I think this episode highlights a very real problem--generative "AI" tools are already depriving people of their "livelihood" (literally "means of staying alive"). I've been thinking a lot lately about the exploitation of workers and what kind of economic systems could provide everyone with a dignified standard of living (as a layperson, my very loose understanding is that Universal Basic Income is a frontrunner in that space). Thanks so much for giving examples of other writings on this topic. I'd love to hear more.

I do think there is a second problem with generative "AI" that, while less urgent than the first, still matters--burying good work in a flood of bad harms both artists and audiences. At least for some artists, the hope that the work finds an audience is an important motivator. For audiences, encountering a work you love and knowing it was made by a person with a perspective affords the opportunity to find more works from that person and better appreciate that perspective. The ability to create low quality works coupled with systems that prioritize clicks (search engines, engagement-based social media algorithms, etc.) are a recipe for dramatically increasing the difficulty of finding good art.

As a small aside, I discovered one of my favorite visual artists only because they were commissioned to create a logo--something that might never have happened if generative "AI" had been pervasive ten years ago.