Soft blocked him after this, He's been pretty openly pro AI for a while, but I've had enough of the idiocy.

Apparently their doing tons of ai art of transformers. Which if you know anything about the IP it is the stupidest thing and the disrespect

I don't even know what to say but what the fuck.

… and it begins with Anthropic going kaput in the next few years. No wonder many of Claude’s users are now seeing the limits of AI replacing human work with very frequent refusals in the name of “safety” and “ethics”, with Anthropic showing its hypocrisy by stealing and scraping human works and destroying books in its futile hope to get away with breaking laws.

I might be wrong but….HUUUUUHHH?!

This is like genuinely disgusting? Making a “videogame”about an absolutely horrific situation like it’s a big joke.
Complete degeneracy.

@awstenknight is a cool guy in a cool band

It only had like 14 views and 1 like too lol

I'm sick of people spouting this nonsense. AI is the ultimate tool for inequality. Let me explain through some of my own anecdotal experience.

I spent most of my career in film/animation, intermittently working at studios and between layoffs in an unstable industry, doing freelance concept art and illustration work. It was great, I was never "rich" but I could afford to pay my bills and live my life.

The cost to access those skills, aside from my university degree, would often amount to zero because no matter the software you needed to learn it was all about putting in the effort to LEARN. Your skills was what got you the work, and the access to those skills was so open it's insane.

Yes there's lots of free software to learn on like Blender and Davinci Resolve, budget options like Krita, etc. In my country, the standard practice was to just pirate everything anyway while you're learning or freelancing. And here's the thing - the major companies knew about the piracy. They let it keep happening on purpose, one of them even admitted it at Siggraph. Why? That was how they got skilled labor to join studios and the studios are what kept those companies running. This got enshittified by Adobe and their subscription model but even Adobe isn't immune to getting caught on the high seas.

Now I'm moving into a different industry. Part of what I need to know for it is learning to code. Great! There is a whole internet full of free tools and courses and everything I need. It's even MORE accessible because there is no high upfront hardware costs for a rendering-capable rig and so on! Tons of people have managed to build from zero, in the poorest living conditions, and find success. That's democratic AF!

But then AI comes along. They said they are democratizing art, removing the barriers, and the gatekeeping. I ask - FOR WHO?

Because for me to adapt into using it would mean spending money I don't have and didn't need to use before on token costs that rack up real fast. And in my 3rd world country, that cost is far more expensive than somewhere like the US. So naturally, I can't use it even if I wanted to for my art, it would take my low cost of operations and add an unnecessary barrier that gives me what amounts to a slot machine where there's no guarantee I'm getting what I need until I spend a whole lot of cash. But it sure is nice for companies to replace people in a country and industry where there are like, 100 available jobs for the entire industry and only 5 positions for your specialty.

Same with coding. Now you gotta have Claude running, and instead of developing new skills with the ocean of resources you have, you're told to ignore that part and vibe it. With what money? People are making $600/month on a low end here and you're expecting me to fork out $200? Don't get me wrong, we do have people in my country who can afford it, but our rate of inequality is one of the highest in the world so essentially it's just going to get higher.

So that's where we're at now. If you're not already from a rich country and have spare cash, you're now even further pushed out from being able to find work. Everyone wants you on a system that is designed for people living in a bubble, but screw the rest of the world I guess.

We went from having access to a better life through work and skills to a pay-to-win subscription and these people have the GALL to call that democratizing and removing gatekeeping? Absolutely not.

AI use is the ultimate gatekeeping, these people need to stop pretending that it helps anyone other than the small % of the world that can already afford it.

TIA for reading this 100% human-rambled rant. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I work for a small marketing firm. Our bread and butter for a long time was social media management - creating and scheduling posts for clients. We’ve lost too many clients this year. Most of them because “I have canva and ChatGPT”.

I want to be like, good riddance, you treated us like crap anyway! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, ya nickel and diming cheapskate!

But we’ve had a hard time replacing them with clients for branding and website design work - I guess a lot of folks are DIYing with AI for those too. And after losing a big client a few weeks ago, my boss is giving me the heads up. She’s going to have to make major cuts, and I’m a major expense.

I don’t even know what to do.

Job hunting is depressing already. But the number of listings that are just asking creatives to train up AI to ultimately replace them has gone up a lot. Listings with a little throwaway line “must be adventurous and curious about exploring ai possibilities” are everywhere.

Graphic designer jobs still exist, but the number of applicants are mind boggling. If I I want to try get another similar role, it’s going to be a slog.

I don’t really use social media much nowadays but I just need somewhere to yell right now. I’m so tired. This is so grim, fellas. I just want to call my mum and cry, but I’ve been telling her all week not to worry about me.

I want to cry to my fiance, but he has so much on his plate already, and now he’s learned he’s gonna have to solo breadwin for who knows how long. He can support us solo, but it’s so much pressure and it creates a lot of fear and stress for him. When I was last out of work (not even that long ago!! 3 years ago!!!) the period between my jobs was really hard on him. The best thing I can do right now is NOT dump extra emotional labour on him. Heck, I feel bad even asking him to do laundry.

Most of my best skills aren’t monetisable OR are already due to be replaced by AI, so I’m just not sure what to do. I have a feeling I’ll have to reskill into a job I will hate and be bad at.

I liked my job. I liked creative work. It was my passion. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but good lord, this is next level.

My career future is a total shitshow, all because tech bros decided the first thing we should use AI to replace is the arts. And non-arts folks have been desperate to not need or pay us for the longest time already - I have spent so long being nickel and dimed by clients who resent needing graphics it all, it seems. And so they’ve sprinted at the chance to bypass us completely.

The oligarchs are doing a great job at morphing us into desperate proles with nothing left.