alt Hacker NewsI strongly disagree, for reasons that are different from what's discussed in the thread.
It doesn't matter if LLMs can't hold a candle to some of the finest human writing. What matters is that before you become a world-renowned writer, you need to pay your bills, often for a long time. And that's what LLMs take away. All the mundane literature-adjacent works: journalism, translations, technical writing / corporate comms, copyediting.
The same goes for many other forms of art. A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI.
Replies
AI overviews are killing traffic to websites that do the original research. It’s putting translators out of work.
The replacement is not better, but it’s good enough for the undiscerning people who prefer the cost pr convenience of LLM-generated content.
In any case, you find yourself competing with oligopolies that can insert their bad LLM output in front of your good work. It’s not a fair fight.
I generally agree, but don't discount the impact of platforms like Patreon and Substack. Obviously, many authors of the past had patrons, but this was generally based on status and connections - and that's to say nothing of people who can support a writing career based off inherited wealth. But there is little historical precedent for an avenue for creatives to support themselves (or at least meaningfully supplement their income, potentially leading to less non-creative work hours and thus more time to hone the craft) using a decentralized base of support.
AI will definitely not take over translation for a long time. Machine translation has improved to the point it's mostly no longer incoherent, but for non-formulaic content it's still very hit-and-miss, not that much better compared to 10-20 years ago. For example, something they still struggle with is consistently translating terms coined within the text with consistent phrases.
>A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI.
Are you joking? The only people I see using generative AI are either companies, shitposters, and spammers. Who are all these people who have stopped paying commissions and moved over to prompting AIs?
Agree, Hunter S Thompson would've never written fear and loathing were he not a sports journo first
Yeah, the arts in general in this age are reverting back to
1) the privilege of the rich and secure who can do it despite the lack of financials.
2) the ultra passionate who spend every waking moment outside of their day job engaging in the craft. Often to the detriment to their health and social obligations.
You shouldn't need to go all in on a skill just for a chance to maybe one day earn money from it.
I find myself writing more than ever. In fact I must. I have to explain in no uncertain terms what I mean. Though I often find myself in very complex technical straits where words are not enough. There's something liberating about writing a wall of text and knowing that at least something will give you feedback. It won't be annoyed. It won't be tired. It won't say "tldr?" back at you. I don't know if that will convert into a novel for me. But it must for someone.
Totally agree. LLMs are taking over everything related to intellectual work and work in general. But that doesn’t mean people will have nothing to do.
The show will go on and humanity will probably split into those who work deeply with AI and create an AI economy, where AIs develop and interact with each other (much like cloud systems do today) and a human world where people compete with other people both in art and in sports with the best receiving rewards and recognition from other humans.
I also disagree with the author.
The first careers I witnessed being negatively impacted by AI coming onto the scene .. just a couple years ago .. was tech writers. Source: my personal network of tech writer colleagues.