#artificial intelligence says

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

no i don't want to use your ai assistant. no i don't want your ai search results. no i don't want your ai summary of reviews. no i don't want your ai feature in my social media search bar (???). no i don't want ai to do my work for me in adobe. no i don't want ai to write my paper. no i don't want ai to make my art. no i don't want ai to edit my pictures. no i don't want ai to learn my shopping habits. no i don't want ai to analyze my data. i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it i don't fucking want it i am going to go feral and eat my own teeth stop itttt

[mostly-natm]

Android child bonding!

[curtwilde]

X

[skull-pun]

I just...

I just don't know anymore.

[mislamicpearl]

They made us register for online classes about Gen AI today. One of the categories to fill in was "Prompting Experience". I feel gross.🤢🤮

At least it's just my work email... gonna deactivate that account as soon as the school year is over.

[katherinakaina]

The problem with house elves in Harry Potter.

Typical argument goes as follows: it is bad and irresponsible for an author to create enslaved people who love their enslavement and love their masters because of all the real world parallels to real slavery. Similar arguments were actually made about American slavery and every other slavery before or since. In our world such rhetoric is always propaganda. But in Harry Potter it’s portrayed as genuine.

For a children’s book especially, it’s not a good look. As a children’s book, Harry Potter contains too many dark and difficult topics and without satisfying lessons or conclusions it’s tempting to say – don’t introduce slavery into your story. Don’t create willing slaves, for starters.

But the problem is in the lessons or conclusions part, not the introducing part. And even willing slaves can be explored in interesting ways and really done justice when in hands of a competent writer with good politics.

How so? Well, don’t create such creatures just because. Make them into a coherent metaphor for something. There are several possible options, starting from less fitting:

1. House elves are dogs. Or children.

You can frame dogs as voluntary slaves if you don’t know much about dogs. Unlike house elves, they are perfectly independent creatures that do not have an inborn desire to obey humans. They need to be trained and even then they can be very stubborn and do not appreciate or even tolerate abuse like house elves do. Dogs are more like children. You have the position of authority over them but that makes you responsible and it is your job to make them happy and occupied.

But if you are really committed, you can frame childhood as slavery too. Being a child or a pet is a vulnerable position to be in. Your labor is sometimes exploited and you don’t control your life much. You know how it is.

So, there are creatures who love their sometimes actually slavery-like situations because they love their "caretakers" and you cannot solve this problem by just separating the two groups. It would be doing everyone a disservice.

But in Harry Potter, Hermione decides to free elves purely on philosophical ground and in her zeal doesn’t consider the reality of their special psychology. Who would even make such a silly mistake?

2. House elves are house wives. And Hermione is a lesbian separatist.

This angle really comes into focus when we meet Winky in the fourth book. She is a female elf and a loyal supporter of her master Barty Crouch Snr. You can very easily read her as this conservative fearful simple-minded wife that just wants to keep peace and make her husband happy above all else*. The only thing that is above the “husband” is her “son", her perfect boy who can do no wrong – Barty Crouch Jnr, a death eater and the main villain for most of the book.

In the beginning of the book, Winky gets "divorced" against her will, by her “husband”, for a public transgression that made him look bad. It’s this situation that shocks Hermione to the core and makes her believe that all elves should be free. But then Winky ends up in the Hogwarts kitchens (where elves live among themselves like in a convent) and we see that she’s devastated, blames herself, becomes an addict and never fully recovers. Hermione never gets strong evidence in the opposite direction and eventually abandons her activism.

This does sound like a cautionary tale a conservative would write about marriage. How feminism is women’s main enemy and how we all are deeply unhappy without the authority of a husband. Again, actual arguments that people make about modern society TODAY.

Obviously, that’s not how the real world works. But even here separatism is a bad solution. Yes, there is a rare house elf that can handle freedom**. There are women (not quite so rare) who don’t want to engage in relations with men. But it would really be doing everyone a disservice to force apartheid between men and women. Most wives love their husbands. Even when they are abusive. Most women can stop loving a particular man, but not men in general. There’s no escape from the biological prison of heterosexuality.

Anyway, those are all bad metaphors that require a lot of stretching. House elves don't look like creatures that evolved to cooperate with humans like domesticated animals or humans themselves. They are too subservient. Such a thing wouldn't happen naturally. They seem to be created (or altered) artificially to accept humans unconditionally***.

3. House elves as perfectly aligned Artificial Intelligence.

House elves have stronger magic than wizards, they think differently from them but still are perfectly loyal and obedient to those they consider their masters.

This is the best metaphor, in my opinion. After all, science is similar to magic. They are both really powerful. And both can be used for better or worse. You don’t have to write sci-fi to talk about any futuristic concept. Those are just aesthetics, really****. And that’s a pretty cool question to ask – if people could create a house elf… would they? Not a far fetched idea at all.

So, when written well a house elf can be a perfectly good narrative device. Introduce them into your story as a metaphor for domestic servitude or AI, an enslaved god in a box. You can even mix those metaphors. Make your house elf a stand-in for a waifu simulator. Make them Joi from Blade Runner 2049. Make it real dark.

Tone it down for a YA audience, of course, but still, why not? There are real life implications here. You can even start with the SPEW plot as well. Show that brute force lesbian separatism or rewriting the code of a perfectly happy and aligned AI is stupid and, in the latter case especially, really dangerous. Don’t separate families on the basis of some abstract philosophical grievance you made up. Don’t kidnap people’s pets. Sure!

What’s next, though? What do you do with a subservient creature you cannot just free?

In the real world we have laws surrounding all of these issues, protecting all spouses, children and pets from abuse. And when sentient waifus become a thing we will have to intervene as well.

How come this point never crosses Hermione’s mind? How come she gives up on SPEW and never finds a third alternative?

A better written Hermione would say: “Okay, Hagrid, I concede that house elves should not be taken from their homes. Fine. But are we really also fine with families like Malfoy’s treating their elves like dirt? Elves do become distressed when it happens, we can all clearly see that. Harry was right to free Dobby, we all agree on that. But do we agree that it was Harry’s responsibility to do that? No authority had taken Dobby away from his masters even though Dobby actively wanted to be taken. No authority had permanently taken the right to own house elves from Malfoys. They can just buy a new one and abuse them as well! I know you don’t have child protective services either, so we should probably start with that but can we at least agree that it's a goal for the future? There’s a pile of clothes for elves who want freedom in the kitchens now. That’s a good thing, right?”

But such a conversation can never happen in Harry Potter, about any issue*****. Because that would imply a systemic change. It would imply that the Ministry of Magic, portrayed as useless and incompetent most of the time, has to do something. And we can’t have that.

Instead we have a toothless morality that we should just all be better as individuals. We should help victims when some injustice really stares us in the face. And we should treat our own elves better. Be nice to your wife. Be kind to your children. Don’t hit your dog. Don’t inflict pain on your waifu simulator. What happens behind the closed doors of your neighbors is really none of your business. Family is the cornerstone of society and the government should not meddle in its affairs.

This is what makes Harry Potter's house elves irredeemable. Not their existence but all the lessons we expected to not learn from them. A competent writer with good politics wouldn’t stop the conversation on “well, they enjoy slavery so we must not intervene”. In a bad situation there’s always a less ridiculous alternative to doing nothing.

_____________________

* There are no sexual relations between wizards and elves anywhere in the books as far as I know. I’m only talking about the social dynamic of traditional marriage, nothing more. (Although in real world sexual abuse does happen in all of the situations discussed here)

** The only one we see is Dobby but even he was not free from his affection for wizards. He just switched from serving his family to serving the main character, not de jure but de facto. He risks his life and suffers abuse for Harry and in the end he dies saving Harry’s life.

*** As far as I know it was never confirmed how elves came to be in Harry Potter. Which is bizarre considering this author's love for writing extra worldbuilding. That suggests to me that she was uncomfortable with the topic herself and didn’t really want to make it into a coherent metaphor. Else she could have given them any origin story she deemed fit.

****I do mean that fully. A spell that reads minds and computer chips in brains can and should serve the same narrative purpose. You can go full Black Mirror in your fantasy novel. That one episode where people’s eyes film everything they see – literally a pensieve.

*****They ponder once that they sort children into houses a bit early and even though it would be a comparatively easy fix they still do nothing. They never do anything!

[mishoarts]

no matter how simple your drawing is

how poor your writing is

how bad your answer was in that test

A reminder that you did that YOURSELF

AND DID NOT USE SOME CHEAP ASS AI LIKE SOME PEOPLE

[batcavescolony]

I didn't think if have to explain this, Human mediocrity is hundreds of times better then ANYTHING an AI could come up with.

[khrayton]

Please read.

All the problems in America originate in giving the power to push laws to corporations.

The reason why farmers can't replant the seeds from their harvests.

The reason why all cities in America have to be built around cars.

The reason of the housing crisis.

The reason why Healthcare companies can simply deny all claims and get away with it.

The reason why companies are pushing AI to have copyright despise being built without the consent of thousands of artists

The reason why Tesla can get away with selling the cyber truck despise being the most poorly designed most dangerous vehicle which by the way, can't be sell outside the US.

The reason of the unnecessary complications of paying taxes.

The reason why Billonaries don't pay taxes.

The reason why we have to deal with a useless middle man taking all of our money in taxes, healthcare, etc.

They own the system WE use to prevent those things from happening, they push the people they want into the system, they push the laws they want into the system to work with.

Do you know the legend of the Gordian knot?

"Whoever could untie it would be destined to rule all of Asia"

The one capable of untie the complex knot of the human rule of power…

But that's not what the legend is about isn't? The legend talks about Alexander the great, who rater to attempt untie this complex of human connections he decided to draw his sword and cut it out.

If we are not able to solve this problem with our mind then the sword will.

Best case scenario we somehow unite and get out companies to make laws and we take down the laws those same companies have made.

I don't believe is possible for us to fix America using the system those companies own, we can't untie this Gordian knot of problems, human relationships, of professions, of whole companies. If they don't cooperate then we will be force to use the sword, and I don't know if we will survive a fight against them.

People are confuse, homeless, sick. Individualism have taken over so many people because we are drowning in on our problems and we are alone trying to fix them.

We surpass them a thousand to one yet we are incapable of uniting, we are scared of violence and the consequences of it, but at this point things are only going to get worse. If we don't act quickly then wen violence become the only solution, it will be worse, so much worse…

Go outside, talk about this problem, join forces with others, make it fun, make it something to be proud of, we revel against a broken system and if you don't hear our demand then you will a victim of them, make music about it, share food on it, today on age we live in a world with so many distractions, we seek immediate satisfaction, so lets bring that satisfaction to help us fix the problem.

Luigi (allegedly, innocent until proven guilty) remind us that Billionaires and CEO's are people like us with names and addresses

How many people will be enough to trash one of those companies places so the police can't deal with it? They are protecting them, not us, lets change that, convince them, they receive orders, many from one…

The problem of many is also your problem, and you can do so much about it.

[harveybwabbit92]

[I had thought about Ultras and their skeletons, then thought what if they were similar to a cat's skeleton? Where the vertebrae are all held by muscles rather than by ligaments, (That would explain Blazar.) and now I'm imagining Taro trying to hide from toddler Taiga for five minutes so he can eat a candy bar without sharing with his son, but Taiga finds him and gets into to the room by squeezing in through a gap under the door which scares the shit out of Taro! cos he didn't know they could do that!]

[thelesbiandeli]

why use AI to write your essays for you when there’s probably some little freak who’ll do it for three pounds and a biscuit

[kayden-i-guess]

I will actually murder the stupid ass ai that marks my online work that my school makes me use.

[defectivegembrain]

Have had multiple lecturers telling classes explicitly not to get chatgpt to write our assignments for us. And granted we share some classes with undergrads but today the research methods lecturer said it in a class full of only postgraduates. Like if you're a postgrad you're most likely an adult who made a decision to apply, right? Especially in something like linguistics. Society is not pushing you to do linguistics, the wider job market would not lead you to linguistics by itself, it would be a very unusual thing to be pushed into by parents or something. Typically you choose it because you're interested in it. Why would you make that decision only to offload your work onto Cleverbot's less fun cousin?

[noahkirschtein]

hey so being anti-AI includes AI chatbots btw

[icicledream]

"so many things using the term ai feels like deliberate obfuscation" i hate to tell u this but we have been using the term ai for video game npcs and scientific models and automated tools and generative tools for many decades.

like if this was a more recent acronym yeah it'd feel deliberate but all of those things are, in fact, forms of artificial intelligence

and sure they're trying to buzzword it bc of the genai craze but that shouldn't take away from the fact that we've been using that acronym for decades

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

For my fellow BSGeeks!