crunchysteve

I follow 2 newsletters, the above-mentioned authors. I confess, I read them because they align with my values:- Mary promotes artistic independence, particularly in the music business, while Ed calls out the excesses of growth capitalism, particularly in the snake oil of Silicon Valley. These might seem widely disparate topics, but they're very much relevant, each to the other.

Lets start with Ed. I wouldn't say he's a socialist or anti capitalist, like me, but he is a journalist who observes and calls out the hype and lies of industrial tech, the so-called "silicon snake oil" in topics like AI, web search and other technologies, new and established that we rely on heavily, or will rely in heavily as they develop and become more accessible. This is important stuff, especially Ed's writings, of late, regarding key players in artificial intelligence, Open AI and Meta.

Meanwhile, Mary is an advocate for musicians to retain ownership of their brand, espousing the ideal of "1000 True Fans" enabling an artist to remain unsigned and still make a comfortable, middle class living from their art. Again, this is important stuff.

In Australia, APRA/AMCOS is the songwriters/composers' representative body that collects royalties. Every time an Australian radio station or streamer plays a tune and does their copyright returns, APRA/AMCOS collects about a cent per play (plus some for costs) and holds these moneys for distribution to songwriter/composer members. This kind of thing happens across the world in music.

I have no recording label, yet I have had songs get airplay and have received some very tiny royalties from radio and TV. At my peak, enough for a beer or 2. Spotify has unilaterally decided that artists are only worth 4% of this 1c figure, only pay out at all if you've had 1000 plays in a month and won't let you draw on those funds unless they're more than US$50 in total. The music industry meets the tech sector, decides to set a price and, pardon my "french", fucks over the artist. Capitalism in the arts is a warning for humanity about capitalism on the factory floor. Industry is not simply trying to screw down your wages anymore, they're going to starve you to death and steal your property while doing it. Artificial intelligence is the key to achieving this, hence my interest in both Mary's advocacy and Ed's investigations.

The relationship between Spotify and the music industry started off vexed, but the two business models found common ground, ripping the majority of artists off by locking a most of these artists into shady deals, in the name of searching for "stars", all the while making more money for shareholders than for the artists. For every star you've heard of, the record industry holds rights to the music of 1000s you never have heard of, and never will, because they are working to control competition in music. Spotify took this to a deeper level through a copyright loophole, involving playlisting, that allowed them to bottom dollar music. If you're "Tay-Tay", you can make a quid, if you're "Crunchy" they can steal your music forever.^*

How this relates to Ed Zitron's writing about AI and the tech sector is that Spotify and other streamers are an experiment in devaluing the cost of labour in popular music, a sector where eager youngsters are sold dreams of fame and fortune and have their art and cultural contributions locked away to increase the value of already known artists. In the AI sector, they're trying to replace artists altogether, with the long view of replacing labour altogether. If you think the bosses and the workers should be friends, it's literally not possible. The bosses' enemy is the cost of labour, the workers' enemy is the cost of living. The venture capitalist bosses are investing big in AI, search and streaming media because they want to kill labour. Maybe most , not literally kill labour, but I would not be surprised, considering how mouthy against even moderates that Musk has been of late, that he and others of an ilk might secretly dream of literally killing workers. It's OK, we're a long way from that... ...right?

Ed's big bugbear right now is the headlong rush to roll out AI in every sector, despite it still being quite flawed, severely under-regulated in almost every way and the fact that the focus is entirely on shareholder benefit, not human benefit. AI art is hyped as a new genre. AI for medecine is grossly overhyped. AI in web search, seemingly harmless enough, is also seemingly unable to tell the difference between truth and lies. Never mind the energy and carbon pollution crises AI data centres are beginning to exacerbate. But the hype continues, from the absurdity of "the skynet threat" on one side to the "wonderful world of never having to think for yourself."

And I see Mary's concerns about the rights of artists to make a living crossing over into Ed's concerns about why so much money is being thrown at rolling out a laboratory curio tech into real world applications. Why are people who want to make a profit chasing such a risky venture?! What does Daniel Ek and Spotify have in common with Altman and OpenAI? They both want to eliminate the labour cost from production. That is what the headlong rush to AI arts and AI production is all about - cultural control and the obsolescence of the proletariat!

So today, Mary wrote about a pile-on by the online music community on a musician and motivator for using AI artwork. The perfect became the enemy of the good and Mary points this out so well. We in the arts sector have always been hand to mouth, but for the rare few "stars", so we have to shortcut our costs. One such artist, in creating a tool for his fellow artists, a set of motivations/inspirational cards as a tool for creativity rituals, used AI art to illustrate the prompts - got himself a new arsehole ripped by, so-called supporters. Mary leapt to his defence, in the spirit of solidarity, but the harm is done before we realise the pile-on is even happening.

At that point I suddenly realised, this is exactly what the AI CEOs want, worker turning on worker. An arts community pick on a member of that community for trying to make a quid while trying to create and contribute, because the victim of the pile-on had to make cost compromises - AI generated artworks. Perfection as an ideal became the enemy of the good being done by a practical act.

The AI mavens are laughing all the way to the bank - we artists taking a side in a fight, gave a heap of free publicity to AI tooling. We showed our mercuriality and how that makes using AI for music or images in industry because it's cheaper and less volatile than a human artist. Altman and Zuckerberg, et al, are working to dehumanise the workforce - literally! Working to remove humans from production. Working to dehumanise we at the bottom to each other. "You used AI art! Traitor! Satan!!!"

"But I need to at least make my costs back, I'm an arts worker, too!"

"No you're not! You didn't employ a human artist to handle what you couldn't do!!!"

"Should I starve? Should I go out backwards?!"

"Yes, and because you didn't choose to starve, you're a thief!"

The real class treachery here is not the producer using AI, the class treachery is in not offering to help with rights share on future projects. The real class treachery is criticising another while not examining one's own imperfection. And the mavens of AI are loving it. They're rubbing their hands together in glee at yet again dividing the workers, creating discord, and they now know that the have to hype AI even more.

Class struggle is still a struggle, but we need to unite, not take sides against each other. We need to fight the evil of greed, not fight each other. An independent artist making a tool as a side-hustle isn't a class traitor for using AI, they are our comrade, scratching to make a living and a reputation. If you spoke up against Andrew Huang, that was an act of class treachery. If you condemn any artist trying to maximise their already meagre income, you might as well condemn yourself for the same thing, because the real enemy is capital, especially those sinking all their capital into tools that not only do they want to ultimately replace we arts workers completely, they want it to starve us and turn us against each other that we might eliminate ourselves. Great own goal this week, artists.