MidwesternRobot

Human - most definitely not a robot

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@SnoutUp Yeah - I’ve always wanted to experience a holodeck personally. But you don’t have to enjoy them. Nothing more subjective

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@RedHotBlaziken Nobody is forcing you to use AI?

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@ThunderStoic @Senpaisaysbye They’re an angry bunch, grasping as straws now. I get it ppl are really angry about the tech revolution. I’m just surprised at how many are running out into this tsunami and pinching the water.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Oh yeah, if it’s behind a digital screen or glowing rectangle, are forever changed. I can’t change that, it’s a tsunami bigger than all of us.

I don’t regret gaining those skills, yes they’re being rendered obsolete but they make me a better thinker and designer. Life is a process of forever learning. I forge ahead.

But there’s still a market for real art. I’m just not gonna go looking for art on a computer anymore. I want to see it done. Local orchestra, live performance etc.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@QuannumLogic I appreciate your take on it. Good news is nobody is forcing you to use any AI! Lots of ppl find it useful.

Digital art is pretty much changed though. We have holodecks now.

But you can give everyone online the middle finger and do oil painting today, do it!

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Seriously - then start a business that works in your style of artwork from from Al. Sell it as such. But try not to be bitter… or you’ll find the next years very depressing.

Reframe. We have holodecks now. Use them for everything but the parts you care about.

Or get offline. Real art is at art shows and local theater anyway. Good luck

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Yah. But in fairness they’re saying it’s inevitable because it is… barring cataclysm. You can’t go back in time and prevent the atom’s split either, or the wheel, or internal combustion, or printing presses, or the internet itself.

I wonder when ppl around here will move out of denial phase and confront our new operational reality. Or maybe they won’t and will be miserable, but that’s sad.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@DrewPavlou Because 3D modeling is fun and hands on and you can be more prescriptive?

Hybrid: use AI as an assistant. Your model.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@_chinnyi You can do both! Don’t limit yourself.

We have proto-holodecks now.

No need to be bitter, it can’t be a fun way to move about the modern era. And hang in there!

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Fair. I get the “theft” frame is emotionally salient and many gen-AI models were not trained ethically.

But the point is moot now. Adobe Firefly was trained on licensed material and it is powerful and useful. We aren’t going to untrain the ones that did.

The theft frame also seems a little paralyzing at this point. I can’t just sit in a bitter puddle when I ultimately need to adapt and keep finding a way to make a living in a changing world.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@Azadux @Flat2VR @michaelybecker @ShinyQuagsire Nice 👍— great idea

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Yeah. Now… if this leads to an AI with some hubs of synthetic nervous systems… persistent cognitive processes running on specialized hardware. Episodic memory. Quantum computers for training.

Yeah then we’ll talk. Right now we have pattern resequencers… really good ones, but pattern resequencers nevertheless

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@Grummz It’s a combination of external accounts/bots and behind the scene influence and genuine pro/anti-AI “camps.” But it’d be disingenuous to imply it’s not also a very real, defendable apprehension over AI in the United States.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@GohilHardy I can't say I'm angling for a viral following with my posts - but this seems like good advice for the folks who are

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

@unawakeful5224 @LeeGrimmAuthor @Viper04191 Can of worms - but fulfillment can't be found behind a glowing rectangle. It's in community, food, gardens, theater... it's out-fucking-side.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

Those skills are irreplaceable. No experience is wasted - especially learning a complex program like Blender. You use AI to assist in your creations - you aren't "vibe coding," you are being prescriptive and leveraging a very competent assistant. Your workflows, your models, faster - more efficient. And good luck!

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

I understanding many are grieving the pre-AI world, but you have this weird cultural moment where a collect of people think it entitles them to be pricks. And then you have an army of vibe coders ready to troll them back. It's really quite annoying and probably time for folks (myself included) to block the rabble rousers and stay focused on the useful threads here about the tools/work.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

I find it interesting that the X conversation around AI is 90 percent about generative AI images/video/songs. I find that stuff to be the least useful or interesting in the conversation... yet it sucks all the oxygen and it's miniscule.

I'm also not as worried about art as a whole. I really hope people enmass stop looking for art behind digital screens and go to local theater, art shows, commission work.

I'm a broken record on this but AI has been beating chessmasters for decades and we still watch Magnus Carlson and play the game.

[MidwesternRobot @midwesternrobot]

I just can't cede the point. Very necessary and simply false for custom applications/complex integrations/backend systems... and accessibility/liability, deployment, etc. etc... tools are very good in *assisting* here but AI is not replacing human judgement (will see how Astra plays out though - my tests with it show it is exceptional).

Now a small org might decide to bring digital/comms fully in-house so they can be more nimble and experimental. Firm loses a client; someone gains a job. More information. More demand. That's how it *seems* to be going from my view.

But you said: "most of the people who just want a little website" so I agree with you there, but those people pre-AI might've used Squarespace or Wix or paid someone a few hundred dollars to set up a Wordpress or Shopify instance. And certainly not enough to say that the field is dead... but it's hard to predict the next five years.