#on AI

[quill-of-thoth]

Also: Half the business of tech right now is trying to invent markets that have never existed. "smart" appliances that you are used to hitting a single button to use and then walking away, driving you to install an app to order at a restaurant, the many instances of "AI powered" apps and programs that you actually just want to set an alarm or type a grocery list into.

starting to suspect that tech bros actually just don’t know what reading is

[gaiuskamilah]

i dont really care for investigating whether a piece of artwork was ai-generated/assisted or not. i dont find it productive and i think a lot of the mainstream narratives on anti-ai or whatever are very poorly founded and many boil down to dumb essentialist thoughts on what "art" is and say that ai art is "ugly and disgusting" when that can be used to be against practically anything. investigating whether art is ai-made by hyperfocusing on details also just puts artists at greater scrutiny and will only harm them in the long run. i also cannot take seriously people who cry about the environmental impact of ai when they turn around and stream netflix or play video games for hours; those are just as energy consuming and impact the environment like ai does. ai is not some essentialist special evil in the world.

the slave labor used to make ai possible is also finally entering some conversations about it but i do not like how people treat it as some special thing that only ai runs on. sorry, practically everything is made on underpaid exploited global south labor. your clothes and food (especially if you live in the usa/europe/global north countries) are made available year-long because of global south exploitation. ai is not special and you need to start seeing it that way. then you'll see that the problem isn't ai itself; it's the capitalist system which it functions within. every new technological advancement comes with a change in labor, a look into history shows that, and it's almost never been equal. so, again: stop acting like ai is special. it is not. be a marxist and understand historical materialism or you'll fall into stupid reactionary and uninformed takes on it.

[crescenthistory]

Regarding the whole ai thing, idk but like is it just me who thinks what that person did to the girl who sent u that ask ( i think dai) is okay? like im against ai if it gets published but like that person didnt even publish it they just used it for themselves and they clearly meant no harm and had good intentions. i mean i saw on her account how she replied to them so idkkkk. kinda iffy and over doing it but maybe difference of opinion 🤷🏽‍♀️

absolutely not.

i don’t know if you’ve ever written anything anon, especially a long-term project, but it is such a personal and emotional endeavour. and it is YOUR property. for anyone to use your work in ai, regardless of if they publish it or not, is completely uncalled for and disrespectful. it is neglecting the hard work you put into it. we all pour ourselves into our writing, so for you to remove us from it through ai generation feels deeply wrong.

and better yet, to let the author know that you got “tired of waiting” only aids in the dehumanisation of writers. people are doing this for free, providing you with entertainment and art they create in their spare time. readers aren’t owed anything, they’re gifted it. the LEAST you can do is wait. no amount of “i love your work” will ever erase disrespect like that.

and even if you have a different “opinion” on it, it’s important to respect the consent of creators. if dai says she doesn’t consent for her work to be put through ai, then everyone must accept that, even if you wouldn’t mind someone doing it to you.

i stand with dai on this one, and want to make it clear that i myself am completely against anyone doing the same with my writing.

[navybrat817]

Hi, Navy. I was wondering if I could ask your advice on writing.

I haven't updated my work for about three or so years now. Originally, it was because I wasn't doing well health wise, but now I'm scared of being accused of using AI. Out of curiosity, I tried using an AI checker on my own work that I wrote before that kind of generative AI was even available—not to mention having the editing process documented—and it came back as 25% written by an AI. It's made me scared to update because of the rather freely made accusations I've seen online, even though obviously AI checkers aren't perfectly accurate.

Do you have this fear? Should I update anyway after so long? What if someone does accuse me of not writing it myself?

Hi, nonnie. First off, I hope you're doing better health wise.

Second, you hit the nail on the head that AI checkers aren't perfectly accurate. Running your stuff through AI may vary. For example, you might have written "the sky is blue" and that line has been written by many before, so it's possible that they may say it's AI. It can also pull from Google docs now. I'm not sure if you use Google docs, but if your stuff is there and it has similar writing patterns, it may also say it's AI. And once you put your stuff into an AI checker it's going to recognize it going forward. And let's so you used ChatGPT and then Gemini later one of them is going to give you a higher score, but they'll likely never be the same.

As stated above, they can pull from Google docs and these checkers pull from REAL writers and writing. Like people using the dashes. I use them here and there, but some use them constantly and they don't use AI for their writing.

I get the fear. I really do. I would hope no one would accuse you because lord knows there's enough stuff we have to deal with. You have to ask yourself at the end of the day what you want to do. YOU know you wrote it yourself and you can stand by that. YOU put your heart into your craft. You got this.

Lovelies, feel free to correct me or chime in. Nonnie, wishing you a welcome back and best of luck. Love and thanks. ❤️

[sugar-phoenix]

if you think anti ai is ableist I'd like to make a counterargument: if you think disabled people are so incapable that they need to steal the art of other people (probably the able-bodied, since you think only able bodied people can draw art) in order to "make" their own art then I'm not sure what you think ableism is in the first place.

[modern-idiot]

i think AI is only helpful if you’re genuinely stupid because when i’ve been pushed to use it at work, it does my job worse and takes more time to edit the problems out

[darkhorsetyrant]

I am so sorry for implying if anyone use AI , I did not know. i legit hought it was a compliment (this is how it was taught to me by my ex friend who is no longer speaking terms with me!!)

she fooled me 😔 I will do better from now on and I have apologize to the writers and am deleting those posts. I am also habing trouble finding the posts and typing on my new phone

[kyratittyfish]

I see a lot of people saying stuff like "AI is evil", "AI should have never exist", "Fuck Machine Learning", and while I see where they come from (being scared and misinformed)... it's also quite disheartening to me.

Why?

Cause Midjourney/ChatGPT/those shady models that scrap human creations without creators' consent is (thankfully) just a subset of what AI is and can do.

You know what I, and my colleagues, use AI for in my line of work?

Detecting cancer, for example, or hidden signs of other life-threatening diseases *before* a human (even the one with the best training and abilities) can see them. "Decoding" brain waves to help people with severe physical impairments to have greater independency. Classify subtypes of diseases (like, once again, cancers) and understand which treatment is more effective.

All things that, arguably, are helpful and good.

When you say "ban all AI", you also include those uses.

AI is a method, just like nuclear fission.

And just like nuclear fission, it can be applied in ways that can better society (green, almost unlimited energy! advancing medicine! improve quality of life!) or utterly destroy it (nuclear war! or the death of creativity!).

Extremely polarized views will NOT help.

Push for regulations on AI, push for transparency on its uses and on the data that was used to train it. I absolutely, 100% agree on that! Push for it to be an *aid*, not a *substitution* for the spark of creativity that makes us human.

Don't push for its complete annihilation.

Bans don't work. Responsible use does.

Oh and, by the way, Machine Learning is not a synonym for AI. And true AI doesn't even exist.

I don't want to ask AI a question. I don't want AI to write my sentences for me, at all ever. I don't want AI search bars to be the default and I don't want them to be in such a way that I can't opt out. I don't want this kind of AI in my life and there is no such thing as AI art, there is only theft of art from human artists by AI scrappers. I don't want any of this, I hate it. Maybe in a world that isn't driven by tech bro capitalism we can see machines doing all the dangerous inane things so humans can be free to pursue life and creativity. But that's not what's happening right now and I hate it.

[zanderbobs]

They should block chatgpt on uni WiFi the way they used to block coolmathgames

[the-forest-library]

kill the imposter syndrome in your head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they’re also using chat gpt to do it

[crescenthistory]

I honestly don't really understand how people can still continue to support AI, it's so discouraging to see people use AI and steal art from creators who gave their all :( It's also quite scary because I'm worried about how much bigger and worse this is going to get in the future

i fully fully denounce ai in art and i'm so relieved to see most of my friends here do the same</3 what happened to dai shouldn't happen to anyone

[nonbinary-octopus]

yikes

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

[elexuscal]

"what did students do before chatgpt?" well one time i forgot i had a history essay due at my 10am class the morning of so over the course of my 30 minute bus ride to school i awkwardly used by backpack as a desk, sped wrote the essay, and got an A on it.

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

point being that actually doing the work is how you learn the material and internalize it. ChatGPT can give you a short cut but it won't build you the the muscles.

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[krisrisk]

tiny critique there: genAI is actually very much like a calculator, and you can easily see that when you take a look at how asian kids who are taught the suanpan (abacus) can do math vs european kids who have the Texas Instruments calculator.

Something I don't think we talk enough about in discussions surrounding AI is the loss of perseverance.

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Idk I'm just really worried about kids having to grow up in a world where (for a variety of reasons beyond just AI) they're not given the chance to struggle through new and challenging things like we used to.