#Chat Automation

[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.

[super-cool-taxi-service]

(returns again with an even longer beard, visibly decrepit) FUCKING FINE. HAVE IT YOUR IMPOSSIBLE WORD-SEARCH WAY. GIASFCLFUBREHBER. i spent EIGHTEEN YEARS in the WORD SEARCH DESERT FOR THIS

[clumsypuppy]

Next time we invent life changing technology we cant let capitalists get their hands on it

[warrioreowynofrohan]

….how did Brandon write a story about ChatGPT before the invention of ChatGPT?

[carfuckerlynch]

it's fucking crazy to me how much xfinity refuses to let me talk to a person. like i have been trying to get on the phone with a human

[lesbiansanemi]

Fighting for my fucking life just trying to figure out why my wifi bill is double what it has been

[queen-mabs-revenge]

ok the second last chapter was the best one because in fairness it actually did address encoded biases in both generative and predictive AI datasets and violent outcomes for oppressed groups in policing, healthcare, resource distribution, etc. and it did make mention of the horrific exploitation of workers in the neocolonial world in cleaning datasets, moderating virtual spaces, tagging, transcribing, and other digital sweatshop work.

but the problem is that the solutions offered are more women in STEM and better regulations... with the end goal always always always of accepting and facilitating the existence and forward motion of these technologies, just with more equitable working conditions and outcomes. early in the book, there's a great aside about how generative AI being used for new forms of image based sexual abuse causes incredible harm to those who experience misogyny and also is gobbling up energy and water at exponential rates to do so. but that environmental angle gets a few sentences and is never spoken of again in favour of boosting a kinder, more inclusive inevitable AI inundated future.

but like — the assumption that these technologies are both inevitable and reformable makes all the solutions offered untethered and idealistic!

profit is mentioned throughout the book, but the system of profit generation isn't mentioned by name once. so the problems of some machine learning systems get attributed to patriarchy and profit as if those two things are separate and ahistorical, instead of products of class society with its most recent expression in capitalism.

but yeah I mean it's not presenting itself as a Marxist analysis of AI and gendered violence so I know I'm asking it to do things it was never setting out to do. but still, it's wild how when you start to criticise technology as having class character it becomes glaring how few critiques of AI, both generative and predictive, are brave enough to actual state the obvious conclusions: not all technology can be harnessed to help the collective working class. some technology is at its root created to be harmful to the collective wellbeing of the working class and the natural ecosystems we are in and of.

technology isn't inherently agnostic. it isn't neutral and then progressive if harnessed correctly, and that idealist vision is only going to throw the people and entities capitalism most exploits into the furnace of the steam engine powering the technocapitalist death drive.

you can't build a future without misogyny using tools designed to capitalise on increasingly granular data gathered from ever-increasing tools of surveillance, to black-box algorithmic substitutions for human interaction and knowledge, to predate on marginalised communities to privatise and destroy their natural resources and public services, and to function on exploited labour of unending exposure to the most traumatising and community-destroying content. and we have to be ruthless in our analysis to determine which AI technologies are designed and reliant on those structures — because not all are!

you have to be brave enough to go through all that analysis and say the thing: if we want a future of technological progress that is actually free from misogyny, we can't build it with those tools that are built by and for the capitalist class and are inextricable from their interests and the oppression of other groups of people that capitalism needs to perpetuate.

some technology is not fit for purpose if our purpose is collective liberation.

[coffeewithcalypso]

I was reading an article about AI and how AI creators think it will replace jobs (but let's put aside the whole debate of whether the digital, daydreaming toddler can become competent or not) and the thing that I don't really understand is why do they want it?

They know it will create unemployed people. All these tech bros are just Conservatives pretending to be Libertarian (because Libertarians are just Conservatives pretending to be Libertarian). Conservatives hate when people don't work. They're currently trying to pass a bill to make the sick and elderly go back to work! So why are they trying to actively create more unemployed people?

The thought process is fewer employees, higher profit. But they know there aren't jobs for people to move to. No jobs. No money. No spending. No profit. I do not understand how their logic breaks down.

[vkr-kayne]

trapped running lights at a corporate healthcare event and 80% of it is ppl making nothing statements in favor of gen ai 🫥

[hellyeahheroes]

NaNoWriMo's Nonsensical Defence of GenAI by CrowCaller

[mysticfemme]

screaming crying throwing up because the period app tracker I've been using for ten years has put almost every single function behind a paywall now

[self-spaghettification]

they/themavos real

[dialdrunk]

i finally hear back from one of the part-time positions i applied for, finds out it would be 17.50 an hour, goes through their q and a thing, tells me the position has been filled.

[arctic-hands]

...it should NOT be this hard to get in touch with your power company wtf

[chaoticeddie]

y'all better hope and pray you never have to contact the thriftbooks customer service cause I am having a HELL of a time getting a response

[musesofthesun]

ooc:// slowly getting my creative mojo back….. here are some yuis