What is the instrument?

I'm not sure if this is a metaphor, or genuine. But if it's genuine I'm very curious to know what this instrument is!

If it's a metaphor, I think it's a good one. We build, design, draw, and create, with the hope that we make the world a better place in some small way. The person that invented the abacus did so, because they wanted to do mathematics easier. Should those have come before been offended that their years and years of doing math on their fingers was now being stolen and simplified?

This is the march of progress. And it fucking SUCKS that people are being hurt by it. I fully advocate for universal basic income, free education, and fully funded career transitions, because technology will never slow down, and people need to feel comfortable in order to embrace it.

Oh for fucks sake, why is it the people worst at claiming fallacies are always the first to try to use them. No, this is neither a strawman, nor is it moving the goalposts. If I was moving the goalposts, I would have to create a new justification that could never be actually reached. What I did, was a clarification to counter a bad-faith interpretation.

My point was ALWAYS "This thing would not exist without AI." Not that it was impossible to exist without it, but that the requirements for its creation exceed what the average person can be reasonably assumed to possess. The average person doesn't have access to a multi-million dollar studio, and you taking my clarification as an attempt to move the goalposts is an admission to your own strawman attempt, not me moving the goalposts.

As for claiming I'm building a strawman, again, you're wrong. At worst it would be a non sequitur, as it was an assessment built upon a series of questions. You can claim "No, that reasoning doesn't follow the logic," but a strawman is when I actively argue against a position you don't hold, which is what you did.

And it's not even a non sequitur, it's just displaying your actual beliefs in a non-flattering light, which was the entire point.

People are using LLMs to express their creativity due to lack of skill in the creative arts. Painting, drawing, sketching, all of these skills take years of practice to get good at. Up until now, when people had in image in their minds eye, they either had to scour the Internet for someone that had already made that thing, pay someone else to make it for them, spend years learning the skill, or... Just never make it.

Whether you like it or not, these models ARE enabling people to express their creativity in ways that were gated behind money, or years of practice.

Whether you like it or not, demanding a total cessation of their use, is definitionally calling for the restriction on how people express themselves artistically. You don't like the framing, because your pseudo position is being a champion of artists and the downtrodden, but my argument is that it's actually just a purity position built on tribal identity and emotion.

And because I can feel your argument building already...

It would be a strawman to pivot to "What about the Grok stuff!" Or "What about all the copywrite infringement!" Which are both genuine issues that exist, nor am I defending them or justifying them AT ALL. But they're unrelated to the specific point that I am making and was brought up in this thread.

Demanding a universal ban/cessation is inherently restricting people's ability to express themselves. It's claiming a tool is offensive or inherently dirty because of unrelated ways in which it has been abused, or used to hurt people. You cannot simultaneously demand inclusivity and accessibility be universal, while also cherry picking specific areas that it's okay to gatekeep.

Should my nephew with cerebral palsy be insulted and admonished for not learning how to draw his DnD characters properly? Because that is genuinely what is happening from MANY people in this toxic purity movement. Or artists such as this that don't use AI, but still get these purity police on their ass accusing them of it nonetheless.