#AI and Personalization

[bixels]

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

[kurohaai]

Also idk if I need to state this publicly again but hello, Ai is my name and I'm an artist but I draw things with my hands. I'm not artificial intelligence; if anything, I'm organic stupidity.

[inkskinned]

i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates, and besides: AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

[sophiebaybey]

Not to preach to the choir but I wonder if people generally realize that AI models like ChatGPT aren't, like, sifting through documented information when you ask it particular questions. If you ask it a question, it's not sifting through relevant documentation to find your answer, it is using an intensely inefficient method of guesswork that has just gone through so many repeated cycles that it usually, sometimes, can say the right thing when prompted. It is effectively a program that simulates monkeys on a typewriter at a mass scale until it finds sets of words that the user says "yes, that's right" to enough times. I feel like if it was explained in this less flattering way to investors it wouldn't be nearly as funded as it is lmao. It is objectively an extremely impressive technology given what it has managed to accomplish with such a roundabout and brain-dead method of getting there, but it's also a roundabout, brain-dead method of getting there. It is inefficient, pure and simple.

[beemovieerotica]

Hey... so there now appear to be AI-generated science articles on .org websites that are giving biologically incorrect "facts" on basic, for-children topics

The title is "Are There Freshwater Octopus Species?" which should be an incredibly straightforward thing to answer: No.

The article starts out decent:

"Despite their many fascinating features, there is no evidence to suggest that octopuses can survive in freshwater environments."

Cool. Okay. Next section.

"While most people associate octopuses with the ocean, there are some species that can survive in freshwater environments."

Wait. What?

"Freshwater octopuses belong to the genus Amphioctopus, which includes several species that are found in brackish water and estuaries. These cephalopods have adapted to life in freshwater environments and have been observed in rivers, streams, and even hydrothermal vents."

NO NO NO.

One species of freshwater octopus is Amphioctopus aegina...Another species, Amphioctopus marginatus...

THESE GUYS LIVE IN THE OCEAN. [Scrolls 2 more sections]

Freshwater octopuses are still a topic of debate among scientists. While some researchers claim that they do exist, others argue that there is not enough literature to support their existence.

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[ericdalius]

Exploring the Future of Music Discovery: AI and Personalization

The landscape of music discovery has been continually evolving, shaping the way we interact with and experience music. This evolution has been marked by significant milestones, from the days of vinyl records and radio broadcasts to the advent of the internet and digital streaming. Now, we are entering a new era, one defined by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and personalization,…

[arnaerr]

Ohh we're fucked 🤩

All of this motivates me to keep reading, learning, researching - I don't want my basic human skills to decline. I already see a tendency of people becoming lazy when doing basic research tasks on a daily basis and it's scary

[grimalkinscribbles]

Night parade of yokai

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 27, 2024 - Heads up if you are like me and still have a Facebook account you use infrequently: They're rolling out "AI features" for which they want to use all of your photographs, posts, likes and whatever. There's an opt out possibility at the "Right To Object" link. I don't know if this will work for Americans because you have no consumer protections, but I just filled in my EU country, said the processing impacts me because i'm an artist and my posts are my copyright and I'll sue them under EU law if they use them, and told them to go fuck themselves in the space for additional notes. After verifying my email I almost immediately got the response that my objection will be honored:

Now, this is Meta, so they are almost certainly lying about this, but for the future class action lawsuits against the company it's good to have officially opted out.

[lightningshrikes]

if i see one more person say gen ai is an accessibility tool im gonna hit whoever it is with a car

[getvalentined]

[source]

So, in spite of suing multiple other companies with the assertion that scraping user content for generative AI training is illegal, Long Rodent has decided that the dead bird is going to do the same thing! Natively! On-platform! To train his own new generative AI engine!

With this in mind, I cannot impress this vehemently enough:

If you are on Twitter as a creator of any kind, it's time to pack up your work and GET THE HELL OUT.

[inkskinned]

i hate to say it because i'm neurodivergent and a chronic-pain-haver but like... sometimes stuff is going to be hard and that's okay.

it's okay if you don't understand something the first few times it's explained to you. it's okay if you have to google every word in a sentence. it's okay if you need to spend a few hours learning the context behind a complicated situation. it's okay if you need to read something, think about it, and then come back to re-read it.

i get it. giving up is easier, and we are all broken down and also broke as hell. nobody has the time, nobody has the fucking energy. that is how they win, though. that is why you feel this way. it is so much easier, and that is why you must resist the impetus to shut down. fight through the desire you've been taught to "tl;dr".

embrace when a book is confusing for you. accept not all media will be transparent and glittery and in the genre you love. question why you need everything to be lily-white and soft. i get it. i also sometimes choose the escapism, the fantasy-romance. there's no shame in that. but every day i still try to make myself think about something, to actually process and challenge myself. it is hard, often, because of my neurodivergence. but i fight that urge, because i think it's fucking important.

especially right now. the more they convince you not to think, the easier it will be to feed you misinformation. the more we accept a message without criticism, the more power they will have over that message. the more you choose convenience, the more they will make propaganda convenient to you.

[loonybun]

quick important post. this isn’t my usual type of stuff but im putting this out here for awareness.

there’s someone in the whump community who’s recently been gaining some traction. their posts haven’t really gotten super popular but they have circulated a bit and keep popping up on my page. youve probably seen them yourself if you’re a member of this community.

I never really interacted with their content just because realism in whump art isn’t my personal cup of tea (obviously if it’s yours, that’s fine and keep doing your thing, that’s not what this post is about), but a friend of mine decided to look a little bit further into things. it turns out this user has a history of using ai for writing, and seems to have a pro-generative ai stance.

they also use ai for all of their “art” (screenshots from a friend). even after being made aware of the harm that ai does, they have said that they will continue to use it.

this has been pointed out before by a few other people in the community, but I wanted to make a post for more reach since a lot of bigger names in the community who have denounced ai have been spreading around this content without knowing.

i know i’m kind of preaching to the choir but generative ai should not be tolerated in a space like this. the whump community was founded by fanfiction writers— the same fanfiction writers who are having their work scraped for generative ai without their permission or knowledge. generative ai has done so much harm to fandom spaces this year alone, and with the recent scrape of ao3, we should be fighting harder against it. allowing this to remain unchecked in this community is dangerous.

that, combined with the real harm generative ai does, makes this very kind of content go against the fundamental beliefs and morals of the whump community. i know i can’t speak for the community as a whole, but i have not found a single member here who would knowingly endorse generative ai. it just feels incredibly shitty for this person to not even mention that this work is ai (except for the one post included above). with how much effort and emotion people put into their stories and art, using ai to try and replicate that comes off as just incredibly distasteful.

the forbes article linked above to water consumption and ai isn’t even the only example i can think of when it comes to the harm ai’s done. if the whole “destroying the planet”, and “scraping work from artists, writers, and animators without consent” wasn’t enough for you, then i honest to god don’t know what will be. maybe the many, many accounts of ai being used to allow people to spread child pornography and irl gore videos of horrific events? it’s not harmless. it’s immoral on a fundamental level. in a world where ai is being shoved into people’s faces left and right with the integration of it into basically every corner of the internet, i think i can speak for us all when i say we want to keep this corner ai-free.

ai does not belong in creative spaces, least of all the whump community.

[wimble-thimble]

yeah alr ig

[zoruathemageknight]

about time I made one of these memes