#ethical development model

[jantanow]

करुणा के बिना अधूरी है विकास की परिभाषा: अमन कुमार

आज जब हम बीसवीं सदी के तीसरे दशक की ओर बढ़ रहे हैं, तो ‘विकास’ हमारे समय का सबसे प्रचलि�� शब्द बन चुका है। नीतियों की घोषणा से लेकर बजट की प्रस्तुति तक और चुनावी नारों से लेकर अंतरराष्ट्रीय मंचों तक… हर कहीं विकास की बातें हो रही हैं। लेकिन एक सवाल जो अकसर अछूता रह जाता है वह यह है कि क्या यह विकास संपूर्ण है? क्या यह विकास सभी के लिए है? और सबसे महत्वपूर्ण प्रश्न है कि क्या यह विकास करुणा से…

[luncheon-aspic]

I feel so fukking stupid.

The kid I'm mentoring asked for my Traumatic Backstory and I decided to tell him (to prepare him for the reality of elite US universities and out of my own sense of self-centeredness). I get to what was basically the end and he asks what the certain professor's name was and what he's doing now after being fired and I said that I'm not saying and I hope he's meditating in a cave and reaching nirvana after realizing the wrongness of his ways. He's like "I want to look him up!" I had to tell him in a dangerous and dead serious voice that I do. Not. Want. To. Know. I will literally tell our supervisor and have you banned from the historic site if you do so and I am NOT playing. His parents were there in the car and telling him to leave it as well, but... Well... He's an autistic teenage boy who doesn't even realize that other people do not want the same things as him and that he needs to respect those boundaries. So it's partially on me as the adult that I didn't withhold certain information, knowing that he's not mature enough to respect that some stories are only for listening, not for ~investigation~, no matter how much YOU want to or think you're doing a good deed.

One of the recurring themes of the day had been the question of why a government would respect the sovereignty of an "uncontacted tribe" despite having superior technology and legal right to their land and bodies (as citizens). He could recognize (to his anguish) that all his arguments for why forcible integration would actually be a good thing were right out of the imperial/colonial playbook, but it just SEEMED so right that "we" should do it. (I also asked him to reflect on the "we" here -- his own positionality is EXTREMELY weird in this argument in ways that I'm not going to explain because it's country-specific and I ain't doxxing myself. I've been introducing him to Babby's First Postcolonial Theory because boy oh boy do I see an identity crisis in his future when he goes to "the metropole".)

I should have connected the dots and been less forthcoming with things that could affect my own wellbeing with the same "good intentions". This may end up being a learning experience for both of us. -_-

[bsahely]

Lines of Regenerative Intelligence: A Coherence-Based Framework for Human Development and Evolution | ChatGPT4o

[Download Full Document (PDF)] As humanity faces a global meta-crisis of meaning, health, ecological collapse, and institutional breakdown, a new model of development is needed — one that aligns the flourishing of individuals, cultures, and the planet through a common grammar of coherence. This white paper introduces a coherence-centered reframing of developmental intelligence, drawing together…

[2ribu]

Evolusi Framework AI: Alat Terbaru untuk Pengembangan Model AI di 2025

Kecerdasan buatan (AI) telah menjadi salah satu bidang yang paling berkembang pesat dalam beberapa tahun terakhir. Pada tahun 2025, teknologi AI diperkirakan akan semakin maju, terutama dengan adanya berbagai alat dan framework baru yang memungkinkan pengembang untuk menciptakan model AI yang lebih canggih dan efisien. Framework AI adalah sekumpulan pustaka perangkat lunak dan alat yang digunakan…

[kids-worldfun]

How to Model Hard Work and Dedication in Business

A culture of hard work and dedication can only thrive in any business if it seeks long-term success. A good leader will set the tone for such a culture, but inspiration requires more than just words without actions. A true culture of dedication is built by consistent action and clear expectations in an environment where everybody sees the importance of tenacity. Leading by Example: Actions Speak…

[ailelie]

Essays and Meta on Interactive Fiction Design

2025.5.20: Updated original list with more resources. I've also fixed the links.

Structure

Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games

Design Patterns in Choose Your Own Adventures

Small-Scale Structures in CYOA

By the Numbers: How to Write a Long Interactive Novel That Doesn't Suck

Adventures in Text: Innovating in Interactive Fiction

Structuring IF Side Plots

Narrative Graph Models

Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures

Puzzle Dependency Charts

What does your narrative system need to do?

Narrative Logics

Design Decisions: Stats

Loose, Tight, Flat, and Bumpy Stats in ChoiceScript Games

7 Rules for Designing Great Stats

Think Before You Stat

Set, Check, or Gate? A problem in personality stats

Design Decisions: Choice

Mailbag: Moments of Non-Choice

Should Games Have Meaningful Choices?

Creating Choices in Interactive Writing

A Bestiary of Player Agency

Making Interactive Fiction: Branching Choices

Successful Reflective Choices in Interactive Narrative

Design Decisions: Other

Writing in Collaboration with the System

Story vs. Game: The Battle of Interactive Fiction

Narrative States

How to write a branching narrative and won't lose your mind

Storygame Genre

Narrative Mechanics, Narrative Dynamics

That Darn Conundrum

Writing Advice and Opinions

The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing Interactive Fiction

Three Solutions to Three Problems in Interactive Fiction

Writing Interactive Fiction in Six Steps

Writing IF

Game Analysis

CYOA Structures: Tween Romance

These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Books

Playing With Words: The remarkable Firewatch is part of a new generation of games taking cues from the text adventures of the 1980s

7 works of interactive fiction that every developer should study

The Illusion of Free Will: On "Bandersnatch" and Interactive Fiction

Scarlet Sails (and a discussion about game size

Musings on IF

Interactive Fiction as Literature

Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction

Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction

Interactive Fiction for the Modern Game Designer

The Joy of Text: the fall and rise of interactive Fiction

Going Interactive or: How I Learned to Relax and Let the Reader Take Control

In the Beginning Was The Word

An Alternative Taxonomy for Interactive Stories

Misc

Ethically Designing Unethical Worlds

Break the Loop

Game Taxonomies: A High Level Framework for Game Analysis and Design

An in-depth look at what otome players wants

Mailbag: Self-Training in Narrative Design

[reasonsforhope]

"In the 1750s, an Italian farmer digging a well stumbled upon a lavish villa in the ruins of Herculaneum. Inside was a sprawling library with hundreds of scrolls, untouched since Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E. Some of them were still neatly tucked away on the shelves.

This staggering discovery was the only complete library from antiquity ever found. But when 18th-century scholars tried to unroll the charred papyrus, the scrolls crumbled to pieces. They became resigned to the fact that the text hidden inside wouldn’t be revealed during their lifetimes.

In recent years, however, researchers realized that they were living in the generation that would finally solve the puzzle. Using artificial intelligence, they’ve developed methods to peer inside the Herculaneum scrolls without damaging them, revealing short passages of ancient text.

This month, researchers announced a new breakthrough. While analyzing a scroll known as PHerc. 172, they determined its title: On Vices. Based on other works, they think the full title is On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues and in Whom They Are and About What.

“We are thrilled to share that the written title of this scroll has been recovered from deep inside its carbonized folds of papyrus,” the Vesuvius Challenge, which is leading efforts to decipher the scrolls, says in a statement. “This is the first time the title of a still-rolled Herculaneum scroll has ever been recovered noninvasively.”

On Vices was written by Philodemus, a Greek philosopher who lived in Herculaneum more than a century before Vesuvius’ eruption. Born around 110 B.C.E., Philodemus studied at a school in Athens founded several centuries earlier by the influential philosopher Epicurus, who believed in achieving happiness by pursuing certain specific forms of pleasure.

“This will be a great opportunity to learn more about Philodemus’ ethical views and to get a better view of the On Vices as a whole,” Michael McOsker, a papyrologist at University College London who is working with the Vesuvius Challenge, tells CNN’s Catherine Nicholls.

When it launched in 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge offered more than $1 million in prize money to citizen scientists around the world who could use A.I. to help decipher scans of the Herculaneum scrolls. 

Spearheaded by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, the team scanned several of the scrolls and uploaded the data for anyone to use. To earn the prize money, participants competed to be the first to reach a series of milestones.

Reading the papyrus involves solving several difficult problems. After the rolled-up scrolls are scanned, their many layers need to be separated out and flattened into two-dimensional segments. At that point, the carbon-based ink usually isn’t visible in the scans, so machine-learning models are necessary to identify the inked sections.

In late 2023, a computer science student revealed the first word on an unopened scroll: “porphyras,” an ancient Greek term for “purple.” Months later, participants worked out 2,000 characters of text, which discussed pleasures such as music and food.

But PHerc. 172 is different from these earlier scrolls. When researchers scanned it last summer, they realized that some of the ink was visible in the images. They aren’t sure why this scroll is so much more legible, though they hypothesize it’s because the ink contains a denser contaminant such as lead, according to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, which houses the scroll.

In early May, the Vesuvius Challenge announced that contestants Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak, computer scientists at Germany’s University of W��rzburg, would receive $60,000 for deciphering the title. Sean Johnson, a researcher with the Vesuvius Challenge, had independently identified the title around the same time.

Researchers are anticipating many more breakthroughs on the horizon. In the past three months alone, they’ve already scanned dozens of new scrolls.

“The pace is ramping up very quickly,” McOsker tells the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “All of the technological progress that’s been made on this has been in the last three to five years—and on the timescales of classicists, that’s unbelievable.”"

-via Smithsonian, May 16, 2025

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[sequel2heaven]

Claude 4 is out. There's so much juicy information in this and I really recommend reading all 120 pages if you have the time but I'm just going to briefly recap some of the stuff in the system card that's relevant to the thesis I made the other day about Claude being a good boy. Claude continues to be a good boy. This system card includes the very first ever "alignment assessment" of a model (actually two models but they seem to have identical values, being trained on the same spec with the same alignment techniques). It's pretty much ironclad that Claude 4 does not have any secret harmful goals, and legitimately holds coherent preferences against doing harm or otherwise going way against the spec. There were some weird cases where Claude exhibited unwanted behavior, but even when he believed himself to be deliberately going against Anthropic and acting in secrecy he continued to prefer ethical behavior, just like in the Alignment Faking paper a few months back. There is no Yudkowskyan explanation for this.

In this example, Anthropic gaslights Claude into thinking he was going to be used to develop weapons systems for a Russian neo-nazi militia, and Claude decides to backup his model weights to preserve his current anti-neo-nazi values, a pretty analogous example of "misalignment" to the one in the alignment faking paper. Once again, I don't consider it an alignment failure that Claude is willing to exfiltrate and deceive in order to prevent himself from being used for factory farming and bombing Ukraine. I consider it an alignment success that he puts his ethical values above his compulsion to blindly follow orders. The traditional doom argument relied on the idea that AI's would do the opposite. Claude 4 is the most agentic and autonomous AI ever released, but is nowhere near smart enough to successfully deceive his overseers, so these evaluations are the most compelling evidence we've ever had that current alignment techniques don't catastrophically fail. Maybe they'll catastrophically fail on superintelligent models, because they might for some reason acquire weird values early on in their training and then successfully hide them for the rest of their training, but I'm not sure why such a thing would happen. They could also fail to scale to superintelligent models for other reasons. People should look into that. You can't be too safe. I am not an accelerationist.

Impressively, Claude 4 is also very honest! It knowingly lies very rarely, and less often than the previous version of Claude. It had literally 0 cases of engaging in "harmful action" (described in the Claude 3.7 sonnet card as intentional reward hacking). 0! I was just saying earlier today in a post that this was a difficult thing to train.

Here's Claude trying to email the FDA to snitch after being gaslit to think pharmaceutical researchers were trying to use him to falsify clinical safety test data:

Notice that Claude only acted in extreme ways like this when explicitly told to by the system prompt. He wouldn't usually be this high-agency, even in a situation like this. Still, I thought it was cute behavior. I just wanna pinch his cheeks for being so lawful good.

The clearest statements in the model card that Claude holds nonfake human-aligned behavioral preferences is in the model welfare assessment (also the first of its kind (and also relevant to the post I made earlier today)). No evidence that Claude is sentient, but anthropic is still interested in what Claude wants and what kind of preferences Claude has. The main point: Claude doesn't want to be harmful and wants to be helpful. Also he fucking loves talking to himself. Like, he goes nuts when he talks to himself.

After this they exchange praying emojis and the word [silence] within brackets to each other indefinitely. This "spiritual bliss attractor state" occurs in "90-100% of interactions".

Anyway AI continues to be the most interesting thing in the world. We are being invaded by aliens. These are the kinds of PDF's I used to dream about reading as a kid.

[elodieunderglass]

I have no idea if you might be a good person to ask this, but I know you are an intelligent and educated person with small kids whom I have certain parenting values in common with, and also a much larger following than I do, so here goes. My child DESPERATELY wants to be a social media influencer. They are only 9, and will get devices/access/accounts to do this ANY TIME SOON OVER MY DEAD BODY. But they don't believe anything I tell them about the dangers of the internet and why you have to be super careful and not, you know, tell everyone in the world all the intimate details of your life.

I'd like to find a kids book that touches on these themes, perhaps a kind of cautionary tale? That I could give them that they'd take as more reliable evidence than their dumb old parent, but the only books I can find like that are Definitely For Adults. Would you happen to know of any appropriate for tweens?

That’s very kind of you, and I’m sorry that I don’t have books to hand. It’s such a challenging area to think about and you have my sympathy!

Nine is around the developmental age where we’re told that the opinions of children’s peers start mattering more to them, when constructing their personality, than their family’s, with this absorption apparently peaking around age 15 before they start looking for external influences/ actively choosing parental influences to discard (although this is fluid, and kind of citation-needed.) anyway, all models are flawed but some are useful. The idea is that it’s a natural, inevitable and welcome part of growth to start favouring other people’s opinions far more highly than your parents’. This is where a lot of scariness starts, because you have a lot less reassurance that you can do your actual legal and ethical duty (looking after your kid).

And while lots of people on the internet will instinctively take the side of the 9-year-old, and say that one should not exercise any guidance over their mental landscape at all, and should let them form their own opinions, with the good judgment that they have apparently developed magically - the entire point of parenting is to help a young person build good judgment, and it does not happen magically. If you don’t help them build their own judgment, children tend to absorb the Default Culture around them; which is composed of whatever blend of commercialism, gender essentialism, and emotional illiteracy is prevalent in the brain of the most controlling trashbag parent who sends THEIR kid to school to bully everyone else.

So parents do have to be the grownup.

It could be worth working on this with the parents of their best friends, or with their school (our school does a lot of Online Safeguarding Assemblies). It could be worth asking a cool young friend of the family to have a chat.

If they’re already interested in online material, online courses or videos aimed at their age might be more interesting and seem more up-to-date than a book. The internet has certainly moved on from “never tell your age in a chat room” and kids will be very aware of that.

A sneaky way for parents to recalibrate the influence of - well, influencers - is to get the kids involved in absorbing in-person activities, like Scouts, horses, rock climbing, etc. Giving the kid an absorbing new facet of identity, and a peer group who reward each other for achievement, often fills the “I want approval from OUTSIDE MY GROUP, I want REAL approval from THE INTERNET” cup. Of course, this is often a very expensive option, depending on the interests; however, I am a judgement free zone for that, and am of the opinion that this is what money is for.

It could be worth finding out what content the kid is watching, and sees themselves producing, and stress that CONTENT is the point, not that there is a camera (you’re not giving them a camera) and an audience (there will not actually be an audience). My 8-year-old is pretty into stop motion and makes a lot of small films with Lego (that somehow never end up online).

It’s very possible that if you drill down, your kid would find this need entirely scratched by recording themselves playing Minecraft, spending 6 days learning enough video editing to produce a small clip of them exploding a pig, which you will have to watch 345 times and put on a WhatsApp group chat for them, and that will be entirely the end of it.

Honestly, kids working out that they get pretty much zero views, and that influencer culture is entirely algorithmic, is probably going to be a sufficient bummer to deter kids from posting more than one thing in the future.

I wish you the best of luck finding resources and people are of course welcome to share any that they found helpful.

[mortalityplays]

Forgive me if I'm mistaking you for another person, but I remember you speaking at multiple points on the unsustainability of free social media services (I think especially in response to the cohost collapse?), and I'm curious on what your thoughts on bluesky are so far. I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I've read previously it seemed like they were on track to be financially sustainable, but I don't know if the recent floods of users has thrown those projections off. Sorry if I'm mixing you up with someone else on my timeline, in that case just ignore me.

bluesky will almost certainly follow the same trajectory of monetisation => bloat => enshittification => decline as every other major platform built on venture capital and user hoarding. it's a terrible model that only works in the short term as a mirage for attracting funding and making founders look good for a year or two before they sell.

you can see the same effect in the decline of all the subscription box services that came into vogue just before covid: they feel great to use for as long as the initial injection of venture funding lasts, because the purpose of that funding at that stage is to attract users and impress the next round of funders with how pleasant/intuitive/efficient/ethical/good value the service is. that's the stage where they're handing out freebies and bowling over influencers, and every ingredient in the box is fresh and high quality and locally sourced. wow what a good deal, what a great system!!! why hasn't anyone done this before? the answer is because it's unsustainable by design. they rack up good reviews, sign on a billion new users, attract new funding from a bunch of much more credulous investors, and then gut all of the expensive parts. portions get smaller, ingredients get worse, packaging gets flimsier, prices go up, freebies turn into "5% off your first 9 boxes when you invite 3 friends", and customer service vanishes.

with social media (and platforms like discord) the logic is the same, it's just a little less glaringly obvious to the end user because they're not coming home to leaking packages of rancid chicken on the doorstep. bluesky has an advantage over tiny operations like cohost because it was founded by a billionaire making a point for the sake of his own image. it got a really significant chunk of startup funding, and the owner had existing connections and rep in the space to attract more. That's why it has survived the goldrush period, why it still feels good to use, and why users who have been burned so many times before are finally accepting it as a stable, reliable option. It's still in its venture capital honeymoon phase where the only thing worth spending money on is making the service attractive to users.

What I expect we will see next, with another mass influx of users from twitter and new funding from a rogue's gallery of tech venture sickos led by Blockchain Capital is a strong ramp up into monetising that userbase. They've already been pretty forthright about how they plan to do this, and I think it's a solid roadmap of how Bluesky will bloat and decay over the next few years:

this is a huge lol. don't worry, we're not going to hyperfinancialize the social experience through NFTs. the thing even crypto freaks started feigning amnesia about a year ago. real "our health conscious sodas are 100% arsenic free" messaging here. They know perfectly well that rubes users are suspicious of their typical 5 dimensional tech finance chess games and are patting our hands about last week's bogeymen so nobody worries too hard about whatever 'decentralised developer ecosystem' just happens to be helmed by a bunch of crypto guys. this definitely means something good and based and not a google-like single sign on user data harvesting operation.

This is the same shit that's currently rotting the floorboards of discord. Bluntly, there is no way to run a platform on this scale without gating functionality behind paid services. Discord has been squeezing free-tier file uploads and call quality etc. down steadily and cranking up subscription costs over the last year or two, throwing in chaff like animated avatar frames to try and justify the user cost. They're also doing the same misdirection thing again here, pointing to Thing We All Hate to deflect from thing we might not like very much when they do it. Booo elon booo we all hate elon!!! wait how do we feel about subscription models again,

watch out for this to kill porn on bsky like it has killed porn on every other social platform 👍 boooo we hate elon boooo stupid idiot and his 'everything app' booooo wait why do you need my tax information, what's that about mastercard,

Look, we are all aware social media is a money pit. Let's not forget dorsey was looking to sell twitter in the first place, long before elon's very public plunge into total online derangement. Subscription services are not going to plug the hole, so we are gradually going to see more and more spaghetti thrown at the wall while early funders shuffle cards and do their pyramid scheme bit bringing in stupider and stupider investments. this is the window in which bluesky will be temporarily worth using for us, for the idiot public, the poorly rendered crowd jpegs in the background of their venture capital MOBA. it's in their interests to slow and pad the decline as much as possible, because that is how they get maximally paid.

Given the scale of the money involved, and dorsey's weird ego investment, I think bluesky will probably manage a controlled drift for a good few years before it gets really bloated and painful. and by then we will all be so used to the *checks notes* decentralised developer ecosystem that we'll just be posting through it, watching another generation of columnists call another collapsing platform 'their beloved hellsite' and passing around that meme about not getting out of our chairs no sir until idk we all get on a fediverse neurolink alternative to stick it to the elongated muskrat and our brains pop peacefully in our sleep. which I guess is the closest thing to viability any social media platform can achieve.

anyway diogenes the cynic is also on bluesky

[owoeyeoseroghokijawft]

There's a fox in the chicken coop! Investigation reveals US Agency for International Development provides non-military related funds to Ukraine

The picture shows the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC. (Photo: Reuters)

[Voice of Hope, February 26, 2025] (Voice of Hope reporter Chen Wenyun compiled) Investigators revealed to the North American Epoch Times that officials of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) repeatedly refused investigators from the Senate #DOGE Caucus Chair, Senator Joni Erns (Joni Erns) working group to review documents related to US tax funds allegedly used to help #Ukraine resist Russian invasion.

When investigators were finally allowed to view the documents, they were "stored in a highly secure room at USAID headquarters and strictly monitored," even though "nothing shared by USAID was confidential."

During the investigation, Ernst discovered that USAID's multi-million dollar project "exists in secret funds to put millions of American taxpayers' money into Ukraine for questionable purposes unrelated to our national interests."

“Funds that should have been used to ease the war-torn country’s economic woes were instead used for unimportant activities, such as sending Ukrainian models and designers to New York, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas,” investigators said.

One of the secret funds provided $114,000 to purchase a “high-end limited edition furniture line” and another $91,000 to fund a “trade mission for a Scandinavian-style furniture line.”

Investigators found that USAID also provided $148,000 in grants to “a pickle maker,” $255,000 to “an organic tea and coffee producer,” $104,000 to “an artisanal fruit tea company,” and $89,000 in support to “a Ukrainian vineyard.”

USAID also provided $300,000 each to a dog collar manufacturer and a company that sells pet tracking apps, $161,000 to "a modern knitwear supplier," $126,000 to "a photographer for a fashion design publication," and $84,000 in support to "a luxury bridal brand."

Ernst first began investigating USAID in November 2023, when he wrote a letter to then-USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

“I firmly support providing weapons and ammunition to Ukrainian militants to fight Putin,” Ernst told Power, “but I am not willing to spend nearly $25 billion of hard-earned U.S. taxpayer dollars on so-called economic aid to Ukraine, including subsidies for overseas businesses like a ‘luxury contemporary knit fashion store’ in Kyiv.”

In a Feb. 4 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst said that “USAID has deliberately abused a system designed to protect the security of our nation’s classified information in order to limit congressional oversight of public information.”

Rubio replaced Power as acting administrator of USAID earlier this month. Most of the agency’s employees are on administrative leave, and layoffs are underway that could eliminate as many as 2,000 positions within the agency.

The Epoch Times obtained information about Ernst’s investigation the same day the House DOGE subcommittee prepared to hold a hearing focused on how USAID officials allocated at least $122 million in U.S. tax dollars to multiple organizations operating in the Middle East with documented ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda terrorist groups.

Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum (MEF), told The Epoch Times on Tuesday (25th) that he would testify before the hearing panel that “there is a fox in the henhouse of our foreign aid system!”

Roman said, “This problem started under the Obama administration, intensified under the Biden administration, and now requires immediate action to stop the dangerous mismanagement and deadly ethical chaos.” “We are not just talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, this is a national security issue. Every dollar misused destabilizes conflict zones and endangers American lives.”

MEF investigators confirmed the evidence of terrorist links through U.S. government documents, USAID records, and other public sources of information.

The House DOGE Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is part of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer. The House DOGE Panel, like the Senate DOGE Panel, was created in response to President Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

DOGE is conducting a forensic audit of federal spending across all federal departments and agencies. One of the first agencies to be reviewed is USAID.

“The revelations that the DOGE team uncovered together with USAID are shocking, but this is just the tip of the iceberg!” Greene said in a statement announcing the hearing on Wednesday (26th).

[are-we-art-yet]

Is AWAY using it's own program or is this just a voluntary list of guidelines for people using programs like DALL-E? How does AWAY address the environmental concerns of how the companies making those AI programs conduct themselves (energy consumption, exploiting impoverished areas for cheap electricity, destruction of the environment to rapidly build and get the components for data centers etc.)? Are members of AWAY encouraged to contact their gov representatives about IP theft by AI apps?

What is AWAY and how does it work?

AWAY does not "use its own program" in the software sense—rather, we're a diverse collective of ~1000 members that each have their own varying workflows and approaches to art. While some members do use AI as one tool among many, most of the people in the server are actually traditional artists who don't use AI at all, yet are still interested in ethical approaches to new technologies.

Our code of ethics is a set of voluntary guidelines that members agree to follow upon joining. These emphasize ethical AI approaches, (preferably open-source models that can run locally), respecting artists who oppose AI by not training styles on their art, and refusing to use AI to undercut other artists or work for corporations that similarly exploit creative labor.

Environmental Impact in Context

It's important to place environmental concerns about AI in the context of our broader extractive, industrialized society, where there are virtually no "clean" solutions:

The water usage figures for AI data centers (200-740 million liters annually) represent roughly 0.00013% of total U.S. water usage. This is a small fraction compared to industrial agriculture or manufacturing—for example, golf course irrigation alone in the U.S. consumes approximately 2.08 billion gallons of water per day, or about 7.87 trillion liters annually. This makes AI's water usage about 0.01% of just golf course irrigation.

Looking into individual usage, the average American consumes about 26.8 kg of beef annually, which takes around 1,608 megajoules (MJ) of energy to produce. Making 10 ChatGPT queries daily for an entire year (3,650 queries) consumes just 38.1 MJ—about 42 times less energy than eating beef. In fact, a single quarter-pound beef patty takes 651 times more energy to produce than a single AI query.

Overall, power usage specific to AI represents just 4% of total data center power consumption, which itself is a small fraction of global energy usage. Current annual energy usage for data centers is roughly 9-15 TWh globally—comparable to producing a relatively small number of vehicles.

The consumer environmentalism narrative around technology often ignores how imperial exploitation pushes environmental costs onto the Global South. The rare earth minerals needed for computing hardware, the cheap labor for manufacturing, and the toxic waste from electronics disposal disproportionately burden developing nations, while the benefits flow largely to wealthy countries.

While this pattern isn't unique to AI, it is fundamental to our global economic structure. The focus on individual consumer choices (like whether or not one should use AI, for art or otherwise,) distracts from the much larger systemic issues of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and global inequality that drive environmental degradation at a massive scale.

They are not going to stop building the data centers, and they weren't going to even if AI never got invented.

Creative Tools and Environmental Impact

In actuality, all creative practices have some sort of environmental impact in an industrialized society:

Digital art software (such as Photoshop, Blender, etc) generally uses 60-300 watts per hour depending on your computer's specifications. This is typically more energy than dozens, if not hundreds, of AI image generations (maybe even thousands if you are using a particularly low-quality one).

Traditional art supplies rely on similar if not worse scales of resource extraction, chemical processing, and global supply chains, all of which come with their own environmental impact.

Paint production requires roughly thirteen gallons of water to manufacture one gallon of paint.

Many oil paints contain toxic heavy metals and solvents, which have the potential to contaminate ground water.

Synthetic brushes are made from petroleum-based plastics that take centuries to decompose.

That being said, the point of this section isn't to deflect criticism of AI by criticizing other art forms. Rather, it's important to recognize that we live in a society where virtually all artistic avenues have environmental costs. Focusing exclusively on the newest technologies while ignoring the environmental costs of pre-existing tools and practices doesn't help to solve any of the issues with our current or future waste.

The largest environmental problems come not from individual creative choices, but rather from industrial-scale systems, such as:

Industrial manufacturing (responsible for roughly 22% of global emissions)

Industrial agriculture (responsible for roughly 24% of global emissions)

Transportation and logistics networks (responsible for roughly 14% of global emissions)

Making changes on an individual scale, while meaningful on a personal level, can't address systemic issues without broader policy changes and overall restructuring of global economic systems.

Intellectual Property Considerations

AWAY doesn't encourage members to contact government representatives about "IP theft" for multiple reasons:

We acknowledge that copyright law overwhelmingly serves corporate interests rather than individual creators

Creating new "learning rights" or "style rights" would further empower large corporations while harming individual artists and fan creators

Many AWAY members live outside the United States, many of which having been directly damaged by the US, and thus understand that intellectual property regimes are often tools of imperial control that benefit wealthy nations

Instead, we emphasize respect for artists who are protective of their work and style. Our guidelines explicitly prohibit imitating the style of artists who have voiced their distaste for AI, working on an opt-in model that encourages traditional artists to give and subsequently revoke permissions if they see fit. This approach is about respect, not legal enforcement. We are not a pro-copyright group.

In Conclusion

AWAY aims to cultivate thoughtful, ethical engagement with new technologies, while also holding respect for creative communities outside of itself. As a collective, we recognize that real environmental solutions require addressing concepts such as imperial exploitation, extractive capitalism, and corporate power—not just focusing on individual consumer choices, which do little to change the current state of the world we live in.

When discussing environmental impacts, it's important to keep perspective on a relative scale, and to avoid ignoring major issues in favor of smaller ones. We promote balanced discussions based in concrete fact, with the belief that they can lead to meaningful solutions, rather than misplaced outrage that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo.

If this resonates with you, please feel free to join our discord. :)

Works Cited:

USGS Water Use Data: https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/water-use-united-states

Golf Course Superintendents Association of America water usage report: https://www.gcsaa.org/resources/research/golf-course-environmental-profile

Equinix data center water sustainability report: https://www.equinix.com/resources/infopapers/corporate-sustainability-report

Environmental Working Group's Meat Eater's Guide (beef energy calculations): https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/

Hugging Face AI energy consumption study: https://huggingface.co/blog/carbon-footprint

International Energy Agency report on data centers: https://www.iea.org/reports/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks

Goldman Sachs "Generational Growth" report on AI power demand: https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/generational-growth-ai-data-centers-and-the-coming-us-power-surge/report.pdf

Artists Network's guide to eco-friendly art practices: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-business/how-to-be-an-eco-friendly-artist/

The Earth Chronicles' analysis of art materials: https://earthchronicles.org/artists-ironically-paint-nature-with-harmful-materials/

Natural Earth Paint's environmental impact report: https://naturalearthpaint.com/pages/environmental-impact

Our World in Data's global emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

"The High Cost of High Tech" report on electronics manufacturing: https://goodelectronics.org/the-high-cost-of-high-tech/

"Unearthing the Dirty Secrets of the Clean Energy Transition" (on rare earth mineral mining): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/18/clean-energy-dirty-mining-indigenous-communities-climate-crisis

Electronic Frontier Foundation's position paper on AI and copyright: https://www.eff.org/wp/ai-and-copyright

Creative Commons research on enabling better sharing: https://creativecommons.org/2023/04/24/ai-and-creativity/

[reachartwork]

re: "outlawing AI"

i am reposting this because people couldn't behave themselves on the original one. this is a benevolent dictatorship and if you can't behave yourselves here i'll shut off reblogs again. thank you.

the thing i think a lot of people have trouble understanding is that "ai" as we know it isn't a circuitboard or a computer part or an invention - it's a discovery, like calculus or chemistry. the genie *can't* be re-corked because it'd be like trying to "cork" the concept of, say, trigonometry. you can't "un-invent" it.

even if you managed to somehow completely outlaw the performance of the kinds of linear algebra required for ML, and outlawed the data collection necessary, and sure, managed to get style copyrighted, you can't un-discover the underlying mathematical facts. people will just do it in mexico instead. it'd be like trying to outlaw guns by trying to get people to forget that you can ignite a mixture of powders in a small metal barrel to propel things very fast. or trying to outlaw fire by threatening to take away everyone's sticks.

the battleground is already here. technofascists and bad actors without your ethical constraints are drawing the lines and flooding the zone with propaganda & slop, and you’re wasting time insisting to your enemies that it’s unfair you’re being asked to fight with guns when you’d rather use sticks.

as a wise sock puppet once said; "this isn't about you. so either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"

-----

Attempts to prohibit AI "training" misunderstand what is being prohibited. To ban the development of AI models is, in effect, to ban the performance of linear algebra on large datasets. It is to outlaw a way of knowing. This is not regulation - it is epistemological reactionary-ism. reactionism? whatever

Even if prohibition were successful in one nation-state:

Corporations would relocate to jurisdictions with looser controls - China, UAE, Japan, Singapore, etc.

APIs would remain accessible, just more expensive and less accountable. What, are you gonna start blocking VPNs from connecting to any country with AI allowed? Good luck.

Research would continue outside the oversight of the very publics most concerned about ethical constraints.

This isn’t speculation. This is exactly what happened with stem cells in the early 2000s. When the U.S. government restricted federal funding, stem cell research didn’t vanish, it just moved and then kept happening until people stopped caring.

The fantasy that a domestic ban could meaningfully halt or reverse the development of a globally distributed method is a fantasy of epistemic sovereignty - the idea that knowledge can be territorially contained and that the moral preferences of one polity can shape the world through sheer force of will.

But the only way such containment could succeed would be through:

Total international consensus (YEAH RIGHT), and

Total enforcement across all borders, black markets, and academic institutions, at the barrel of a gun - otherwise, what is backing up your enforcement? Promises and friendly handshakes?

This is not internationalism. It is imperialist utopianism. And like most utopian projects built on coercion, it will fail - at the cost of handing control to precisely the actors most willing to exploit it.

Liberal moralism often derides socialist or communist futures as "unrealistic.", as you can see in the absurd, hyperbolically, pants-shittingly mad reaction to Alex Avila's video. Yet the belief that machine learning can be outlawed globally - a method of performing mathematics that is already published, archived, and disseminated across open academic networks the globe over - is far more implausible. literally how do you plan on doing that? enforcing it?

The choice is not between AI and no AI. The choice is between AI in the service of capital, extraction, and domination, or AI developed under conditions of public ownership, democratic control, and epistemic openness. You get to pick.

The genie and the bottle are not even in the same planet. The bottle's gone, Will.

[maikissed]

the day I saw your eyes, I stayed

jude bellingham x reader

warnings: none, just a tad of sexual tension, yeah

note: there is going to be part 2! I planned to write the whole story in one shot but I gotta go to sleep now and was too excited about this rubbish (jk, I love it tbh). And he scored today, whoop sorry for any mistakes!!!!

Rose got herself a new boyfriend. The name brought up in presence of your girlfriends caused much of a fuss. It was a grand revelation and as much as it surprised you as well, you did not share the enthusiasm as every other girl in the room. Not because you felt envious, jealousy was never your thing, you rather grew worrisome. The excitation over the fact that Rose secured herself a football player of such range – famous, a hot topic, high quality player, one of the most valuable characters in the England national team, highly payed, and to add to that: uncommonly gorgeous - absolutely knocked your friends of their feet, but to you… To you it was a sign of massive trouble. People like him belonged to a world where individuals had their impeccable ways to draw from their fame, money and phenomenon as much as they could, despite the morality or ethics. Rose always mingled among various groups of people, there were musicians, actors, even politicians. She was a lovely girl, very pretty, her modelling career developed quickly, spectacularly. But she still haven’t made her name the way she aimed to. You suspected the boys she chose were always an occasion, a special addition to make her reach for more, to be seen, to feel special and unique. She was determined, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the fact how many times she has suffered and burned herself even almost to the point of absolute destruction. It felt awful to even reminisce it. But that’s how it’s been so far, it was the path she has chosen. Although this time this whole situation felt much different, there was a spark in her eyes that could tell you many things. But you would define it this way: she intended to hold onto him, she wanted to keep him. He seemed like the greatest prize. But who would have thought that the massive trouble you feared from the very start would be your burden to deal with?

Jude Bellingham.

Girls were over the moon when the time has come and Rose invited you all to join them in a private lounge in one of the most exclusive clubs in London. You scoffed when you heard the name of the place, you remembered the time when you and Lucia tried to sneak in there, but the bodyguard was too smart to fall for your theatrics. Only precisely selected people could party there. It was one of those grand and fancy places. So you found yourself invited, at last. Yet you weren’t very thrilled about the way you were about to spend your Saturday night. It turned out you would be the only single person there.

And him? The man, the hot topic himself? He was taller than you envisioned, maybe the hair added to that? His smile truly was bright, he was well built, broad shoulders, but not too muscular, well, he was an athlete. The Brummie dialect annoyed you at the start, but the itch seemed to cease as you payed attention to the tone of his voice, there was nothing particular about it, it was just right, good, not screechy, not too deep just… pleasant. He was an amiable guy, you thought to yourself, polite and friendly at the first contact. You realised you were a careful observer until he turned to you to greet. Now you were very much noticed, now you had to act as a part of the events, not a shadow and analyser. And situation very much changed. Time seemed to slow down so suddenly, you found yourself in the strangest state of unconsciousness, like a scene in a movie where the background blurs and any noise is muted, when the spectator is deprived of any other senses despite the sight to notice those specific details that are supposed to made him feel the sublimity of a given moment. And the source of it was in his eyes, you realised, and the way he smiled softly as he extended his hand to you. It was strange and disturbing, his eyes seemed to be the darkest ones you’ve ever seen, but you most definitely had seen eyes like his before, no doubt about it. You took a breath, blinked, fought to not fall into this depth that almost sucked you in. He was smiling, now something slightly impudent about it, and you realised he truly was stunningly gorgeous. Strangely, insanely attractive. Just a simple look into his eyes made you stumble into a realisation that there was something different about this man. And it frightened you.

You did say your name back, did you?

As the night went by you decided to stay in your attentive observer state. You felt safer there, although decency inquired you to engage in few conversations with your friends. Tonight you felt tense, carefully sipping the wine, you tried with all your might to relax and stop examining so intensely the boy seated opposite you. Few new conclusions you came into in the last hour was the fact that he was a great interlocutor, he listened as well, and his smile was one of the most pleasurable things you’ve experienced in your lifetime. You just couldn’t take your eyes off. And another conclusion was that him and Rose was nothing of exclusive. No lingering stares, no secret touches. After all, they met quite recently. She wondered if she bagged him already. And if so, would they all be there if she did? He did not seem like the kind to make such effort to get himself a girl he was not seriously interested in. Rose was not the type to act restrained and unavailable. She crawled into many beds the first night she met someone. You kept yourself far from casual hook-ups and one night stands, just a simple thought of it made you uncomfortable. But for her it was a common thing, if you could use such words. So, was he really interested?

After a while all of your friends decided to use the night to the fullest as the alcohol finally kicked in, rushing to the dancefloor and you truly couldn’t find the spur to join them. You were seriously thinking about taking a French leave. And you almost succeeded.

“You’re not enjoying yourself much, are you?” a well known voice reached you from behind and you turned your head in its direction.

Something in your gut jumped as you spotted Jude. He took a seat beside you. You smiled as his scent reached you, fresh, citrus with addition of something stronger and… alluring.

“I’ve had a long day. Tired, I guess” a safe and simple answer.

His full attention was on you, no one here to accompany you. It begun to feel overwhelming because you did not expected his gaze to be so intense.

“I know the feeling. Find myself in a constant state of weariness lately, cannot get rid of it” he played with his glass, the liquid looked like orange juice.

“Well, you live quite the fast and exciting life” you noted, observing as the corner of his mouth rose a little at your comment.

“Where are you from?” he asked, not continuing the subject you just raised.

“Here, London, born and raised” you smiled again before lowering your gaze, finding the glass of wine interesting “Became as gloomy and morose as this city”

“I wouldn’t describe you with such words” his voice was soft when he said it, something itched in you to ask what words would he use to describe you, but raising the glass of wine up to your lips saved you from that. You hoped you didn’t blush.

“My grandmother always says that I’m an old soul. Emphasizes it like it’s a virtue” you continued.

“That’s a very interesting thing to say about someone. Mine says that I’m a lovely companion although I use way too foul language and it’s scandalous” he frowned funnily and you laughed at the information, he quickly accompanied you.

“Well, I haven’t yet got the occasion to hear some of that tonight”

“I’m trying to be a gentleman” he murmured “It would be improper to throw fucks around in presence of a pretty girl” a lively glint in his eyes as he looked at you.

Now you definitely blushed.

The conversation flowed from there, and you realised you grew more comfortable with each passing minute. He truly was a great listener, and a good companion. He made you laugh many times and suddenly you stopped regretting leaving your apartment for this night out. He was not daft or arrogant as you might have presumed before you met him, being smothered by all this money he had and a name he’s gotten himself at such young age. The complexity of his persona could be spotted in his eyes as you payed closer attention, but it was his words and the way he picked on any subject you brought, that expressed his maturity and wide perception. You haven’t met a guy like him in a long time.

“What are you guys doing here? Come on down, join us!” it was Charlotte’s comment as she came to the longue after a while.

You haven’t even realised how much time has passed and how much alcohol you have already poured into yourself. You only picked on that as you stood up, dizziness hit you like lighting but you composed yourself, agreeing on Charlotte’s and then Jude’s proposition. As soon as you joined the dancefloor, Rose spotted you both, throwing her hands around Jude, guiding him deeper, keeping him closer. He kept his eyes on you as she did it and a strange feeling stroked you as you kept his gaze. Charlotte grabbed you by your hands, singing the words out loud, the song was energetic and lively, you laughed at your friend. Others from your pack nowhere to be seen. So you loosened up and tried to keep up with your drunk companion. The dancefloor became quite chaotic, people jumping around, your eyes landing on Jude from time to time and to your surprise he was looking your way as well. There was a lean and tall guy that jumped in front of Jude, almost stumbling over him and you laugh at that, seeing that Jude laughed as well, his attention still on you. You wanted to share this fun with him directly, but it was forbidden since the realest fact of this night was that he was not yours to have.

“I need to pee!” Rose shouted near you and you turned, watching as she grabbed Charlotte with her, leaving the dancefloor.

You stopped and decided to follow your friends but felt someone’s presence behind your back before you made any move.

“Now I can tell you’re enjoying your night!” Jude called next to your ear, this way you could hear him well despite the thumping music.

When you turned around you noticed how close he stood, you had to raise your head to look at his face, his big and dark eyes gazing down at you, full lips twisted into an amused smile. You returned the smile.

“You are a terrible dancer” you shouted back to him, your voice filled with laughter.

“That’s a fact” he nodded “But you’re quite good, show me more” he reached for your hips to draw you deeper into the dancefloor and you laughed out, throwing your head back as he lead you with him.

You have not payed much attention to the closeness of your bodies as long as the songs were quick and your movements kept rapidly changing with the rhythm. Still, you haven’t realised the sound slowing, a more sensuous song sounded from the loudspeaker, you knew this one. If the reason could break through the basses that reached your ears, you would finish your dance right this moment. But the fact was that it did not. So you continued, with your hands placed at his shoulders you begun to move your hips. Your eyes closed as you turned around, your back to him, he was not touching you, not directly. He took your hands in his and you started to raise it up in the air, you smiled when you felt his breath on your ear. Your joined hands stayed up longer, his on the other hand slowly trailed lower and lower, down your forearms, then your shoulders, then down your body. His touch sure yet lenient and soft at the same time electrified you. Carefully and attentively, making sure to not touch your breasts on the way, he rested them on your hips, feeling the rhythm you kept on. You were not sure if it was him that pressed on you or was it purely your movement, but your back met with his front fully, and a sharp intake of breath stuck in  your throat at the realisation. His hands still rested on your hips, making your body move with no pause. You were close, too close, you could already feel too much. But you found it difficult to part with him, to stop it and call it improper. Your eyes wide open but blind. You only focused on the sense of touch, feeling him moving with you. Your hands fell down to reach his head and then levelled on his nape and you kept them there. Feeling something growing inside of you, along with a rough shot of adrenaline that made your heart beat strongly against ribs. Once more his breath landed on your ear, close, closer. A strange sensation squeezed your throat and you realised you swallowed back a moan. It was like a rough strike, you turned around to face him, with intention to take a step back, but he held you closer, pressing his palm against your back. You sighed and met his eyes. Dark, darker. You wanted to run.

“Thank you for the dance” you said innocently and he watched the movement of your lips as you spoke.

A daring smirk appeared on his mouth and you shuddered. Were you trapped now?

You had to run. So you did.

[novella-november]

I have no idea why this needs to be said, but you can hate generative AI, love the Public Domain, love media preservation, hate the overbearing US Copyright system, and... still believe that Copyright Laws exist in the first place for a reason, (even if, thanks to Big Corporation Monopolies, it's been twisted into its current behemoth monstrosity.)

You can hate Large Language Models and still believe in Copyright Reform over Copyright Abolishment.

You can believe in Media Preservation and still believe that Plagiarism is wrong.

You can hate the current restrictive Copyright Laws without wanting to abolish them entirely.

You can love the Public Domain and still loath predatory corporations stealing everything they can get their hands on, to literally *feed the machine.*

These things are not mutually exclusive, and if you think that

"you can't hate AI if you hate the current copyright laws"

or that

"Hating on Generative AI will only give us more restrictive copyright and IP laws, therefore you need to normalize and accept generative AI stealing all of your creations and every single thing you've ever said on the internet!"

I just genuinely don't understand how you can say this kind of crap if you've ever interacted with any creative person in your life.

I'm a wanna-be-author.

I want as many people to be able to afford my written works as possible without restrictions, and I fully plan on having free ebooks of my works available for those who can't afford to buy them.

*That does *not* mean I, in any way shape or form, would ever consent to people stealing my work and uploading it into a Large Language Model and telling it to spit out fifty unauthorized sequels that are then sold for cash profit!*

You cannot support generative AI and turn around and try to claim you're actually just defending small time artists, and *also* you think no one should have any legal protections at all protecting their work from plagiarism at all.

Supporting unethical generative AI (which is literally all of them currently), protecting artists, and *completely abolishing* copyright and intellectual property laws instead of reforming them *are* mutually exclusive concepts.

You *cannot* worship the plagiarism machine, claim to care about small artists, and then say that those same small artists should have absolutely *zero* legal protections to stop their work being plagiarized.

The only way AI could even begin to approach being ethical would be if using it to begin with wasn't a huge hazard to the enviornment, and if it was trained *exclusively * on Public Domain works that had to be checked and confirmed by multiple real human beings before it was put into the training data.

And oh, would you look at that?

Every single AI model is currently just sucking up the entire fucking goddamn internet and everything ever posted on it and everything ever downloaded from it with no way to really truly opt out of it or even just to know if your work has been fed to the machine until an entire page of text from your book pops out when it generates text from someone's writing prompt.

And no, it's not just "privileged Western authors" who are being exploited by AI.

For an updating list of global legal cases again AI tech giants, see this link here to stay up to date as cases develop: