AI job loss, is an economic issue, not a human right. I think human rights involve being treated with respect and dignity, housing, food etc. (I wrote a whole post about this). But I don’t think those rights protect people from job loss. I think we should treat people without jobs better and don’t believe they should be living in tent cities or under highway overpasses, but working for money always seemed a privilege to me over a right.
Banning AI use so authors and artist can protect their market share seems like a draconian overreach that stymies progress. There are countless examples where protecting a certain group of people’s interests hurts us all. Like port to port shipping in the US per the Jones Act. You can’t ship by boat from a US port to a US port without a US ship with a US crew and US captain. Great for a US maritime shipping company, bad for anyone who wants oranges shipped by boat from Florida.
Car dealerships are another great example, we protect them by not allowing car companies to operate their own. That’s why the Toyota dealership is not owned by Toyota, but rather a middleman who takes a markup on the cost of the car. Change the protection laws regarding car dealerships, and we’ll all see cheaper cars, but it’ll cost all those people who work for dealerships their jobs. You’ll hurt a group of people and make cars a little cheaper for all of us.
A ban on AI generated books will do the same thing. It will protect authors (including myself), by lessening the pool of books a person could purchase. I find it unnecessary because AI generated books and human written ones can coexist. Hugh Howey recently wrote that there should be a Humazon, a bookstore with entirely human written books. I honestly think that’s a good idea but I think there should also be an AIzon too.
Humazon can be the store where people who want to pay a little more for human made products (because let’s face it, humans cost more), and AIzon can be the ones for people who want bargain prices because AI makes cheap (keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be slop just cause its AI, skill still matters when using generative tools). Then you can have Amazon for both, if you don’t really care and just want your next read.
Just because AI can do something doesn’t mean we should embrace it nor does it mean we should ban it. I don’t have a right to make money with my craft it’s just nice that I do. (Let me be a little more nuanced, I do have a right to make money with my writing if money is generated from it. If money is made from my creativity, I should get a slice of it. But that doesn’t mean I have the right to ban another because I don’t like the tool they use).
As soon as we jump into the realm of protectionism, that’s when we start hurting everyone, to protect the interests of a few. We allow most protectionism to go on because the economic impacts for the people the laws protect is often catastrophic (like car dealerships going out of business) and the benefit not all that much (like a little lower price on cars for everyone). Most reasonable people would think, sure I’ll spend a little more on my next car purchase to make sure those people have jobs.
But AI is different, it’s a world changing technology, not a local car dealership. A ban on AI generated books and artistic expression, I think would be bad for humanity. Authors, especially Sci Fi authors warn us about our future. They imagine hellscapes so we don’t have to experience them in reality. While I can’t say we’ve avoided nuclear annihilation for almost a century because of fiction, I can say that’s that same part of our brain that enjoys fiction is how we avoided it.
Because people can imagine how awful both during and after a full on nuclear confrontation will be, we haven’t done it yet. Because our brains can imagine how awful the future would be if future X or Y happened, I wouldn’t want to deprive AI of that knowledge of our fiction. Knowing our fiction is how something can understand us. Humans are pretty inscrutable, and we can’t even measure consciousness in ourselves, and only can ever use “just because we know it.”
If AI is ever growing into super intelligence, I’d rather it have our fiction than not. What better way to understand us than through our stories. And because we are worried about protecting the paychecks of those like myself, we may miss out on giving AI the most important part of what it means to be human, the stories we tell about ourselves.
That aside, I think the real reason we fear AI job loss is because of the way we treat people without jobs. I don’t think work should be tied to a person’s right to existence. There are plenty of good reasons people can’t work. Injury, illness, child care, elder care, and yes, they just don’t like working. I don’t think any of those should be punished for those choices.
I also don’t think people who don’t work deserve fast cars and big screen TVs, and houses on the beach (unless of course they got the money through a legit mean then chose not to work). If work was a privilege and we worked to buy ourselves luxuries and not survival, the world would be a better place. Anyway, I wrote a whole post about this already, but I bring it up because I think an artist or an author who uses AI for their craft shouldn’t be punished for their process.
I think there is room for both human and AI authors.
Continue reading the AI Statement series: Next up, Part III: AI Ethics →