#AI can never replace humanity

[adulthumanproblem]

AI can't replace humans in language learning or even translation

Google translate is already only really useful in a pinch

Because here's the thing: you need to under culture as well

Take Japanese for example:

It has multiple levels of politeness. You can learn all the words and grammar just fine, sure, but without understanding why, when and for whom you are using which? Doesn't really get you anywhere

We all know there are many ways to say "I" in Japanese. That's largely dependent on who you are talking to and what your position in relation to theirs is

I thought "watakushi" was just a different way of saying "watashi", maybe depending on the region (like "atashi", which is mainly used in Tokyo and female coded)

But it turns out, "watakushi" is polite language, something you'd use towards a client or customer

There are different words for things like directions in polite language as well

And while it sounds complicated, I'd argue most languages do this. You speak differently with a client than you would a friend

But it's still something you need to know. While your friends may not care as much, a client or potential employer can absolutely be put off by it

That's why it doesn't really help to just repeat words and phrases

Culture and language are intertwined

English is used differently by every country, every region where it's spoken as well

[poppyseedqueenz]

(Hopefully Final)Update On the owonekko situation:

Okay so just today the situation has reached its peak so a few hours ago Nondi has worsened this whole mess by making a follow-up response to not only Jouusta but to her critics AND her fans as a WHOLE and let's just say it's probably WORSE than her first response

How did she Respond? Did she apologize? Is she taking a break? Did she realize her mistake?

Well.....

Okay I'm not gonna hold back

Nondi This is the Most NASTIEST, IMMATURE, RUDEST, DISRESPECTFUL Thing that I have Ever Seen! Where do I even start?? Lets start with the fact that whole Animatic low-key ridiculous not only is the whole thing lowkey disrespectful to EVERYONE involved with the portrayal of Jo, Her Critics, HER FANS. But this video is anything BUT respectful! She went silent for almost 5 to 10 days after her Livestream only to make an EVEN worse response not only that but the fact That now she's trying to turn the whole thing into a race issue when race was NEVER even mentioned by Jo or anyone EXCEPT Nondi! Nondi was the ONLY one who said anything about her skintone but now I'm starting to realize something

At this point this isn't even about the AI anymore Nondi is just being a straight-up bully and slandering Everyone involved specifically Jo painting her in a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE Light(whilst now Nondi fans are also now sending Jo hate comments and a few were DEATH THREATS)

Not only that but in the description to her animatic not only is she "Not sorry" she made a lengthy doc(and yes I read every single word) where she fails to take accountability and passes blame onto the critics and Jo and making excuses for her behavior and adding extra things that are half-true, not relevant to the situation, gaslighting fans, and downright lies of which she claims is the "truth"

Nondi's Doc:

Let me remind that after Jo's video went up she made a Pinned Comment and made a few edits to it when Nondi's livestream went up This is What she Said:

Jo's Pinned Comment: "EDIT (9/12/24): Thank you to all who have let me know about Nondi’s most recent livestream and livestream thumbnail. I have not watched the full VOD, but I have seen the thumbnail and… obviously, I am not okay with it. Not in the slightest. That being said, it’s very clear to me that she’s having a mental health episode of some sort. I’m hoping after that livestream she’ll take some time off the internet and not entertain this controversy anymore. I’m disappointed with her actions, with her portrayal of me, and with how she’s handled everything, but at the end of the day I want her to be mentally well, and I feel bad that I contributed anything to the deterioration of her mental state. I still stand by everything I said in this video. I still think she’s wrong for misgendering the larger creator (and continuing to justify it). But I think this will be the last thing I’ll say regarding this video and OwONekko. If anything else happens, I’m not gonna address it (unless I feel like I REALLY need to). Again, don’t go and harass Nondi. Don’t be nasty to anyone. Take care of your mental health too. . . . . . . . . A few more notes here! I changed the title of this video from “How to Lose an Audience’s Trust - OwONekko’s AI Art Stance and How it Harms Artists” to “OwONekko’s Generative AI Stance and How it Harms Artists” because I felt like that was a more concise and less offensive way to market the video. I also want to say I do NOT think Nondi is a bad person for using and liking AI for the reasons she does, I just disagree with her reasons, and I should have been more clear about that. She’s entitled to her opinion about AI as much as I am entitled to mine. I may go here or on my insta to say a few more things regarding this situation if anything else happens, but I’m not going to make any more video content because I don’t want to egg on the people that have been relentlessly harassing Nondi because of my video. Genuinely, I feel awful about that. If you have anything to say about this discourse, keep it on MY video and off of her twitter/ Youtube page. She’s seen all the arguments, criticism, and nasty shit that’s out there. I may have criticized her for blocking certain users in my video, but at this point I think that course of action is 100% justified. If I had known this video was going to be shown to over 200,000 people in less than 48 hours, I would have been a lot more clear and less reactive with how I expressed things in this video. I’ve never had a video perform like this one did.. like, genuinely, I thought this would be watched by the people already in this discourse and MAYBE just a few others. It was not my intention to bring so many new eyes to her channel, especially in this light, but that’s what happened. As for the transphobia claims, she says it was an accident and will not repeat this mistake going forward. She hasn’t apologized for misgendering the creator, which I absolutely disagree with, but she’s made it clear she doesn’t stand by what she originally did. (that being said, I am not trans or queer, so whether or not you want to support her for this going forward is completely up to you. Just don’t go and be a bother to her.)(edit: she has continued to justify her misgendering the larger creator so idek anymore) I’ll edit this comment if I have anything else to add, but for now that’s all I have to say."

I am 100% on Jo's side of the drama

Jo said that nondi was entitled to her opinion and was not calling her bad in ANY WAY Jo was rightfully upset about how nondi portrayed her in the Livestream(she hasn't seen the Animatic yet) and for some reason nondi and her die-hards decided to attack her when Jo just made a harmless statement and even said not to harass anyone at the VERY beginning of her video plus she Cannot be blamed for who saw the video she is not in control of what the algorithm shows us as she said that her intended target for the video were people who WERE actually aware of the situation WITH the exception of a FEW new eyes NOT 200,000(now 400,000) new eyes and she did apologize for that and I do agree if people did not watch Nondi's ai stance video and then Jo's video(even though jo DID say to watch Nondi's video first to get the full context)

(Note: I watched Nondi's full ai stance video before Jo uploaded hers) and just saw Jo's video(depending on how much you watched of Jo's video) and just relentlessly attacked nondi are also in just as much of the wrong telling her to "Kys" is not helpful and making her more stubborn and while I don't agree with her deleting comments that DO know the full story those critiquing her with no context are 100% justified beacuse context is EVERYTHING however Nondi's reactions and responses are NOT justified whatsoever she is a GROWN ASS WOMAN who knew DAMN WELL what's she's doing especially when she went live with that slander video, Twitter posts and even TODAY'S video and the fact that people are still defending what she's done are also the problem she is not the victim she is the perpetrator and when other people did what she's done now they were called crazy, were ridiculed or nearly lost or DID their careers entirely)

The last time a rapper(Doja Cat) made a post disrespecting her fans the same way nondi did she lost almost 200,000 followers

When this rapper(Nicki Minaj) went on a whole Twitter rampage and a crazy rant on IG live beacuse of Hiss (by Meg Thee Stallion)(in this case Nondi went on A coke rant on YT live)she was called a fucking cokehead

When this youtuber(Colleen Ballinger) made a video pinning blame on the internet for banding together, calling her out on her predatory behavior and made a ukulele musical as a response(in Nondi's a fucking snl skit) her response was seen as the worst youtuber apology/statement videos to date

(Note: this is not an attack on Nicki, Doja nor Meg as I love and respect all 3 of these artists however I can't say the same thing for Colleen as she is a terrible human being)

And while people are saying "omg the art community is so sensitive" and you know what? You're right the art community can get sensitive over everything and anything but that that's not the case people are rightfully upset at nondi she montitezed her ai Playlist Made by a company who's under fire for stealing unauthorized audio and using it but now she's attacking fans and critics who were trying to tell here what she was doing was WRONG

AI is a dangerous practice and a very controversial topic that is threatening not only art but jobs in general if ai was not being trained on stolen work and being seen as a replacement then maybe I would have a different opinion the problem is its not being seen as a tool but as a REPLACEMENT for human artists whist stealing art from them and creating entirely new images for the stolen work and people keep Making excuses for ai if "get with the times" mean I have to just let ai steal my work then I rather be left behind

And when I was looking at Nondi's Doc she keeps using race(she used are a total of 3 times even again race is NOT the problem and the fact that your using the race card is downright sickening and this is coming from a black person) and she tried to make Jo look like the bad person and acting as if what she's doing isn't overreacting guess what nondi You ARE overreacting and this Animatic and doc is proof and the way you responded has just made things worse you could've used that short hiatus to reevaluate or make a statement no one asked you to apologize for the A.I video but for the misgendering, the hateful comments and to Jo but instead you make 2 videos(one of them being a YT live) and slandered many people(even though you said you don't like bigger platforms using their influence to harm others) she is becoming the thing that she doesn't want to be and it's sad and the fact that fans still defend and fight tooth and nail for her just proves how ignorant these people are critics will critique ANYTHING, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE that should be common knowledge if you become a content creator or a public figure(such as a celebrity, influencer or musician) if you can't wrap your head around that then content creation isn't for you She is a GROWN woman who went on a two-year old rampage over a controversial topic

Remember the reason all of this is happen is beacuse she got pissy over ONE comment and she's using her race as a sheild

This isn't a RACE issue this is an ETHICS issue and she's treating it like some Anti-Black Campaign

Nondi This is Unacceptable

Leave the internet or take a hiatus beacuse this is too far

[annihilatius]

The reason why I hate interacting with fandoms especially on Tumblr and AO3 is because I have this insecurity where I feel intimidated by people I think are smarter than me (probably the mental illnesses) and when it comes to mature game series' with layered complex subjects and issues in the canon material y'know like Bioshock it feels like nearly EVERYONE is smarter than me so I just stay in my own little hole where I don't feel like I have to compete to be the most "right" with others. When it comes to characters or subjects I don't give a shit about it doesn't make me feel anything because I didn't have any particular opinion on it anyway so theres no room for me to feel like I'm wrong, but when it comes to characters I am passionate about and someone else imposes on it with an idea I've never even considered my brain immediately goes into "Are You Challenging Me" mode.

This isn't meant to be a vent post it's just me rambling because I'm stressed and I also don't expect anyone to relate to this but ... hell idk. I know it's just fandom it's not real none of this matters in judging someones intellect, but I guess it's because I hate feeling like I'm stupid yet I can't shake this feeling that I'll never be smart. And anytime I feel like I finally said something remarkable or insightful someone butts in with something I wish I had thought of first. I want to be smart I want to be someone other people look up to and consider the ideas of but I never will be because my ideas are shit. Am I just a bad storywriter? Because anytime I try to make my own original story or add onto one that already exists, I completely fumble it and end up abandoning it either out of loss of motivation or realizing it's a lost cause. I'd like to write something good someday that invites a new idea to people's heads that they didn't consider before but I'm so uncreative that I don't feel like I'll ever get anywhere. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING I have all of these unrelated parts that I WANT to do something with but I don't know how to feasibly stick them together and everyone does it so easily

[dancedancedie]

The reason why skibidi toilet is outliving all this new brainrot and is much more memorable is because skibidi toilet is made by the labour of a real human and it had real lore that was more or less worked out

Bombardino Crocodilo and trallaliro trallala or whatever are mass produced, they claim to have lore but it’s never shown because they’re just a static and soulless ai image, which is no fun to engage with 🙂‍↕️

[fluffyandjulietta]

Meta AI is funny.

Who the eff is Buck Lucetti??

[roadkill-raccoons]

Ai art bot ≠ Ai chat bot

Ai voice bot ≠ Ai chat bot

One steals work of real people, one steal the identity of real people, the other is just an funny program who either invents dialogue or takes information from the internet.

"Ah, but it steals your data", everything does nowadays, how do you think that facebook and other media always know what kind of propaganda to show? SOCIAL MEDIA STEALS DATA

Character AI is totally stealing my info so it can get a job at McDonalds pretending to be me.

Eviebot getttin a little wild

[medicinemane]

Ok, I was reading the article just to not be spreading something I haven't actually read... and that was gonna be it, but I'm actually kinda mad now

I'll hit a couple points before I get to the thing that made me made at the end.

"ChatGPT might be great for responding to emails or quick-drafting a document", well it's not

"He expected it to be a cakewalk for the cutting-edge large language model, which cost tens of millions of dollars in training alone.", well I don't know why he'd think that (it was at this point I predicted in my tags that it would try and make nonsense plays, and then I read the very next paragraph...)

"ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks, and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were—first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract to recognize, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notation"

I mean... no duh. It can't recognize rooks or bishops, it can only go "rook to e7 might be said in response to this question". It's not blaming the icons, it's responding with someone someone might say if asked why they were getting confused... it can't think, it can't understand... well literally anything, it's not capable of the act of understanding, all it can do is spit out the next thing that might follow in a chain of text

This though, this is the line that made me fume enough to write this:

"Perhaps it's better we keep using it for more mundane tasks for now"

I mean... get bent, it sucks at the mundane tasks too, it sucks at almost everything. Absolutely stop using it for mundane tasks. It sucks at the mundane tasks. Fucking think for yourself and write your own damn emails and whatever else you're doing. What is wrong with you dude?

How is it that tumblr is the last bastion of sanity when it comes to the various kinds of ai in the world... tumblr users and literal experts in the fields... what a stupid world we live in when tumblr users are the only people who might not make me want to die talking about ai

Stop using it for mundane tasks and just use your brain for 5 seconds from time to time pal

Deep Blue is 30 years old and was capable of defeating chess grand champions. It could be housed in a single cabinet.

ChatGPT spans untold data centers devouring massive amounts of electricity and it got its ass whipped by an 8 bit gaming console from the 1970s.

[the-hwaelweg]

Working in publishing, my inbox is basically just:

Article on the Horrors of AI

Article on How AI Can Help Your Business

Article on How AI Has Peaked

Article on How AI Is Here to Stay Forever

Article on How AI Is a Silicon Valley Scam That Doesn't Live Up to the Promise and In Fact Can't Because They've Literally Run Out of Written Words to Train LLMs On

[swampjawn]

Look Back VS AI Art

This is a real frame from Look Back (2024).

You might assume this made it into the final movie because of its director Kiyotaka Oshiyama (押山清高) doing HALF the key animation for the film and only fully finishing it A WEEK before it's festival debut.

And well, you might be partially right about that. But more importantly, this is the movie embodying its themes through its unconventional production process and the very lines on the screen!

In an age of digital tools, CGI, AI, and other combinations of letters ending in I, Look Back is an ode to art and the labor that goes into it, no matter how tedious or imperfect.

Every thought, every little decision, every stroke made by a person puts a little piece of that person onto the screen, and the imperfections that come from that process can be beautiful in the sense that they're evidence of the thoughts and process that went into creating an image. So in keeping with the plot of the movie itself, Oshiyama made a point of leaving those remnants - lines that are scratchy, overlapping, or half-erased, and normally would have been cleaned up in 2nd key animation (第二原画).

Ayumu Fujino has a tight grip on how she expresses herself, having this image to uphold as the perfect prodigy girl. She's afraid to let people see too much of her, lest that perfect image be shattered.

But at times the mask does slip, like this moment of sheer panic after she accidentally drops what is really an extremely rude manga strip under her rival's door by accident.

And it's these moments when that rough imperfection shines through the most! So this breakdown of polish in the art functions simultaneously as both a connection to the human labor that went into creating it, AND an impressionistic representation of Fujino's mental state within the world of the movie.

Not only are the edges of her backpack visible through her arm, her face even disappears completely, replaced by just the roughly sketched dividing lines that indicate the position of her eyes. At least personally, I never would have noticed this fully unfinished frame at full speed because the shot is just so well-executed! The framing is dramatic with Fujino surrounded by these mountains of sketchbooks in the foreground, and the motion is so believable, her posture - hunched over to the side to support the weight of the bag while maneuvering around the books, and the way her legs twirl around each other frantically, rotating this way and that.

But more importantly, this is a frame that an AI program would never draw, because it has no REASON to. There's no thought process, no decisions being made about how to express a feeling. Even if you did train an AI specifically to mimic these human imperfections, in Oshiyama's words, "It would just be a design. It would be a fake. The lines have meaning because they were drawn by humans. […] There's value in that." (MANTANWEB)

This is an adapted excerpt from this video! Go watch it or I'll dox you.

[oh-dameron]

SecUnit armour should attach directly to anchor points on the construct. If you're building something designed to wear armour then including couplings for it just makes sense. A human should not physically be able to wear SecUnit armour not because it's too heavy (though it probably would be too heavy/cumbersome to move well in) but because it doesn't have straps and buckles or lock to itself like human armour does: it clips onto the underlying foundation (the SecUnit).

It's disposable plating meant to take hits and then be replaced, but it's also an extension of the construct's body.

I have a lot of Feelings about Murderbot and its armour, how terribly it misses its opaque faceplate and how naked and vulnerable it feels every time it goes into combat without it. How in System Collapse it feels weird about taking Three's armour, and whether that's an extension on how it feels about armour in general, taking Three's specifically, or its evolving feelings about being expected to charge into combat in the first place. It's a component Murderbot lost early on and has never been able to replace, an exoskeleton it's struggling to learn to live without even as the humans around it don't even register it as a loss.

I think it's pretty likely that given the choice, it would generally prefer to chill in the argument lounge in full armour with its faceplate opaqued. Without that option it's been forced out of its comfort zone and has connected with its humans in a way that Mensah correctly predicted it never would have otherwise, which. Yay. But now it's done all this hard work and uncomfortable growth I hope eventually it gets its comfortable shell back.

Not to wear all of the time, because ART's crew uniforms are very soft and don't have seams or logos that it doesn't like, and ART's argument lounge and Preservation Station are safe places where it can be around humans without needing it. But next time shit hits the fan I hope ART gets to do a dramatic reveal of the bleeding edge armour it contacted the PSUMNT AI that has a special interest in materials science to make. It upgraded its fabrication units to be able to build it. It hacked Company blueprints to get a design schematic to scoff at and then improve. It's got the stealth coating they lifted from the NE hostiles. It's got extra data storage and processors tucked in there big enough to carry an ART partition. It comes with a whole fleet of matching drones. It's Perihelion blue. You can't buy armour this good (who would ever spend this much to protect a construct?), but it would hypothetically cost more than a fully kitted-out brand-new top-of-the-line CombatUnit. ART paid for it out of its own accounts and will not be taking questions about PSUMNT mission budgets at this time.

The wall retracts to reveal a secret armoury like in a spy movie, complete with theme music and coloured lighting, both because ART is Extra and because it knows that Murderbot has some mixed feelings about armour and having nice things. Giving it cheesy melodramatic presentation to nitpick and protest over will be comforting, even as they both unironically enjoy the homage to the episode of Timestream Defenders Orion with the chrono-displaced space knights.

This got away from me, but tl;dr: let the awkward turtle have its shell back!

[hneycmb]

I swear ppl on Instagram think they'll die if they don't mention ai in every single artist's comment sections 😭

[sillydragon666]

🔪

[mushroom-soup-is-my-religion]

i dont even have the energy to to deal with this type of bullshit rn

[sshannonauthor]

What is your opinion on using ChatGPT to help you write? I myself use it for moral boosters and when I'm doubting myself and ask it if something makes sense, nothing more as I'd never want a word of my novel to not be my own. But I've seen some hate online recently from writers saying that anyone who uses it at all isn't a writer? Which does make me awfully sad

-

It's not hate – we're scared and frustrated. Not just for ourselves, because AI is a genuine threat to our livelihoods, but also for the next generation of writers, like you. It's going to be a lot harder to get discovered or published with AI-generated content flooding the Internet and the book market.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Meta trained Llama 3 on a massive body of pirated work. You can read more about it here. Meta employees knew this was morally wrong, but they did it anyway, because (1) they didn't want to pay anyone for the use of copyrighted work, and (2) they knew they could get away with it, and they have. They took our stories, born of real human experiences, and used them to feed something that's designed to be able to replace us. There are other reasons writers may be anti-AI, like the impact on the environment, but hopefully that gives you some context for why writers, specifically, are reacting to this so strongly.

You've said you wouldn't use ChatGPT to write your novel, which is great to hear. If you did, I would tell you that you weren't, in my opinion, a writer – just as I would never claim to be an artist if I used ChatGPT to create images, or a musician if I used it to generate a song. But I would also gently question why you feel like you need it to give you morale boosters or tell you if something makes sense. ChatGPT is not a human reader; unless you specifically instruct it not to flatter you, it will say what you want to hear. It isn't reacting to you, or to your story, with a human gut or a human heart. To me, any praise or encouragement it offers is empty. There's nobody and nothing behind it.

As for asking it to help you work out if something makes sense: I really do understand the temptation. I'm chronically ill, so I write at a slower pace than a lot of my colleagues, and it might help me churn out books faster if I asked ChatGPT to help me unpick a knot in the narrative, or fix a plot hole. But I don't want to surrender the ability to think and problem-solve for myself, and I would caution you against doing that – not just for the sake of your writing, but for everyday life. In this era of disinformation and propaganda, our ability to think, interrogate and analyse the world around us is more important than ever.

I can't stop you from using AI. But ask yourself: what would you have done before ChatGPT? Could you have figured out for yourself if something about your story makes sense? I think you definitely could have. It might have taken a bit longer, but you would have worked it out. I would encourage you to hold on to that ability. Cherish and nurture it. Rather than relying on artificial intelligence, trust your own.

[heron-knight]

decided to crack open my skull and pour the contents of my brain onto the keyboard. thought the denizens of tumblr might enjoy it. bon appetite

Mech Pilot Care guide

You never expect it, do you. Even as you see the flashes of pulse-decay fire in the sky, illuminating a scene of violence on the cosmic scale. Planetary defense satellites forming Monolithic structures in the sky, their purpose now revealed as they scatter constellations of destruction across the night horizon, drowning out the stars and replacing them with ones born of death. The oxygen in a ship catching fire and burning away in an instant, a flash of light that marks the death of its crew of hundreds. Even if you take your telescope to watch this spectacle, this war in a place without screams, you still feel profoundly disconnected from it.

Even as you see a pilot cleave through a drone hive with a fusion blade, the molten metal glistening in the light of the explosions around it, scattering without gravity to the corners of the universe, even as two mechs dance across the sky, their reactors pouring into the engines enough energy to power the house atop which you sit for ten thousand years, flying in a 3.5 dimensional dance with only one word to the song that can reach across the vacuum: “I Will Kill You.” you don’t feel even the slightest glimpse of what goes on inside their minds. You don’t feel the neurological feedback tearing across the brain-computer interface, filling her mind with more simultaneous pain and elation that an unmodified human could ever experience. You don’t feel it as the pneumatic lance punctures through steel and nanocarbon polymer, the mech AI sending floods of a sensation you could never truly know through the skull and into every corner of the body carried on enhanced nerves for every layer of armor punctured, tearing into the enemy chassis with a desire beyond anything the flesh can provide. Let the stars kill each other. After all, I am safe on earth. No, you don’t expect it when the star is hit with a sub-relativistic projectile, piercing through both engines in an instant. You don’t expect it to fall. You never would have expected it to land, the impact nearly vaporizing the soil and setting trees aflame, on the hill beyond your house, and you would never have expected, beneath the layers of cooling slag, for the life-support indicator light to still be visible.

All the fire extinguishers in your house, your old plasma cutter that you haven’t used in years, and whatever medical supplies you think they might still be able to benefit from. All that on a hoverbike, speeding at 120 kilometers per hour through the valley and up onto the hill, still illuminated by the battle above, unsurprisingly unchanged by this new development. 200 meters. 100 meters. You don’t know how much time you’ve got. It wasn’t exactly covered in school, how long a pilot can survive in an overheating frame. You’ve heard rumors, of course, of what these things that used to be human have become. That they don’t eat and barely need air. That they don’t feel any desire beyond what instructions are pumped directly into their brains. Not so much of a person as much as an attack dog. It’s understandably a bit concerning, as if they are alive, then it’s not guaranteed that you will be. Three fire extinguishers later, the surface of the mech is mostly solid, and the cutter slices through the exterior plating. With a satisfying crunch, the cockpit is forced open, revealing the pilot, and confirming a few of the rumors, while refuting others. Pilots, it seems, are not quite emotionless. In fact, there seems to be genuine fear on its face when it sees you, followed by… a sort of grim certainty as it opens its mouth, moves its jaw into a strange position, and you only have half a second to react before it would have bitten down with all its force on the tooth that seemed to be made of a different material then all the rest.

Your thumb is definitely bleeding, and is caught between a metamaterial-based dental implant, and one containing a military-grade neurotoxin. You’re not sure exactly why you did it. The pilot looks at you for a second, before the tubes that attach to its arms like puppet strings run out of stimulants, and it passes out after who knows how long without sleep. This battle has been going on for weeks already. Has it been fighting that long? Its various frame-tethered implants disconnect easily, the unconscious pilot draped over your shoulder twitching slightly with each one you remove. It’s a much longer ride back to the house. Avoiding having the pilot fall off the bike is the top priority, and the injured thumb stings in the fast-moving air. 

An internet search doesn’t lead to many helpful sources to the question of “there is a mech pilot on my couch, what do I do?” a few articles about how easy targets retired pilots are for the “doll sellers,” a few military recruitment ads, and a couple near-incomprehensible legal documents full of words like “proprietary technology” or “instant termination.” However, there is one link, a few rows down from the top-- “Mech Pilot Care Guide.” It’s a detailed list, arranged in numbered steps. The website has no other links on it, just the step-by-step instructions: a quick read reveals that this isn’t going to be easy, but looking at the unconscious pilot, unabsorbed chemicals dripping from the ports in its arms and head onto the mildly bloodstained towel, you come to the conclusion that there’s no other option.

Step one: the first 24 hours.

The first thing you should know is that pilots aren’t used to sleeping. They’re used to being put under for transport and storage, but after the neural augmentations and years of week-long battles sustained by stimulants that would fry the brain of anyone that still has an intact one, they’ve more or less forgotten what real sleep is. If they see you asleep, they’ll think you’re dead, so don’t try to let them stay in your room yet. Once you’ve removed the neurotoxin from the tooth (it breaks easily with a bit of applied pressure, but be careful not to let any fall into their mouth or onto your skin.), start by moving them into a chair (preferably a recliner or gaming chair, as the mech seat is about halfway in between), and putting a heavy blanket over them. Don’t worry, they don’t need as much air as normal humans do, and can handle high temperatures up to a point. This is an environment similar to the one they’re used to. It’ll stay like this for about 12 hours-- barely breathing, trembling slightly underneath the blanket. Feel free to check if it’s alive every few hours, not that you could help it if it wasn’t. It won’t freak out when it wakes up. In fact, it doesn’t seem like they can. Turn down the lights and remove the blanket from its face. It’ll stare blankly at you, trying to evaluate the situation with a brain that’s not connected to a computer that’s bigger than they are anymore. Coming to terms, if you could call it that, with the fact that it isn’t dead. Don’t expect it to start reacting to things for a while yet, give it a couple hours. 

It’s been a bit, and its eyes are starting to focus on you. The next thing you should know is this: pilots only have two groups into which they can categorize non-pilots: handler and enemy. You need to work on making sure you’re in the right one. Move slowly, standing up and walking toward them, making sure they can see where you’re going to step. Place both hands on their shoulders, then slide one under their arm and carefully pick them up. Don’t be startled by how light they are, or how they still shake slightly as they realize their arms don’t have anything connected to them. Most importantly, don’t break. Don’t reflect on how something can be done to a person so that this is all that’s left. Just focus on rotating them as if you’re inspecting all the brain-computer interface ports, while holding them at half an arm’s length. Set them back down, wrap the blanket around them, then lean in close and say “status report.” they won’t say anything, as they usually upload the data via interface, but what’s important is that now they recognise you as their handler. Their entire mind will be focused on the fact that they exist now to do what you want. Now it’s up to you to prove them wrong.

Step two: the first week.

They’re shaking so hard that you’ve had to move them from the chair back to the couch, sweating heavily as they pant like the dog they’ve been trained to think they are. This was to be expected, really. Pilots are constantly being filled with a mix of stimulants, painkillers, and who knows what else, and you’ve just cut them off completely. You’ve woken up several times in the night and rushed to check if they’re still breathing, debating whether you should try to tell them that they’re going to be okay. The guide says they’re not ready for that yet, whatever that means. They’re still wearing the suit you found them in, made from nanofiber mesh and apparently recycling nutrients and water before re-infusing them intravenously. It’s been three days since you tore them out of the lump of metal atop the hill outside. Long enough that the suit’s battery, apparently, has run out. You lift them gently from the couch and carry them to the bathroom. The shower’s been on for the past hour or so, meaning the temperature should be high enough. You set them on their chair, which you’ve rolled there from the living room and covered with a towel. Removing the suit normally isn’t done except in between missions, and it’s only done to exchange it for a new one. Without the proper tools, you’ve opted for a pair of scissors. Cutting through the suit takes a bit of time, but you manage to cut a sizable line from the neck down to the front to the bottom of the torso. The pilot recoils slightly from the cold metal against their skin, but you manage to peel off the suit without incident, The Temperature of which was roughly the same as the steam filling the room, and you’ve done your best to minimize air currents. They’ve got a bit more shape to them than you expected of someone who’s been so heavily modified. Perhaps what little fat storage it provides helps on longer missions, or perhaps this is for the purposes of marketing. Just another recruitment ad that appeals to baser instincts. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Using a cloth with the least noticeable texture possible, you wash off as much sweat and dead skin as you can, avoiding the various interface and IV ports, as you’re not yet sure that they’re waterproof. Embarrassment is the enemy of efficiency, so you’re slightly glad that their eyes never completely focus on you. They shift their weight slightly, however. Despite the difficulty moving with their current symptoms, they lean in the direction opposite the places you wash once you're done, allowing you to more easily access the places you haven’t got to yet. An act of trust that you have a suspicion they weren't “programmed” to do.  As they dry out, you prepare for the difficult part. You take the blanket that previously wrapped around their suit, and gently touch a corner of it to their shoulder. Pilots are used to an amount of sensory  information that would overload any normal human in an instant, but most rarely experience textures against their skin. After about half an hour, they’re used to it enough that you’re able to replace what’s left of the suit with it, and after another you’re able to wrap them in it again. You carry them back to the couch, and place a few of your old shirts next to their hand. They pick one and touch it with one finger before recoiling slightly. Eventually, they’ll be used to at least one of them enough that they can wear it. It’s slow progress, but it’s progress.

Step 3: food

It goes without saying that it’s usually been at least a year since they’ve eaten anything. The augmentations scooped out much of their knowledge on how to survive as a human, assuming that they would die before ever needing to be one again. Start them off with just flavors. Give them a chance to pick favorites by giving them a wide selection and firmly telling them to try all of them. Avoid anything solid for the first month or so, both because they can’t digest it and because they associate chewing with their self-destruct mechanism. Trying to and surviving might make them think the “mission’s fully compromised” and attempt to improvise. They’ll typically pick out favorites quickly with their enhanced senses, so once they’ve sampled everything, tell them to pick one. Remember it, not in order to use it as a reward or anything, but them still being able to have a “favorite” anything is something you should keep in mind for later. 

Use a similar method anytime they become able to handle the next level of solidity. Don’t be alarmed if one of their favorite foods is the meat that’s most similar to humans (such as pork.) they’re not going to eat you, they just will have already formed an association between that flavor and the moment they went from being a weapon to living in your house. Don’t worry about your thumb getting infected, by the way. Pilots barely have a microbiome.

Step 4: entertainment:

Roll them over to your computer and give them access to your game library. No, really. They need enrichment, and there’s only one activity that they’re able to enjoy at the moment. A simulation of it will make the shift from weapon to guest easier. Start them off with an FPS with a story. Don’t go multiplayer, as your account may get banned for being suspected of using aimbots. Watch as they progress the story. The military left pilots with just enough of a personality to allow them to improvise, and that should be enough for them to make decisions on this level. They won’t do much character customization, but keep an eye on which starting character body shape they pick. No pilot would consciously think they have enough of a “Self” to still have a gender, but keep track of the ones they pick in the games. As for the one you’ve found, it appears that she’s got a player-character preference. You even saw her nudge one of the appearance sliders before clicking “start game.” Whether this means that a pilot doesn’t think of themselves as “it” or that it means there’s still enough of their mind left for them to know there’s more to themselves than the body they have, it’s a handy bit of information to know. Some pilots might have had this decision influenced by their handlers having referred to them as “she” in the way it refers to boats, but still, on some level they always know that “it” meant that they’re a weapon. 

Step 6: outside:

There’s a profound difference between experiencing the world through information fed directly into your brain and standing up for the first time, wandering around the room and investigating with hands not made of a half-ton of metal. She’s not used to feeling the air on her skin as she stands in front of the window, visual data coming from two eyes instead of seven cameras. It’ll take a while to get used to it again. New old data, reminiscent of a time before she’s been trained not to remember. It’ll take a while until she’s walking like a human and not a mech, as the muscles used are different, and the ones to hold herself upright haven’t been used in a while. She’s going to fall down at least once. Be sure you’re standing next to her when it happens, as pilots that fall aren’t trained to think they can get back up. It’s worth it, though, when she opens the door herself and strides into the yard, still wobbly but standing. Be careful not to let her look into the sun, partially because it looks nearly identical to the barrel of a pulse-decay blaster milliseconds before it fires. She would get hurt trying to dodge it. It will be somewhat confusing for her, standing on a hill as she once did, but not contained within a 12-meter metal chassis. A feeling of being small and alone without the voices of the computer. This means it’s time for step seven.

Step 7: 

All this time, and any idea that she’s still a person has, for her, been subconscious. Any thought of humanity is stopped when it slams into the wall of her handlers and mech AIs reminding her for years before now that she is a weapon. She’ll still ask for your permission before doing just about anything, and that’s just the rare times that she’ll do something you don’t tell her to. Even after you’ve moved her into your room, she’ll still try to sleep on the floor. She still thinks that beds are only for humans. Kneel next to her as she curls into a ball on the ground, assuming that’s what she’s supposed to do. Expect her to try to move down to the foot of the bed after you set her down on it. Gently move her back up until her head’s on the pillow. Sit on the edge of the bed, and hold out your hand to her. After a bit, she’ll take it, wrapping both hands around it and tracing her fingers along the scar on your thumb. Lie down next to her, an arm’s length apart. Place your other hand on her forearm, then slide it up her arm to her shoulder. Don’t move too quickly, and don’t surprise her. Whisper softly but audibly every movement you’re going to make in advance. Move in a bit closer, until you’re wrapped in her arms. Mech pilots aren’t used to this. They aren't used to feeling someone next to them. Not above them, but next to them, getting exactly as much out of this as they are. Even after several months, many won’t admit they deserve it. You wouldn’t waste time lying next to a gun. So why do they feel so strongly that they don’t want you to leave? Why do they hold on tighter? They often feel they’re doing something wrong. Overstepping a boundary. There’s a rift between what they want and what they’re told they can want that nearly tears their mind in half, and it hurts. No normal human will ever know how much it hurts them to think they’ve broken some instruction, that they feel things they aren’t allowed to. Nobody said it was easy, learning how to become human again. Tell her it’s okay. That she’s allowed to feel this way. She still won’t know why. It’s time to tell her. The guide can’t tell you what to say, only that you have to say it. It has to come from you. You have to be the one that tells her what she is underneath all the modifications. It’s time, say it.

“Do you feel that? Do you feel your heart start to beat faster as it presses up against mine? Do you feel your own breath against your skin after it reflects off my shoulder? Do you feel your muscles start to tighten as I slide my hand across them, then relax because you know it means that you are safe? It’s because you’re alive. Because despite everything, you’re still alive. Still someone left after all the changes, all the augmentations. And I know you’re someone because you are someone that likes food a bit spicier than most would prefer. Someone that closes her eyes and gets lost in music whenever it’s playing. Someone that added that one piece of customization to her character, even though they would wear a helmet for most of the game and nobody would know it was there but you. Maybe you aren’t the same person you were before. Maybe they did take some things from you that nothing can give back. But you’re still someone. Someone that people can still care about, and I know because I do.”

You can feel her tears drip down onto your neck as she pulls you closer. She tries to say something, but you can’t understand what. You tell her it’s okay. That it’s not easy, and that she doesn’t have to pretend that it is. Not for you, and not for anyone anymore. She doesn’t have to be useful anymore. No need to keep it together. All that matters is that she’s alive. 

There’s another battle going on in the night sky outside. The same flashes of light you saw the night you stopped living alone, even if the other person couldn’t admit that they were one yet. She still flinches at the brighter bursts of pulse-decay fire, still stretches out her hand on reflex to prime a pneumatic lance that isn’t there. But she knows it’s not her, it’s just a ghost of the weapon that died when it hit the ground. You can feel her relax as she realizes this, moving her hand back to dry her face before reaching out towards yours. You hadn’t noticed the tears on your own face. You place your hand on hers as she wipes the corner of your eye. Outside and above, the war continues on a cosmic scale, so far apart from where you both are now that you barely notice it. Let the stars kill each other. After all, the one before you has already fallen, and she doesn’t have to return to the sky. Together, you are safe on earth. 

[cnestus]

Hello !! I was wondering, is AI gonna have a role in your field?

I don't think there's a single knowledge-based profession out there that isn't under threat of being automated by some pig ignorant dipshit beancounting middle manager with a hardon for AI and entomology is certainly no exception. even before the big AI explosion of the last couple years people have been trying for a long time to automate pest arthropod identification, but at least so far they haven't been successful. Especially when it comes to things like bark beetles, which I specialize on, the differences between a harmless native species and an intensely destructive exotic one can be unbelievably subtle, not to mention the fact that new/cryptic species are always being discovered and that's not something an AI would ever be able to detect or understand.

That doesn't mean that our jobs aren't still under constant threat even by an algorithm that would do a piss-poor job of imitating us; the executive perverts that get all hot and bothered by the idea of replacing humans with fancified autocomplete functions have a vested interest in not understanding the nuances of the professions they're killing and as long as it's good enough or even just appears to be good enough, they'll push for it.

Also let's not forget one thing about "AI" which is that half the time it's actually just a marketing term used to cover up the usual outsourcing/offshoring to cheaper workforces that has been ongoing for the last 30 years. My lab was recently and repeatedly pestered by someone selling "AI moth traps" that purported to be able to identify any pest species of moth that flew into it. When we pressed him on it it turns out that part of the service it offered was that the moths would be photographed by a little digital camera in the device and the pics sent to a team of entomologists in Hungary to confirm. Aside from the fact that a lot of small moths need to be carefully examined under a microscope and often even have their genitalia dissected by an expert to be confirmed as a particular species, this is no different then any of the other supposed AI products that have been revealed over the last couple years as just being a shiny veneer over the same old digital sweatshops on the other side of the world.

More importantly though, even if the AI moth traps did work as advertised either through the ~*magic of machine learning*~ or desperate poorly paid eastern european entomologists either way it's yet another thin edge of the wedge designed to put me and my colleagues out of a job by convincing our bosses or our bosses' bosses that there's a cheaper and more efficient alternative and I view them and literally anything else marketed as AI as part of the same anti-human push to deskill and demoralize as much of the workforce as possible. I've never once used chatGPT or any other LLM, I've never used an AI image generator, and I will never, ever fucking use any purported AI entomology tool because aside from being shined up dogshit it is an existential threat to the discipline I've dedicated almost 20 years of my life to.