When the spoon boy in Matrix says "there is no spoon", low-level telling Neo that everyone are inside a simulation and suspension of belief is required to affect changes, he is really (message from directors) saying that any system is UPHELD by belief - that the borders of the system really are where everyone say they are, and disbelief/apocryph views only MOVE borders, change the size of the playing field. Eg. that opposition to systems mostly only ease your own moral suffering.
Intents and realities of physical art and digital art differ in much the same way a live theatre performance differs from a filmed performance; uncomparable as mediums, different "systems". Thus they are only to be viewed as comparative in the sense that they have been "created" - given frameworks.
As such one medium is done upon transference of ownership (purchase of physical painting, fx, remove from studio/gallery, hang on own wall, artist cannot change), while the other is continually "open" as work, until a hash-code is done of the work and kept apart from the work, to prevent alterations of the work. Different eras, maybe, but the first functions on the terms of the physical human individual, the other on society upholding the electrical power needed to confirm artistic intent. One ground in individual senses and body, the other in communal ability/"body".
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Being a professional artist in the sense you describe may not be the best artist:
Lots and lots of artistically inclined and experienced people "turn" their art towards what can sell right now - to pay their bills. This without directly claiming/capitalising upon personal mastery of colour, texture, positioning of elements, but maybe on ability to depict present day topics, make to size or pantone colour scheme, make a customer happy etc. Is this selling out? Then most "professional" artists in your sense of the word are sell-outs. And with this position established, "non-professional" artists, so called "amateurs" (meaning "doing it for love") have no way of selling out..." and can thus do all the experimentation that real artists do...
= Money is not a result of art. Money is a result of selling. The artist, the dealer, the personal meeting. But art is not what is being purchased. What is sold is faked or real conviction, and what is bought is trust and experience and willingness to grow. Be it in understanding or money; the elements can be in balance or not. ART factors only as a frame. What you belive and trust and invest is the object of sale.
Take the prompt result of your illustration "AI, make me a 5 fingered human hand composed of fingers, mix the styles, colours, highlights and definition of Botticelli, Modigliani and Arcimboldo into a late modernist centre composition on black background" and you would get close to that. What are you then buying, apart from the knowledge that the art prompter probably didn't succeed with the first prompt? You are buying your own reactions to the piece. Your own learning. You then blow it up to 3 by 3 meters and what you may marvel in at breaktfast is that process - the cost to make it physical, the reactions of people seeing it for the first time - and over time this becomes part of your memory of this work. You see YOUR OWN EFFORT and the wow-effect of strangers following that. You could also buy a 3 x 3 meter video screen with the work perpetually displayed, and effect and memory would be the same: You see you. When you buy a real painting, possibly a limited print, you are directly corresponding with the artist, and you see the life in strokes. It mimics your own life. The digital artifact has no such traces - be it prompted or digitally drawn - and as such is only a matter of style and competence. Of aestetics.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard said something in the vein of "most people are like children, occupied with aestetics, how idealized/stylised things are. Ethics come next, the actual importance of depicted content, and lastly the spiritual content telling viewers and creators of their place in the universe. The meaning of being. The gratefulness with being. The importance of recognising "the system we are in". Viewed as a learning process with constant new do-overs it is not an endgame - a result, where you win, when you recognise that you are smaller than a sun - but a dynamic system hinging on both recognition and loss and acquisition of recognition." That is the human artist with their physical interaction with a physical medium, where the opposition of the material plus the opposition of the "medium of flesh" are directly connected. Whereas digital creation has no weight. No body. No mass. And can therefore never ascend to Kirkegaard's spiritual regard of an actual universe on level with the body. And can therefore never be part of change except on a metaphysical level - as an illustration of thought. The heart does not come into play.
Working with LLM is that. Illustration of thought. It is what most people believe they ask for, when they think "art". Something their brain will approve of, "recognise" as essence, and therefore "more true" than less recognisable creations. If you are worried that your non-professional art will lose out to AI-creations, you and every other artistically inclined person can counter that by stop doing digital art and blow your own minds with physical creations. Detail stuff, opiniate, experiment with media, placement, intent, seek out new essence, strive for collectivity, for ethics and humility and tenderness and empathy, or coldness and dominion and cruelty and cessation, but be honest. And forget about cost and price. They are part of a optionable later stage of creation.
Honesty, KNOWING THAT YOU ARE HONEST is what makes you an artist. Intent. Whether you work with oils or with pixels. The only difference being that your digital creations can never be touched and therefore never compare to your life. Only to your thinking about it.
"greed" and "crime" are moral and legal transgressions, respectfully. These two exist, because some brains are wired for pushing boundaries beyond present and projected need - "risk-taking". Self-gratification at the expense of others. Very much needed, when stakes need to be put down and held - against nature, animals, other humans - but redundant, when a "satisfying" level of "civilisation" is achieved.
Your question contains a lot of "what do we do with those paving the way through chaos for monetary rewards, requiring low empathy or an unreasonably high degree of anthropocentricity?" - once a mechanistic level of civilisations is achieved? Eg. "where do the warriors go, when the was is over?" And now it is becoming: "where do workers go, when autonomous systems take over management, and workers still need to eat?
Generally speaking we are standing on a cusp. We are very close to technological "heaven", but most of the world's economy is geared towards competition and power rather than fulfilling everyone's needs. Economy here means "distribution of value as exchange". There is no "we", when it comes to tradable value - there is only "I" - I, country against countries, I, company against companies, I, individual against individuals. The WE is presently NON-extensive beyond personal identification, because our present mode of wrestling necessities out of chaos requires "profit maximisation": "raising worth to the max level of interest". There is no WE HUMANS in that. There is only me and them.
When plan economy nations tried the WE in those clothes - giving value only to that satisfying human basic needs - they forgot that greed and crime arise in the same people, who plow through the jungle to find gold or aspire to power. Not in people, who look at sunsets and enjoy tranquility in a safe, predictable environment. This resulted in the direct murder of lots of citizens with brains, that did not fit into submission, and as a by-product killed off millions needing the energy and non-submissiveness of people not fitting into the system.
In an "autonomous world", where ideals for feeding the masses can easily be programmed into autonomous machines, there would be no one to pay for the machines (as the economy we know toil under), and no place to go for the the more restless and non-submissive brains. Machine logic would displace state logic, and programmed rules of behaviour would result in various kinds of enforced "law keeping" to stop or prevent "illegal" or "disruptive" behaviour not befitting the WE. Meaning humans, not the machines. You can easily have all the things humans need - but you cannot give purpose to human brains, which are wired for risk-taking and exploration and questioning the "order of things". You need "un-programmable variety" - which is basically chaos.
Only the plasticity of mind understands the plasticity of existence. Plastic mind to constantly evolving existence.
Your "ideal" is by doing away with chotic minds (once they have proven chaotic"), once the collective mind has programmed autonomous machines with a desired, future behaviour and desired variety. Many great philosophical scifi novels have explored this theme: What is actually a stable society?
Personally I believe much would be achieved by disallowing destructive competition. Competition should ALWAYS benefit the "losers" as well, ie. be "moral wins". This IS possible - but not by letting autonomous systems run the world. Human brains regarded as a collective mind are amazing - that require the respect of the WE to not deflate into submission and inefficiency from lack of fight.
Machine autonomy is presently on track to kill us off by reducing us to recipients or regularly starve us from all kinds of deficiencies: feelings of necessity and worth, loss of abilities to maintain stable homes and sources of food, education, experience, non-economic/religious/political role models.
So, IMO the best world is achieved by reigning in those selling standardised killing devices and building autonomic systems taking people's purpose in life.
(Sorry for the rambly bit - but I am out of time to clean it up.)
- soon, very soon, cars will all be non-owned, meaning you can interact with them with less control than that of riding a taxi ("go this way or that"). It won't matter, basically, what the controls are. You won't have a say.
- aestetics have taken over. Physical dials, buttons and switches are always better than computer-translations of intent. Diagnostics CAN be an added computer, but it need not sit in the center of things. Therefore you don't need touch displays.
See data centres being constructed in areas with green energy, forcing countries to revert to petro and update power grids to accommodate FUTURE "needs" and governments discounting power bills due to... yeah, due to what, actually?
Also watch power bills rising in USA due to faulty leadership, and power lines above-ground constantly at risk during the climbing number of destructive hurricanes.
Think bigger and with broader out-reach: All of these companies are forging deals left and right, and - let me guess - some as part of threat-package deals "suggested" by the present US trade administration.
Soon, very soon, many of these US/EU-data centres will be forcefully discontinued as part of growing EU-independence. And good riddence, too.
Yes, I think AI is an industry in need of a prodcuct, and they are minions of the anti-christ of Capitalism and Consumer-Slaverism. This is already a failed project, as it is done without the ethics of collectivity (to the benefit of "more than me"), to paraphrase Kierkegaard. Me, you and All. Only power and enrichment in this end-time, when care could have leveled the plane and touched us all equally GOOD.
title is misleading. Nobody spends 2 months on a project to appear productive. They spend 2 months because they feel like they are relevantly challenged, maybe feel competent, but definitely feel appreciated - both by the system/Corpus and by middle managers, who are not hired as quality assessors and thus easily duped by “progress” and promise of easy money, which is their real job, and from that point of view naturally rewarding towards those, who dangle administrative rewards in front of their noses.
All of it is a learning process. I don’t know: Can you look for a better job? Or are you in the position to not-expose yourself to management and tell them the problem? Or are you certain they would not believe you? Could you adequately substantiate your claim?
You won’t, maybe, have saved your future and wages with this firm, but seeing you are kinda bypassing the issue of fast gratification - that real competence IS, when adequately challenged - you may by omission reach a deadine from being real competence and old-school: hunkering down and getting shit done by true grit and new ideas and imagination and taking chances and kinda loving it all as you hate the shit, but you still love it!
Maybe you need to learn something too: Speaking up against the weaknesses in the chain, which was never the You’s, but the incompetents - but now appearance and riding that wave might cost you manegerial trust and respect, because it doesn’t look easy and it takes longer time…?
re writing: Practice writing up against a certain number of key presses. Trying to keep up with your brain is a lost cause - you need to win back control, put down som stakes, define the arena - by # of key presses.
Ever heard the expression: Sorry its so long, but I didn’t have time to write it shorter?
Boots. I have bought Italian-made boots for 23 years - the same brand and model. 1. pair the inner lining died, rest was fine-to worn for 7 years, including laces, 2. pair lasted 7 years, the inner lining held this time, laces too. 3. pair was smaller than indicated, I stood the pain for one winter, could not "grow them", 4. pair has laces die after 1 year, leather cracking after 2 years, rubber seal opening after 2 years and lace (metal) hooks straightening from tying the laces. And this is the company, who has always promised exchange of soles for 100$ - but THAT has never been an issue.
Metal hooks, lace-weave and thread, leather, glue - I wonder how much they save, but I have bought my last pair.
So, let us assume AA could or would pay Spotify for "profits lost".
Now that we know AA's abduction of files were the files that actually received playtime, we would immediately see a lot of music artists embursed, yes?