Man and machine
“Protests outside the mill today, machines are taking their jobs.
They’re faster and cheaper. They’re clumsy now but they’re getting better.”
“Fast enough to scare the humans in need of rest and comforts.
Humans that pay to live building the machines that are replacing them?”
“‘Where is the line?’ They ask where the sign is raised.
The line is where it is drawn.”
– Ricki Jarmon
In a turn of events that seems inspired by a scene from a cyberpunk novel, for over 100 consecutive days, protestors quite literally stood their ground against the inevitable rise of robots built to take their jobs in our competitive society1.
Unlike the cyberpunk literature, the companies of today realize there is no labor machine more efficient than a human body for its versatility, at least for now. It was in fact the work of the mind that companies found they could readily and easily replace with computation and algorithms. As a result, educated work is going the way of the robots and much of what is left is blue collar2.
Now, those of us that preferred woodshop over mathematics might not be that concerned yet, but bear in mind that accounting is not the only job being swept up. Art and creativity itself are at risk in the sudden capitalistic bets being placed on AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Music, Art, Writing, and Acting are being slowly replaced by Generative AI, from the grand stage of the movie screen down to the most common of children’s books. Worst of all, it is being accomplished with a horde of data stolen from the internet without even the courtesy of giving credit to the human artist’s copyright.
Anyone who has tried it will tell you that art is not easy. It is a constant struggle of self doubt and the need for validation after hours of working alone in front of your preferred medium. Imagine for a moment that you have struggled through the murk and mire to become a professional artist, and after years of practice and searching for your own personal style you have finally made a breakthrough. You rush to the computer to upload your designs for the world to enjoy, it is a feeling of ecstasy and accomplishment! Unfortunately that feeling of joy is ripped away from you just one week later as your friend shows you this awesome image he had his computer make for him in a few seconds. The image is your unique style almost exactly and it took only moments for the AI to copy it and make it its own.
Luckily, much like in those cyberpunk novels you might buy at your local bookstore, mankind fights back against the greed that is making their world a dystopia. Tools are being developed to fight the machines sent to terminate our jobs. A metaphorical John
Conner against the skynet that is a stable diffusion image generating AI.
The name of that tool is Nightshade3, and it was developed by a team of concerned computer scientists at Chicago University. They saw the sudden and gluttonous theft of artistic data that was putting the livelihood of the creator’s in our society at risk and smithed arms against it. The resulting weapon works against the scraping of copyrighted works across the internet by making the AI training model see one thing where our human eyes see another, thus confusing the image.
In a world where the digital realm is ever increasingly important for an artist’s success, we can only hope that more innovations such as Nightshade emerge. In the meantime, artists must take caution against a new form of plagiarism that is faster, cheaper, and tireless enough to replace our human workers unfortunate enough to be in need of rest and comfort.