This is a tough one, and I think is a bug of the current system, and only serves to hold us back. I'd like to think that one day we'll reach the point where UBI is practical. We're not there yet, and we need to do more in the interim offset the impacts of automation to workers losing their livelihoods as a result.
These workers, in particular, I think would be the most ideal candidates to make and monitor this automation. Send them to college part time to learn the skills they need for this.
Re-training programs to teach them new skills to make a horizontal (or upward) shift in the workforce seems like a no brainer.
Problem is, who's going to front the capitol for this? If we forgo automation at the ports, it will impede the potential cost savings of shipping goods into the US, making importing goods less attractive to everyone involved. Re-training can be expensive as well, who's going to front the capitol to pay a mid-career worker with a family a similar salary to re-train?
Our system has failed horribly with this, and it needs to come up with something as more and more jobs are sought to be automated out of existence. There's no reason why we should have to avoid technical progress just to make sure people can keep collecting a paycheck.
I think this is an area that highlights one of the huge differences between Europe and the US that isn't obvious at first to most Europeans. Outside of commercial messaging that you may see in TV show, or Country Music vehicle, it's not that common for people who have a truck to use it as a status symbol any differently than they would with a car.
In practice, a lot of working age Men own a light duty pickup (f-150, Silverado 1500 or smaller types like the Ranger or Colorado) when you get outside of the Cities for the utility. It's basically needed if you live in the country and want to be self-sufficient. While you may see these on a farm, more than likely a farmer would need something more heavy duty to pull anything serious.
People with Boats can usually get away with hauling it with a light duty truck, whereas people with RV's usually will have something more heavy duty.
They are far from status symbols, and often people will have old trucks (beaters) that are paid off and will use when it's practical.
>US trucks are just a peculiar form of luxury car
No, not really. You can get one fully loaded, or get a bare bones work truck. Thing is there are no "luxury" makes for trucks, but more often there are trims of different models. A F-150 Raptor is certainly a luxury model for status signaling (or just to have the nicer thing for those who can afford it). The XL Model is far from a luxury vehicle.
>The bed in the F150 is shortened to make room for a second row of seats.
F150's come with multiple cab/bed options depending on the year. Yes, some have short beds with cabs, others have Long/standard beds with cabs (enough to put a 4x8 piece of plywood in the back). Some come with short beds and no cab. Long beds with no cabs.
>You have to use something with proper augmentations (like ComfyUI or Fooocus(which runs on ComfyUI))
Yeah, comfy was given a reference design of the sdxl model beforehand so it would be supported when sdxl was released. I should probably switch to comfy, but I don't touch the tech very frequently as I don't have a practical use case besides the coolness factor.
>The entire AI industry is powered by piracy at a massive scale.
ARRRRR..
This is a grey area still for me. It's a neural network. It works similar to our brains work, but more consistent. It's doesn't seem like piracy to me. If an artist was really into Salvidor Dali, and happened to imitate his surrealist style, it would not be considered piracy. In fact, this is how art has evolved over the centuries. Each relevant artist in the past has incrementally contributed to what we call art today.
I feel like the people unwilling to accept that AI may impact their career are more worried about putting food on the table than anything else, which is very understandable, but it's just the cost of progress.
The bigger problem we need to deal with is how to retrain and provide job placement who are affected by disruptive technologies. We've really failed the public on this in the past and I don't think it's worth nerfing emerging tech just to keep people employed. This is not the first or last time this has happened, and it's going to be more frequent as technology advances.
>I'm an artist and designer too, the fear of how fast these tools can replicate styles and take jobs becomes a lot less scary when I can take advantage of it myself or enhance my workflow with it myself without paying a subscription tax to do so.
Have you tried to train SD on your artwork? Pretty curious about the results an artist can achieve when embracing this tech.
>The community is entrechend in 1.5 because that's what everyone is now familiar with, IMO
That probably has some weight to the community's decision to still use 1.5.
Other reasons (and more important IMO) why we're still stuck on 1.5 is due to nerfing 2.0, and the plethora of user trained models based on 1.5.
I'm continued to be amazed by the quality possible with 1.5. While there are pros and cons of each of the different offerings provided by other image generators, I haven't seen anything available to the public that can compete with the quality gens a competent SD prompter can produce yet.
SDXL seems to have taken off better than 2.0, but nothing so amazing to justify leaving all the 1.5 models behind.
>However, according to him, he did not attend his graduation ceremony to receive his degrees, and therefore, he does not technically possess a BA or an MA.
>It's kind of a testament to our times that the person who chooses to look at synthetic porn instead of supporting a real-life human trafficking industry is the bad actor.
"Bad actor" is a pretty vague term, I think they are using it as a catch all without diving into the specifics. we are all projecting what that may mean based on our own awareness of this topic as a result.
I totally agree with your assessment and honestly would love to see this tech create less of a demand for the product human-traffickers produce.
Celebrity deep fakes and racist images made by internet trolls are a few of the overt things they are willing to acknowledge is a problem, and they are fighting against (Google Gemini's over correction on this has been the talk this week). Does it put pressure on the companies to change for PR reasons, yes. It also gives a little bit of a Streisand effect, so it may be a zero sum game.
We aren't talking about the big issue surrounding this tech, the issue that would cause far more damage to their brand than celebrity deep fakes: