I’m talking about ALL AI. Narrowly defining them to just chatbots skews the scope of the discussion on the matter, IMHO.

I’m not talking about chatbots. AI can be tailored to suit the need. You wouldn’t expect a receptionist to do the job of the engineer anymore than you’d expect Excel spreadsheets to operate a CNC machine.

I used to be a whizz at Photoshop elements. I could make .gifs, I could do lense flares, gradients, clean up line work, color in layers, shift chromatics, all of it.

Now i can barely understand Gimp enough to mirror a copy paste command.

So there’s also an element of maintaining relevant skills.

AI can do any job. Doing the job with finesse and originality, not so much. But it will do it adequately, expediently, and repeatably. It will never get bored, (so long as that is not programmed into it) and does not require rest, food, or recuperation time. If a robot breaks, it can either be repaired and be back to work in hours or days or be replaced instantaneously with no troublesome moral entanglements regarding ending a person’s lively hood.

You can hate them all you want, but from a purely CBA perspective, it’s plain to see why there’s’ a move to it.

As CGP Grey put it in his fantastic video on the subject: Not everyone wants a triple press fair trade soy macchiato with oat milk foam; most just want a decent cup of coffee.

If everyone were angels we wouldn’t need money and the issue is that struggling artists have none to spread around. Collaboration is not the answer. Ending the oligarchic kleptocracy so we can afford to pay artists their worth is.

40 years ago this would be a Farside comic