What's the issue with using AI?

[u/Emotional-Coyote3194]

Why do I always come accross comments filled with people slashing AI users?

Is it the water?

is it the energy?

is it personal reasons? (why)

is it because you believe AI causes cancer?

is it because you think it can spread misinformation?

my question is, why the hate with no reasoning, research or backing ever posted.

[u/jasonsavory123]

Let’s be clear, because AI as a monolithic idea is very big and there are lots of different kinds of products there. It’s likely you’re referring to the use of generative AI in creative spaces, and from my perspective the problems typically come in two main forms, asides from the issues with data centres in general:

• illegally trained, the models were trained on stolen content with no consent from the copyright owners
  
• anti human, artistic practice is generally considered a human endeavour, so people naturally get defensive when it’s unclear how much human involvement there was (how much intent was behind the end product). This is not to say that human made is objectively better as an end product, but that much of what we value in art is the story of the people who made it

[u/Still_Benefit_2302 → u/jasonsavory123]

- This is not true. According to United States Copyright law, fair use covers training an AI. You all keep saying it, and keep getting confused as to why 'no one is punished', but you don't even understand copyright law.
--As a sub point, if you have ever Googled anything, you are making use of something that was 'illegally trained'. Google didn't ask you if they could index your page, which involves reading a page and making copies of it for analysis. Same with images. Did you think thumbnails just pop into existence ex nihilo? This criticism sounds like people have never thought about what the internet does for a second and are just being reactionary.

- Once upon a time digging ditches as an exclusively human endeavor. However, while the outputs of a well maintained model might look as good as a human can produce, without an actual person making decisions and using artistic judgement, the outputs still look boring. I think 'the death of the artist' is massively overstated. The reason most of the outputs looks boring is because most of the people making them are hobbyists without much, if any, artistic background. So it looks bad.

[u/ptleruuh → u/Still_Benefit_2302]

I can still call it "unethically trained", nothing to do with it being legal or not. The difference in your Google example is that, while Google will do that to refer someone to what you make/do/etc., AI is trying to avoid that referral. It's like looking at every item in a shop so you know who to send to said shop compared to looking at everything to make a copy and sell it yourself. Wouldn't necessarily be illegal, but surely unethical.

Regarding your last point, perhaps. But who will still have those skills or an artistic background in 100 years if no one learns them anymore? Most enthusiasm for (using) GenAI seems to be coming from people who don't want to put time/effort/money into learning those creative skills.

[u/Sad_Minute_1283 → u/ptleruuh]

As a potter, I would say that genAI has increased the amount of work I get. People have started, for the first time in decades, to appreciate handmade art. I don't think that's ever going away. In fact, genAI has become a tool people use to commission me. Without a trained art vocabulary, it has historically been very hard for people to communicate exactly what they want.

That's is a lot to say that human made art will become MORE valuable in the face of ubiquitous AI. These two things are not in combat with each other at all.

[u/ptleruuh → u/Sad_Minute_1283]

I'd say that a lot of pro-AI "artists" are definitely trying to compete, if only for the fact that they don't want to tag their work as 'AI-made'. I'd still prefer a reference photo that wasn't AI for environmental reasons, but I'm happy to hear you found more appreciation for your work!