I agree with you, I recently explained it to a group of engineers and techs.

That’s also fair. I’m just making up definitions, you can form your own opinions.

I wouldn’t agree with the above comments assessment either. I don’t know enough about Picasso to say which bucket I’d put him in (also the world is grey, he might be in both buckets). To me it’s more about the motivation for creating the art, was it strictly profit motive (performer) or did he make it for pretty much any other reason (artist)? An artist can make a painting just because they themselves think it looks nice or because they want to share it with others.

I’m a big proponent of drawing inspiration from others and building upon it. I doubt whoever Picasso pulled the art style from was the first person to put paint onto a canvas.

Another perspective for you to consider coming from someone who works in product development in a completely different field. I don’t have good skill in visual arts (I play a couple instruments though) but I personally consider good product design/engineering as a sort of art like thing. To me the distinction comes down to motive and passion. I recently saw someone contrast artists from performers where an artist is self motivated to create their art wheras a performer primarily seeks an audience adapting their “product” to maximize profit. A designer that’s focused on making a product to solve people’s problems is a good thing. People that make products solely for the purpose of extracting the most money out of customers are the problem. In my experience most people who have to work for a level living try to do good, even in demeaning clock punching type jobs.

I haven’t read the article but what’s described in the headline is abhorerent. Ironically the technology could be used to identifying times when artists’ identities are being misattributed or stolen. Pretty simple for an artist to define their portfolio then have a bot flag anything it finds with their signature on it that they didn’t create themselves.

I miss unexpectantly learning about how everything relates to that time undertaker threw mankind off a cage and the alternative uses for booster cables.

The original justification for patents at least had some logic to it. In exchange for progressing the state of the art and telling everyone else how your new invention works you get a period of market exclusivity. There was/is the option to not patent ideas and keep them as trade secrets instead, at the risk of others figuring out your idea.

Unfortunately for all of us 20 years is a really long time for exclusivity at our current tech development pace and in no way are patents consumable information for laypeople. The nonsense filings that get granted and all the lawyers involved have turned it into yet another tool only available to the wealthy.