> AI placeholders during development as it can majorly speed up/unblock

Zero-effort placeholders have existed for decades without GenAI, and were better at the job. The ideal placeholder gives an idea of what needs to go there, while also being obvious that it needs to be replaced. This [1] is an example of an ideal placeholder, and it was made without GenAI. It's bad, and that's good!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1l9j2kz/new_amazi...

A GenAI placeholder fails at both halves of what a placeholder needs to do. There's no benefit for a placeholder to be good enough to fly under the radar unless you want it to be able to sneak through.

I've actually considered hiring artists to help me out a few times too under sort of comparable circumstances? I could use AI to generate basic assets, and then hire artists for the real work! More work for artists, better quality for me. Unfortunately, I fear I'd get yelled at (possibly as a traitor to both sides?)

Frankly, in the wider debate, I think engagement algorithms are partially to blame. Nuanced approaches don't get engagement, so on every topic everyone is split into two or more tribes yelling at each other. Folks in the middle who just want to get along have a hard time.

(Present company excepted of course. Dang is doing a fine job!)

I've never liked the argument that there's some imaginary line between the acceptibility of AI as a tool for creating art and Photoshop/Krita/Procreate/etc as a tool for creating art.

Rubbing a brush on a canvas was good enough for the renaissance masters, why are we collectively okay with modern "artists" using "virtual brushes" and trivializations of the expressive experience like "undo" when it's not "real art" because they're leaning so heavily on the uncaring unthinking machine and the convenience in creation it offers rather than suffering through the human limitations that the old masters did? Are photographers not artists too then, because they're not actually creating, just instead capturing a view of what's already there?

The usual response to this is some trite response about how AI is 'different' because you're 'just' throwing prompts at it and its completely creating the output itself -- as if it's inconceivable that there might be someone who doesn't just shovel out raw outputs from an AI and call it 'art' and is instead actually using it in a contributatory role on a larger composition that they, themselves, as a human, are driving and making artistic decisions on.

E33 is a perfect example here. Is the artistic merit of the overall work lessened by it having used AI in part of its creation? Does anyone really, truly believe that they abdicated their vision on the overall work to machines?

Just because someone can drag and drop to draw a circle in an image editing app instead of using their own talent and ability to freehand it instead doesn't mean what they then go on to do with that circle isn't artistic.

We do make this argument all the time though. Film is probably the number one example in my mind. After actors, we celebrate directors more than any other individual in film. Directors often don’t write the script. They don’t handle the camera or the lighting or sound. They don’t create the music. They don’t do the editing in post. They don’t do the acting. But they do direct all of the people doing those things to achieve an overall vision, and we recognize that has significant artistic merit. Directors are not artists, or cinematographers, or composers, or actors, or visual effects artists, or sound technicians. But they are still artists, because art is more than the technical skill to produce something.

I dislike this argument only when taken to the extreme 'GenAI allows anyone to create arts'. It's like saying 'Ikea allow anyone to be a woodworker'!

I love debating, but I want debate to learn things, not to walk people into traps.

Obviously the woodworker is a person. And you would be on a team that has woodworking as part of their skillset.

But the way you set up your reductio-ad-absurdum it can be read as implying the AI is a person too. O:-)

You know what, rather than just going for a flip rhetorical takedown, what if we took that implication seriously for a second?

What if you did mean to argue that (the) AI is a proto-person. Say you argue that they deserve to be in the credits as a (junior?) member of the team. That'd be wild! A really interesting framing, which I haven't heard before.

Or the weaker version: Use said framing pro-forma as a (practical?) legal fiction. We already have rules on (C) attribution. It might be a useful framing to untangle some of the spaghetti.