A good artist is just as expensive as a good programmer. Commissioning art is expensive. Outsourcing to third world countries is cheaper (just like programming!).
> A good artist is just as expensive as a good programmer.
Let's look at industry, and just go look at what video game artists make compared to programmers with a similar amount of experience. Now, are you just claiming that they just aren't very good artists, so they aren't paid well? Because I've seen their work, and its not shabby at all.
Video game companies are a special case (even for programmers). They work people to the bone for lower pay because people are passionate about video games, but the common denominator there is gamers wanting to get into the industry—not being an artist or programmer.
> Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable.
Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them.
> One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it."
This is because they don't view programming as a "creative" form of labor. I think this is an incorrect view, but this knowledge is at least useful in weighting their opinions.
The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. Their stated preference is they don't want any AI anywhere, but their revealed preference is they'll continue to spend money as long as the product is good. Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.
That’s the thing. One day everyone is going to just stop caring about being anti-AI. Already I’ve noticed that most people are only against other people’s use of AI. Their use is justified.
I actively don’t use AI because the results are unreliable or ugly. I’m just not against AI in principle. It’s funny that my position is considered contemptible by people who regularly use AI but are hard hardliners against it on moral grounds.
Remember when everything wasn’t a religious war? Actually, I don’t. It was always like this and it’s always going to be like this. Just one forever crusade after another.
I am going to sound cynical, but I strongly believe that everyone's view on AI is contaminated by ulterior motives, and a lot of people are not truthful with themselves about their positions on AI. For instance, I feel as though topics such as copyright, environmentalism, water use, etc., that have been thrust into the limelight are being pushed by people who didn't care about these issues 5-10 years ago, but decided to start clutching their pearls about it now. Particularly copyright; everyone was so okay with pirating movies, apps, music when it benefited them, but now they are the vanguard in enforcing other people's copyright on data they don’t even own.
> everyone was so okay with pirating movies, apps, music when it benefited them, but now they are the vanguard in enforcing other people's copyright on data they don’t even own.
You do not mention the perception of asymmetric legal and market power. Many people think that file sharing Disney movies is ok, but Google scraping the art of independent artists to create AI is not ok. That is not the same dynamic at all as not caring about copyright, and then suddenly caring about copyright.
Suddenly people change their tune, what gives? All we are talking about is the forced wealth transfer of trillions of dollars to the richest megacorps on the planet.
Most people didn't choose to be part of your moon shot death cult. Only the people at the tippy top of the pyramid get golden parachutes off Musk's exploding rocket.
They never changed their position, corpos shouldn't get any money! That's always been the position. They are inherently unethical meat grinders.
> Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them.
I agree that this is often the case. I still see Games Workshop as an exception. They could have moved plastic production to a cheaper region (e.g. China), but they haven't done so. Financials are obviously important to them, but they're being very careful and thoughtful about their actions. This AI ban is just another showcase of that.
The UK production is mostly about speed (turnaround from 3d prototype, to mold, to finished sprue, and ‘Eavy Metal painted promo images) and quality control for the models. All of their paper and hard plastic products (books, dice, etc) are produced in China.
> The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. ... Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.
how can you go and generalize about these people, calling them idiots (that's what "deep of an opinion" means, even if you don't say that), and then breathlessly engage in the exact same rhetoric?
> The AI goldrush has proven that intellectual property laws are null and void. Money is all that matters.
Indeed they never really mattered. They were a tool for large corporations to make money and they will go away if they can no longer serve such purpose. Anyone that thought there was a real moral or ethical basis to "intellectual property" laws fell for propaganda and got scammed as a result.
I see "hackers" in these comments are now advocating to make "criminal contempt of business model" a serious thing, instead of a mere meme used to describe draconian copyright and patent laws.
It's a reddit alternative hosted by a venture capitalist firm, the startup culture is much more prevalent here than the hacker culture that inspires the website's <title> tag.
> But they can't do-
You can just do things as long as no one physically stops you. I think that's been the theme of 2025.
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