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Danielle Navarro

@plexus I have very similar feelings. Ever since LLMs started to become popular I’ve found myself slowly losing the joy of writing, and even the joy of making computational art. At some level I feel like the wider world has stopped valuing the craft involved in those activities, so… why bother spending time doing it anymore?

6 comments
MaxTheFox

@djnavarro @plexus @nyrath I actually wouldn't say the world stopped valuing human writing, speaking as a webnovel writer. Still many human-written webnovels, in fact the most popular ones have little to no AI involvement. ""Proper"" books have even less of it.

Really, we writers are less affected by AI than visual artists are. It doesn't matter, at least to me, if a robot can do a vague imitation of what I do, as I don't have to use it. Still my writing, my impact on the cultural sphere, yk?

MaxTheFox

@djnavarro @plexus @nyrath It's like being a professional chef and giving up because a McDonald's opened down the street. Yeah, McD's is soulless and can, theoretically, take away customers, but it doesn't somehow corrupt your own food merely by existing, and your fanbase, if you have one, is likely to stay with you *because* they like your style. In general, most appreciation of writing is in the execution rather than the concept, and AI is usually rather mediocre at execution.

Danielle Navarro

@maxthefox @plexus @nyrath Fair point. Most of my writing is a kind of bespoke technical thing in a unique authorial voice, and I suspect that my audience for that isn't going to disappear. Same thing with my visual art, I suppose: nobody wants me to make generic midjourney rubbish they're interested in my particular artistic style. Even so, it's hard to escape the feeling that my work isn't as valuable anymore, you know?

MaxTheFox

@djnavarro @plexus @nyrath Valid, but it feels like a waste to give up because of that, you know. If it makes you feel any better, there was plenty of generic unimaginative stuff out there even before AI (I'd say the majority), it's just that the amount of it increased drastically. There's even an old adage, Sturgeon's Law. "90% of everything is bad".

But you're media-conscious enough to worry about it, you're probably not in that 90%. Sorta adjacent to impostor syndrome, I guess.

Danielle Navarro

@maxthefox @plexus @nyrath yeah, that's also a fair point. most content is rubbish, and the rise of generative AI has vastly increased the amount of garbage content out there. but that's never been where my audience is, I suppose. I'm not a content mill, and in any case my writing/art isn't where I make my day-to-day living. I make these things because I love the act of creation, and I enjoy the craft. I suspect that's the thought I need to hold onto

MaxTheFox

@djnavarro @plexus @nyrath If you like writing that's all that matters, tbh. Don't let others, in human form or in machine code, discourage you from that.

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