It's truly a tragic state of affairs. As far as I can tell these people are WEF acolytes and dream of the "You'll own nothing and be happy " paradigm. So it seems in line with their disdain for property rights. We must fight back, however. Build property and hold onto it. I made a deliberate choice to depart form the digital long ago when I started Armature Nine in 2012 because I felt the digital world going in a toxic direction. It seems more important than ever for us to return to grass roots involvement and building local relationships and fostering local businesses and local growth. My hope is to get as many figures out into the world for people to have in their hands before they pull the plug. Having something physical that you can touch with your hands, seems more valuable than ever to me.

Indeed! This technology could usher in a sort of entrepreneurial renaissance by empowering everyday people to forge their own paths, provided regulations don't stifle its potential with a restrictive 'AI power for me but not for thee' approach. Regarding the layoffs, do you think AI may be the direct cause? Even if not, it certainly seems poised to have an impact. As you mentioned, companies might increasingly seek only the top talent, reducing the need for the lower 80%. To be fair, this trend was already in motion with the rise of outsourcing abroad. However, with AI, even the need for outsourcing might diminish, potentially leading to the obsolescence of all entry-level roles in favor of positions like prompt artists, prompt engineers, and prompt assistants. Ultimately, it might be those who ask the best questions and possess the finest discernment who will thrive in the future, while traditional notions of talent and skill could become relics of a bygone era. And if that's the case, Shouldn't we at least pause for a moment and talk about this loss? Even grieve? This thing called "progress" never seems to give us the opportunity to feel what we lose in the process and as a species we just burry our emotions from one generation to the next. I don't think this is healthy for us. And largely why I feel it's important to have this conversation.

@@Armaturenine I don't think AI has much to do with it. It can't really create concept art. The best you can do with it is to generate ideas and then you would have to clean it up and make sketches based off of it. That's what everybody in the gaming industry says. And they also won't risk using it because of the copyright. That's why steam bands the use of it. As soon as they see anything AI they immediately take it down. I believe there's just a lot of artists now compared to what there was before and a lot less projects. So the few projects that there are they want the highest quality so they only seek out 8/10 People for the job. In comparison to 5 to 10 years ago there was a lot more projects so they would give the jobs to people who 6 or 7/10. The top freelance people have even had to lower their rates. They used to like charge like $1,000 an hour. Now they have to charge around $700. And because there's not enough projects, they're outsourcing a lot of the work to third world countries. So they'll pay somebody in Germany or Africa or India $200 an hour. The companies are saving a lot of money and $200 an hour is a lot of money to someone in Africa. And the quality of their work is just as good or even better than the people who are living here, so they usually go with out sourcing

@@williammclean6594 I'm not sure concept artists ever made $1K an hour XD. I think most are making $30-50/hr (salaried positions). And at the very top (non-salary) maybe $150/hr.

@@Armaturenine Oh, I was mostly like talking about freelance artists that companies hire. Like the top ones that live in LA that get calls from the major studios. That's what they usually charge. They're not on contract. They only work for like a couple days for a company. So they're charging for the piece. Not really an hourly thing. It's like those famous artists. If you go on their website, that's what they usually charge for a commission about $800 for a drawing because they can't be bothered with $50 commissions. It's just not worth it to them

@@williammclean6594 I see. Well these are very much a tiny minority of professional artists. They're more like celebrities (Craig Mullins, Ralph McQuarrie, John Howe, etc). Not something most professional artists can relate to. I can certainly see how individuals like them whom have cachet in an industry will be fairly safe from AI though I wonder if they're the last of a generation. I can imagine a future where we may have new artists that will develop the same level of cachet but by building their own custom proprietary neural networks for new and innovative forms of art. So you don't believe most professional artists jobs in the games industry will be disrupted by AI? Concept artists may not be using the technology but art directors will and probably be able to avoid needing to hire concept artists to begin with. Don't you think? They'll be able to get around the issue with copyright by training their own internal neural networks on artwork their former artists have done for them over decades. I would think one has to be careful (as an employee) because it wouldn't surprise me if companies start to covertly train on people's work at the office until they have everything they need and then let them go. Kind of like when they would have domestic workers train foreign replacements and then they'd let the locals go. Scary stuff.