Basically, is this going to become the kind of subject where having a highly salient opinion on the subject puts you at a very significant risk of losing friends -- regardless of whether that opinion is positive or negative RE: generative AI art?
This is admittedly a bit squishy and subjective, and I will resolve this based on my best impression of what the social temperature seems to be a year from now.
I'll throw in that if I lose any of my own friends over this, or I see any of my friends lose friends simply over this one subject, this market resolves as YES.
Close date updated to 2023-12-31 11:59 pm
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Well, we're at two months left, and I'm just not seeing it. Lot of people are loudly anti ai art when they see it and have problems with it, but at least in my social circles we aren't near the point where you would lose friends. You'd have to take an extremely strong (and rude!) position on it like "I hope that ai art replaces all human artists soon", and then you'd have to be super clear that you weren't joking and this was a very important issue to you. Then some of my artist friends might stop being friends with me, if I kept bringing it up.
But I just don't think we're there. Of course I don't know your friend circle or what sort of opinion you think is salient, which I why I am not betting all the way down.
@TiredCliche there are actually some pretty cool AI artists that I argue enrich the art world
https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/5/2/23708076/ai-artist-stelfie-process-workflow
Conversations that I personally have had (anecdotal evidence, for sure) are critical but really not polarized.
Buying NO
@TiredCliche I think this is somewhat out of touch with lefty/creative communities. You can just search AI art with a minimum of 10,000 likes on Twitter and nearly every result will be talking about how it's terrible and exploitative. I won't link the tweets but there's hundreds of them, it's extremely controversial in plenty of communities.
@SemioticRivalry if we're talking about Twitter, everything is off the table. But I interpret this question being about losing friends in real life, not people blocking you on twitter
@TiredCliche The difference between Twitter and "real life" is just what communities you find yourself associated with. I am confident that the people giving and liking these takes are real people and genuinely believe that they are being stolen from and would break off friendships because of it.
@SemioticRivalry Perhaps, but as someone who has not had a twitter account in four years, my irl friendships and my associations with people I do not know irl on Twitter are very different.
Here's one difference between Twitter and real life: I have never shared a meal with someone I only know from Twitter. IRL friendships are far more durable than those formed on the internet. What can seem an inexcusable betrayal from an online friend can be easily forgiven from a friend who has helped you move, or let you crash at their house, or made you soup when you were sick, etc
@TiredCliche People tend to interact with people who are similar to them. Just because you don't see it in real life doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I don't interact with any creationists but I know objectively that they exist in very large numbers.
@SemioticRivalry yeah I have read that SSC article too.
Again, though, I believe this market is talking about IRL friendships, not just Twitter associations. And, yes, people tend to interact with those who are similar to them, which is a strike against negative polarization.
@TiredCliche i think if we had a market on "will there be significant negative polarization about coronavirus lockdowns" and then the creator said "nope, all my friends are pro-lockdown, no problems here" that would be fairly silly.
@SemioticRivalry Every recent comment Lars has made has indicated he is talking about people he knows IRL, professional associations who would not talk to him again, and so on. Not just people he only knows on social media. More durable connections than that.
And at this point, I'm just not seeing it! Like I said, I think there is negative polarization among art groups, but this question seems to be about the "social temperature" as a whole. (it would also be silly to resolve yes based on "well all my friends who work at midjourney or Dall-E are very polarized in favor of ai art.") I interpret this market to be about the broader public.
@SemioticRivalry In that case, being anti-lockdown would put you at risk of losing friends, satisfying the criteria for negative polarization.
@LarsDoucet where are you at on this? I'm surprised that this hasn't gone way up, in my experience things seem to be much more tense than they were a few months ago, especially after the union strikes regarding AI. I mean, today Disney posted a poster of Loki and all the replies are complaining that it's AI and therefore Disney hates artists. I don't even know how they know it's AI, but it's the only thing that people are commenting on.
https://twitter.com/LokiOfficial/status/1708889582341615678
@LarsDoucet I'm kinda curious what the base rate is of you, or your friends, losing friends over abstract cultural/political issues like this. I feel like this is pretty uncommon in general — indeed, in my own life, I'm struggling to think of occasions on which such a thing has happened — but maybe things are different in your social context?
@Kurgan I actually don't know! I could run some quick polls and find out.
Losing professional friends is definitely a thing that happens.
If I were to, hypothetically, announce loudly and publicly that I was going to vote for certain political candidates for president, there are people in my immediate social circle of game developers who would almost certainly unfollow me on social media and never talk to me again, including people that I'd known in a professional capacity for years.
Comments on this were spicier than I expected. A lot at play here, but Kickstarter requiring disclosures for AI art definitely stirs the pot.
@Charlie there are some pretty incredible statements at that link
"it's too powerful"
"it's impossible to enforce"
"there's no way to know everyone's not using AI already"
"it's advancing too quickly"
Seeing a lot of "the cat's out of the bag" arguments today, literally, as if there's no point in opposing AI taking over commercial art.
Meanwhile, the professional artists I know are definitely not happy about this at all.
@cloudprism I feel like “it’s impossible to inforce” is a very weak argument. Even if you don’t require rigorous documentation for art assets, it’s very possible to enforce a policy that cuts down on AI generated art, even if some stuff inevitably slips through.
@gaurav unlikely in the timespan with the capability gain. 3 months of time, for the earliest adopters, and less for later.
@firstuserhere hmm - I mean I expect to hit the news anyways and for most people to look at examples of what dalle 3 can do through that and form opinions after regardless of having used it.
@firstuserhere Sorry I read your comment quickly. That does seem like a good point - I don’t update on it though.
@LarsDoucet have you observed any difference in the last month or so? I've seen improvements and artists embracing ai tools more but not polarization
@firstuserhere It hasn't heated up any more than it was already at last I saw. Many of my artist friends are still firmly opposed to it, but the discourse around it has mostly quieted down.
@wustep So I feel like this is still about where it was months ago in terms of polarization, ie, still kind of wobbily perched on a knife's edge without a clear resolution either way. I know a lot of artists who are still furious about AI art, but I still haven't lost any friends over it, or observed any of my friends losing friends. It's one of those things were a few people care a lot, but generally most people don't think about it day to day, and it has yet to make a big enough material impact to really force large numbers of people onto either side of it.
To wit, that's one major substantive development since I posted it that's happened though -- StableDiffusion, et al's failure to make much of an observable material impact in the actual industries I travel in. The most that's happened is Photoshop content aware fill got a little more interesting and some people are using that. But I haven't heard any cases in my industry of anyone losing jobs or mass layoffs as they all get replaced by AI art generators or anything like that at all. If anything like that at all were to happen within my circles, this would definitely resolve YES, but I just haven't seen it. I've followed along very closely with the capabilities of the latest AI art generator models (ControlNet, LoRAs, and all the rest of it), and it still seems to very much be in the tech demo phase.
If you're seeing anything different in your own circles, please do share.
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