So, lately I have been seeing AI bros always using the “It democratizes coding/game dev/modding/drawing/music creation/video editing/insert a hobby that requires actual skills” argument. And it always just irritates me.
Like, democratizing a skill means giving everyone an equal opportunity, which is what free (specially FOSS) tools do, think Krita, Blender, Godot, etc… You get the tools that you need for said hobby free of charge thanks to the GOATed people that maintain them. And then you learn it.
But AI, it just works on the basis of who has more disposable income to feed the capitalist machine. Like where is the “democratization” when the person with more money gets the better experience. Isn’t that the era of paid software all over again? isn’t that literally the opposite?
Yeah, so that is the end of my rant, I just wanted to vent out to people who will understand that sort of thing (talking about a fine echo chamber ;) )
And I hope people point out that stupid argument when they see meatproxies using it :)
“It democratizes coding” in the same way an Easy Bake Oven democratizes cooking.
“It democratizes drawing” in the same way a plotter democratizes making lines.
“It democratizes music creation”… Uh, this one was already cooked a long time ago. AI changes almost nothing in this area.
People have been listening to (electronic) automated/generated music since the 1960s. Technically, every time we “listen to music” we’re hearing a machine-generated version (since the artists aren’t performing there in the room with us).
Also, pop music is so formulaic it didn’t surprise me in the slightest the first time I tried an (open source) AI music generation model on my PC (local GPU) and it made a catchy tune almost immediately. I was expecting total shit I could laugh at and share with my friends but it spat out perfectly respectable tracks about 10% of the time (and it only takes like 10 seconds to generate a song) 🤷