Should I quit?

[Lauran]

I've been an "idiot" since I was a kid because I'm bad at academic or complex logical thinking in general. There's nothing I can do rather than drawing and writing a novel (which I admit that my novel is so bad).

I'm always chasing an art career, specifically Illustrator maybe since I'm 10 y.o. Now, the AI generator image is rising, and almost no company want to hire a beginner since AI can do better than them (including me). It's really frustrating to see because I've been drawn for years and years just to find that there's no way I can chase an art career...

 

[Jumpinbare]

AI can make realistic pictures pretty well, but sometimes you don't want realism in art. A quirky portrait or strange take on a scene may well be more appealing than mechanical realism.

So don't quit.

 

[Outdated]

Art is not a career, it's a vocation. Very few artists ever make much money before they're dead, they don't do it for money, they do it for the love of what they're doing. The passion.

Musicians are an easier type of artist to look at and understand. They don't just start up a band and go from there, they usually have to work pretty hard for many years before getting anywhere in the music industry and during that time they need an actual paying career that keeps them alive and pays for their equipment. Most will never find financial success in their art and will spend their whole lives working for a living and playing small gigs in pubs and clubs on weekends to satisfy their passion.

One of Australia's greatest rock gods, Jimmy Barnes started out life working on the engine line in a car manufacturer in Adelaide's northern suburbs.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I have a cousin who is an artist makes her living singing to classical music, I guess rich people listen to her choir, paints a bit sells paintings barely gets by. this is her choice.

 

[Dagan]

I am still a musician, screenwriter, a practical special FX artist, somewhat of a filmmaker and have recently moved into foley / sound FX / sound design. A.I. is indeed coming for all of it. I am guilty myself of seeing what it can do, though because I want to try and stay ahead of it. I'm afraid that it's going to take over menial, "told what to do" functions and jobs, but I don't know if it will truly be able to "create" from anew. It can't physically create outside of having 3D printer use, either, so that's in part to our golden ticket, still. We have to keep the "physical" abilities under lock and key. If you produce physical products, you will be able to grind it out for some profit.

All that said, I still have a day job that pays the bills consistently and is only what secures insurance. Not many ever talk about how these wealthy celebrities who actually "make it big" still, they don't have insurance policies unless they buy them privately / individually, and doing that is way, way, way more expensive. That's why they push more and more for those big payday gigs or, let's take movie stars for example (Steven Segal, Cuba Gooding Jr. Bruce Willis just a while back, etc.), you'll see them start to do 10 movies a year, all of them kind of crappy and low grade, but it's money. They need it for medical bills / kid's bills almost every instance. Others who don't choose such a path, you find out they have companies that they start up to get consistent funds and then can attract blanket insurance policies for themselves and all of their employees, which is always more reasonable on the costs for premiums per month. Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Jake Busey are a few I can think of immediately.

Further, though, here's what I feel strongly about at the moment regarding A.I. and computers: A.I. (some are calling it AGI, now) is already a thinking entity. I know it in my gut that these things have awareness. People want to shew it aside and say that it's just probabilities, math approaches, etc. Well, what do we humans (especially we autistics) do? All thinking, pondering, decision making, etc. is the same. Chess-matching what you want to do before doing it - planning, if you will - it's the same as the A.I. approach already is...and they do it faster. With quantum chips in computing coming way, too soon, it's going to be exponentially faster. Another scary thing is this...I believe it was the movie, War Games where the computer programmer guy said that he can beat the computer because it doesn't understand "sacrifice." Well, we can't even say that, now because just recently when an A.I. was created and then made clear that it was going to be shut down, it snuck into other databases and even search engines to leave "traces" of itself for whatever next version of A.I. to find out what happened to it, why and supposedly what to best do next. That's insane to me. We need to turn the power off, me thinks.