Steven Stahlberg on AI

Professional illustrator Steven Stahlberg posted his take on Artificial Intelligence on his Facebook. He provides some history, and his own personal history -- and then, his take on the impact of A.I. 

 

"The Golden Age of illustration was roughly 1880 to 1930, helped along by advances in printing and publishing.

 

"In the 1800's the invention of photography began to cut into first painters' earnings (it was cheaper and quicker to get a family photo), and later illustrators' pay (again, photos were cheaper, quicker and more detailed).

 

"There was a resurgence for illustration, call it a Silver Age, from 1970 to roughly 1995.

This was the age of the highly paid commercial artist. I was one of them. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, and my average net pay per month in the early 90's was around 8000 usd.

 

"Then in the mid 1990's desktop publishing arrived, and with it stock photo services.

Basically removing all newspaper and magazine work, and most book covers, and later also ad work. And what work was left was dirt cheap and needed to be finished in hours, not days or weeks. It was a financial disaster for me and my family.

 

"Then came digital art. Roughly 2000 to today.

 

"Around the end of the 90's, as I adapted and shifted into digital, I made a come-back financially, mostly because I was one of the lucky few who made the shift really early on.

 

"Then the entire rest of the art world slowly and gradually made the same shift, and my salary took a nose-dive again. I like so many others had to start hustling on Patreon and similar services just to survive.

 

"AI will shrink the market further, at a time when the pool of talented artists grows faster than ever.

 

"One day there will be no money to be made as an artist. But money's not important, you say? Not the reason we make art? If you think that, you're either not the one paying your rent, or you're independently wealthy.

 

"Now everyone's saying, oh but a human is still needed, to be the creator behind the image, just like with photography.

 

"They draw the parallel to photography. "It's just a new tool! And it's so fun to use!" And yet others discuss copyright.

 

"You're not seeing the problem. It took hundreds of years from Niepce inventing the first permanent photo, to the stock photo services that killed traditional illustration.

 

"It won't take hundreds of years for AI to mature. And it's not mature yet. What we see today is a fetus. 

 

"The growth is incredibly fast. Dalle-E 2 blows Midjourney out of the water today. Who knows what it will do tomorrow? What about next year - Dall-E 3? 4? What about all the other dozens of AI's in development?

 

"Look, the trend is clear. The writing's on the wall. This is the meteor that kills the art-dinos: humans who work full-time as professional artists, to support themselves and their families.

 

"I never wanted to be anything else, I never could have been anything else, I'm bad at math, science and sports, from a toddler to 63 I've practiced art almost every day. That's approaching 100,000 hours. Even if I had another 100,000 hours to give to another field, what should I pick? I always liked music, but even less money in that, and anyway AI will be coming for all creative jobs sooner or later. (And all non-creative jobs too.) Maybe a craft, I always enjoyed glass-blowing...

 

"Sorry not sorry just presenting the problem as I see it, since I see so few other people looking at it this way. I think it's important to identify problems. The only solution I can see is Universal Basic Income, or UBI, but apparently we can't do that because we're told no one deserves to survive unless they work 8 hours a day doing whatever capitalism tells them to do.

 

"So what's left, Walmart Greeter? No, wait, Walmart eliminated those jobs in 2019."

 

 

What's scary is that Steven wrote this on August 12, 2022.  It's new to me. Seeing it for the first time a year later, I can't imagine the leaps and bounds that AI has taken. Pushing a button and creating art and writing instantly doesn't make one an artist or a writer, but corporations that hire already see this as a less expensive, less time-consuming solution to providing content.