I don’t understand the vitriol.

Like what is so heinous about someone wanting to be valued for having a talent that they have nurtured and mastered over time? And if they are lucky enough to make a living off of it, wanting to defend that living?

What’s wild to me is folks acting like these artists are petty or money-grabbing but not looking at the folks who used their art without permission to make money with the same scrutiny.

Is it because it’s art and nobody cares about art or is this how we react every time a new sector is taken over by AI?

As an artist myself I am biased in the favor my fellow artists - but on a grander scale we need to think hard how we handle this as a culture and society.

Lots of folks have been warning for years that AI and automation are coming and some of the biggest threats to the middle class nobody is really talking about.

So here is is. It’s easy to shrug off because art has been devalued so heavily with the digital revolution and how easy and cheap it has become to produce and reproduce.

But what about when the robots come for service jobs, desk jobs, programming? People are kidding themselves if they think it’s not coming.

Technology has always been a cycle that renders some jobs and skills obsolete but I don’t think people are really grasping how the speed and exponential growth that AI presents is going to take that to the nth degree. People won’t have time to keep up where previously a phase out period gave these sectors and their workers time to adjust, reskill, and move forward

Unfortunately creatives will be be the canary in the mines because they are not “essential” in the eyes of society so maybe the real test is when the first “real” job gets automated on a large scale. What rules and social contracts we make now may come into play when that happens.