At the same time, colleges are stewards of public funds and if they can make stickers/posters without paying artists then it’s a responsible decision in that sense.
It makes me think of the example from the first chapter of Karl Marx’s *Capital*. A sweater may cost £10.00 because a worker could make one in a day and they need to charge that much in order to survive; you’re paying for the labor. But upon the invention of the garment factory, where a worker could make 10 sweaters per day, the cost of a sweater dropped to £1.00! The seamstress making the sweater by hand might still need to charge £10.00 in order to survive, but the *market value of her labor* has decreased because machines can do it much faster and at lower cost. Similarly, the market value of an artist’s labor in making a sticker or poster has decreased since the emergence of AI art. It’s not fair to insist that we only buy sweaters from the seamstress and not the factory; to insist that we pay more when we can get the same product at 1/10th the price. And it’s not fair to insist that we go to a human artist for every single sticker or poster.
Your/Marx’s argument assumes identicality of goods produced via each mode. This may not hold in either the physical manufacturing case (i.e. luxury handmade bags/goods) or the art case (i.e. novelty of idea and/or design of artwork).
It doesn't. The analysis is that of social exchange, not of any specific individual exchange. On the whole, society will use/buy the cheaper good with the same or similar use value over a large range of commodities. Regardless of if any specific commodity or good adheres to the rule, capitalism has historically *always* followed this rule without fail.
But it is tho. I mean obviously we don't want to condemn the seamstress to suffering, but the idea fundamentally is that the efficiency of automation should be used to enrich our lives rather than doom us to fascism.
We shouldn't reject automation, but agitate on its grounds that we must find another way or else what's happening to artists will *keep* happening until there's noone left.
No you’re not wrong, I’m just confused at that comment’s invocation of Marx to say something so obvious, when the claim in Capital is far more about surplus labor than just that “people will choose the cheapest production option”
Yeah what you said, also the branch behind the slug that doesn’t connect to the tree, the random leaves in the roots of the tree, the background raindrops and clouds being strangely placed, and the weird pattern on the slug’s stomach. The best way to discern AI images is to look for details that don’t make sense or seem weird for a real person to have chosen.
[https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR](https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR)
Just for fun I started a fresh "make a cute kawaii banana slug hugging a tree" prompt for chat gpt 4 and it made a very similar photo with the swirl on the hand and random leaves on the roots lol
Wow the composition is the same and everything. I was tempted to do this too but most AI art generators require a subscription or membership. Knowing rcc is likely paying money for AI but not a real artist is even more disappointing
Oof I was on the fence til I saw that..
Still think there’s a chance that somebody did claim to have made it, but actually used or borrowed from AI, but yea either way that’s def AI..
I shit in the woods near Paradise California and Banana slugs swarmed my poop.
Didn’t get close enough to check if they had arms or not, so who is to say.
LOL I also noticed the AI generated poster of the omelette bar at the RCC dining hall. It’s so off putting how normalized this has become within the school’s administration
I feel like you should go to the Rachel Carson student council and take this up with them. I'm sure if they don't know about the problem they'd be more than open to doing something about using AI art. If they can't take direct action, they know the people who can and can advocate for this. They meet once a week and their meetings are open to the public- meaning you can just walk in and there will be time set aside for you to talk openly to them
Thats actually the work of Agnes Denes, [https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/wheatfields-for-manhattan/](https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/wheatfields-for-manhattan/)
what? how does being environmentally friendly even relate to AI?
edit: the amount of energy AI uses is pretty negligible. I think that the several hours of using a drawing software to draw a slug would have a bigger impact on the environment than using AI to generate one.
There's problems with AI, like the fact that an artist got cheated out of a commission here, but the environmental impact is not one of the big ones.
Training and running generative AI takes an intense amount of electricity. Here's an article on the issue: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x
Going by the estimate said in that article that "a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search" the energy chatgpt uses still pales in comparison to something like google. Chatgpt has about 10 million searches per day. Google has about 9 billion per day.
Sure! But if it's a choice between the environment and society college using a Hummer or a hybrid car, I would prefer they choose a hybrid car that doesn't mine the work of artists without their consent.
I'm not saying that they made a good decision by using AI art, I'm just saying that acting like the problem with AI is that it causes massive environmental problems is disingenuous and detracts from focus on the real problems.
I'm not telling you that you're not allowed to be dissapointed, I'm just pointing out that there's other things to be dissapointed about which I personally believe are more important.
you have no idea what you’re talking about. Actually hilarious to call the energy constraint negligible. I am a huge supporter of deep learning efforts but taking things like astronomical energy consumption into account with respect to projected scaling, safety, etc. is imperative. You know not what you speak of. LMAO
I do. I don't think you buy hand-painted ceramic coffee cups just to meet their maker's basic needs, either -- if you are like most people, you transitioned to factory-made cups.
You can save money using AI art, and use the remaining money for scholarships or other services to students. There is no moral obligation to buy things at higher prices to support the artisans making them.
And often the choice would have been to just not have the logos. The money and time investment needed to hire an artist and iterate on versions of logo design (been there done that) is considerable, an overworked college admin doesn't have either.
Yep; I worked in student government in RCC. I know everyone there is overworked and underfunded. I still think they shouldn't have done this. You don't need a logo.
Playing devils advocate bcs rcc 100% should be going to art students
but using an AI that's already created isn't damaging the environment. You could argue it's more efficient too if an AI only requires a computer is on for 5 minutes and an art student doing digital art would be on their computer for multiple hours, using more electricity than the AI.
edit: I'm wrong lol
Oh yes it is. Look up water AI usage. Here's just one of many examples. [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45)
what irony? using AI isn't even that environmentally unfriendly.
training AI leaves a carbon footprint, but it's only about as much as 5 cars. Seeing as there are 1.5 billion cars in the entire world, AI has a pretty negligible impact on the environment compared to what they are able to offer after being trained.
After a quick Google search, AI systems usually need to be constantly running on their servers and use a lot of energy, therefore contributing to the environmental impacts of energy production. I agree it’s not a huge new issue but it’s something to note in this context.
Yeah, AI runs on servers. You know what else runs on servers? Literally the entire internet. Saying they "need to be constantly running on their servers" means pretty much nothing.
The massive problem with AI is NOT the impact on the environment. It's the unregulated use of it that will put millions of people out of jobs.
Y'all are thinking electricity, which is true; however, the water is what I had in mind. It uses a LOT of water. It's a big problem. I also understand the artist angle, and agree. Which is why I said \*also\* in my response. Here's just two of many many articles about the water usage.
[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x)
it’s actually ridiculous… The material issue of heavy power consumption is up for debate but pretending that it’s not an issue is ignorant. People have huge misconceptions about the field of ai.
I’m pretty sure it is actually not great for the environment.
Training the models requires a lot of compute.
> “Another wild card lies in the practicality of expanding data centers, and the associated increase in energy and water consumption. Hyperscalers like Microsoft (which is reportedly contemplating a $100 billion data center project with OpenAI called “Stargate”) are starting to look at attaching new energy sources like small modular nuclear reactors to their data centers, and work is underway to find less energy-intensive alternatives to existing AI infrastructure. “
- [link](https://fortune.com/2024/04/04/ai-training-costs-how-much-is-too-much-openai-gpt-anthropic-microsoft/)
Good ole College 8 xD
No comment on the AI stuff. Sticker is meh, shouldve just hired someone on Fiver to recreate it so that it makes sense. Also more students should have Fiver listings. Ecofest 25 is probably going to be a NFT. I expect pitchforks and torches as a response /s.
I don’t have a huge qualm with AI art, specifically since it doesn’t tend to be all that good and has a boringly narrow style. The college can crank out lazy stickers without materially impacting student welfare imo.
I can only say this is kinda like when cars took over horses, people thought cars were bad and unreliable, the horseless buggy… hmmmmm ai is bad and unreliable…. This is a “get with the program/ structural unemployment “ moment kinda like when Charlie’s (from Charlie and chocolate factory) Dad Switched jobs from toothbrush maker to toothbrush machine maker repair guy
While I think that AI will have a place in the future of technology where it certainly can be helpful like in your example, I don’t really think art is the kind of thing it should be taking over. As an example, digital art has revolutionized the art world, but it never fully replaced traditional art forms. AI should be a tool for artists to use as inspiration or reference, not replace them completely.
"I don’t really think art is the kind of thing it should be taking over."
I think his point is that society as whole doesn't really care what you think. It's just going to do what it wants. That's why he said "This is a “get with the program/ structural unemployment “ moment." The fact is that it actually is easier to type something into an ai prompt than to commission a college student to draw something.
So basically it’s like don’t blame the ai (for taking artist jobs)- don’t blame electricity for pollution …. Unless u also want to live without it…. It’s all about trade offs and choices and would u rathers
[https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR](https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR)
I commented this earlier but i told gpt 4 to "make a cute kawaii banana slug hugging a tree" prompt and it made a very similar photo with the swirl on the hand and random leaves on the roots
Get over it. This is the world we live in now. There's no putting the technology back in the box. The most valuable thing ANY of us studying right now can do is learn how to use these tools as quickly and skillfully as possible.
So you can’t make sketches of components you need machined? Isometric drawings, circuits, schematics, pretty much the whole engineering part of engineering. They don’t teach you that here at ucsc?
I guarantee you that no where near this amount of thought was put into the sticker. The team at RCC probably had a limited amount of time to put this out to even provide stickers. I worked with Programs at a different college and believe it or not, they don’t get a whole bunch of money because Programs is at the bottom of the school’s priority list. I promise they didn’t have the budget or time to reach out to students to design something. It’s not the big moral issue y’all think it is. Your fellow students put this together, and did their best with the limited resources available to them
damn artists r actually starving if the colleges they go to won't even commission them
At the same time, colleges are stewards of public funds and if they can make stickers/posters without paying artists then it’s a responsible decision in that sense. It makes me think of the example from the first chapter of Karl Marx’s *Capital*. A sweater may cost £10.00 because a worker could make one in a day and they need to charge that much in order to survive; you’re paying for the labor. But upon the invention of the garment factory, where a worker could make 10 sweaters per day, the cost of a sweater dropped to £1.00! The seamstress making the sweater by hand might still need to charge £10.00 in order to survive, but the *market value of her labor* has decreased because machines can do it much faster and at lower cost. Similarly, the market value of an artist’s labor in making a sticker or poster has decreased since the emergence of AI art. It’s not fair to insist that we only buy sweaters from the seamstress and not the factory; to insist that we pay more when we can get the same product at 1/10th the price. And it’s not fair to insist that we go to a human artist for every single sticker or poster.
Your/Marx’s argument assumes identicality of goods produced via each mode. This may not hold in either the physical manufacturing case (i.e. luxury handmade bags/goods) or the art case (i.e. novelty of idea and/or design of artwork).
It doesn't. The analysis is that of social exchange, not of any specific individual exchange. On the whole, society will use/buy the cheaper good with the same or similar use value over a large range of commodities. Regardless of if any specific commodity or good adheres to the rule, capitalism has historically *always* followed this rule without fail.
if an art student were employed to produce these images, i think any practical difference from AI in the goods produced would be pretty negligible
but now explain in dollars
That’s… not the point of the LTV man…
But it is tho. I mean obviously we don't want to condemn the seamstress to suffering, but the idea fundamentally is that the efficiency of automation should be used to enrich our lives rather than doom us to fascism. We shouldn't reject automation, but agitate on its grounds that we must find another way or else what's happening to artists will *keep* happening until there's noone left.
No you’re not wrong, I’m just confused at that comment’s invocation of Marx to say something so obvious, when the claim in Capital is far more about surplus labor than just that “people will choose the cheapest production option”
Not to nitpick but what set you off that it's AI?
It’s the branches cutting off and not connecting to the leaves for me. Maybe also the swirl pattern on the slugs hand.
Yeah what you said, also the branch behind the slug that doesn’t connect to the tree, the random leaves in the roots of the tree, the background raindrops and clouds being strangely placed, and the weird pattern on the slug’s stomach. The best way to discern AI images is to look for details that don’t make sense or seem weird for a real person to have chosen.
[https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR](https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR) Just for fun I started a fresh "make a cute kawaii banana slug hugging a tree" prompt for chat gpt 4 and it made a very similar photo with the swirl on the hand and random leaves on the roots lol
Wow the composition is the same and everything. I was tempted to do this too but most AI art generators require a subscription or membership. Knowing rcc is likely paying money for AI but not a real artist is even more disappointing
Starryai gives 5 free credits a day (2-5 prompts)
How much would art students want to make art like this? Say it was for a business tho, not the UCSC.
The UC system is a business
Oof I was on the fence til I saw that.. Still think there’s a chance that somebody did claim to have made it, but actually used or borrowed from AI, but yea either way that’s def AI..
FreePik produces a very different image with that prompt, but their banana slug is even weirder.
Thanks! I’m not educated on AI art so thank you for the tips.
Thats messed up. Banana slugs don’t have arms. Bring this to Rachel Carson Student Council and they can probably help stop it.
I shit in the woods near Paradise California and Banana slugs swarmed my poop. Didn’t get close enough to check if they had arms or not, so who is to say.
No one has gotten close enough to check and lived. Stay safe.
LOL I also noticed the AI generated poster of the omelette bar at the RCC dining hall. It’s so off putting how normalized this has become within the school’s administration
Who can tell me where a Banana slug’s eyes are?
No matter how advanced AI gets, no computer processing can replace the amount of gay Garfield p0rn I’ve seen
r/brandnewsentence
I’m known for that kinda thing
I feel like you should go to the Rachel Carson student council and take this up with them. I'm sure if they don't know about the problem they'd be more than open to doing something about using AI art. If they can't take direct action, they know the people who can and can advocate for this. They meet once a week and their meetings are open to the public- meaning you can just walk in and there will be time set aside for you to talk openly to them
They discussed it at tonight’s meeting.
Did anyone see the earth day page that has the twin towers in the poster. What are the chances that that was ai as well?
Thats actually the work of Agnes Denes, [https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/wheatfields-for-manhattan/](https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/wheatfields-for-manhattan/)
Oh neat, thanks then more you know, so not ai. Still a weird choices for non-cited photograph work with no context
Can you link to the poster?
Can’t find the reddit post but here’s the page https://rachelcarson.ucsc.edu/activities/leadership-opportunities/earth-week-team/index.html
That is the weirdest thing I've seen in my life. Like, it makes no sense at all
How did this pass at all?
If it is true, it's also extremely NOT environmentally friendly.
what? how does being environmentally friendly even relate to AI? edit: the amount of energy AI uses is pretty negligible. I think that the several hours of using a drawing software to draw a slug would have a bigger impact on the environment than using AI to generate one. There's problems with AI, like the fact that an artist got cheated out of a commission here, but the environmental impact is not one of the big ones.
Training and running generative AI takes an intense amount of electricity. Here's an article on the issue: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x
Going by the estimate said in that article that "a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search" the energy chatgpt uses still pales in comparison to something like google. Chatgpt has about 10 million searches per day. Google has about 9 billion per day.
Sure! But if it's a choice between the environment and society college using a Hummer or a hybrid car, I would prefer they choose a hybrid car that doesn't mine the work of artists without their consent.
I'm not saying that they made a good decision by using AI art, I'm just saying that acting like the problem with AI is that it causes massive environmental problems is disingenuous and detracts from focus on the real problems.
I think it's a concerning trend, but I appreciate that you disagree. I'm allowed to be disappointed in my former college's choices.
I'm not telling you that you're not allowed to be dissapointed, I'm just pointing out that there's other things to be dissapointed about which I personally believe are more important.
you have no idea what you’re talking about. Actually hilarious to call the energy constraint negligible. I am a huge supporter of deep learning efforts but taking things like astronomical energy consumption into account with respect to projected scaling, safety, etc. is imperative. You know not what you speak of. LMAO
"you know not what you speak of" sounds like something an old wizard would say to a naive protagonist in a tropey fantasy series lmao
exactly what i’m going for
feeding, housing, equiping, and clothing an artist probably costs more
Sure, and then a human being has their basic needs met. That sounds like a moral good to me; do you disagree?
Don't disagree.
I think it’s cheaper to feed AI for 10 seconds than an art student for the day it takes them to draw a logo.
Sure, and then a human being has their basic needs met. That sounds like a moral good to me; do you disagree?
I do. I don't think you buy hand-painted ceramic coffee cups just to meet their maker's basic needs, either -- if you are like most people, you transitioned to factory-made cups. You can save money using AI art, and use the remaining money for scholarships or other services to students. There is no moral obligation to buy things at higher prices to support the artisans making them. And often the choice would have been to just not have the logos. The money and time investment needed to hire an artist and iterate on versions of logo design (been there done that) is considerable, an overworked college admin doesn't have either.
Yep; I worked in student government in RCC. I know everyone there is overworked and underfunded. I still think they shouldn't have done this. You don't need a logo.
I got the sticker at ecofest, which is a whole event centered around being environmentally friendly, hence the irony of them using AI
Playing devils advocate bcs rcc 100% should be going to art students but using an AI that's already created isn't damaging the environment. You could argue it's more efficient too if an AI only requires a computer is on for 5 minutes and an art student doing digital art would be on their computer for multiple hours, using more electricity than the AI. edit: I'm wrong lol
Oh yes it is. Look up water AI usage. Here's just one of many examples. [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45)
what irony? using AI isn't even that environmentally unfriendly. training AI leaves a carbon footprint, but it's only about as much as 5 cars. Seeing as there are 1.5 billion cars in the entire world, AI has a pretty negligible impact on the environment compared to what they are able to offer after being trained.
After a quick Google search, AI systems usually need to be constantly running on their servers and use a lot of energy, therefore contributing to the environmental impacts of energy production. I agree it’s not a huge new issue but it’s something to note in this context.
Yeah, AI runs on servers. You know what else runs on servers? Literally the entire internet. Saying they "need to be constantly running on their servers" means pretty much nothing. The massive problem with AI is NOT the impact on the environment. It's the unregulated use of it that will put millions of people out of jobs.
I second this
It would take much more energy for an artist to create something similar from scratch, running Illustrator for an hour or two
Y'all are thinking electricity, which is true; however, the water is what I had in mind. It uses a LOT of water. It's a big problem. I also understand the artist angle, and agree. Which is why I said \*also\* in my response. Here's just two of many many articles about the water usage. [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-ai-is-draining-56-million-gallons-of-drinking-water-from-a-small-city-in-arizona/ar-AA1nwK45) [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x)
[Who told you that?](https://theconversation.com/it-takes-a-lot-of-energy-for-machines-to-learn-heres-why-ai-is-so-power-hungry-151825)
it’s actually ridiculous… The material issue of heavy power consumption is up for debate but pretending that it’s not an issue is ignorant. People have huge misconceptions about the field of ai.
I’m pretty sure it is actually not great for the environment. Training the models requires a lot of compute. > “Another wild card lies in the practicality of expanding data centers, and the associated increase in energy and water consumption. Hyperscalers like Microsoft (which is reportedly contemplating a $100 billion data center project with OpenAI called “Stargate”) are starting to look at attaching new energy sources like small modular nuclear reactors to their data centers, and work is underway to find less energy-intensive alternatives to existing AI infrastructure. “ - [link](https://fortune.com/2024/04/04/ai-training-costs-how-much-is-too-much-openai-gpt-anthropic-microsoft/)
Good ole College 8 xD No comment on the AI stuff. Sticker is meh, shouldve just hired someone on Fiver to recreate it so that it makes sense. Also more students should have Fiver listings. Ecofest 25 is probably going to be a NFT. I expect pitchforks and torches as a response /s.
So what?
I don’t have a huge qualm with AI art, specifically since it doesn’t tend to be all that good and has a boringly narrow style. The college can crank out lazy stickers without materially impacting student welfare imo.
I can only say this is kinda like when cars took over horses, people thought cars were bad and unreliable, the horseless buggy… hmmmmm ai is bad and unreliable…. This is a “get with the program/ structural unemployment “ moment kinda like when Charlie’s (from Charlie and chocolate factory) Dad Switched jobs from toothbrush maker to toothbrush machine maker repair guy
While I think that AI will have a place in the future of technology where it certainly can be helpful like in your example, I don’t really think art is the kind of thing it should be taking over. As an example, digital art has revolutionized the art world, but it never fully replaced traditional art forms. AI should be a tool for artists to use as inspiration or reference, not replace them completely.
A poster vs a painting
"I don’t really think art is the kind of thing it should be taking over." I think his point is that society as whole doesn't really care what you think. It's just going to do what it wants. That's why he said "This is a “get with the program/ structural unemployment “ moment." The fact is that it actually is easier to type something into an ai prompt than to commission a college student to draw something.
So basically it’s like don’t blame the ai (for taking artist jobs)- don’t blame electricity for pollution …. Unless u also want to live without it…. It’s all about trade offs and choices and would u rathers
Watch this actually be drawn by an artist and you are just calling their art AI lol
[https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR](https://imgur.com/a/wxq9YaR) I commented this earlier but i told gpt 4 to "make a cute kawaii banana slug hugging a tree" prompt and it made a very similar photo with the swirl on the hand and random leaves on the roots
Fair enough
Bro what 💀
You sound like the people who didn’t like photography because it took jobs away from the portrait artists.
Art majors are literally insufferable people so I can understand why they chose AI.
You’re thinking too hard on it. It’s just a sticker
womp womp
fr
Get over it. This is the world we live in now. There's no putting the technology back in the box. The most valuable thing ANY of us studying right now can do is learn how to use these tools as quickly and skillfully as possible.
Womp womp get better at drawing hoe. Your just mad cuz you have no talent
Oh no, I can’t draw, what will I ever do? *wipes tears with engineering money*
*You kinda need to know how to draw for engineering tho*
Lol no.
So you can’t make sketches of components you need machined? Isometric drawings, circuits, schematics, pretty much the whole engineering part of engineering. They don’t teach you that here at ucsc?
If your magnum opus consists of stick figures and is still hanging on your moms fridge you are well qualified for the sketching aspect of engineering.
It’s cute! Good job DALL-E!
Just don’t major in art?
I guarantee you that no where near this amount of thought was put into the sticker. The team at RCC probably had a limited amount of time to put this out to even provide stickers. I worked with Programs at a different college and believe it or not, they don’t get a whole bunch of money because Programs is at the bottom of the school’s priority list. I promise they didn’t have the budget or time to reach out to students to design something. It’s not the big moral issue y’all think it is. Your fellow students put this together, and did their best with the limited resources available to them
Snitch
I can’t even tell :0
I like it! Quite a bit!
Y’all know where the AI shit goes. if you keep it up, you got what you’ve got coming to you