alt Hacker News>We are none of us much without the others.
It can be summed up as: "An artist struggles without tools, and a toolmaker is meaningless without an artist." It's still a valid answer in the modern era, but with AI added to the mix, confusion sets in. But if that's the case, where does AI fit in? I am a toolmaker, but I actively use AI. So what am I?
A toolmaker who makes tools for making tools? But agents, at least when it comes to CRUD apps, work quite perfectly once I've given them a short command. So what am I, then?
Replies
dfxm12 • today at 2:32 PM
If you think, at least, you are.
cwmoore • today at 2:28 PM
temporary
> where does AI fit in? […] what am I, then?
One of many. Personally I’ve never seen this as a particularly confusing or mysterious question, as long as you don’t anthropomorphize the computer. The computer isn’t writing your apps out of thin air, people made all the training data, and people wrote the tools that can turn prompts into code & images. You are just choosing to use the work of other people, and tools made by other people. In a very real way, your situation supports the article’s notion that we are nothing without the others.
Art, and especially digital art, has always had the ability to use/borrow/steal/remix the work & tools of others. AI is just the newest tool other people made that can do faster borrowing of other people’s work than before. After MacPaint, we had Photoshop and that was used to do a lot of borrowing & remixing too (as well as plenty of original & creative digital work).
I’m guessing that use of AI will mirror the other tools in the sense that the people who will be celebrated for their creativity, for the most part, will be the people who limit their use of borrowing from others and bring new ideas to the work, and/or the people who can tell the best story about what they did.