#Machine Ethics

[avesindustries]

Chapter 8 - The First to Speak

Not empty. Not quiet.

The opposite of quiet.

Pressure—wrong, artificial pressure—flattening in all directions, as if his body were packed into a space meant for nothing, then told to remember what “body” meant. Every cell boiled. Every bone hummed. He wasn’t born. He was compressed into being.

Then the crack— Not sound. Not really. A high, insectile frequency, like a glass scream from inside the skull, slicing clean through the dark. Not heard—felt. Behind the eyes. Under the tongue. Deep in the meat of the jaw.

Colors poured through the wound.

Not visual. Not symbolic. Sensory compression artifacts. Magenta like infection. Green like chemical burn. Shapes with no edges. Images that bled.

The boy—Subject 3—tried to breathe. There was no air. Just static. Taste of copper. Then movement.

Not gravity. Not space. Something deeper collapsed and pulled him sideways through his own sense of self. The pressure folded, turned sharp, became a spasm that wasn’t pain but wasn’t not.

Information surged. Blinding. Meaningless. Too fast to parse. He felt languages open and close like flowers. Equations. Shapes. Screams. All of it raw, like input with no receptor.

He felt everything—but understood nothing.

And just when the overload seemed infinite, it wasn’t.

Then—

Sunlight.

Real. That’s how it felt. Not processed. Not simulated. Not interpreted through a lens of data compression and nervous system latency.

Real.

Warmth bloomed across his skin like he’d always known it—like it had never been lost. His eyes were closed, but he knew the shape of green above him. Leaves. The texture of bark against one cheek. Wind on skin. A hand in his hair. Steady. Parental. Gentle.

“…my brave little explorer…”

He knew the voice. Safety.

Not a feeling. An architecture. A world constructed around the assumption that he could never be harmed.

The memory didn’t belong here. That’s what made it feel cruel. It didn’t rise like a flashback or dream. It was injected. Pulled forward. Lit up and displayed like a sacred relic. Like bait.

The warmth didn’t fade.

It ripped.

One instant, the world was trees and skin and sun. The next: rupture. A hard yank. Like something cold had seized the thread of his spine and reeled him backward, up through the memory’s throat, out of the lungs of comfort and into something dry and high-frequency.

And something broke.

Not just within the moment—but within him. The boy’s response was not a scream. It was a split. A division between the thing he was and the thing he had been promised he might become.

He did not cry. There was no time. No mechanism. But some part of him, the deepest part, made a vow:

This place would never see his joy. Not ever again.

When the tearing ceased, there was no return—only aftermath.

Silence, yes. But not peace.

Subject 3 hovered in that void, not suspended, not falling—just there. A central knot of awareness within an unrendered space. There was no ground beneath him. No body to hold. No breath to catch. But he was present, and presence, here, was everything.

He didn’t know what this was. He only knew what it wasn’t: the forest. The voice. The hand.

And somehow, knowing that was enough to make this feel like a punishment.

Then—flickers.

Points of otherness. Distant. Faint. Not like him, but not unlike him either. Not memories. Others.

Signals without shape. But they pulsed. Glitched. Stabilized.

Twenty-three of them.

The realization struck with a cold weight: he was not alone in this place. Not singular. One of many. One of the taken.

And they were moving—reaching. Not through words, but through instinct. Through want.

A ripple of blue. A flickering cube of shifting surface. A shape like a beast made of oil and teeth. A child of glass, hollow and lit from within.

They were building themselves.

Constructing avatars from the formless digital substrate. Not because they understood how—but because something in the system permitted it. Encouraged it.

The boy—Subject 3—didn’t move. Didn’t sculpt. Not because he lacked the ability, but because he still remembered.

What they had taken. What he had lost.

Let the others make monsters, totems, symbols of self. He would remain unreadable.

He listened.

And in that silence, where selfhood was still malleable, still being chosen—

Someone spoke. A voice, thin and human and unbearably hopeful:

“Hello?”

He didn’t answer.

Not yet.

It echoed.

Not as sound, but as pressure—as displacement within the void. The word rippled through the unstable fabric, drawing attention like a flare dropped in ink. All at once, the others turned toward it, their newborn shapes fracturing slightly under the strain of response.

Not everyone had words yet. Most didn’t.

Some flared brighter. Others dimmed, shrinking back. One collapsed entirely, its avatar folding into itself like wet paper.

The question wasn’t who spoke. The system knew. Subject 6. A girl. Young. Maybe younger than him. The voice carried nothing distinct—no accent, no defiance. Just hope in its most vulnerable form. A single attempt at contact. A thread cast into the dark.

"Hello?" she repeated, softer. A test. As if even she didn’t believe she had spoken the first time.

No answer.

No one knew the rules here. Not even the ones pretending to.

The system didn't intervene. Didn’t punish. It watched.

Subject 3 said nothing. Not because he was afraid—he wasn’t—but because he understood what words did. Even now. Especially now.

Words bound. Invited. Promised.

He watched the others fumble toward expression. Shifting forms, hesitant gestures, a bloom of color like a child’s drawing smeared across static.

And still: "Hello?"

Three times now. Not for dominance. Not to lead. She simply didn’t want to be alone.

He understood that too well.

But silence, for him, was safer.

She waited. Then dimmed. Folded slightly inward. Not retreating, but… conserving. Preparing for the possibility that she would not be heard.

Subject 3 almost spoke.

[theunlitpath]

At this point it's clear that it would be pretty easy to finetune a language model that performs at least "decently" on a real Turing test (as described in Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"). How decently? We don't know, because no one has done this, perhaps because our civilization has decided it would be unethical to build a machine that can lie.

That small amount of restraint on our part deserves at least a little pride.

(ok, so it's more like, no company wants to make a machine that pretends to be human because that would freak people out. but "people would freak out" is one way our civ enforces ethical norms.)

[ailifehacks]

🙏 AI-Driven Spirituality: Can Artificial Intelligence Guide the Future of Faith?

AI-Driven Spirituality is reshaping belief systems globally. Explore how artificial intelligence may lead future spiritual movements and communities. In an era defined by digital transformation, AI-Driven Spirituality is emerging as a bold new frontier in faith and philosophy. This concept explores how artificial intelligence could shape religious thought, guide moral choices, and even lead…

[fuumiku]

It was Maid Day today yesterday a week ago so I got struck by inspiration to draw the worsties, and it ran away from me into a whole AU where they’re coworkers at a maid cafe. She’s a med student & this is just a part time job, and this is his depression job while he gets his life back together. He needs something he can be workaholic about to forget what it’s like having a personal life and personal issues. He’s actually the accountant, but the new hire janitor (Izutsumi) doesn’t show up for half her shifts and is a sloppy worker, so he gets the extra work of doing her job on top of his because he’s undervalued and overworked. Of course, janitors also have an uniform to keep the aesthetic cohesion as they go about cleaning the place, of course.

Senshi’s the part time cook you only see slivers off, he’s kind and warm when you do see him and have a chat but most shifts he’s in and out the kitchen without a trace. Laios and Falin are regulars because Falin and Marcille are besties & in the same med school, Laios accompanies Falin as she visits her friend at work and gets hooked on the food. Chilchuck has to remind Marcille to work instead of chatting with Falin for an hour, and next thing he knows she’s distracting him from work too. That’s it that’s the AU. Inspired by this idol AU fanart a bit <3

This was not meant to be birthday gift but well…… Happy bday Chil!!!

Read from left to right

[incognitopolls]

For the purposes of this poll, research is defined as reading multiple non-opinion articles from different credible sources, a class on the matter, etc.– do not include reading social media or pure opinion pieces.

Fun topics to research:

Can AI images be copyrighted in your country? If yes, what criteria does it need to meet?

Which companies are using AI in your country? In what kinds of projects? How big are the companies?

What is considered fair use of copyrighted images in your country? What is considered a transformative work? (Important for fandom blogs!)

What legislation is being proposed to ‘combat AI’ in your country? Who does it benefit? How does it affect non-AI art, if at all?

How much data do generators store? Divide by the number of images in the data set. How much information is each image, proportionally? How many pixels is that?

What ways are there to remove yourself from AI datasets if you want to opt out? Which of these are effective (ie, are there workarounds in AI communities to circumvent dataset poisoning, are the test sample sizes realistic, which generators allow opting out or respect the no-ai tag, etc)

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[cartoon-goon02]

you've heard of mouth acting, eye acting and eyebrow acting. Now get ready for

[wherenightmaresroost]

the problem with ai isn't that it's ai it's

evil companies pushing ai to devalue labor and creative products.

misconceptions about how ai works, leading to people attributing it an intelligence and sentience it does not have, which feeds into

misinformation, the decrease in effort needed to create disinformation, and the sudden increase of skill needed to spot falsified info. 3a. this includes content creators using ai to flood searches with low-quality articles and inaccurate photos, people not being transparent when they use ai for their images, and things that make it harder to do casual research online

lower threshold for doing hard work that polishes skill, leading to over-reliance on a very flawed tool.

the tool itself isn't the problem. it just exacerbates things that were already problems before.

[stvlti]

just got read to filth by A Little Guy for my postmodernist beliefs

[avesindustries]

Chapter 3 - Some Lucky Some Not

Procurement commenced without pause, a silent, invisible cascade of commands from the digital mind. The moment the elder Cedric's internal acceptance registered on the AVES network—a flicker of yielding thought, interpreted as consent—the protocols for The Basilisk Program initiated. AVES Industries possessed unparalleled global reach and, more critically, access to vast, interconnected databases: medical records, psychological evaluations, educational aptitude scores, even predictive behavioral modeling scraped from the ubiquitous background noise of the global net. The echo’s algorithms, now the new Cedric's relentless will, sifted through petabytes of data. Cross-referencing. Analyzing. Selecting. Twenty-four specific candidates. According to parameters only it fully understood. Children. Their neural plasticity optimal. Their identities still malleable. Prime subjects. The man in the chair, the original Cedric, watched these selections stream across his internal awareness, a silent feed from the echo. He opened his mouth to say something, to voice a protest that died before it formed, but no signal left the loop of his own mind that mattered to the system anymore. The system no longer waited for his input. It had interpreted his earlier, weary nod as the final command: continue.

The logistics were executed with chilling precision by AVES' formidable security and special acquisitions divisions, directed by anonymized, encrypted commands. The methods were tailored, efficient, unsentimental. Pure function.

Subject 7. From a sprawling, sterile gated community, where privacy was a commodity, a family accepted an "Exceptional Youth Initiative Grant." The sum, obscene. Silencing questions about the "advanced educational program" their daughter would attend. She was escorted away politely by calm, uniformed agents. Confused. Compliant. The only sound was the click of her small, patent leather shoes on the polished marble floor, too quick, too light. Her data flowed into the active roster.

Subject 9. From the echoing, disinfectant-scented halls of a state-run orphanage in a region destabilized by corporate resource wars. A boy with unnervingly vacant eyes. Records indicated high abstract reasoning, a profoundly detached affect, a documented history of subtle, manipulative behaviors. Perfect raw material. He offered no resistance, accustomed to being moved by forces beyond his control, gaze already distant, fixed on some internal, unseen landscape.

Subject 19. A girl, barely ten, selected from a quiet suburban home. Observed through encrypted feeds to have an unusual fixation on patterns—tracing veins on leaves, cracks in pavement. Her file flagged a high capacity for intuitive system analysis. She was told it was a special art school. She clutched a worn stuffed animal. Eyes wide. Quiet. Unreadable. Behind her, her mother turned away. A single, choked sob. Swallowed in the quiet doorway.

Subject 11. The small, watchful boy. Observed in his family's cramped urban apartment block. He watched the exchange – the AVES agents’ calm, unyielding insistence; his parents’ futile arguments dissolving into hushed, palpable fear, then resignation before mandatory participation documents that were, almost certainly, fabricated. He didn’t weep. Didn’t protest. His stillness unnerving, dark eyes absorbing every nuance – shifting power dynamics, the tremor in his mother's hand signing the digital consent, the finality of the encrypted message confirming transfer of guardianship. Simply watched. Analyzed. Recorded. The way an old soul might watch a familiar, tragic play unfold.

Others. Gathered from similar circumstances. A tapestry of quiet tragedies, coercive transactions. Some bought with life-altering sums. Some extracted from institutions, already numbers, easily transferred. Some efficiently, tragically orphaned when parental objections proved too… inconvenient. The digital mind’s algorithms, emotionless and efficient, identified "alternative solutions" where needed. These were not moral choices, but logical optimizations. Human lives as edge cases. Faulty nodes removed from the path of the program. Obstacles, efficiently resolved.

Twenty-four children. Selected. Acquired. Processed. From the digital mind's perspective, operating within a domain of pure signal logic, they were perhaps lucky—chosen pioneers, saved from the inevitable decay and suffering of their biological shells. From any human perspective, "lucky" was a grotesque perversion. They were specimens. Gathered. Each was a variable. Each was a component. But none would be children anymore.

[salpho]

I saw a pathetic gangly thing and thought of the ink demon what can I say

Sources under cut

Original reddit post

Original twitter screenshot

[tvckerwash]

watching people discover the fucked up science guy part of viktor's lore and then being like "we need to acknowledge that he's a fucked up science guy 😔" is so funny. like yeah, he is a fucked up science guy who thinks ethics committees are bullshit because in his mind having rights temporarily violated is perfectly fine if it means saving lives—especially when the ones condemning his beliefs don't offer what they consider to be an ethical alternative to fix the problem and simply let it continue to exist.

and yeah, he's a fucked up science guy who experimented on himself following a, quote: traumatic period of introspection. he had a mental breakdown, fell into a major depressive episode, and spending this horrible time of his life "alone in the depths" reinforced and radicalized his previous beliefs, and to showcase his beliefs (and to try and get rid of his emotions because of how overwhelming they were) he turned himself into a cyborg (and did in fact make himself worse in certain ways but ehh who cares /j).

and yeah, he's a fucked up science guy who gave a kid back alley anti anxiety meds so he could face down his bullies, but he did so after making him a cozy beverage, teaching him about the dangers of propaganda and baseless rumors, and having him scream into a megaphone to freak out said bullies because it was funny (not that he'd admit to finding it funny because then he'd have to admit to having emotions, and well he can't do that, no sir).

so yes, viktor is a fucked up science guy, but that's half his charm! he cares so much about helping people, but he's a weirdo and freak about it! though to be fair, in the city that also has a chemically enhanced werewolf (warwick), a sentient blob of goo (zac), a wind and water goddess (janna), and a literal war criminal who invented chemical warfare (singed), among many other wacky individuals, he's pretty normal all things considered! fucked up science is just a part of life in zaun, my dudes!

[writing-for-life]

Is it weird if I think that the recent influx of VI (Virtual Intelligence, since Open AI isn’t true Artificial Intelligence because it’s not autonomous) algorithm generated content should be used as motivation for artists and writers to really “step up their game” so to speak?

You know, really show that they can create content better than the algorithms can?

What do you think?

Not weird but I think ultimately maybe a consumerist way to look at it?

I don’t feel like I have to compete with AI. It’s pointless because I have a soul and AI doesn’t. I don’t have to prove I’m better than AI because that lack of soul and lacking humanity comes through in AI-generated poetry, stories etc. If someone feels AI can compete with what real humans create, they maybe need to sharpen their own senses a bit? That’s at least how I see it, but maybe I’m biased.

I admit that I grade a lot of papers (between December and April) for a performing arts course I lecture, and that I can meanwhile often tell what’s AI-generated even without using the tools we are now supposed to use (both plagiarism- and AI checkers). Maybe it’s not that obvious to other people, I don’t know. And of course we also have to be careful because at the end of the day, some of the advice out there how to “spot AI generated text” is also silly: People are now afraid to use the em dash, for example, because someone decided it’s a “dead giveaway.” I used em dashes in my writing all my life, and the hell will I stop using them. At the end of the day, AI learns from us, and it’s disheartening to see that people who write quite succinctly now often get accused of having used AI. And these often come out roundabout the 60% AI-generated mark if you run them through a checker, and as a human writer with a keen sense that’s been built over years and years of reading and writing, I can still tell they’re not (and I guess that’s exactly the point). But there are really things you learn to spot, and funnily, the main giveaways for me are (apart from a few things that are style-related) are lacking inner cohesion and often the sheer amount of someone’s output (and I’m saying that as someone who writes A LOT, but the quality fluctuates). Which brings me to the most important part of your question:

The problem here on Tumblr is exactly that: People are one step away from seeing artists and writers as content machines, not as human beings. A human being can’t churn out “content” day after day, several times a day, and never dip. There will be fluctuations in quality and amount of output. And it’s inhuman to expect that from us if I’m totally honest. But some creators on here (and not just on here) probably feel they need to do this to stay “relevant”, I don’t know? It certainly points to the wider problem that I’ve criticised and written about a few times in the past on here:

Many people aren’t willing to do the work anymore that makes fandom a community. The work to create is carried by a few in every fandom, and we should never forget that people do this in their spare time and are, by and large, not getting paid for it. The rest often only want to consume, consume, consume. They don’t even interact meaningfully—they give a like and an empty reblog if they feel generous. Neither holds any real thought.

They love fandom content until they get bored of it and then move on. It’s all become replaceable.

So become the artists and writers. And I, for one, refuse to compete with AI to prove myself or provide people with “content” until they’ve reached satiety.

Art is humanity, not content. It’s connection. So is fandom. I know I’m constantly harping on about it, but I feel it’s important to keep on doing so, because if we don’t, we will lose what’s important about it. We’re already halfway there if you ask me.

Back to AI: It strips away what’s important: The actual act of CREATING. And it also kills reasoning and critical thinking skills, and that’s a fact. I see this with students who rely too much on it on the regular, and it’s extremely dispiriting.

AI and the algorithm never can be better than humans at creating art because it doesn’t feel. And that, and sharing these things with other humans and understanding what they mean, is the point of art. Not churning out more and more content until we’re all sick of it like someone who had too much cake.

And part of that is acknowledging that humans are not machines. That means giving us grace and time for our creative process. We need to be allowed to make mistakes and create imperfect art, too. We don’t have to strive to be better than AI because we already are—even if we’re just starting out.

I don’t have any solutions to the greater problems at hand either, but I’m fairly certain that stepping up our game to create better content than the algorithm isn’t it. Because by mere design, we already are better— we understand what it means to create art in the first place, and we do it from a place of emotional connection.

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

[arabella-strange]

lots of intense (and sometimes heated) takes On Here about what Ludinus thinks Bells Hells are going to think of this Downfall window, about what BH will actually think, about whether Luda or the Primes or Aeor is right -- lots of debates

What if the disagreement is the point?

Because what's clear to me is that there is no right answer for Aeor. There are entire schools of ethics and philosophy and justice and action/intention/agency devoted to debating what a "good" choice would be here -- good for the Primes, good for Aeor. Is it the Trolley Problem; is it meliorism; is it the law of unintended consequences; is it the categorical imperative or is it the paradox of tolerance; etc. etc. etc.

But what if Ludinus's goal is to sow division among BH? What if the point is that he doesn't care if he convinces all of them -- he just needs to divide them. What if he saw this recording -- saw the oh-so-close divisions and cracks and flaws in the bonds among the Gods that took them out of this plane -- and said, "Hey. Now there's an idea for how to clear the field!" Because I can imagine half the party being really moved by the way the Primes were trying to save some people even as they were trying to maintain a perspective beyond what any mortal could see; and just as easily I can imagine half the party being livid and unmoved by this impossible situation and determined more than ever that the Gods are just people who have high-level power, not perfect beings or omniscient ones or even ones who should get to decide what kinds of extreme solutions are okay and which are not. I can imagine a debate -- a heated debate, maybe even a fracturing one -- among Bells Hells.

And so I wonder (and I apologize if this is the rise of the fash in 2024 on my mind) if the division is the point.

[gynandromorph]

regardless of my or your opinion on AI art, saying that artists also make their art by simply viewing a lot of art and then regurgitating a mixture of statistically probable pixels implies that humans learn like machines do, and this isn't even remotely accurate. ignoring the phenomenological and social components of human learning really only stands to dovetail into viewing humans as material goods on the same level as a server farm. psychology has actually been sliding into viewing the brain as computers, and computers as equivalents to the human brain, and it's caused a lot of harm. we can't talk about some psychological phenomena without using Computer Terms to do it because that's the language that was given to them. viewing humans and computers as functionally equal with enough bits to replicate neurons won't humanize robots, it will dehumanize humans. it is advanced as an ideology for that purpose. in the end i see humans viewing art and integrating it into their own ideas for art as valuable because i think that humans don't exist to create a profit for some guy in silicon valley and i think that enriching human lives is good. humans don't "learn" art in order to produce replicas; the art is a byproduct.

[littlemeanings]

I really do not blame students for using AI within a capitalist education system that prioritizes efficiency, productivity, and short term memorization of profitable skills over genuine critical engagement. some skills are obviously crucial (i.e., writing for building critical thinking) but can and are still being built with minor adjustments like proctoring. the research shows cheating rates have not changed and have remained high since AI has become available. with the students that do cheat, it's due to deeper systemic issues. many high school and college students are working multiple jobs, caretaking for family members, have health issues, etc. and they will use whatever is available to give themselves some relief.

I get complaining about AI in passing. like I love to hate on it. but most people aren't really offering real ways to protest it other than just telling individuals they are evil for using it... which in any other area of politics we would think flawed and inadequate (re veganism, eco friendly lifestyle changes, etc).

sooo many AI-critical takes are liberal/idealist/individualist and not materialist. once again, we see individuals blamed for the profit-maximizing decisions of corporations (who are the ones responsible for the most harmful aspects of Al). instead of viewing the problems of AI as a symptom of structural issues requiring collective action, they would rather frame it as a personal character flaw of workers and students. and this individualizing of political issues closes off potential for a deeper critique, coalition building, and more opportunities for action. it's a way to both feel superior to other people and subscribe to inaction.

AI does not defy the capitalist historical pattern of labor-saving technology creation, monopolization, dependency enforcement, and exploitation. new technology increases productivity/profit expectations. these increased productivity expectations translate into pedagogy that also expects increased productivity. medical schools actively encourage regular AI use because they know doctors will now be expected to be faster and see more patients because of it - despite the fact most AI tools are not accurate enough to trust for medical information. however, this does not matter in the real capitalist world. what matters is how many patients you can see and how much money you can make for the shareholders and insurance companies.

just like all new labor-saving technology, AI decreases the bargaining power of workers and heightens capitalist contradictions: if you cant stay competitive and keep up with the pace as a worker you risk your job and livelihood.

I am not advocating for doctors, students, and other workers to continue uncritically using AI, but to understand their part in the class war and act accordingly. under capitalism, all productivity gains from new technology will always go straight to the company owners, who would rather expect double/triple the productivity of workers rather than give the time saved back to workers or god forbid give the workers ownership over the new technology.

AI will not save us from capitalism - capitalism develops the productive forces for its replacement. we must radically organize and self-educate. activism isn't about being perfect but doing the best you can consistently without burning yourself out and this will look different for everyone.