As a software engineer and artist[1], my views on art and generative AI have been evolving.
In my opinion, GenAI has revealed that the art isn't primarily in the creation, but in the selection. It used to take incredible talent to create something worth selecting (writing, painting, sculpture, etc), so creation and selection were often so close to be seen as indistinguishable. A technically skilled artist was likely to create something great, because they were likely making high quality selective decisions all along the creation process. So the end result of a gifted writer was probably a high quality work.
But now the creation of technically skilled works has become detached from the selection process. Now we're flooded with technically skilled work, but no selection. But the selection process is still critical to make something compelling and innovative. The artist needs to evolve to inject themselves into selective decisions of GenAI, both in the process and in selecting the final result.
Underappreciated comment right there. The idea about selection vs creation was on my mind, but I wasn't able to put the idea into a solid form as you did there. Thanks.
Their wealth is tied up in stock whose value is tied to the perception, aka the accountability, of the general public. Not being able to personally destroy someone's wealth because you don't like what they're doing is different from being unaccountable. If tomorrow Zuck released an AI model or FB feature that was deeply unpopular, his ventures and personal wealth would dwindle according to the market's reaction. That's accountability. I'm not even a fan of Zuck... he's a slimy weasel who changes his tune to whoever is in power. But public perception directly affects his decision making.
Reminds me of the Bill Gates quote when Steve Jobs accused him of stealing the ideas of Windows from Mac:
Well, Steve... I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.
Xerox could be seen as Google, whose researchers produced the landmark Attention Is All You Need paper, and the general public, who provided all of the training data to make these models possible.
Saved money are also injected back into the economy. They aren’t stored under the mattress. They are in banks, where they are lent out, spent and invested, creating jobs, buying goods and services.
You're only 1/3 right. Saved money isn't lent, nor spent (lending is just creating money). It's invested, 95% in the secondary market (probably more in the US). If the secondary market isn't correlated to actual production (and nowadays, it actually isn't, even in mining, prospecting and future are the main beneficiaries, which to me is crazy. One of the only exceptions is the energy sector), that money won't create real jobs.
Re-invest in crypto or other, already-existing stocks.
The secondary market is so huge nowadays, and uncorrelated from dividends, mainly because growth (followed by regular buybacks), not dividends, is now the main way to pay investors, but not only. In fact, what Jacques Richard call "futuristic accounting" (his research is available in english [0]) is basically helping big companies to decorrelate real profits from dividends.
> Re-invest in crypto or other, already-existing stocks.
Again, for a stock to be on the market, somebody has to do the economic activity to create & bring it there. Buying from that "someone" pumps the money back in the economy. Buying from another, previous, stocks owner just moves the situation to him.
Kind of like when you pay your retailer for the product on the shelf: there are certain delays but eventually the money has to reach the product builder, with each participant in the production & logistics chain keeping his share on the way.
This is simple, trivial logic and no amount of biased, ideological "research" can change it.
You're right, eventually an investor exit his position to buy newly issued shares or obligations, which in theory should be used to increase production.
What I'm saying is twofold: most of the money is invested in purely financial products, not production. Two examples: I'm not against futures, I think it's a good idea to stabilise farmers income. But when you have twice as much money in futures, twice as much investments in agritech, and the same agricultural output, can I say that money had no impact in production? Also,just look at the state of mining companies, or rather, where new money is invested. A lot is in new prospecting companies with 'AI' or 'blockchain' in their website. In the same time, new mines open less frequently, despite a huge increase in investment. Am I allowed to say that investment in this sector is decorrelated from actual production?
That's my first point. My second was that the new accounting 'technique' (futuristic accounting) used by some companies (PE, but probably others) is used to issue dividends uncorrelated from profit (thus uncorrelated from production).
Also I don't want to enter a boxing match, just confronting point of views, and I don't care that you didn't read about the specific of futuristic accounting, it's about accounting, I understand. But don't call ideological something you did not read next time.
The only point I am addressing here is the claim that invested money is not injected back in the economy.
Where exactly do you think invested money goes, if not in economy? Please be specific. Give concrete examples.
No boxing match, just trying to understand your point. I know nothing about mining sector and I have no clue what the connection with your “futuristic accounting” is.
But still less than if the federal employee was providing any ROI whatsoever on their salary. Why not instead talk about which federal departments (or agencies) provide an ROI, and how that can be measured in a nonpartisan way.
(In any case, US federal debt interest payments will be ~$952b in 2025, out of $7.5 trillion budget. That's >> more than the $271b on total salaries for all civilian employees (or the $4.7 trillion tax cuts which expire end 2025). So, intentionally crippling the federal govt still wouldn't touch either the debt or interest payments; except as a blunt instrument to kill govt programs and bypass Congress.)
In my opinion, GenAI has revealed that the art isn't primarily in the creation, but in the selection. It used to take incredible talent to create something worth selecting (writing, painting, sculpture, etc), so creation and selection were often so close to be seen as indistinguishable. A technically skilled artist was likely to create something great, because they were likely making high quality selective decisions all along the creation process. So the end result of a gifted writer was probably a high quality work.
But now the creation of technically skilled works has become detached from the selection process. Now we're flooded with technically skilled work, but no selection. But the selection process is still critical to make something compelling and innovative. The artist needs to evolve to inject themselves into selective decisions of GenAI, both in the process and in selecting the final result.
1. https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253