs are being taken away. Fighting against AI generated art doesn’t necessarily mean wanting to destroy the tech, like I mentioned, fighting for regulation so that they can secure the bare minimum of rights to not get fucked is one way of doing it. And since by doing that they are also organizing the artists, I see it as the right way to approach this issue. I should also have mentioned that the movement I mentioned earlier, UNIDAD, talked with marxist channels on youtube for example.
I don’t believe this is going against anything you talked about.
I don’t know if you meant this to insult me or not, but I did no such thing to you, so I’ll pretend I didn’t read it.I was being descriptive. It is a fact that current genAI makes images that have issues that need to be corrected by hand. Again I’m not talking against the tech, I’m simply listing the issues it has.
No, it means that on a technical level it is not on par yet. These models produce hallucinations and wrong outputs. Such things either end up needing to be touched up, which takes work and time to correct, or are used as is, which is currently bad, and as I said, slop.
Yes, and to achieve that you need organization. Workers organizing is a good thing since it shows them that they can fight. It them becomes easier to shows them that the issue is capitalism and that only through organization it can be toppled.
I agree completely.
No, it wasn’t directed at you. I reworded it before I saw your reply, if it helps. And I upvoted your reply :)
I think before we discuss this we we should get our definitions clear? Someone workings as freelance logo designer is different from someone working as an employed illustrator, is different from a “free” artist painting in their atelier etc. A website or UX/UI is different from a picture you hang on your wall; a movie poster might be somewhere in between and is still pop culture unless it’s idk some indie movie?
Sometimes “art” or broadly being-creative becomes a commodity which can be sold, too (my wording here is not exact but you get my point). Art courses, cross-stitching, sewing, like, hobby stuff. Modding games can be seen as a new kind of prosumer culture indutry, externalizing costs while reaping the benefits of a more valuable product, indirectly by creating a fanbase/ecosystem or directly by claiming rights on UGC. It’s also used to find new talent.
“Art” is just an umbrella term for different kinds of work, and different kinds of products. There’s different distribution channels, different degrees of independence and a range of ways on how it interacts with the market.
There’s a certain spark in human craft I won’t deny, but I agree that a Marxist, or generally a more “cold”, view on “art” is usually the way to go. Ultimately humans instruct their LLMs and Diffusion models to create slop, and they will do it and have always done it without them.
Art≠Art
There’s no need to have a “cold” perspective to be marxist. Nothing human should be alien. Capital has countless references to nature.
The importance here is not to mystify here to metaphysical nonsense. We should not resort to idealism of where human creativity comes from.
Art is clearly subjective and it is the relationship between the viewer and the art that defines it as art; whether it is exchanged for money or not.
However, what is effectively being requested here is to gatekeep who gets to make that art (only those skilled enough) and that art should be paid for; the defense of proprietorship. It is this that is reactionary while appealing to ludditism.
This reply is probably not directed at you but for anyone who is lurking.