#Art and automation

[musingsfromastonehead]

please upload your creativity

[whompthatsucker1981]

i think that gay sex cats is the new duchamp's fountain

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[k0libra]

RK800 #313 248 317 - 00

[chainslobber]

Belobog has a graveyard for broken down machines, but where do cyborgs go?

[scared-lantern]

discussions

can u tell this was literally just supposed to be a sketch of narinder at the start ffs

(btw happy Ramadan and happy Ash Wednesday and start of Lent :DD)

this actually came from a doodle page where I was trying to sketch narinder some more (lamb then joined and decided he needed to be bullied), and also came to the conclusion I wanted to make him (at least slightly inspired by) a Cat Sìth- an evil cat Fairy found in the Highlands! they are inspired by the Kellas cat so that's why narinder has a triangle on his chest (also why his pyjamas are currently like that)

Cat Sìth essentially, may steal the souls of the recently departed if they aren't distracted, people would try to stop them from stealing a recently dead person's soul by playing games, singing and wrestling while keeping watch of the body- I thought this would be and interesting concept for narinder to be based off of. Cat sìth are actually responsible for many common myths about black cats like them having 9 lives! (while some believe Cat Sìth are Fair Folk, others believed them to be witches that could turn into cays 9 times and on the 9th stay as a cat - and are also responsible for theor prevalence in Halloween! (originally the pagan holiday of Samhain, people would leave offerings on Samhain of milk to Cat Sìth, because if they didn't it was said thier cows wouldn't produce milk for year :D)

Also decided that Nari got his crown really young, like oldest probably 12 - which explains the amount of eldritch nonsense he's able to do- I like to think some of the above would be applicable to trying to distract the (very young) God of Death - Lamb here's asking about some of the customs just to be a prick lmao- talking abt them I've been turning them around in my head like a microwave and may finally have a name for my lamb too so yippee! (every time I look at them though I'm like bro who ARE you why are you always different whenever I draw you?)

[willwoodwithadditionalgrapejuice]

for more information please dial (248) 434-5508 😇

i was bored at work so, KAYNE SELLING COCAINE COKAYNE!!

Text:

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Saddness, blindess, back pain, terminal illness, cancer, autism, dyslexia, left-hand-syndrome, regret, happiness, depression, fatigue, foggy memory, derealization, depersonalization, dehydration, headaches, fever, flu, the plague, irritation, lack of memories, too many memories, fear, lost of self, madness, madness, madness, madness, madness, madness, madness, madness, arthur-itis, haha get it?,madness, madness, madness, lost sense of time, euphoria, pain, nostalgia, deja vu, boredom, not enough bones, too many bones, just the right amount of bones, no head, <- (get your mind out of the gutter), no synpathy, too much sympathy, british, mania, dysphoria, orphan-Syndrome, alcholism, christianity, atheism, no face, believing in a smiling god, beliefs, morals, steven johnson syndrome, ADHD, OCD, DID, ABC, humanity, sadism, no insurance :(, owning a car, having a hairless cat, gay thoughts, (gay), intrusive thoughts, no thoughts, too many thoughts.

THEN CONSIDER COKAYNE! THE FUTURE OF MEDICNE!!!”

[benotafraid111]

[gifposter9000]

⚙️ | automatons

[cancelforcipe]

"Love you to Death and back".

Fanart for Void Scientist!Nexus and BlackSun!Solar from Automation Heart AU (by @witchysolfan).

Is this an homage? Yes, it is an homage. Or at least I tried. Think the original is fairly well known.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

These "hallucinations" are a stubbornly persistent feature of large language models, because these models only give the illusion of understanding; in reality, they are just sophisticated forms of autocomplete, drawing on huge databases to make shrewd (but reliably fallible) guesses about which word comes next:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Guessing the next word without understanding the meaning of the resulting sentence makes unsupervised LLMs unsuitable for high-stakes tasks. The whole AI bubble is based on convincing investors that one or more of the following is true:

There are low-stakes, high-value tasks that will recoup the massive costs of AI training and operation;

There are high-stakes, high-value tasks that can be made cheaper by adding an AI to a human operator;

Adding more training data to an AI will make it stop hallucinating, so that it can take over high-stakes, high-value tasks without a "human in the loop."

These are dubious propositions. There's a universe of low-stakes, low-value tasks – political disinformation, spam, fraud, academic cheating, nonconsensual porn, dialog for video-game NPCs – but none of them seem likely to generate enough revenue for AI companies to justify the billions spent on models, nor the trillions in valuation attributed to AI companies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

The proposition that increasing training data will decrease hallucinations is hotly contested among AI practitioners. I confess that I don't know enough about AI to evaluate opposing sides' claims, but even if you stipulate that adding lots of human-generated training data will make the software a better guesser, there's a serious problem. All those low-value, low-stakes applications are flooding the internet with botshit. After all, the one thing AI is unarguably very good at is producing bullshit at scale. As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

This means that adding another order of magnitude more training data to AI won't just add massive computational expense – the data will be many orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire, even without factoring in the additional liability arising from new legal theories about scraping:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

That leaves us with "humans in the loop" – the idea that an AI's business model is selling software to businesses that will pair it with human operators who will closely scrutinize the code's guesses. There's a version of this that sounds plausible – the one in which the human operator is in charge, and the AI acts as an eternally vigilant "sanity check" on the human's activities.

For example, my car has a system that notices when I activate my blinker while there's another car in my blind-spot. I'm pretty consistent about checking my blind spot, but I'm also a fallible human and there've been a couple times where the alert saved me from making a potentially dangerous maneuver. As disciplined as I am, I'm also sometimes forgetful about turning off lights, or waking up in time for work, or remembering someone's phone number (or birthday). I like having an automated system that does the robotically perfect trick of never forgetting something important.

There's a name for this in automation circles: a "centaur." I'm the human head, and I've fused with a powerful robot body that supports me, doing things that humans are innately bad at.

That's the good kind of automation, and we all benefit from it. But it only takes a small twist to turn this good automation into a nightmare. I'm speaking here of the reverse-centaur: automation in which the computer is in charge, bossing a human around so it can get its job done. Think of Amazon warehouse workers, who wear haptic bracelets and are continuously observed by AI cameras as autonomous shelves shuttle in front of them and demand that they pick and pack items at a pace that destroys their bodies and drives them mad:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Automation centaurs are great: they relieve humans of drudgework and let them focus on the creative and satisfying parts of their jobs. That's how AI-assisted coding is pitched: rather than looking up tricky syntax and other tedious programming tasks, an AI "co-pilot" is billed as freeing up its human "pilot" to focus on the creative puzzle-solving that makes coding so satisfying.

But an hallucinating AI is a terrible co-pilot. It's just good enough to get the job done much of the time, but it also sneakily inserts booby-traps that are statistically guaranteed to look as plausible as the good code (that's what a next-word-guessing program does: guesses the statistically most likely word).

This turns AI-"assisted" coders into reverse centaurs. The AI can churn out code at superhuman speed, and you, the human in the loop, must maintain perfect vigilance and attention as you review that code, spotting the cleverly disguised hooks for malicious code that the AI can't be prevented from inserting into its code. As "Lena" writes, "code review [is] difficult relative to writing new code":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

Why is that? "Passively reading someone else's code just doesn't engage my brain in the same way. It's harder to do properly":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773780355708764665

There's a name for this phenomenon: "automation blindness." Humans are just not equipped for eternal vigilance. We get good at spotting patterns that occur frequently – so good that we miss the anomalies. That's why TSA agents are so good at spotting harmless shampoo bottles on X-rays, even as they miss nearly every gun and bomb that a red team smuggles through their checkpoints:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

"Lena"'s thread points out that this is as true for AI-assisted driving as it is for AI-assisted coding: "self-driving cars replace the experience of driving with the experience of being a driving instructor":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773841546753831283

In other words, they turn you into a reverse-centaur. Whereas my blind-spot double-checking robot allows me to make maneuvers at human speed and points out the things I've missed, a "supervised" self-driving car makes maneuvers at a computer's frantic pace, and demands that its human supervisor tirelessly and perfectly assesses each of those maneuvers. No wonder Cruise's murderous "self-driving" taxis replaced each low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged technical robot supervisors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI radiology programs are said to be able to spot cancerous masses that human radiologists miss. A centaur-based AI-assisted radiology program would keep the same number of radiologists in the field, but they would get less done: every time they assessed an X-ray, the AI would give them a second opinion. If the human and the AI disagreed, the human would go back and re-assess the X-ray. We'd get better radiology, at a higher price (the price of the AI software, plus the additional hours the radiologist would work).

But back to making the AI bubble pay off: for AI to pay off, the human in the loop has to reduce the costs of the business buying an AI. No one who invests in an AI company believes that their returns will come from business customers to agree to increase their costs. The AI can't do your job, but the AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI anyway – that pitch is the most successful form of AI disinformation in the world.

An AI that "hallucinates" bad advice to fliers can't replace human customer service reps, but airlines are firing reps and replacing them with chatbots:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

An AI that "hallucinates" bad legal advice to New Yorkers can't replace city services, but Mayor Adams still tells New Yorkers to get their legal advice from his chatbots:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/03/nycs-government-chatbot-is-lying-about-city-laws-and-regulations/

The only reason bosses want to buy robots is to fire humans and lower their costs. That's why "AI art" is such a pisser. There are plenty of harmless ways to automate art production with software – everything from a "healing brush" in Photoshop to deepfake tools that let a video-editor alter the eye-lines of all the extras in a scene to shift the focus. A graphic novelist who models a room in The Sims and then moves the camera around to get traceable geometry for different angles is a centaur – they are genuinely offloading some finicky drudgework onto a robot that is perfectly attentive and vigilant.

But the pitch from "AI art" companies is "fire your graphic artists and replace them with botshit." They're pitching a world where the robots get to do all the creative stuff (badly) and humans have to work at robotic pace, with robotic vigilance, in order to catch the mistakes that the robots make at superhuman speed.

Reverse centaurism is brutal. That's not news: Charlie Chaplin documented the problems of reverse centaurs nearly 100 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)

As ever, the problem with a gadget isn't what it does: it's who it does it for and who it does it to. There are plenty of benefits from being a centaur – lots of ways that automation can help workers. But the only path to AI profitability lies in reverse centaurs, automation that turns the human in the loop into the crumple-zone for a robot:

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Jorge Royan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munich_-_Two_boys_playing_in_a_park_-_7328.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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Noah Wulf (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbirds_at_Attention_Next_to_Thunderbird_1_-_Aviation_Nation_2019.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[ihearttseliot]

[kirby-the-gorb]

[just-honey-dewd]

LINK CLICK POST-BRIDON/YINGDU ARC THREAD ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

I don't usually post my rambles on tumblr (main) anymore, but haven't found a link click discord server to spam my thoughts in so here we go!

BRIDON BRAINROT IN CHRONO ORDER

Disclaimer: I made most of these in the middle of watching the season. Might've immediately been disproven from some evidence from episodes straight after, and updated it in real time.

LG's nightmare in episode 4 suggests there might not have been an overarching missing persons case in previous timelines. And supports the theory that the twins are newly introduced variables.

2. LG's logical deduction seems to operate under the assumption that he is the only party with the means to influence small changes in the timeline.

The wording of "things related to him" suggests LG is referring to Vein. So I see it as LG being fixated on Vein as a threat, and not registering LX -- who Vein seems to be working for, or Shao Yuanyuan, who is also affecting time to defy an unchangeable node.

3. LG seemed like he was being loosy-goosy with how accurately he would recreate the past.

I think this season shows us LG's development from approaching his "save CXS" goal without a clear MO, to learning how to utilise his abilities to create butterfly effects to achieve the desired result. Which involves more gambling and educated guesswork than he'd admit. The pokemon learns adaptive planning. I think my initial theory abt it being LG's 1st attempt diving back to the very beginning isn't entirely off -- I think he's off his game because he's not used to being this far back in the timeline. I think every time CXS died, he'd use his ability to dive back to weeks or months before.

4. LG seems to reciprocate the intense words a CXS echoed to LG long ago in the high school flashback ver of events.

I operate under the belief that that s1e5 flashback is LG's, and it's the original events of their first meeting. The CXS in this flashback seems comfortably forward in regarding LG as a long term partner (in that context, it seems to take place right after their first basketball game together).

Notably, there was a theory I saw that suggested this CXS was possessed by a future him -- not about to tackle that here. What observations I can make are that b4 LG made any promises, Bridon!CXS wasn't going out of his way to get closer to LG, it's mainly third parties and circumstances drawing them together.

CXS isn't the one reaching out to him when LG happens to pass the studio a couple months after that first meeting -- QL invites him

Evidently they're not that close, w/ CXS pulling the safe dudebro "hey you can come w/ me to check out the hottie" offer when he's enlisted to photograph the popular cosplayer of their uni's anime club

And he asks about and absorbs the club president's treatment of LG to gain more insight into him outside of physical activity. Still feeling out how to act w/ him

It's during the anime convention -- where he and QL learn abt LG's "divination skills" and witness those skills help Shen Miaomiao -- that CXS becomes more confident in imposing his will on LG

We get a time gap of at least a couple days, and CXS has now gotten used to having LG around as a free pair of hands. And he learns that with enough cajoling, anime club leader-style, LG will reliably fold to help him

Then, of course, LG helping him through the date, and then coming to save him when he gets kidnapped by loan sharks. When Vivian threatened LG's safety, CXS promised murder, and he prioritised LG's safety over securing Vivian's safety, so he was already very attached by that point

These events display CXS's character very well. Coming from a background of being ostracised and isolated by others, he's not openly looking for deeper connections beyond the fragile home he's maintained in the studio and w/ QL. As inviting and friendly as he seems, he's adamantly not one to impose himself on others, and was plenty content having fair-weather friends that seem to go to him for favours (the audacity of that Zhou Xun, I swear).

So where does the CXS from LG's flashback come from with such boldness? Where does this "good partners in the future" sentiment come from when Bridon!CXS needed a near-death experience to express that he begun to regard LG so fondly that he's scared of him disappearing?

5. Someone in that class used their ability to disrupt CXS and LG's telepathic link momentarily.

My money's on CWM cuz I think it'd make sense that after that random kid in the bg smiles at WQ cheating, he would approach her because of that act (and not that silly moment where CXS creates that mirror device to cheat that last question).

Also, LG seemed unfazed* by this incident, so it might be another blind spot for him; feeding my theory that LG is legitimately in the dark about everything to do with CXS's parents.

(1)* updated info at the very end

6. LG deciding this very moment the sacrifice he's willing to make once he "confronts" Vein.

7. Xia Fei def got some Bahati fire trauma locked in there or sth. I wonder if he has a power, and what power it'd be...

Also, why Vein would ask a question in that phrasing is beyond me. Is it like a "you didn't have anything to do with that fire, did you?" line? I mean, my first thoughts are if WQ knew Vein's real name, could that mean Vein was also in Bahati? Then I think abt how apparently Vein doesn't have powers (confirmed in an interview?) Then I wonder what's in it for Vein when he's helping LX get CWM's book.

Thoughts spiralling. Too much unknown variables. Can't compute.

8. CXS's first confrontation with reality

Reality being that LG is a savage lil shitster who'll tease him relentlessly even if CXS feels he's in an overwhelming or stressful situation. I also like to think LG did this cuz CXS seemed too flattered by Vein indirectly complimenting his appearance.

*note: the typed text in that image was not from anything in the show, I wrote a version of their exchange for fun

9. LG's mild expression... Resigned resolve, or detached acceptance? Why not both.

10. LG and Vein's back and forth exchange

For a guy who mastered keeping a straight face, it seems his eyes tend to give him away. Also I take it that LG is already beginning his plan, he's initiating conversation to get Vein talking -- revealing his clear disdain for him by asking why he lingers. Both give a non-answer to the other's questioning. Vein seems unfazed and rather amused by LG though.

Then with this question, I think answering the detective is a very sensible option -- if anyone ends up benefiting from the forest burning, it is the detective who's being compensated. Vein wouldn't be this enthusiastic over that. It's pragmatic and predictable in these types of story settings.

I think if LG were to engage with this question under a traditional clinical setting where he's safe to unload his feelings -- he'd take to the detective being the culprit.

11. Shao Yuanyuan did the "disrupt time to save my s/o" first

I'm thrown off by the line "If someone gets in, the timespace will be disrupted." At first, I assumed she meant if another person interrupts the timeline; i.e. LG. But she never specifies what she sought to do when she came to this time period to meet CXS, and apparently save CWM. It seemed whatever she sought to do is pre-destined to fail? Vein seems to interrupt in previous timelines, if LG's ability to plan around that indicates anything.

Another thing to note. As far as we know, she doesn't have someone like LG to cover her bases like CXS does. She seems to disregard hiding her personality from anyone -- so taking precaution for the safety of the possessed subjects doesn't seem to be a priority for her. All that matters is doing and achieving what she sets out to do. And if it's a miss, she'll facilitate other means through connections perhaps.

12. LG's speech to Vein seems very honest

LG villain monologued so hard, it only makes sense that he did so because he was very certain that he was speaking to a dead man. His last remark of "I hope we won't meet again" carries a tone of "I hope I won't have to dive back and meet you again" to me. Cuz LG has been in a reflective state for that whole episode (aside from the cute modelling montage).

The way he words it was very confusing, I had to type up the dialogue to digest it better. But LG basically says "I've been trying to figure out how to prevent CXS's death, but then I asked myself. What if his murderer was taken out of the picture? No need to fear the change. Just embrace it."

Implying that the reason LG fears deviation is point blank because deviation risks CXS's death being harder to prevent -- because he can't plan around unknown variables. But if such a deviation was for the purpose of eliminating a definite catalyst altogether, then he doesn't give a fuck.

I think after putting himself at ease with the belief that Vein has been eliminated -- this is when he's in S1, and is arguably less stressed and not forcing himself up flights of stairs to make sure events are recreated perfectly.

Everything should be hunky-dory, he knows most of the S1 events aren't lethal. That's why we can see 'Daily Life of Lightime' episodes -- LG thinks CXS's death node has been delayed at the very least.

"The future may not change due to a ripple of the past. Right now, I still don't believe I can come back here to change the past"

The Future: CXS's death a ripple of the past: killing Vein Right now: From LG's learned understanding change the past: sever CXS's death node

"All I want is to be with them and head to a new future. Because I know this is the last time."

a new future: a future that feels real. a future filled with hope. the last time: last time LG will be able to predict events. since he's locking in on letting paths deviate.

LG still has that jaded belief that things are hopeless. But he always chooses to chase after hope.

OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS POST-BRIDON CLARITY

Not like I can answer these questions rn, but maybe someone can! I'm up for suggestions!

Is SYY aware of LG’s interference with the time space? What could clue her in?

Is SYY’s secret she tells to CXS sth LG would already know abt?

Is LG aware of SYY’s exploits and influence as another time traveller?

Did Vein actually die in the Bridon arc or only by technicality?

What is the significance of Jack going missing alongside Xia Fei?

Is Bridon Arc seriously meant to be in the same timeline as S1 and S2?

In Bridon Arc, Shiguang meet in uni instead of s1e5’s high school backstory. Could this suggest that LG has spaced out checkpoints for opportunities to meet CXS between high school to uni (maybe even beyond)?

How does WQ's powers work?

How did CXS dive in and out of a photo to shield LG? The photo that was in front of LG was out of CXS's line of sight.

What did stalling Vein do to guarantee his death in LG's (usually paranoid) eyes?

Why does LX have a phone that read 2024 in it? What powers does this man have?

The director said someone in Bridon would actually die. Who would this be referring to? Was Vein's fake death actually fake? Or was he actually killed, but resurrected?

I think there's more to say, but I'll prolly reblog this post with more observations cuz this one's long as is. If there's anything I've missed or mistaken, leave your thoughts!

_________ updated edits: i went and fixed some grammar errors, missing text, and info discrepancies (1)*LG's reaction to losing connection with CXS during episode 5 is subtle on first watch, but on closer inspection, he is sweating heavily -- clearly having panicked

[sparrow-writes-draws]

2024 vs 2023