I knew a guy that had to come out to his parents (as both gay and a furry) because he set gay furry porn as his lock screen. Not quite sure what the reasoning was there…

How does this have minus one downvote right now? Like, if I downvote it, it goes back up to 41-0.

As an IT person, I’m consistently amazed at what people will do on their work computers if allowed.

At this point, I pretty much assume people don’t fully understand that there’s stuff inside of their computer they can’t instantly see. Unless someone is standing behind you over your shoulder, it’s all totally anonymous, right? /s

A kink? She’s hitting on me? It’s an innocent mistake and I’m just autistic? I dunno, but that’s definitely one of those interactions that I would keep going back to in my head.

“Why are the financial reports from these guys always sticky?”

That reminds me of the Matrix - “You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realise? Ignorance is bliss”

Okay, so does it matter if there’s no actual human you’re connecting to, if the connection seems just as real? We’re deep into philosophy there, and I can’t reasonably expect an answer.

If that’s the whole issue, though, I can be pretty confident it won’t change the commercial realities on the ground. The artist’s studio is then destined to be something that exists only on product labels, along with scenic mixed-animal barnyards. Cypher was unusually direct about it, but comforting lies never went out of style.

That’s kind of how I’ve interpreted OP’s original question here. You could say that’s not a “legitimate” use even if inevitable, I guess, but I basically doubt anyone wants to hear my internet rando opinion on the matter, since that’s all it would be.

Consider the fact that generative AI cannot successfully generate an image of a full glass of wine, since they’re not commonly photographed.

Okay, I have to try this. @aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me a glass of wine.

Hey thanks. When I talk to people who are older now, they might have had a few careers, but it doesn’t generally sound like it was lucrative for them, so much as just necessary. The highest-earning ones became a doctor or an oil company paper-pusher and stuck with it for decades. The thing is, maybe it’s different now, and that’s just because they came up in the 80’s - said teachers basically sold constant adaptability as the best 21st century career skill.

I’m not as old as you, but I’ve had to make a major change of direction once, and I’m basically still in the hole from it. You definitely leave a lot of connections and training and possibilities behind when you do that. I don’t know, maybe you’re considering something that’s adjacent to what you were already doing and won’t be starting from scratch.

OP, I gave a funny sort of answer to the question itself, but it occurs to me that I should address your text separately. If you have options, you absolutely should pursue something you feel a bit of passion for, unless your passions are all hella impractical. The sweet spot is something that allows you to not worry about money, and that you don’t completely hate or even low-key enjoy. Hell jobs that earn a bit extra and being a starving artist that will break in any time now, I swear both get shit reviews (unless done on cocaine).

At 20, something I didn’t realise is that you’re not supposed to “get rich”. I feel like culture sells the idea that we’re all supposed to be Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or something. That’s bullshit, even those guys aren’t what they claim to be, and the messaging about striving for it is basically propaganda to make people like them feel better. I don’t care how smart and amazing you are; real adult life, at it’s best, is about earning x dollars, and spending exactly x dollars on a mix of things today and on investments so you can retire down the road.

Also, you said big jobs “only” make 3x a normal job amount, but where I am in life just an extra 10% a month is basically the difference between two very different situations. 3x someone else’s salary would make the world your oyster. (Although, most people with money get caught in lifestyle creep and never consider what they actually want)

Another thing my teachers explained to me, but not very well, is that it’s hard to know what you enjoy doing up front. Expect to change courses, not because it’s helpful (it’s rarely so), but because you basically have to as you gradually get the hang of things.

Are there alternative career paths to good pay than being really good at something really specific?

Hazardous jobs, shift work, really unpleasant (even evil) jobs. Education still blows them out of the water, though. IIRC most degree holders eventually earn more than an underwater welder or ice road trucker. Other than that, there is no free lunch. The only way to make money for nothing involves having a much larger sum of money to put in up front.

Edit: Oh, I should also mention the college brochures are full of lies. Most people probably know that, but I was dumb enough to take them sort of seriously. A thousand words of that stuff is worth a couple of sentences water cooler talk on a website like this.

I feel like the indistinguishability implied by this undercuts the communicative properties of the human art, no? I suppose AI might not be able to make a coherent Banksy, but not every artist is Banksy.

If you can’t tell if something was made by Unstable or Rutkowski, isn’t it fair to say either neither work has soul (or a message), or both must?

Big fat goose egg 0. A lot of people I talk to don’t even know what Reddit is, really.

In creative works like writing or art, it feels soulless and poor quality. In programming at best it’s a shortcut to avoid deeper learning, at worst it spits out garbage code that you spend more time debugging than if you had just written it by yourself.

I’d actually challenge both of these. The property of “soulessness” is very subjective, and AI art has won blind competitions. On programming, it’s empirically made faster by half again, even with the intrinsic requirement for debugging.

It’s good at generating things. There are some things we want to generate. Whether we actually should, like you said, is another issue, and one that doesn’t impact anyone’s bottom line directly.