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I very likely wrote some of the posts on /ic/ you’re referring to.
My mental model of the developers/proponents of AI art (and AI in general) is that they believe that they’re genuinely making the world a better place, at least by the measure of their own terminal values. I just happen to sharply disagree with them.
Obviously, posts written on 4chan to blow off steam and commiserate with people in your own camp do not always reflect the nuance and complexity of one’s actual views.
EDIT: Well, since I just brought up the subject of having nuanced views, I should acknowledge that I don’t think the motives of AI developers are entirely pure-hearted in all cases. If you read the /sdg/ and /hdg/ threads, hardly a thread goes by without someone saying “fuck artists” or “it’s over for artcels”. There’s clearly some amount of resentment there for people who possessed a skill that they wanted, but were not able to obtain for whatever reason. As for a broader UN/WEF conspiracy to reduce the global population by replacing workers with automation - obviously I don’t have any concrete evidence of an intentional conspiracy, but I do fear that a future like that is possible, even if no one is consciously intending to bring it about.
I am one to make passing comments of this sort. I am also a "techbro" (their words not mine).
Not because I resent the fact I lack artistic ability or whatever, but because you can only read so many comments calling you a nerd, a virgin, telling you to leave your basement, saying you have no creativity, saying you are responsible for making society worse in every aesthetic way possible, etc. And being portrayed as all those things in movies and other media before you kind of go like,"well fuck them".
The fact that programmers practically automated away artists is the most "schadenfreude" inducing thing to happen in a long time. It's borderline cartoonish. Programmers get mad at artists shitting on them, so they just automate their jobs away.
Ultimately its immature/juvenile culture warring, a lot of people are getting their kicks in while the enemy is down.
So you’re acknowledging that you like this technology because you see it as a way to inflict harm on people you perceive to have wronged you. I say “perceive” because, as far as I can tell as a card-carrying nerd myself, picking on “nerds” hasn’t been a thing in the US for at least a decade, if not more. Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status. There’s also some irony here because commercial artists, who stand to be impacted the most by AI, are also frequently loners and weirdos themselves who spend a lot of time surrounded by video games and comic books, and thus know full well what it’s like to be a “nerd”.
I don’t know why you thought this was supposed to make you appear sympathetic.
Among some circles, it's high status. Among some circles, tech is high status, but the actual people in tech are low status.
Perhaps. But this is not an issue that’s unique to tech. It’s something that people in many fields have to deal with.
Do you think patreon furry porn artists are eager to share their job title at cocktail parties?
It is. It's rare that the status of the field doesn't match the status of the people in it. In your furry example, they're both high status (among themselves) or both low status (at the party). Nobody's going to say "we need to get more of group X to be furry porn artists" while still holding existing furry porn artists in contempt.
I’m sorry, but I feel like everyone here is just inventing this persecution of tech workers out of thin air. It doesn’t match my experience at all.
I work in tech. I have never felt any qualms at all about telling people that I work in tech. It’s perfectly respectable. It doesn’t make people kiss my feet, but it’s not low status either. It’s just, fine. Normal. It’s absolutely higher status than telling people that you work in service or retail, which is the sort of answer that the majority of people have to give.
Have you seen many articles recently about how the practices in the service industry are sexist and racist and that the existing service workers are keeping women and minorities out of the service industry?
It never occurred to me to take those articles personally?
I suppose I have, to use a term recently coined by Moldbug, some “dark elf” syndrome going on. Moldbug used the term to describe people whose acculturation and mannerisms mark them as blue tribe, but whose emotional sympathies lie with the red tribe. Similarly, I work in tech to support myself, but I detest “tech culture” and I don’t really view myself as being a part of it. If someone says “Silicon Valley delenda est”, they’ll get a “right on!” from me.
Plus, I hold many views that are popularly considered to be sexist and racist, and I made peace with that fact a loooong time ago, so accusations of racism and sexism don’t really bother me anymore.
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