#i don't actually think there would be anything wrong with a generative AI trained on a specific set of data

[transgenderer]

people talk about the cult of "image" but unfortunately image has a common metaphorical language, of apperance, conception, language. and lately ive felt a little overwhelmed by the extent to which our culture is fixated on literal images, pictures, photographs or facsimiles of photographs.

there are ads for faceapp on the train, calling it better than makeup. and yknow, for a lot of people theyre probably not wrong, theyre putting on make-up for the sake of taking a picture! or the section in certain shops (boba places in particular, for whatever reason) designed for taking pictures of yourself there and posting them on instagram, or the entire venues based around picture locations. did you know every major european city has a "museum of illusions" for taking optical illusion pictures of yourself. you see it on google maps when you visit.

and anyway the peak of this of course is generative image AI, a technical marvel, ludicrously expensive to create, whose whole output is just…images! just pictures! and its cousin cgi, because of course the point of all those practical effect was not to create objects in the world, the point was the images they would result in, and its turns out you can make the images without the objects, so why bother.

and the way that as a person today you can have "seen" almost anything but of course not actually seen it, seen a picture of it. and the way you go on a trip, and your memories are fuzzy, and so the memory becomes the sequence of pictures you took, the little bubbles of shaprness.

and it doesnt help that the rise of industrial manufacturing, which i love, and online shopping, which im ambivalent about, mean that the actual OBJECTS in our lives, the non-pictured, are optimized for looking good enough in a picture(!) online for you to buy it and then inexpertly hand-assembled, build around packing flat and getting shipped. and that when we DO try to make our lived environments better, more aesthetic, how do we concieve of this except in pictures! in pinterest moodboards, in sharing aestheticized versions of our lives chosen by careful images. its just. its pictures!

and to be clear there's not, technically, anything WRONG with all this. but its a very particular way to live, and i dont think we chose it, we just sort of stumbled into it. world of pictures, culture of pictures. imagine youre a farmer, or a hunter gatherer, before engravings became a thing. its the first millenium, let's say. it sucks, you have all sorts of weird diseases. but pictures, pictures are not a big deal to you. i mean unless they represent god. pictures are just not a very common part of your life. you don't think a lot about pictures.

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I dislike large scale generative AI as much as the next guy but every time someone says it "isn't real art" I get the spiteful urge to use it in some way for a complex postmodern art piece where the point is "everything is art, actually, and your arguments are flawed". and I'd hope that it would live in people's heads rent free the same way that damn urinal has lived in art purists' heads for years now.

but I can't do that with generative AI that exists currently because I do in fact hate the plagiarism machine.

[nothanksehh]

When We Meet Again- Chapter 1

Being a rider with a powerful signet usually means you are exempt from being a professor at Basgiath. Only a rare few actually enjoy the task of training the young minds and dealing with all the bullshit that comes along with that. So when Niamh volunteered for the open position of Classified and Rare Signet Professor more than a few people were surprised. What they don't know is that seeing Brennan and Naolin die during the Battle of Aretia nearly killed you, too. No one is quite sure how you are alive, seeing as Marbh and your dragon Eilduaine were mated. Brennan's last words down the bond were a plea for you to protect his sisters. And you will do anything to make sure that last promise is never broken.

Notes:

Please note that this is a slow burn and will have raunchy chapters and themes. There are also themes that go along with The Empyrean series, death, harm, and really bad shit to come. I have taken the time to generate an image of Niamh, Brennan, and Smachd as I have aphantasia and can't see shit up here. The images of these characters are shown for those who would like to see that visual. If you do not support people using AI to generate images of characters please do not give me any grief about it. This is cross-posted to my Ao3 Niamh is pronounced NEEV. Eild is pronounced Aisled. Eilduaine is pronounced Aisled-Wayne.

Chapter 2

I dream of him often. 

I thought that Brennan and I would be together until our last moments. Eilduaine seems to echo the sentiment down our bond. Living without the one person who knew me inside and out is nothing compared to what Eild lost. Mated dragons are supposed to die together, one life lost for the other. The riders follow with them, that's the cycle.

The Battle of Aretia was cruel and hard-fought. More lives than necessary were lost. The sounds of war echo around me as Eild dives for another soul. The only thing I hate more than the fucking griffin riders is having to kill those that were fellow students at Basgiath with me. It makes me sick. But the orders were given. 

Brennan fights alongside me, a rock of resolution flows along our bond. He is there one minute and gone the next but I know he will be fine. 

"This bond we share will be a great asset in battles to come," Eild's words were always a comfort. I will know if something goes wrong with him. I found so much comfort in the knowledge that I would never have to exist without him in this world. 

"We will follow each other to the next life, I promise Niamh."

Fucking liar.

The dreams make me relive them too often for me to ever forget. 

Me holding Brennan as Naolin works to funnel life back into him. Eild snapping at anyone who attempts to get close to Marbh as he fights for his own life. Brennan being too weak to say anything out loud. Him solely using our connection to speak those blasted last words. 

"Nia, please look out for my sisters. Mira and Violet will be crushed, but you have to make sure that they survive. Don't let them do anything stupid."

My tears flowing uncontrollably as I watch Naolin's work fail him slowly. 

"Let my family know I love them. Don't... don't ever forget how much I love you, Nia."

Feeling that bond go dark and then sever, Eild's scream of loss, there are no words for that moment. Or the ones to follow. 

Naolin dying. Tairn's roars. Eild fading. 

No one paid enough attention to the rebel behind me, getting knocked unconscious by the pommel of a sword is the last thing I remember, that last flicker before I wake time and time again.

I wake in a sweat. My body aching, no doubt from the tossing and turning that nightmares bring. 6 years have passed since that awful fucking day. Every day since has been hell. I wish I were dead with Brennan more often than I would care to admit out loud. If I am honest, I don't even think I have had time to grieve his loss. Upon waking after the battle I was told of the outcome and that I had been in a coma for weeks, recovering at Basgiath with the aid of the healers. As soon as they had deemed me recovered, they shipped me off to Samara. Being sent to the front was hell in itself, but it did allow me to be able to rise in the ranks quickly. There was nothing else on my brain other than being there for Mira when she graduated and got sent to her station. The only way that leadership would listen to my requests was if I was high enough in rank to even request to transfer. 

So I worked hard, determination pushing me past limits that should have existed for me. But I was extremely successful. And I followed Mira from station to station. 

God did she hate me for "babysitting" her, as she liked to put it. But I knew that she was secretly grateful for the company, the small reminder of Brennan that shadowed her. We had finally gotten a good rhythm when we got word that Violet was to go into the Riders Quadrant. Mira and I had been so sure that everything would be fine and she would be safe with the scribes. 

Wrong again. 

Leaving Mira was hard. She was so much like Brennan that it gave me a small bit of peace when I was around her. She was a great person once you got to know her. Her secret heart of gold that she only showed to those she was closest with. 

The Professor of Classified and Rare Signets position being open was great timing. Being a Major made me a shoo-in for the role, that paired with my signet and they were practically salivating when I put myself in for it. The only one who questioned anything was General Sorrengail, thank god it wasn't in front of leadership. Being back at Basgiath for the first time was surreal. The General caught me right as I was dismounting Eild, escorted me to my quarters to drop my things, showed me to the classroom that I would be teaching in, and then locked us inside. 

"I want you and I to be on the same page when it comes to this position, Major Leannan," she said, "You are here because your experience in this position will be invaluable. You, however, have not fooled me as to your true intentions in returning. I am aware of your need to shadow Mira wherever her duty might take her. I am aware that you are doing this for Violet so that you might be able to uphold some sort of vow that you have made. And I will make you aware that should you attempt to remove Violet from this quadrant to spare her, you will no longer be required to hold any future vows. You are smart, so I am sure you understand what I mean. I have made an agreement with Xaden Riorson that he will ensure Violet is well-guarded this year. You will make sure that he is held to this. Do not interfere in her education or training here before threshing. Should she survive and manifest, I expect you to personally train her. You will not let her know what I have said. Do not disappoint me, Major."

And then she turned around and left. It was not surprising that she would know what I was doing. Nor was it a stretch that she would want me to train Violet should she bond a dragon and manifest her signet. It just meant that there were now conditions for my survival again.

And after watching Violet cross the parapet, it was going to be one hell of a hard year not intervening. 

[ms-demeanor]

Nahhhh you lost me at the copyright bullshit. A machine created to brute force copy and learn from any and all art around it that then imitates the work of others, an algorithm that puts no effort of its own into work, is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm made by highly paid dudebros to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person.

I mean. You're fundamentally misunderstanding both the technology and my argument.

You're actually so wrong you're not even wrong. Let's break it down:

A machine created to brute force copy and (what does "brute force copy" mean? "Brute Force" has a specific meaning in discussions of tech and this isn't it) learn from any and all art around it that then imitates the work of others (there are limited models that are trained to imitate the work of specific artists and there are people generating prompts requesting things in the style of certain artists, but large models are absolutely not trained to imitate anything other than whatever most closely matches the prompt; I do think that models trained on a single artist are unethical and are a much better case of violating the principles of fair use however they are significantly transformative so even there the argument kind of falls apart), an algorithm that puts no effort of its own into work (of course this is not a fair argument to be having really because you're an asker and you can't argue or respond but buddy you have to define your terms. 'Effort' is an extremely malleable concept and art that takes effort is not significantly more art-y or valid than art that takes little or no effort like this is an extremely common argument in discussions of modern art - is Andy Warhol art, is Duchamps' readymades series art, art is a LOT more about context than effort and I'm not sure you're aware of the processing power used to generate AI art but there is "effort" of a sort there but also you are anthropomorphizing the model, the algorithm isn't generating "its own work"), is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm (i mean it's slightly more complicated than that, we're discussing a wide variety of models here) made by highly paid dudebros (this completely ignores the open source work, the volunteer work, the work of anybody who is not a 'dudebro,' which is the most typically tumblr way of dismissing anything in tech as the creation of someone white, male, and wealthy which SUCH a shitty set of assumptions) to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person.

Okay so the reasonable things I've pulled out of that to discuss are:

"A machine created to learn from any and all art around it is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm made to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person."

And in terms of who fair use applies to, no. You're wrong. For the purposes of copyright and fair use, a machine learning model and a person are identical. You can't exclude one without excluding the other. There isn't even a good way to meaningfully separate them if you consider artists who use AI in their process while not actually generating AI art.

I feel like I don't really have to make much of an argument here because the EFF has done it for me. The sections of that commentary from question 8 own are detailed explanations of why generative models should reasonably be recognized as protected by fair use when trained on data that is publicly available.

But also: your definition of "copying" is bad. You're wrong about what a copy is, or you're wrong about what generative image models do. I suspect that the latter is much closer to the truth, so I'd recommend reading up on generative image models some more - that EFF commentary has plenty of articles that would probably be helpful for you.

[tangentiallly]

so, something i've been thinking about AI is that,

okay. a few months ago a friend was telling me that she was using .... i think it was claude? anyway she says it's better than chatgpt when it comes to coding, and she mentions asking it questions when she encounters some error or wanting to know a fix for something, etc, i forgot the details. but it's basically the kind of things i'm used to looking up the answer on the web for which will usually take me to a stackoverflow page. so i said, if the answers are good i'm guessing the stackoverflow pages were in the training data and that's where it's pulling from? she says yeah most likely.

then i began thinking that, hmm, if it's really trained thoroughly i do think it may be of some use - though of course, since it isn't actually "thinking" and "analyzing" when it comes up with the answer you should be aware that it could be wrong and make adjustments accordingly etc etc. (but i'm not here to debate if it's ethical or "eroding your coding skills" or whatever and tbh even before chatgpt there were people who google solutions and copy paste things they find online without understanding and that thing could be totally wrong. so it's like. you know). anyway, that's not the point. the point i was thinking, so we have all these ..... vast majority set of training data available, right, in this specific field, so many stackoverflow or stackexchange or all those forums that people answer questions on. great! if there were large amount of data then it statistically can generate fairly accurate answer. not always, but frequent enough.

so what happens then, when this becomes a norm, a popular method for people to do things. people encounter some question and instead of asking it on stackoverflow or some other place and then someone else answers, they ask chatgpt instead. and chatgpt generates a great answer if it's similar enough to a question answered before. more people move to using this method and less new forum answers are generated. if things move in this direction then for the newer questions ........ questions that do not exist before, hypothetically would they have less data on this, because the stackoverflow usage has gone down and there is far, far fewer answered questions to pull the data from.

(then again, maybe the obvious solution in this case is, well you post a new question! so maybe it doesn't matter) (maybe the people who posts questions are still used to posting questions and the people who are used to never posting questions and just looking up what others have posted and transferred to using ai doesn't contribute to the question-answers anyway. maybe this is irrelevant.)

(but maybe it does have impact, my first thought of a parallel is that ..... something something digital media replacing physical media and less concrete and sometimes easier taken away, etc. not sure if really that good a comparison though)

anyway this is not really an argument for anything and i don't think people are killing stackoverflow culture by asking ai questions. it's just a thought experiment thing i have with myself. things that probably have no actual effect but i like rotating things in my head.

other people: something about art and souls

me: fine so i do have an attachment to stackoverflow. can chatgpt cunningham's law you?

[bardan-jusik]

Get to know your mutuals ❤️❤️

tagged by both @babyscilence and @arliganzey thank u guys <333

What's the origin of your blog title? 'OYA MANDALORE' is a pretty clear explanation of what this blog is- a love of legends mandos and an absolute refusal to let specifically legends mandalorians get overshadowed by disney mandos (it drives me fucking bonkers when i see people saying 'this is the way' when 'oya' would evoke a more apt emotion)

OTP+Ship name: hmmm atin/laseema i think! i don't really have a ship name for them

Favorite color: i love u pine green. u can never go wrong with pine/sage/dark and desaturated green

Favorite game: all time favorite is Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess but i've been playing Fields of Mistria a lot recently

Song stuck in your head: god. lmao. Killers Walk

Weirdest habit/trait: uhmmm idk i really hate being barefoot?? socks in bed, socks basically all the time

Hobbies: mandalorian cosplay is probably my most major hobby but like i write and draw and can knit and crochet and stuff

If you work, what's your profession? accountant/auditor in training and also i work a grocery store bakery job (hopefully by the end of the year i'll be able to get another accounting/bookkeeping job and get out of the grocery store tho)

If you could have any job you wish, what would it be? full time fiction author tbh. heavy on the military scifi

Something you're good at: i can pretty comfortably say i'm good at art and making things, speaking generally

Something you're bad at: musical instruments. i want to be good at it. ive tried. i am just not musical at all beyond singing

Something you love: my dual monitor pc setup <3 hell yeah

Something you could talk about for hours off the cuff: republic commando/legends mandalorians/my beef with disney canon. like don't get me started it's impossible to get me to shut up

Something you hate: ok this one took me a while bc i wanted to pick something that fills me with absolute incandescent rage that i would never defend anything about (without getting political) and while i am a little hater there is good in everything. so here's my one thing that makes me really fucking angry every time i think about it: once i had an rp partner who i knew was sucking ai's dick but i later found out they definitely fed my replies into an ai for 'help replying' and it makes me want to kill

Something you collect: star wars legos i guess but i havent gotten any new ones in a while

Something you forget: shit i still need to pick up my latest med refill. fuck

What's your love language: being willing to make stuff with u <33 headcanons, rp, art collab, food, whatever. my most sincere show of love is mutual creation

Favorite movie/show: movie: knives out and glass onion i think. i really adore a one-off movie with an exquisitely done plot show: andor. you don't get better cinema than that. (DO NOT LET ME DOWN IN APRIL I SWEAR TO GOD)

Favorite food: uhhmmm i don't really have a favorite but i would SMASH a good pulled pork sandwich right now

Favorite animal: teki assigned me coyote so coyotes i guess <3

What were you like as a child: i remember myself as being weirdcringe as hell but tbh all kids have a right to be weirdcringe. i really loved lord of the rings, medieval swords and armor and stuff, and then took a steep dive into star wars pretty young. i had a nerf sword i would carry around everywhere (i still have it actually) and i liked to pretend to be a lotr ranger with my threadbare blanket cloak and trusty steed (bike). i read a lot and didnt have to try to get straight a's in school

Favorite subject at school: despite being an easy straight A student i really liked PE. i was also a little bit of a jock kid (out of pure spite) and lived for the competition aspect it offered

Last Favorite subject: god chemistry was the FUCKING WORST

What's your best character trait? uh.... not to stroke my own ego or be pretentious about this but i like to think that it's an unkillable optimism and belief that there's some amount of good in literally everything? but i'm a huge hater tho.

What's your worst character trait? my self discipline in the face of tedium is dogshit tbh

If you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be? 50,000 american dollars right in my bank account. jk actually it's that i would want my parents to at least not freak out about my immortal soul being in danger/probably consider me untouchable if i told them i don't have a gender and i want to legally do a gay marriage

If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet? a neolithic era person i think

NPT: @the-pyromaniacs-teki @zanabes @viscanpikamine @finerafin

[literaticat]

Regarding the AI-to-sort-through-submissions question, a major publisher recently opened (briefly) to submissions and were going to use an AI called Storywise to sort their subs. There was a massive backlash on social media and they rescinded the idea, got them a lot of bad press. Not sure if you saw that controversy. So I wonder if the person who asked you that question also saw that or if some agencies/other publishers are now doing this too.

I hadn't heard of this controversy, so I googled it, and came up with this article recapping a thing where Angry Robot was going to use Storywise to sort through submissions and got a lot of pushback. (Are they a major publisher? Is this what you were referring to? Or was there another thing?)

The interesting / wild thing about this to me is that... this doesn't sound like a big deal, actually? They put an FAQ about it (which they have left up for transparency) -- in reading the article above and the FAQ, if they are to be believed, it seems that AR were using a non-generative AI program that was NOT being trained on or retaining any of the author's work.

This "slushbot" was going to filter submissions to the appropriate editor and flag any anomalies (like, "doesn't fit requested word count" etc).

All submissions, whether or not they were "flagged" in this way, were being looked at by an actual human. (Because slushbot can make mistakes!).

This... doesn't sound that egregious to me? In fact, it sounds super reasonable? AM I BONKS? Am I missing something?? Maybe!

Things I -- and possibly you! -- use every day that have similar features:

GMAIL. Uses AI to filter out spam, highlight important messages, designate promotions and ads to different folders, remind me to follow up on things, etc. Does it make mistakes? Sure, sometimes. I do have to check the spam filter now and again to make sure it isn't flagging important things wrongly. Does it make my life infinitely easier? YES. I get hundreds of emails a day -- if I had to look at all the trash ones, I would NEVER find the important ones!

SPELLCHECK / AUTOCORRECT / AUTOCOMPLETE / GRAMMARLY, et al. Use AI to tell me when I have misspelled something or to suggest wording. Is it always right? No! I never mean DUCK, spellcheck! Does it make my life easier? For sure! I have fat fingers, this saves me from many a gaffe!

"IF YOU LIKE ____, TRY _____" -- you know how online retailers often suggest things based on your buying preferences, or give you a bargain on things they know you enjoy to get you to re-buy, etc? You know how TikTok and Netflix push content that they think you'll be into based on your viewing habits? Or you'll just be chatting about beekeepers and suddenly you have ads for bee merch on your Facebook? That's the magic of the algorithms, babes. And they are everywhere.

QUERYMANAGER. I don't know if this technically counts as "AI" -- but QM does do things like flag submissions that meet certain criteria that I've designated (like, if it is somebody who is previously published, if it is a referral, etc) -- it also tells me the history of submissions, so I know if they've queried the agency before and when and to whom and with what material. (This is how I KNOW FOR A FACT that so many people don't follow the DUCKING directions.) And, while currently I have to manually forward submissions to other agents if they are more appropriate for them, I could see a world where that was automated -- like if all queries came to a central repository and QM2.0 forwarded them to the specific agents at the agency who were open to [whatever] kind of book. Would that be a bad thing? Or a HELPFUL thing? IDK.

These are just tools, at the end of the day. I don't think there's anything morally wrong with using them or trying them out as long as you aren't letting them make actual decisions for you. Like, I would never want a slushbot to reject things (or accept them!) on my behalf - I have to be the one to look, just as I would never want an algorithm to purchase things on my behalf just because I MIGHT like them -- no thank you! By all means suggest, but I have to make the final decision!

(TL;DR: Using spellcheck on your work to make sure you haven't called me KENNIFER? Yes please! "Creating" work that you intend to submit with your name on it using generative AI? Please, no. Using an AI filter to flag submissions and sort them to the correct person? Sounds OK! Stealing author's work to train an AI? Not OK!)

[dragonboyteeth]

Just to clarify a few things bc I mostly reblog stuff and don't make original posts about it and my stance is too nuanced to glean from reblogs of other people's posts:

I don't think AI is ontologically evil. It's just a type of computer program.

I don't think AI is an accurate term, but I'll still use it bc the marketing broadly worked and I want to be understood without having to write an essay about terminology every time the topic comes up

AI has genuinely interesting artistic applications (shoutout to @aholefilledwithtwigs and our beloved departed @nostalgebraist-autoresponder )

The vast majority of AI art (again, conceding to the marketing term for the sake of clarity) is not that.

The use of web scraping and mass processing of artwork without consent is self-evidently inethical. Machine processing is not comparable to a human artist taking inspiration from or referencing other artists. If you try to tell me it actually is the same and I just don't get how it works, then sorry, but I actually know more than you.

That said, I'm not in a hurry to litigate it. Ethical boundaries do not always translate well into legal boundaries, no matter how good the intentions of the lawyers. Copyright law is a fuck to begin with.

If you think AI art is fundamentally the same as photography, you've got a better head on your shoulders than a lot of AI artists, but you're still wrong. The neural network itself is indeed comparable to the mechanical function of a camera. The comparison between working out the right prompt to put in the generator and the artistic process of working out the right angle, lens, focus, and shutter speed is a bit shakier but still works. There is zero possible comparison between photography and the use of huge databases of training data.

I think images generated by AI should be public domain. Full stop. The legal precedent for that isn't actually all that convincing if I'm being honest, I'm just a huge copyleft advocate.

I think it would be great if everyone learned how to make neural networks and started creating their own, way more interesting, projects with training data that actually belongs to them. The results might not be as immediately impressive but it's pretty fucking elitist to put all the emphasis on visual fidelity and polish.

I don't like the gay sex cats because the cats themselves gross me out to look at for too long. Same with most AI art even if it's getting closer to looking right. This isn't, like, an actual ethical issue or anything, just personal squick. I think it would be cool if more people used it to make grotesque horror on purpose.

[clouds-of-wings]

I'm back from Prague, the heart of Europe :)

Did I like it, idk. The city is very pretty. It actually made me a little sad because I kept thinking that if WW2 hadn't happened, a lot of German cities would probably look similar. I definitely didn't spend enough time in the city to really get to know it, especially since I arrived a day late due to a train conductor strike in Germany, also I went to the North of Czechia for a few days (but there I got sick and didn't explore as much as I wanted to).

Prague seems suuuuper overcommercialized though. I wasn't stupid enough to buy anything in the Old Town, but even excluding that it was still hard not to feel like the entire town was an amusement park ride which the people working there were trying to herd you through as quickly and profitably as possible. The souvenirs were very ugly, which was surprising. How do you work with a beautiful marvel of engineering like the Astronomical Clock and produce nothing but corny wood-cuts that get all the colours wrong and that you then ask for 1000Kč (about 40€) for? The Mucha merch everywhere was nice though. He's a little like Klimt in that you can exploit his work commercially as much as you want and it doesn't lose its magic, at least not to me. Indeed there was a lot of Klimt merch too! And then there were people selling their "original artworks". Many of the ones near the Clock were obviously AI-generated. The ones on the Charles Bridge might not have been, but many looked like prints, except sold as originals. Climbing a random tower costs 8€. Why. Does the city not pay for the upkeep? You can see the city for free from the castle grounds. And the "weed and absinthe stores" everywhere. Lololol.

The food was unreservedly great. The highlight of my day was lunch. It's all comfort food, meat, carbs and great sauces. I was surprised by the consistency of the bread dumplings - I thought they'd be like German potato dumplings, which are rather wet and slimy (in a pleasant way), but they were actually like extremely soft and swallow-able bread. I mean it is in the name. BREAD dumplings.

To me the town was a little too money-centered and convenient. Where's the sense of adventure. When I was in Malta last year - I mean that's a pretty touristy place too, but I still felt like there was a sense of exploration. You can do a lot of stuff for free there, there are tons of places on Malta where they don't try to sell you anything and you can just walk and see and explore. Or maybe it's just that Czechia is too close and too similar to Germany and that's why I got a little restless. Malta looked, sounded and even smelled completely different from what I'm used to, plus there's the strong religious aspect, and Czechia was not all that unfamiliar. I really wanted to do one of these Secret City Trails things but ended up not having the time. Really a lot of my opinions are probably due to my only having been in the town for 3 days. But my favourite moment of the entire journey was when I had to climb through a decommissioned train track bed to get where I wanted to go, but there was a ramp there because apparently that was just the normal way to get to the place, and I think that says it all.

Also saw my fav band live again, yaaay. It was great, except I stood behind the ten thousand tallest men in Czechia and didn't see super much. Next time I go to a concert I actually care about I'm just elbowing my way to the front, smh.

I whole-heartedly recommend Hotel Union to anyone going there. Weirdly enough, it's cheaper to book through booking dot com, where I usually only go to read reviews and then book directly on the hotel's own website.

[morbidsmenagerie]

Specifically related to care advice, because I see a lot of people use it to generate care sheets or ask care related questions, even when it's not wrong the information it gives you isn't helpful.

This is what ChatGPT gives when you type "Asian Forest Scorpion Care Sheet". I'm going to go through and talk about it point by point, because a lot of people think that the only issue with AI is it's occasionally incorrect. They think with better source text or better training, it could be useful. This care sheet is mostly factual information. I'm going to show that even if the information is correct, AI will not tell you anything useful and will not give you information that will actually help you.

AI text in blue.

The Asian Forest Scorpion (Heterometrus spp.) is a popular species of scorpion kept in captivity. They are known for their striking appearance, with a black or dark brown body and large pincers. Here's a comprehensive care sheet for them:

True. You can be pedantic and say Asian Forest Scorpions aren't one specie but a common name that covers multiple species, but their care information is basically identical and a lot of other care sheets written by experienced keepers just use "Asian Forest Scorpion".

1. Enclosure:

Tank Size: A 10-20 gallon tank is ideal for one or two scorpions. They are burrowers and need plenty of space to hide and dig.

True, but immediately we run into a problem. One or two scorpions? Are they communal? How tolerant are they of each other? What age and size are the scorpions? The topic of keeping AFS communally is the subject of some debate in scorpion keeping circles. I personally am of the opinion that the risk of keeping them communally is not worth it, but other keepers have kept them together for multiple years without issue. If this was written by an experienced keeper that was aware of the debate then they could introduce this point to you. Keepers who have communal set ups are usually good at stressing that to have a successful communal you need plenty of hides, space, and for the scorpions to be well fed. It also works better with adults who do not molt. Even though this sentence is factually correct there is not enough information or context given for you to set up a communal enclosure or think critically about the risks of communal keeping.

The size of the tank needed also heavily depends on age, a 2i Heterometrus silenus can be less than an inch long and would be completely lost in a 20 gal.

Substrate: Use a substrate that retains moisture, such as a mixture of coconut fiber, peat moss, or sand. The depth should be about 3-4 inches to allow for burrowing.

Also true-ish. The depth needed for burrowing highly depends on the age of the scorpion. 3-4 inches is fine for juveniles, but is too shallow for fully grown adults. The substrate composure isn't bad, but some keepers (like me) don't prefer cocofiber because it tends to be dry and dusty, and sand is either not needed or used in very small amounts. If this was written by an experienced keeper, they could explain some other options and give thumb rules for how deep the substrate needs to be compared to the length of the scorpion rather than hard numbers.

Hiding Spots: Provide various hiding spots like cork bark, rocks, or small logs. They are nocturnal and need shelter during the day.

True, but again an experienced keeper could anticipate common issues and recommend that any hides are secure to prevent them from collapsing on the scorpion as it digs.

Ventilation: Ensure the enclosure has adequate ventilation to prevent mold and stagnant air. A tank with a mesh lid is ideal.

Iffy, the enclosure does need good ventilation but mesh lids tend to be too well ventilated and cause the enclosure to dry out too quickly.

2. Temperature and Humidity:

Temperature: Maintain a temperature range between 75-85°F (24-29°C) during the day, with a slight drop at night.

The temperature range is good, but again night drops are debated in scorpion keeping circles. There are also keepers that keep their AFS much colder than this without issues. There are not extremely well defined minimum temperature requirements for scorpions.

Humidity: Keep humidity levels at around 60-70%. Regular misting can help maintain the humidity, but ensure the enclosure doesn't become too wet.

Good but misting alone wont keep humidity well, most keepers pour water into the substrate to ensure it stays moist.

Heating: You can use a heat mat or under-tank heater to maintain the temperature, but make sure it's not too hot. Avoid direct heat lamps as they can dry out the scorpion and its environment.

Iffy and potentially dangerous. Under the tank heaters are not recommended because scorpions burrow to escape heat, and can cook themselves. Direct heat lamps tend to be harsh for most set ups, but smaller CHEs can be used with a thermometer. Any heating equipment should be used with a thermometer.

3. Diet:

Feeding: Asian Forest Scorpions are carnivorous and mainly eat live prey such as crickets, roaches, and mealworms. Adults may also eat small vertebrates.

True but vertebrates are not recommended prey items. There's no need to feed them vertebrates.

Feeding Frequency: Juveniles should be fed 2-3 times a week, while adults can be fed once a week. Overfeeding can lead to obesity and health issues.

Feeding frequency is not as helpful as feeding based on size. Scorpions should be fed when they start to look hungry, and should not be fed when they are entering premolt. Obesity is a debated topic and I personally don't believe a scorpion can be meaningfully obese but a lot of other keepers stop feeding when a scorpion starts looking plump.

Water: Always provide a shallow water dish for hydration. Ensure the dish is not too deep to prevent drowning.

True but depends, extremely tiny scorpions cannot break the water tension and will drown even in a small dish. Larger AFS can use a deep dish and will even soak if they are provided with a secure means to climb out.

4. Handling:

Handling Caution: While Asian Forest Scorpions are generally not aggressive, they can sting if provoked. Their venom is not dangerous to humans but can cause pain and swelling. Always handle them with care and use tools like tongs if necessary.

True but you could also just say not to handle them.

Temperament: They are relatively calm and tolerant of human interaction, but avoid regular handling to reduce stress.

Same as above.

5. Molting:

Molting Process: Scorpions molt (shed their exoskeleton) several times throughout their life, especially when they are growing. During this period, they may become more reclusive, and it's important not to disturb them. Make sure the environment is moist to help them molt successfully.

If this was a care sheet written by an experienced keeper they would know common mistakes and be able to tell you how you can gauge if a scorpion is about to molt and what to do in case of a mismolt.

6. Lifespan and Growth:

Lifespan: Asian Forest Scorpions typically live 6-8 years in captivity, although some can live longer with proper care.

True.

Growth: Juvenile scorpions grow quickly but will take several molts to reach adulthood. After reaching maturity, their growth rate slows significantly.

True but like the above sentence rather vague and not really useful.

7. Common Health Issues:

Mites: These tiny parasites can sometimes infest the tank. Regular cleaning and proper humidity control help prevent them.

Does not differentiate between harmless (but annoying) soil mite explosions that can happen in a moist tank or the much more serious parasitic mite infestation that can kill your scorpion. Does not tell you how to diagnose or treat a mite infestation.

Dehydration: Keep the environment sufficiently humid and ensure the scorpion has access to fresh water.

True but does not tell you how to diagnose dehydration in a scorpion nor how to intervene if a scorpion is too dehydrated to drink unassisted.

8. General Tips:

Nocturnal Nature: Asian Forest Scorpions are active at night, so observe them during the evening or night hours for better activity.

True.

Tank Maintenance: Regularly clean the tank by removing uneaten food and waste. Replace the substrate every few months to maintain a clean environment.

True but every few months is a lot for full substrate changes.

Stress: Limit disturbances to the scorpion's environment to reduce stress. Constant handling or changes in temperature can cause health problems.

True.

By maintaining a stable environment with proper temperature, humidity, and care, your Asian Forest Scorpion can thrive and live a long, healthy life in captivity.

True. Again, this care sheet is mostly correct. With a bit of tweeking you could make it entirely correct. Imagine if you somehow trained the AI only on very good care guides written by experienced keepers. The information it would give you would be entirely factually true, but even in this case the AI is at best useless and at worst intentionally misleading by removing context, room for disagreements between people's care styles, and too vague to be useful as a care sheet anyway. Furthermore, because it is a generative tool and not a search engine every time you generate a care sheet will be slightly different. Look at these examples where I imputed the same text and got multiple different versions of the Enclosure section.

1. Enclosure:

Tank Size: A 10-20 gallon tank is ideal for one or two scorpions. They are burrowers and need plenty of space to hide and dig.

Substrate: Use a substrate that retains moisture, such as a mixture of coconut fiber, peat moss, or sand. The depth should be about 3-4 inches to allow for burrowing.

The first one, from the care sheet I talked about above.

1. Enclosure Setup

Tank Size: A 10-20 gallon tank is ideal for a single scorpion. For multiple scorpions, a larger tank will be needed. The enclosure should be at least 12 inches high to accommodate burrowing.

Substrate: Use a deep substrate (4-6 inches) to allow the scorpion to burrow. Suitable options include coconut fiber (coir), sphagnum moss, or a mix of organic soil and sand. Avoid using gravel or rough materials that could injure the scorpion.

The second one, this time it says 10-20gal for one scorpion and recommends larger for multiple. Same issues as discussed before, but directly disagrees with the first care sheet. This one also recommends deeper substrate and adds a bit more to the substrate material recommendations.

1. Enclosure

Size: A 10-20 gallon terrarium is suitable for adult scorpions. They need enough space to burrow and hide.

Type: A glass or plastic tank with a secure lid is ideal. Ensure it has proper ventilation.

Substrate: Use a mix of coconut fiber, peat moss, or vermiculite to create a deep substrate (at least 3-4 inches). Scorpions like to burrow, so a deep substrate is essential.

This one specifies the age of the scorpion and does not mention communal keeping at all. The substrate depth is back to 3-4 inches and they included vermiculite as a recommendation instead of sand.

This inconsistency makes it functionally useless to get actual advice on how to care for an animal correctly, again even if the source material it's pulling from is correct. Even slightly rewording the original care sheet makes it confusing and contradictory.

Now let's look at what a good care sheet looks like.

This care sheet was written by an experienced keeper and is not hard to find. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but will point out specific things that make this care sheet actually useful and high quality.

Tips that give specific advice on common mistakes as well as advice on things that can cause a scorpion to go off food. This was written by someone who has the experience to know common issues and how to fix them.

Talks about specific pros and cons of different tank options instead of saying one is the definitive best one. Tank choice can depend on personal taste and cost so it's good to talk about how these aspects compare to each other.

Talks about disagreements people in the hobby have about recommended tank size and gives a thumb rule based on the size and number of scorpions you are housing.

This care sheet has a lot more, it is very well written and though I personally disagree with some specific points this is the one I send to people who ask for a care sheet. It is ok to have some disagreements with people's keeping styles, but it's important to be able to explain why you have those disagreements, or be able to provide evidence for why you are making the recommendations you are making. I know that the author of this article is making recommendations based on his experience, stuff he has researched (there's sources on the bottom of the care sheet) and informed opinions from other keepers. ChatGPT cannot do that because it cannot do anything except generate text. It does not know why it recommends cocofiber as a substrate, does not know how to inform you of potential problems, disagreements, or common mistakes, does not know if the source it is pulling text from is a good source or not. As AI becomes more and more common, good care sheets are likely to be diluted by more AI generated slop, making for completely incomprehensible recommendations.

At it's absolute worst, generative AI does not seem to differentiate what animal the care sheet it pulls from is even about, which is how you get statements like this:

While these are funny and obviously contradictory, it's important to realize the AI cannot distinguish between obvious bullshit like this and genuine good care advice. The same AI that warns you about metabolic bone disease in scorpions is the one that you're using to generate care sheets.

TL;DR: Don't use generative AI to learn anything, there are better sources that will be able to actually tell you the reasoning behind their recommendations and are giving advice based on experience. Better sources will also allow for some disagreements and discussion and be able to warn you of common mistakes and how to avoid them. Talking to someone who has experience and can give pointers or direct you to a good source of information is invaluable.

people are really fucking clueless about generative ai huh? you should absolutely not be using it for any sort of fact checking no matter how convenient. it does not operate in a way that guarantees factual information. its goal is not to deliver you the truth but deliver something coherent based on a given data set which may or may not include factual information. both the idolization of ai and fearmongering of it seem lost on what it is actually capable of doing

[assenavlp]

Oprah and AI

I watched this primetime ABC propaganda sh¡tshow so you all don't have to.

AI AND THE FUTURE OF US AN OPRAH WINFREY SPECIAL

I hadn't heard or seen any press for this show, and just happened to see the listing as I was trying to find something to watch, a few nights ago, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted to watch it or not - lol - so I scheduled it to record, just in case. Finally bit the bullet, yesterday.

The recording caught the last bit of a political ad, before the show began. It warned that "Biden & Harris want to force you to buy an electric car". LMAO And awayyyy we go…

The show (and segment one, of five) cynically begins with a group of everymen/women expressing confusion, doubt, ambivalence, and suspicion. All the better to commence giving you the soft sell, my dears…

THE AGENDA

Oprah: "I was Bedazzled, Fascinated, Curious, and also Concerned. But there is no doubt, it is Here."

She began by breezing through a very basic timeline of the notion and progress of AI, over the last 70 years, and promised, a couple of times, that the show would be "not so technical".

It should be noted that in this hour and four minute-long programme, at no time do they speak of the mass theft of art, music, or literary works (let alone personal data and images shared on social media). 'Cuz who cares about them highfalutin artistic types? Gatekeeping snobs and weirdos, man. 'Ah don't know anything about art, but Ah know what Ah like.' They don't even touch on the issue of likeness theft. They do speak of it, in regards to fraud, later on, but not in regards to creative works, for which there was that whole actor's strike. I see you going to the SAG Awards, Ms. Winfrey. [Buh Gok!] Nor do they speak on the mass of false advertising. They also don't get into the massively detrimental environmental impact. Shocking.

Meta admits scraping every adult Australian’s public post to train AI, no opt-out https://www.diyphotography.net/meta-admits-scraping-every-adult-australians-public-post-to-train-ai-no-opt-out/

Without further ado, the woman who brought us all such greats [chuckle] as Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and the book, "A Million Little Pieces", now brings (to the general public) the so-called Effective Altruist*, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman.

At about 7 minutes in, in the most earnest, pandering tone, he says, "the most important thing that will happen here is, everyone in the world will be able to create at a level that is still hard for us to imagine. This is gonna be an enabler of human ability to create, to flourish, to make new things, to create new companies and services like we've never seen, and we want eeeeverybody to get to do that, not just the white dudes", as he stares directly at Oprah. LOL

Oh, the sweet, sweet 'democratization of art', you bad, bad, racist and ableist anti-AI folks. [rolling eyes]

Of course they allow him to express concern as he pays lip service to safety and regulations, as fellow sociopaths Elon, Jeff, and Mark, all grace our screens, and he speaks of regularly working with the Executive Branch. Mm hmmm. The folks who love their corporate donors. Okay. Go on.

Oprah: "How do we know we can trust you?"

Sam: "The bar on this is clearly extremely high, um, the best thing that we can do is to put this technology in the hands of people, talk about what it is capable of, what it's not, what we think is gonna come, what we think might come, give our best advice about how society should decide to use this. Um, say when we think it's important to not release something, which we also might get wrong, and build up that trust over time. But it is clear that this is going to be a very impactful technology, and I think a lot of scrutiny is thus super warranted."

Oprah: "I actually saw a headline, that said you were the most powerful, and perhaps most dangerous man on the planet, and I'm wondering how that sits with you."

Sam (holding back tears - really): "I…. It's definitely strange to hear you say that. It doesn't… I don't feel like the most powerful person or anything even close to that, uh, like I feel the opportunity, the responsibility in a positive way to get to nudge this in a direction that I think can be really good for people. And that is, like, that's like a serious… exciting, somewhat nerve-racking thing, um, but it's something that I feel very deeply, and I, and I, and I, and I realise how I'll never get to touch anything this important again."

We really needed some violins, here.

Oprah goes on to express her "concern" over the "nefarious" ways some have already used the technology, but then goes on to gush how "calllm" and "relatablllle" he is, and thus, "it seems like everything is okay"…. And he, in turn, replies that he doesn't want to give anyone "a false sense of security", that "there will be bad, too", and that they'll "mitigate, as much as we can" [whewwww, lol] acknowledging full well that "this technology will be misused"… Then he quickly slips in another one for everyone's AI-Bro Bingo card: "like every technology before it…"

Oh, how they love that canard.

*Effective Altruism: letting billionaires amass their fortunes, untaxed and unregulated, so that they can 'benefit' society the way THEY, alone, see fit. Yeah, no.

Then there's a commercial break and they bring back the common folks, for segment two, gushing about their kids using AI to "draw" (yeah, no) dinosaurs, and using the simplified AI filters on TikTok (See? Folks are already using AI, no biggie, lol), using it to generate 'reference' material for sermons, but "never" actually using the raw product (no, of coooourse not), and their fears, shock of all shocks, are slowly being allayed. Apprehensions of "how it will eat you alive" now gone, by "talking to it". Who could have seen this miraculous reversal coming? LOL

HOLY S*** (Their asterisks, not mine.)

Next on the docket is Marques Brownlee, YouTube tech-expert, displaying the exponential improvement of fake videos, in just the past year - of course to Oprah's shock and disbelief - explaining how they're generated by referencing millions of photos. He did explain that "there really isn't any good set of rules" despite some embedding watermarks or meta data so that those who know how to look deeper will know it's fake. i.e. maybe 5% of the people looking at this crap, and at the moment, those folks can tell just by looking anyway.

Then Oprah plays at being the everyman, too, by expressing real concern, especially after he demonstrates a voice generator with his own voice, but of course, she gives him the opportunity to allay those fears; going back down the well-worn 'we've seen this before with new technology' trail that every tech-bro loves to travel, including Sam, in the previous segment. Am I sensing a pattern?

Marques: "I'll say I've seen this story before. Cars, in general, went through this; smartphones, of course, went through this; computers went through this; the Internet went through this; where at their very formative years, they're really, really confusing and potentially amazing but potentially horrible, and eventually, you know, humans sort themselves out, to lay the rules down in a way that we can actually trust that will be better than it is bad. So I've seen this story before and I'm hoping it plays out the way it's played out before."

Oh, that makes me feel so much better, because this all-encompassing technology is absolutely no different than any other technological advance we've seen throughout all of recorded history. No, not at all. [cough]

Next up are Tristan Harris, Technology Ethicist, and Aza Raskin, creator of the Infinite Scroll, talking about the incredible speed of the tech, the ills of "social media addiction, doom-scrolling, and polarization", and how he, Aza, "learned the hard way" that his "good intentions as an inventor just wasn't enough". Ya don't say. He did challenge the aforementioned "every tech" narrative by pointing out that the various problems of cars (eg. seatbelts) took decades to resolve. Of course he doesn't mention that cars, even still, are killing us every day, from their planned obsolescent over-production and resultant waste, to the continued fossil fuel dependency and pollution (or all the rare earth mineral mining devastation that electric alternatives will incur)….

Aza: "Once AI can do anything, people start to use it to do everything."

Tristan: "That's what's so confusing about AI, is it's going to give us all these benefits at the same time that it's undermining the foundations that we depend on, and you can't separate the promise from the peril, so I think instead of getting caught up in the question, "is AI gonna be good or is it gonna be bad", it's about, "is it happening at a pace that our society can respond appropriately."

Oprah: "But guys, it's here. It's why I started this programme by saying it is here."

Tristan: "Open AI's stated goal is to be able to build systems of AI that are even smarter than humans because there's trillions of dollars to be made on the other side…."

Oprah: "What do you want to see happen, now?"

Tristan: "OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, they need to be held accountable for the harms that they would create so that they're all incentivized to pull back, and go at the pace that they can help society be prepared and not be overwhelmed."

Oprah: "And who is holding them accountable?"

Tristan: "We need laws."

HA!

Back with some more everyfolks, segment three begins with the spectre of real life scams and the harm they cause.

BAD GUYS

FBI director Christopher Wray is trundled out to talk more about deepfakes and scams, and ch¡ldp0rn and sext0rt¡on using faked images.

Oprah: "Do you think we have the laws or regulations in place, now, to keep Americans safe from all that's coming, all the AI threats?"

Christopher: "I would probably leave legislating to the legislators, but what I will tell you from an FBI director's perspective, um, is that this is a type of technology that we see manifesting itself in more and more situations, more and more types of crimes, more and more types of threats, uh, and there's a degree to which, overall, our laws haven't kept pace with the technology."

Oprah: "Does that frustrate you?"

Christopher: "Sure, yeah, sure. What I worry about is the day, which is coming, it's not here but it's coming faster than we would like, where those, um, elite bad guys will find AI sophisticated enough to take their game to a-whole-nother level."

Oprah: "And the elite bad guys are doing what?"

Christopher: "So the elite bad guys are the ones, you know, for example, conducting the most sophisticated cyber intrusions. To me no country, no country represents a broader, more severe, more comprehensive threat to American innovation, American ideas, to our Economic Security, and ultimately our national security, than the Chinese government. China has a bigger hacking programme, already, than that of every major nation combined, and has stolen more of Americans' personal and corporate data than every nation, big or small combined. The scale of the threat is significant. If you took the FBI's programme, and just said forget Russia, forget Iran, just do nothing but China, the Chinese government's hacking programme, they would outnumber us 50 to 1.

Oprah: "We've got an election coming. Do you think this election cycle will be compromised by disinformation?"

Christopher: "I fully expect to see, um, disinformation by foreign adversaries. We are finding, all too often, that something on social media that looks like Bill from Topeka or Mary from Dayton is actually, you know, some Russian or Chinese intelligence officer on the outskirts of Beijing or Moscow."

Don't worry about the homegrown stuff. [shhhh]

Oprah: "What should we be on the lookout for?"

Christopher: "All Americans should try to be, you know, more discerning consumers of information. It is incumbent on everyone in America to bring an intensified sense of focus and caution to the use of AI, and how AI can be used by bad guys against all of us, but not to panic I don't think this is a time for panic."

So, in sum: Chinese and Russian AI, baaaaad. [furrows brow] American AI, goooood. [thumbs up] Nothing to see, here!

Back to the everypeople, and the fear of job losses, immediately followed by the old 'but there will be newwww jobs' cliché, and then the folks who were suspicious but they looove it, now, and the folks who aren't worried because they're "irreplaceable".

HEALTH, EDUCATION & JOBS

Oh! Bill Gates! Quell surprise.

Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/microsoft-ai-oil-contracts/679804/

Long story short: medicine is going to be sooo much better. And education, too!

Bill: "We can see it's already working pretty well."

Oh, really?

Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests Researchers compare math progress of almost 1,000 high school students. https://www.popsci.com/technology/kids-who-use-chatgpt-as-a-study-assistant-do-worse-on-tests/

And robots can do the blue collar jobs, too! (Including fruit-picking, on all that farmland he's been buying up.) Yayyyy, replicants! [facepalm]

Oprah: "What are the jobs that you believe are going to be undisturbed? What skills are going to persist in these, in this new world?"

Bill: "Yeah, that's very hard to make a prediction. I mean there'll be aspects of creativity, there'll be aspects of appreciating, uh, people [said as if under duress, lol], you know, social work, the teacher really engaging that student in the rich way. Even then I can't guarantee that software won't eventually get good at that, but you know, for the next generation, the more human, the more engaged you are with other people [so, not artists], that is a skillset that is in such short supply, whether it's mental health or education, that we can never have enough of that."

I dread to imagine what his visions for future mental health services are.

Oprah: "I mean I've expressed several of my concerns, but do you have none, do you have no…"

Bill: "I have significant fears about the risks. This is the first technology that is happening faster than even the insiders expected."

Oprah: "It's happening faster than you guys thought?"

Bill: "Absolutely."

Oprah: "Do you think that your company, that, that Microsoft, and other companies that are gonna make a lot of money off of AI have an obligation to help us manage and navigate through this change?"

Bill: "Absolutely. The fact that there will have to be regulation, that the way we think about taxes will have to change quite a bit. If the companies are working with the government, then at least we can craft something that's, that's not just profit-driven."

Regulations that you and your lobbyists craft? [chortle]

Oprah: "But what did we miss with the Internet and social media that we can use to apply now, to this moment of AI?"

Bill: "Well, I, I would say, speaking for myself, personally, and, I think, many others, that we were a bit naïve."

Ya don't say.

Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg have 'polluted culture' ""I’m the chump who thought social media could change the world," he told his audience at the Digital Futures Institute." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceq5q3jlnz3o

Bill: "We thought the Internet, the availability of information would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out kind of a niche of misinformation, we were a bit naïve."

Okay, then.

Back to the everyones… and what it is to be "human". HA! "As a religious person, one of the things that I reflect on is "be careful about comfort because too much comfort is actually going to make your life worse, not better, because it'll decrease your over all capacity." (An actual good point.)

IRREPLACEABLE HUMANS

The final guest, Marilynne Robinson, novelist, is the lone 'creative' on the show.

Marilynne: "The impulse behind it seems to be to eliminate the human hand, the human eye in the making of the reality that we inhabit to the farthest extent possible. With the effect of, of, um, concentrating power in the sense of the control of this strange fantasy, uh, within very few people's hands and consolidating masses of capital, and masses of natural resources devoted to this very dubious project. It's just a human impulse to escape from its humanity, which is something that happens over and over again, historically. The impulse to say, uh, that there's nothing intrinsic about a human person, that cannot, in theory, be replicated by something that, frankly, works cheaper, works faster. I don't know why it is but it's part of our human lot to be uncomfortable with our humanity, and to mechanize it, you know, out of existence in some way. We're not enough in love with our own existence, and we're not enough in love with everyone else's existence, and I think that's very dangerous." [chef's kiss]

The same reason transhumanists are so obsessed with living longer and more artificially. They don't love - or respect - the time they have here. They want more, more, more.

Oprah: "What is the thing that concerns you the most?"

Marilynne: "I'm afraid that there will be so much investment of every kind into this project, that it will have its consequences before it really deserves them, and so there will be all kinds of cutting back on all kinds of employment and so on, anticipating this insurgence of, of AI, and then it will turn out that it's a, it's a bad project, you know, that it's more dangerous than it is valuable, and so on, and so we will have a disrupted economy on the one hand, and an unusable technology on the other."

Mic drop!

Oprah, ignoring the words of the preacher before the segment, persists…

Oprah: "But it's also going to, no question about it, it's going to make life a lot easier for a lot of people, so what's wrong with that?"

Marilynne: "American schools ask for a lot of written work from students, and that's a very good thing. It's an autonomy-creating exercise, you know. But what we don't do, we don't tell them that this is a discipline, like an athletic discipline that they have undertaken to strengthen themselves, not just to bring themselves over some arbitrary line of sufficiency."

Never mind the physical process of writing, learning cursive, etc., which too many deemed unnecessary, despite all the literature demonstrating otherwise.

Oprah: "That it's the discipline of doing the work and the thinking process."

Marilynne: "Exactly. And students say writing is difficult, which of course it is."

Oprah: "It is."

Marilynne: "But difficulty is the point."

Oprah: "And so if you were in charge of this whole AI movement, what would you be doing or what would you advise?"

Marilynne: "I would advise that it be used for, you know, the kind of research that produces drugs and immunizations and so on."

Sure. With MUCH oversight. But then again…

Revolution, interrupted One of the promises of machine learning was better drugs, faster. A decade in, AI has failed to live up to the hype https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-artificial-intelligence-drug-research-hype/

Marilynne: "I would, uh, I would make a fantastic library. I would use it very, very judiciously to replace work that is drudgery without the arrogance of replacing the work of people who, you know, who are of very great value, you know, just because they are the substance of our ordinary interactions with the world."

Oof. There's MY personal sticking point. "Eliminating the drudgery." She was careful to make a distinction but I fear that nuance will be lost on most of the people already sharing that hackneyed meme. Everyone wants a replicant to do the stuff they think they're above doing. Doesn't end well.

Oprah was still desperately trying to make the case, though, retreating to the same old "fear of the new" and "nostalgia" arguments, asking how this time is different. Sometimes I thought, maybe she's just playing Devil's Advocate, with some of these questions? It was interesting that she gave the final word to someone who had the most philosophical viewpoint. But nahhh. Marilynne then compared it to The Manhattan Project. HA! Another mic drop.

And then Oprah's final thoughts, on this peak Boomer TV:

"A special thank you to everyone who spoke with us, tonight. I hope that they have left you with a clearer picture of what is coming. Artificial intelligence is still beyond our control, and to a great extent our understanding, but it is here. We're going to be living with technology that can be our ally as well as our rival. It is something that no other generation has ever experienced. This moment requires a different level of alertness, awareness, about who we are, and where we're going, what's real, and what's not, what's artificial intelligence and what is human wisdom, authentic intelligence earned through study and experience. We are this planet's most adaptable creatures. We will adapt again but keep your eyes on what's real. The stakes for all of us could not…..

And then the recording cuts out. [GUFFAW]

-30-

[arcanetrivia]

[Image text:

What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page." We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer's resources, and personal choice.

We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

/end transcription]

Even setting aside the ethics of using generative AI in general (both in terms of where training data came from and the environmental impact), and the whole mess about whether it's "ableist" to urge against using it because hey, some people have limitations that mean they can't make art in traditional ways... in what frickin' world is this at all in the spirit of what NaNoWriMo is supposed to be for? How is using an LLM anything like an exercise in getting your gosh-darn words out even if they kinda suck and just pushing forward and keeping up momentum and flow? How the heck is that going to poke your brain bits in the way this challenge is supposed to poke them?

Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.

Okay, sure, but what's this got to do with the work of churning out 1700 words a day? I'm sure that some people show up to NaNoWriMo with the intent of producing something saleable; and yeah, in that case at some later point you really ought to retain the services of a professional editor and there's probably a monetary barrier there that's kind of a problem. But the editing would come after the first draft that NaNoWriMo is about, no? Are most participants not getting initial feedback and review along the way from other participants, or cheerleading friends, for free?

Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing.

I don't feel qualified to address how generative AI may or may not help someone with cognitive or physical issues that make writing or even language in general difficult. But: "level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing" is straight-up skill issue. You can choose to change that. You can study and learn more of a language. You can practice using it to increase your proficiency. In fact that's what you've got to do if you want to be better at it. Attempting NaNoWriMo in a second language sure does sound like a tough challenge. But if you want help beyond looking up vocabulary or fact-checking yourself on verb tenses, would it not be better to enlist the aid of a speaker of that language? I think an LLM is likely to give you feedback that may sound right but is actually wrong, too, and if you don't speak the language very well you're not in a good place to detect when the thing is "lying" to you. That could harm your language skill, not help it.

There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help. 

Trufax! Why not get the help of another human being?

General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur. 

See under "Classism". While this is all undoubtedly true, I don't see how it follows that using a generator to participate in NaNoWriMo is a good (or neutral) thing. These are valid complaints about what happens after you've written the thing.

Lilith Saintcrow sez:

Ah, so one of the NaNoWriMo org's big sponsors this year is Pro Writing Aid, which has gone all-in on using writers' work to train its "AI", and is no doubt selling data sets to other "AI" thieves. How very interesting.

Indeed, curiouser and curiouser.

So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.

Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.

[servin-up-surveys]

survey #219

Is your computer in the bedroom? No; I moved my laptop into the spare room on a desk so I would stop using it in bed. I lived in bed and it did very bad things for me.

Do you have a TV in your room? No, because I don't watch TV.

What's piled up under your bed? Nothing.

How is the weather? It's sunny out, computer says 85*F.

What are you listening to? I'm watching an episode of Gab Smolders's Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree let's play. The DLC came out very recently and I am watching SO many different people play it, haha.

What makes you madder than anything? The alt-right and their inane bullshit.

Are you a really emotional person? Boy am I!

Do you hang out a lot in malls? Not at all. You don't wanna "hang out" in the local one anyway, shootings aren't rare.

Do you cuss a lot? A whole lot, because I don't believe in traditional profanity anyway. What makes a word "bad" if it wasn't made to directly degrade someone's identity? You won't see me dropping racial slurs and as a queer person I'll only say sexuality slurs among other queer people who aren't bothered by it, but IN GENERAL, I don't say words designed to be belittle certain populations.

Do you spend a lot of time on your appearance? I spend a very minimal amount of time on it.

What are some of your pet peeves: People lying to save face/not owning up to their mistakes, ignorance to the difference between venomous and poisonous and calling venomous animals the other, going in the out door and vice-versa, people who can't accept the possibility of ever being wrong, people taking what they see online as absolute fact, people sharing AI art online thinking it's harmless, lots of other stuff. I tried to avoid the extremely obvious ones.

Do you have a "type" of person you always go after: The only two consistencies I can think of is I tend to like the geeks (esp. gamers) and metal + rock music enjoyers.

Are there songs your parents played or sang to you as a child? Which songs remind you of being a child? My mom did, definitely. She played Raffi songs a lot, along with Disney ones, and she'd sing us things like the Itsy-Bitsy Spider, stuff like that.

What type (genres) of music did you listen to when you were young? I actually most enjoyed pop, followed by country. It was in middle school when I moved into rock and metal.

Any religious songs you are particularly fond of? Well, I like some Skillet songs, and a few by Red, too. Idk about Red, but I know Skillet sucks as humans, I'm aware of their anti-trans and I'm assuming anti-LGBTQ+ stance.

Do you have any favourite love songs? "If It's Love" by Train is probably my favorite and will likely be featured in my wedding. Then there's "Drops of Jupiter" and "Hey Soul Sister" (both also by Train, they write my favorite love songs), "When It's Love" by Van Halen, "18th Floor Balcony" by Blue October (possibly first dance for me), "Lay Your World on Me" by Ozzy Osbourne, "Last Day on Earth" by Green Day, and so many more.

Who were your favourite singers, performers, groups, bands, composers, and/or orchestras when you were young? Backstreet Boys, above all. I also likedddd... Green Day, Black Eyed Peas, Pussycat Dolls, lots of big pop groups of the time.

Are there any songs you associate with a particular person, place, memory, event, or time in your life? There's A LOT that remind me of Jason for a number of reasons, like "Another Life," "Disguise," and "Eternally Yours" all by Motionless In White, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, "The Mortician's Daughter" by Black Veil Brides, and many others.

Can you commit to one person? Yes, I'm monogamous.

If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say? I'd be absolutely devastated. I'd probably just cry.

Do you care if people talk badly about you? Sadly, yes. I care way too much what people say and think of me.

Are you going out of town soon? No. My mom's car is dead right now, so... not that we really went out of town when it wasn't, though.

Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years? Five years? Probably.

Do you have any pictures on your Facebook? I have many. I've had the same account since I first got a Facebook when it was surpassing MySpace's popularity.

Have you ever sleepwalked? No.

Have you ever been on a laptop inside a vehicle? Uh maybe, but I don't think so. Not that I remember.

While on the road, do you play any road games? No, I haven't done that since I was a kid. I just listen to music.

Have you ever picked apples before? So I don't think at like, an orchard or something (but maybe as a kid, idk), but I have picked an apple that grew from a family friend's yard, and it was one of the best apples I ever had. Of course I had permission, my sister and the girl that lived there did the same.

Are you scared of semi-trucks? Especially when you’re driving next to one? YES YES YES YES

Do you like eating shrimp? I do, just not when they're cold, like when you use cocktail sauce. Otherwise, I fucking love shrimp.

Who was the last person to comfort you? My boyfren <3

Are you currently wearing any socks? No, I avoid wearing socks unless I'm wearing shoes that call for them. I don't like the feeling of socks.

Do you think that in the end, everything will fall into place? That is absolutely not how everyone's lives go, so no, not as a rule.

Who was the last person you disappointed? I'm sure my mom.

What’s the capital of the state you reside in? Raleigh.

Have you ever hazed someone or been hazed? HELL no, I've never done it, especially when I'm so sensitive to embarrassment. I don't think anyone's truly done this to me, either.

Have you ever skinny-dipped? No. I do have this little romantic desire to do this once with a partner though, lol.

Have you ever tried weed? No. I never want to smoke it (or anything), but I would like to try an edible, so long as I have people with me; I know some people have bad trips and I DO NOT want to be alone and that happens. Weed is illegal here in NC though, so I have no interest in trying it while it is; I don't care nearly enough about seeing what it's like when the law could get involved.

Would you ever get a significant other’s name tattooed on yourself? NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Do you play video games? I only play WoW right now, but now that my anhedonia has lifted the amount it has, I WOULD play more if I had the memory on my laptop... It's fucking insufferable. I recently looked up programs that CAME with the laptop that I could uninstall without harm to its function, and I removed quite a few, and I'm STILL getting warnings for low memory. WoW is the only game I can keep on here, and sometimes just to update it, I have to do a disk cleanup.

Thoughts on Pokemon Go? I love it. It's the only Pokemon game I've managed to get extremely into. I'll enjoy the "normal" Pokemon games for a little bit, but I eventually get very bored with them. Not GO, though.

What podcasts do you listen to, if any? I don't listen to any myself. Sometimes Castle Super Beast with Girt in his car. We both like the hosts (we each enjoyed Super Best Friends Play), so I don't mind listening to it with him.

Which period of history was your favorite to learn about in school? The Holocaust era. How insanely evil humans can be is fascinating in a very sad way, it's just hard to stomach people DID that.

What was your most recent binge-watch? Dāv Kaufman videos.

When was the last time you or someone else said/used your middle name for something? uh idk

When was the last time you rolled your eyes? At what? Something my mom said, I think. I don't remember what it was, and it certainly wasn't in front of her.

Do you like mozzarella sticks? Eh, I can eat a few. I'm not massive on them.

Do you like caramel? I love it.

According to your ex, are you a b-word? She's called me things way worse than a bitch.

When was the last time you cried? Literally last night. I had a bit of an anxiety attack.

Are you currently frustrated with a girl? No.

Who was the last person you took a picture with? Girt.

Do you currently have a hickey? No.

What're the last three things you had to drink? Raspberry lemonade-flavored water, chocolate milk, and I think cherry limeade-flavored water.

Have you ever dated the same person twice? Girt, yes. I was not ready to date a man again the first time we tried. I am very, VERY glad I asked him about trying again when I felt more ready.

Are you mutually best friends with anyone? Girt, yeah. If you wanna count him, 'cuz like I know we're dating, so maybe you won't count that. Otherwise, no. I don't have a true "best" friend besides him, or my mom.

How many people have you had sex with in the past week? Nobody.

Would you rather spend a whole day with your mom or your dad? Right NOW, my dad. Mom and I live together, while I rarely see my dad.

Is it easy for others to make you feel awkward? YES!!!!!!!!

Are you shy? I'm excruciatingly shy.

Did your ex hurt you emotionally when you broke up? My most recent one? She didn't intentionally or anything, she approached the discussion very reasonably and gently, and while I didn't WANT to break up so was bummed, I wasn't like, devastated. The amount I TRULY cared shoulda been an indicator that I was never truly in love with her.

How many times did you go see the Twilight movie? I never watched it.

What’s going on with you tomorrow night? Mom plans on cooking burgers on the grill of the 4th. I hope we'll make s'mores, I think we have the stuff somewhere. That's it.

What is the last charity you donated to? American Red Cross with my blood, I guess. I don't have money to donate.

Do you have anything planned for the summer? No. I never do.

Are there any mountains nearby where you live? No, the mountains are many hours to the west.

Did you like to collect frogspawn as a kid? God, I did, especially when Dad would take me fishing. Sometimes I would use a little fishtank equipment net thing to scoop them up, other times my hands. Because I was a child, sometimes I'd take them home to the fishtank if it was empty, but of course they died. One of my most memorable childhood (more like pre-teen I think, but) moments was finding the ditches between the crop fields SWIMMING with eggs and some tadpoles, and the ditches were doomed to dry up soon, so my little sister, neighbor, and I got a big bucket to haul loads of these guys back to my house, where we had a kiddie pool that we filled with their own water and leaf gunk, etc. I will never forget how fucking heavy that bucket was, lol, we had to fight hard to get them home. Tons made it to their final forms and left the pool, while I'm sure some animals (would raccoons eat tadpoles?) probably ate some of them from the pool. We lived in the woods so there were animals around.

Do you walk fast or slow? I still walk slower compared to most people I think, but I've DEFINITELY sped up since my legs were in awful condition.

Would you consider yourself an adrenaline junkie? Noooo.

What moisturizer do you use? CeraVe.

Would you rather be a kangaroo or a koala? Kangaroo. Their lives seem more exciting, and besides, I favor animals that live in social groups.

Would you consider yourself a leader or a follower? Definitely generally a follower, but I will not follow corrupt or just poor leadership. If I'm confident in my knowledge of a topic, I don't mind being a leader.

Do you keep your fingers on the home keys when you type? Yes.

Can you juggle with more than two items? I can't juggle, period.

Do you like jalapenos? Yes, on things like pizza and subs. I'd probably enjoy them on more things, too.

Have you ever been knocked out? Not BY somebody, but I fainted in the shower before and busted my chin on the floor, which properly knocked me unconscious.

Ever seen the movie SLC Punk? I have no idea what this is.

How about The Crow? Yes, I love that movie.

Any Tim Burton movies? Oh for sure, I love Tim Burton films. He's my favorite director/the only director I really care about.

Have a favorite actor/actress? Not really, no. I appreciate Johnny Depp's flexibility and he certainly knows how to deliver at his roles, but he's the only one that comes to mind.

Current favorite song? Right now it's probably "Beast In Black" by Beast In Black, I've been going back to that one a lot lately.

Ever used to have an imaginary friend? The only one I remember was a male wolf whose name I don't remember that I believed gave me magical animal powers. I was a WEIRD fuckin' kid, y'all.

Believe in heaven/hell? Nope.

Believe in God/Satan? Nope.

Sleep with just one pillow? No, two.

Ever woke up crying? Literally yes, from nightmares/terrors.

Ever took ballet, jazz, or tap dancing classes? Jazz and clogging out of these two; the latter is basically the same as tap, it's just a different shoe for a different sound.

What’s your opinion on Britney Spears? Queen & even though pop isn't my thing, I still like a good deal of her music.

What about Christina Aguilera? Stellar voice, but I don't know much of her work.

Avril Lavigne? Avril has always slayed.

Are you going to graduate high school on time? I did.

Gonna move out when you’re 18? I'm 28 and still living with my mom, sooooo...

Been to the zoo lately? No. :/ I want to go though, especially with all the photography skills I've developed. The Asheboro Zoo is GINORMOUS though, and it's hilly, so I'll need to be more confident in my ability to walk for extended periods before I try there. But I cannot WAIT 'til I go again, I feel like it could really help me as a freelance photographer with products to offer.

What was the last type of smoothie you drank? I believe it was strawberry & blueberry.

Do you think you have a wide vocabulary? I know I do, but it's definitely not as good as when I was a high schooler.

What’s your favourite type of cake? Double chocolate, probably.

Do you have any life-changing plans within the next 6 months? No.

[uncloseted]

1 Sorry but as an artist, part ofyour response to the ai art ask is disappointing. Ai art is not a tool for artist - it's a system built from stealing from artists to produce finished pieces. It's akin to asking for a screwdriver and someone handing you a fully built IKEA shelf. It's built to replace artists, not help them visualize anything. It is completely different to computer animating where that still requires artists to work and craft the animation. You don't just press a magic 'animate'

2 button and everything is done for you. The idea that ai art makes art more accessible is a trash take too. Art is one of the most accessible things out there. All you need is pen and paper. Sure you might not get the results you want, but art requires training. Art isn't a talent you're born with - it's something people train in for many years. It's like expecting I deserve a black belt in karate asap because I really like karate and think I'm entitled to short cut my way to it. There are

3 hundreds of amazing disabled artists out there who draw with their mouths or feet. Artists are already losing their jobs to ai and to hear more people claim how it's 'just a tool' hurts. It's sad enough that my art has been stolen from me and fed into ai without my consent and hearing people say it's a tool and I should be fine with it sucks. My career is already in danger. I admire you as a person but it hurts to see these 2 takes from you as it echos what all the ai bros use to justify theft

I'm sorry if I seemed like I wasn't taking the threat of AI art to commercial artists seriously in my original post. As I said, I do think it's a real problem, and I think we have to start regulating it from now because otherwise it's likely that big corporations will try to cut costs by using AI to create mostly decent work instead of hiring humans to do work that’s actually good or resonant. Already, AI has become a big threat to writers and actors in the film and television industry, and it's one of the big reasons the WGA and SAG strikes happened last year. As you mentioned, there's also a huge problem with how AI models are trained. Artists should be able to choose whether or not they want their work used to train an AI, and, if they do choose to share it, they should be fairly compensated for that work.

That said, I do think that at its core, AI is just a tool. It can be used for all sorts of purposes, some productive, some destructive. I don't think the ways that AI can be used for destruction is a reason to get rid of it entirely. Rather, I think the ways it can be destructive have to be carefully considered and protected against. I don't think that professional creative settings should be allowed to use AI to replace their human artists. But I do think that there are a lot of people who are using AI in really unique in innovative ways, and I don't think they should be prevented form doing that. For example, I know a professional illustrator who has a series on Instagram about a whimsical gnome. He writes the entire thing himself, he will sometimes do animations for it, but the majority of the visual content for this series is hyper-realistic AI-generated video (I think based on his illustrations). It's not something he could create on his own, and it's not something he has the money to hire an entire production crew to create, especially because I don't think he actually makes any money off of these stories. He's creating art that he enjoys making and that other people enjoy viewing, and I don't think there's anything morally wrong with that. Is it less effort than hand-animating illustrations for it? Sure. But I don't think sheer effort is what makes art good or meaningful- if it was, artists like Basquiat or Warhol or Mondrian would be considered terrible. Art (at least, fine art) is art because of what it has to say and the way it chooses to convey that meaning. If people can find ways to create art that's emotionally resonant and meaningful using an AI, I don't think there's fundamentally anything wrong with that (as long as the art in question isn't being created using a stolen data set, which a lot of AI generated art currently is).

[tomschoolwork]

Ai is not art

Have you guys noticed how often or how much people defend AI? They post so much about how they need to use Ai to make art because they can't do it themselves. Spoiler alert; it's not real and all of their excuses are not valid at all.

Notice this: when defending their use of Ai to make work, they defend themselves saying "We need to use Ai to make sure we can create" they are wrong. Ignore them. They don't need Ai to create, they need Ai to be able to do work without needing to actually put any effort in. They want profit without any effort. Sounds appealing, right? Well here's another term;

artist exploitation.

"Hey, how can Ai be exploiting artists? It's a computer software!"

How do you think they get their sample photos? Ai cannot create without referencing and sampling. And who are they sampling from? Artists! Imagine posting digital art just for somebody to feed it into their Ai so they can turn your work into something else. And it doesn't even look good! Here's an example.

I fed a piece of work into an Ai to rework it. It's my own work and the only person who could possibly be harmed by this is me, and I took this risk. Here is the original.

And here is the Ai's version

Notice how different they are. The Ai isn't capable of recognizing/replicating what the original image was. It is just some smiling anime girls- which is stupid because it was a brother and sister drawing I had done. It also completely reworked their eye colors and made them paler. Also it hasn't realized how color theory works. I had done every color intentionally, the pink and blue represent and complement each sibling and the black also ties them together. The Ai doesn’t understand these and sees 2 figures to turn into anime girls, which- yikes- and overall is disappointing.

Ai isn't helping artists at all.

"But Ai can give the gift of creation to those who can't create on their own!"

While that sentiment would be nice, they aren't creating with Ai. They're essentially rebranding. They rework an image to create. And often times, it isn't a good looking image. Looking back at my image, yeah of course I made mistakes but the Ai also made mistakes. It can't pose the way I had been able to, and because it couldn't it filled in gaps. Imagine seeing somebody be glad they can finally make something, just to realize they're stealing work from others. It's not gonna be a good feeling at all. Those who are really determined to create find alternatives. Some people use their lips, use their mouth to hold the paint brush, use their feet, anything besides using an online program to reuse old work and pass it off as their own.

Also, Ai is being trained to steal jobs from real artists. And it sucks. Some people have been saying Wish by Disney is Ai generated, and let me just say it's not, it's just a disappointing movie. Wish is what happens when a poorly planned movie gets greenlit. Not everything bad is Ai generated.

Artists put a lot of effort into their work, it often takes hours to make and complete. Imagine creating something that took hours for you to make, and then boom; somebody else posts something that looks similar, but took them a few minutes at longest. And what they did to make it was wait for a computer program to spit out their prompt after they opened a program and fed some art to it. Artists would get disheartened and then they would slowly stop posting. If their work gets less traction for more effort, what's the point?

"What can I do to protect my art?"

GLAZE IT

Glazing your art will not at all impact how your art looks but it will impact Ai that are trying to replicate your art. It poisons the Ai, and it warps whatever they try to generate.

And also let artists know! If you see their art being bastardized by Ai screenshot it, report the post and let the original artist know. If you don't know the artist, report the post regardless.

Remember, Ai isn't a fun tool to make art, it actively harms artists! Report it if you see it being used in any way that could possibly impact artists, or other people negatively!

[northwest-cryptid]

I cannot express this clearly enough so let me say it as best I can...

The reason I don't go off about "AI is bad AI is scary!" is not because I condone the use of AI to steal people's art, writing, voice, or likeness; because I don't condone that at all. The reason you don't hear me go off about "AI is bad AI is scary!" is because AI isn't actually the problem here... The people who use AI for these things are the problem and I refuse to let them get away with their horrible shitty behavior by letting them scapegoat lines of code that we've literally had for decades but haven't been usable for the common individual due to a lack of understanding, an understanding that the common individual STILL lacks.

If you actually care to know my thoughts past that summary I got you fam. All that I ask of you is that you have the reading comprehension level to understand that I do not condone theft in any form, outside of shoplifting necessities from specifically large chains (do not steal from mom and pop shops or small chains like mall stores it impacts the workers on the lowest rungs of the ladder.)

I literally expressed to a good friend of mine not too long ago that I had used an AI to generate a reference image since I'm trying to get better at art. Without so much as any understanding of my process he began to shame me for it, which made it very hard to explain to him that I had actually trained the model in it's entirety myself; on my own art so that it would produce reference images closer to how I actually draw already and thus make it easier for me to understand how the drawing would look in my style. He then went off about how even if that were true, it wouldn't know what common things are, like how it knows what an owl looks like; to which I had to explain to him that stock photos exist and how I have literally done photography as a hobby for years so most of the images were literally my own photography (most of my family are artists whether that be photography, writing, music, or painting and I grew up in this environment) the only images used to train the AI that weren't literally created by my hand were legally owned stock photos that I used to help round it out a little since obviously I don't have great photos of everything ever that I might want to try my hand at drawing. This explanation literally took me hours, and the actual explanation would have taken me about 5 minutes but we couldn't get past "AI bad AI scary!" to get to "actually you can ethically train an AI to use art, photography, and images of your own creation and not have to steal anything from anyone; ever. All of the images, and art that are used by my AI are used with permission of their original creator, because I am that creator." The AI doesn't even run on the internet or connect to the internet, so it's not like it could pull results from some secret third party or website or something. It's just a huge help as someone who suffers from ADHD, I can't very easily keep an image in my mind and remember the finer details as I draw, and I am not a skilled enough artist yet to know how things should look in relation to other things just yet. However despite all of this I still have had a lot of people get upset with me simply for even USING an AI in the first place.

It's honestly as if people forget what "AI" really even is, it's code. That's it; that's the end all be all of it. Every video game under the sun that you love uses code, and I'm willing to bet good money it uses AI, it's own AI; because a lot of shit has for a long, LONG time. We're only seeing a problem with it now because it's finally being made open source, brought to the masses; and in those masses there will always be people who use it for the wrong reasons. I've been told that my thoughts on AI sound like some 2nd amendment right winger talking about guns and gun laws, which is honestly just annoying because I cannot in my right mind think of an ethical use case for a gun. The best case scenario with a gun is that it's a waste of money you never have to use. However when you break down what AI really is, it's just a bunch of code that can use the knowledge given to it (by a human being) to discern patterns and calculate what mathematically should happen next based on the parameters and then do that thing. There are so many use cases for that, everything from simply trying to calculate a minecraft seed to stuff as complex as surgery (although I would probably still feel more comfortable with human surgery lol)

The only difference between AI and say a basic start up sequence for a computer is that a sequence like that is pre-written by the programmer, it's a line of commands the computer will just follow; while AI has a line of commands that tells it to basically write it's own code and execute it based on the commands that give it "knowledge" of how to do everything. There's no "thinking" there's no "consciousness" it's all calculation and mathematics; which some may equate to consciousness and thinking; but like at that point I think you're just getting into the weeds about it.

What I'm trying to say with all of this is simple though, the tl;dr is this:

That age old saying of "a computer should never be put in a position of power because a computer cannot be held accountable for it's actions" is how I feel about AI, people want to point the finger at AI saying that it stole someone's art or voice or something; and no it didn't AI didn't do that A PERSON DID, BLAME THE PERSON; DO NOT LET THE INDIVIDUAL GET AWAY WITH USING A TOOL TO MAKE THEIR THEFT EASIER, THE PERSON IS STILL THE ONE AT FAULT.

Ai has no conscious thought, it cannot do anything it is not explicitly told to. If I go out and use an AI to generate art or to steal someone's style, that's on ME not the AI; the AI is just a tool, I could have just as easily gone about it some other way. I view AI as a sort of accessibility tool, it makes a lot of lives easier it can make everything from hobbies to jobs easier WITH PROPER USE, but the lazy idiotic assholes who don't bother with proper use and wish to abuse it should be the ones being held accountable. If a studio uses an AI to steal someone's voice and likeness then blame the studio for misuse of their tools!

If I run over 20 people with my car, the car is not at fault; I am. Rightfully so! If I generate 20 images that uses art from various photographers or drawings from artists without their permission or knowledge well, I guess the AI did it; can't blame me right? When people aren't held accountable, they'll just go do it again.