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They don't. And they may be correct.
Most artists (though not all) are bafflingly ignorant about the workings of generative models, despite hundreds of peoples' good-faith efforts to explain the situation to them in increasingly simple words and accessible illustrations. They recognize AI as an existential threat, and seem to have a purely conflict-theoretical understanding of the situation, to the extent that they just don't care about the truth and intend to gaslight everyone involved, chiefly the voters and the regulators, into accepting the narrative most convenient to them («neural networks are evil big business corporate tools to make pedophilic collages out of stolen copyrighted art») and regulating the very technology out of existence, in the same manner they use when canceling things (including AI) on web platforms and in various communities.
I suspect they have a shot at winning this. After all, generic wokeism can also be described as intellectually vacuous, yet here we are. Trans activists don't have a good case against kiwifarms, yet they've managed to drive it off the internet – now where are all those who were saying it's impossible and sensibly chuckled at doomers like myself? Any comments?
Don't underestimate the power of skin in the game, networking and pestering authorities at scale.
I know it changes by the day and I take your point as to the precarious nature of so much of the centralized risk on the internet but kiwi farms is once again back on the internet. Wokism is indeed powerful and these people are using the same strategy as wokeness, in many cases these are the same people, but this isn't really the kind of thing that is weak to that strategy. Maybe, and a big maybe, they can hamper google and western based research but they can't stop China who would jump at the chance to have a leg up on the US in this field. There just isn't any way.
Alas, if China and crypto is any indication, they will not allow anything that could potentially allow someone with insufficient faith in the Party to make a neural-blend of Esteemed President Xi Jinping with the Hated Honey-Eating Disney Bear. If anything, I expect the Chinese government to be even more vulnerable to its country's artisans lobbying against AI.
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Kiwifarms has been dropped by a number of ISPs and this blockade may well escalate. Certainly they receive less sympathy than their opponents and aren't feared as much.
I wouldn't expect much from China, it took them about 3 years to stop ruining their economy with Zero Covid mandates and roughly 10 times as long to merely begin acting as if they realize the costs of one-child policy. For now they're apparently more concerned about generative AI's potential for depicting Chairman Xi as Pooh (or otherwise unflatteringly), so they're banning non-watermarked images. I've seen Western artists extol this move as a step in the direction of protecting their precious rights.
I do not think any but the most rabid artists are seriously banking on this kind of fundamental triumph (some are very rabid though). They're more or less okay with OpenAI's work and do not notice Google Imagen etc. at all. Their winning scenario has more to do with denying their clientele the opportunity to cut them out, introduction of royalties for centralized AI corporations using datasets with artistic content, prohibition of independent (especially local) end user content generation, and its stigmatization on par with CP content; probably some certified-artist-only subscriptions (in the same vein as access to some scientific data is limited to only .edu emails).
This can succeed and go beyond the domain of art, especially if aided and abetted by other parties interested in centralizing AI tech (e.g. longtermists, national security).
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Kiwifarms is back up on the clearnet now I think. But yeah it's an absolute case of:
https://rdrama.net/e/marseyitsoverwereback.webp
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