"LLMs allow anyone to generate — automatically and freely (or very cheaply) — text that they would otherwise pay writers to create" My heart bleeds for them 🙄
That new technology is going to make it harder for us to earn income. As if automation and other improvements over the years hasn't diminished other positions and they should somehow be protected at the cost of improvements for everyone as a whole
Do any of these authors use a word processor? Because that would be displacing the job of a skilled typist.
Technological progress is disruptive and largely unavoidable. Loosing your livelihood to a machine isn't fun, I don't dispute that. But the fact of that didn't stop the industrial revolution, the automobile, the internet, or many other technological shifts. Those who embraced them reaped a lot benefits however.
Technology is also often unpredictable. The AI hype train should not be taken at face value, and at this point we can't say if generative AI systems will ever really "replace" human artistry at all, especially at the highest of levels. But technology such as LLMs do not have reach that level to still be useful for other applications, and if the tech is killed on unfounded fear mongering we could loose all of it.
Also they're not going to lose their livelihoods. They might lose a little bit of money, but honestly even that I doubt.
We are still going to need humans to create creative works and as much as Hollywood reckons they're going to replace actors with AI. They're still going to need humans to write the scripts unless they can convince everyone that formulaic predictable nonsense is the new hotness.
Creative works is probably the only industry that will ultimately actually be safe from the AI, not because AI can't be creative, but because humans want humans to be creative. We put special value on human created works. That's why people object to AI art so much, not because it isn't good but because it lacks, for one of a better word, any soul.
I fail to see how training an LLM in any way discourages authors from producing or distributing new works, which is ostensibly the intent of copyright law.