#open AI discourse

[papercranesong]

Hi @peculiarreality thanks again for sharing your thoughts. I think a lot of concerns you’ve raised (both in your reblog and also in the comments bit) about AI are ones that reflect wider issues like injustice, consent, caring for the environment, and I’m sorry that I didn’t acknowledge these specifically in my original post.

Hopefully it’s okay if I just address the research concern first because it’s quite personal for me and maybe gives you some context as to where I’m coming from, and then it will lead into addressing the data scraping you mentioned.

So I do agree with you, generative AI models shouldn’t be fully trusted to give meaningful or accurate information on their own because they can hallucinate, promote misinformation, reflect bias etc., and people definitely need to be aware of that.

I have a Masters degree in Public Health, which involves critically analysing and evaluating existing health research. In UK academia, generative AI is being used as a really valuable and important tool for performing different kinds of analysis across existing literature (including journals that aren’t written in English), highlighting connections – with the end result being to reduce health inequalities. More broadly, generative AI is used as a tool to fight cancer, like this article from the University of Cambridge - “AI versus cancer”

I guessing that most people on here would probably be okay with the use of AI in those things.

However, as you said, the issue that bothers you most about my original post was that generative AI is trained on public data, including data scraped from AO3 (as described here on Reddit) – and that as @themurdochmemesteries rightly pointed out in the comments, when I use chatGPT, it’s able to give me suggestions and feedback in part because of that data. OpenAI, who developed chatGPT, train its models on public available data on the internet, regardless of copyright, and as described in this article in The Guardian (a UK newspaper), say that it’s impossible to train its generative AI tools otherwise.

So then in light of this – how can I, as a fanfic writer, be okay with using generative AI to help me write?

I'm sorry but I don’t think I’ll have an answer that will satisfy you because it’s not an answer that I’m comfortable with either. Scraping fanfics without consent isn’t okay, it’s theft, and openAI and other companies are being deliberately sketchy about what the data is being used for. I do think it’s important to advocate for generative AI to become more ethical, for the companies to act more responsibly and transparently, to support consent-based AI that’s trained on diverse, bias-aware models and that have safeguards against hallucinations (misinformation and fabricated content), and that’s environmentally friendly.

Like you say though, ethical AI models probably aren’t going to happen in our lifetime. So in the meantime we all have to make our own choice about how we’re going to interact with it now.

I’m choosing to use generative AI - acknowledging that there are ethical concerns as mentioned above, as well as environmental concerns (which I’ve tried to address in answer to this ask) whilst advocating towards using more ethical AI.

My intent is to use it as a tool to enable me to do something I love and to help me achieve Maslow’s top rung (the self-actualisation one) on the hierarchy of needs pyramid even in the bad days, whereas I wasn’t able to do that before.

I want to be transparent in my use of it, so that readers can make an informed decision. As I’ve written about in answer to this ask here, the use of tags in AO3 is difficult because there’s only one tag and so I think maybe tagging something like ‘created in accordance with my personal AI use disclaimer’ would be more helpful, and would then give writers the chance to outline their own use of AI in their AO3 profile, which would then help readers make a more informed choice about whether or not to engage with their fics. (I've now done that in my own AO3 profile).

But since my original post, some people have told me that the very fact that I use AI – regardless of how I use it, or don’t use it – means that they will stop engaging with me or my writing from now on. (Which is hurtful… but to be fair, they are probably feeling hurt by me too).

I’m just wondering if, by this logic, will people stop using AO3 also? AO3 actively host and publish fics that are generated by AI:

“At the moment, there is nothing in our Terms of Service that prohibits fanworks that are fully or partly generated with AI tools from being posted to the AO3, if they otherwise qualify as fanworks. Our goals as an organization include maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This means not only the best fanworks, or the most popular fanworks, but all the fanworks that we can preserve. If fans are using AI to generate fanworks, then our current position is that this is also a type of work that is within our mandate to preserve.” from AO3’s page on AI-generated works and AO3 policies

I really enjoy participating in fan gift exchanges on AO3, and I’m just wondering if I’m going to be banned from doing so by the event organisers because they they might have an absolute stance that “no fics using generative AI as a tool are allowed” – even if it’s just me using it as a proof-reader. It’s already starting to happen with some of the larger cross-fandom writing events. And yet these writing events and exchanges are taking place on AO3 which actively host and publish fics created entirely by chatGPT.

I don’t mean to be provocative – I just want to show that it’s a really difficult and complex issue.

Also, I don’t want to be a spokesperson for AI, but rather a spokesperson for having open AI discussion. I think people are fearful that any mention of using generative AI is going to subject them to anonymous hate and get them and their writing cancelled – because this is what’s happening to me.

Thanks again @peculiarreality for being willing to have this kind of respectful and thoughtful discussion. Happy for you or others to push back on any of these things!

Confessions of a Fanfic Writer: How and why I use AI 

So more and more, I’m seeing posts about AI and the place it has in writing. While some posts express justified concerns, the general discourse seems to be degenerating into “don’t use AI” and “if you use AI you’re a horrible person”, which suppresses conversation and doesn’t really explore the nuances of how AI can be used as a tool for writers.

I’m a fanfic writer who uses AI to help me write, especially when I’m in the throes of exhaustion or depression. I don’t always use it, and when I do, I’m aware it can become a crutch. But mostly it’s transformed my writing life, because it means I can write nearly every day now, instead of waiting for those rare moments each month when the sun comes up and I’m in a good place mentally and I’m able to write. 

So I thought I’d get specific and share some ways I use it. A couple of practical points first - 

AI is a broad term, and so when I talk about AI with regard to writing, I’m referring to a subcategory of AI called LLMs - large language models like chatGPT.

I don’t allow chatGPT to train on my fics. (There’s an option to not let it train its models on any data inputted). 

Ways I use AI to help me write 

One - to help me articulate my ideas

You know when you’re so tired and unable to express yourself properly, and you end up spewing a word cloud and gesturing inarticulately in the vague hope that the other person will understand what you’re trying to say? 

So with chatGPT I type that wordcloud in along with my half-baked ideas and unfinished sentences, and then it will make sense of what I’m trying to say and reflect back to me fully-formed ideas, giving me different suggestions for what I might mean. It’s the “make it exist first, you can make it good later” adage - chatGPT helps me to make my ideas exist first. 

Two -  for constructive criticism 

I might feel like a scene is sagging or that something’s not working but I’m unable to put my finger on it. So I’ll ask - “what’s not working?” and I’ve found it to be remarkably perceptive and accurate in identifying what and why something feels off - maybe it’s the beats and pacing, list-like repetition or lack of a character’s internal reaction.

(Could I just ask a beta-reader to do this? I could, but honestly - I’m an introvert and British. It’s just too awkward for me).

Three - as a sounding board 

If I’m stuck on a scene, it offers a fresh perspective by helping me figure out the motivations of the characters or identifying the emotional counterpoint of the scene and suggesting ways to build on it.

I sometimes ask it to rewrite the scene from the perspective of a different character, or to write the scene from a sensory point of view, just to help me experience it through fresh eyes. Other writers use it to make RPGs of their fics, for similar reasons. There’s also an audio option where it narrates what you’ve written -  the voice isn’t great but just hearing the words spoken aloud allows me to listen and visualise it and gives me a fresh perspective. 

Four - as a research tool 

I like doing research and making my fics as accurate as possible, but sometimes there’s no information available for my scenarios, e.g a character bleeding out in zero-G. So I type in the scenario into ChatGPT and receive information specific to my scene - for example, if my character is bleeding out in zero-G, is that even possible? How would it appear to an onlooker? Would the bleeding happen quicker or slower than in normal gravity? Would it still feel the same? (There’s always potential for the LLM to hallucinate though, so I wouldn’t trust it as the sole authority).

Five - for proof-reading and html code 

I can spend hours checking for typos, grammar and formatting errors, and it’s a lot quicker to ask chatGPT to clean it up for me initially and then to check it myself afterwards (or the other way round). It also speeds things up with writing html code for specific formatting. 

Six - as a writing therapist 

I have pretty low self-esteem and imposter syndrome etc. In the past I would either stop writing for a while - or worse, just delete my stories. 

Now when I feel like that, I tell ChatGPT and  then it responds by having a conversation based on therapeutic techniques such as externalisation (separating harmful thoughts from your identity), reframing techniques based on CBT etc. to explore with me what I’m feeling and to help me think differently about it. 

(Could I not just turn to actual humans for this? Yes, and occasionally I do. But I don’t want to pester my online fanfic friends with my writerly angst multiple times a day. It’s not fair on them, and they’re not counsellors. But with chatGPT I can be as honest and neurotic as I like). 

Conclusion

I guess I wanted to write this little essay because: 

it felt disingenuous not to speak up about my own use of AI when people were posting about it on Tumblr and elsewhere.

to maybe challenge the assumption that the use of AI in writing is automatically deviant, shameful or wrong. 

to hopefully be an approachable  person to chat to about the use of AI in fanfic. I’d love to find a friendly space in which to talk about how to use AI well in creating fanworks, and to discuss the angst, pitfalls and ethics that come with it. (Edit: I made a Tumblr community called Writing-with-AI, let me know if you’d like the link).

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and for keeping an open mind. I’m always happy to chat more - feel free to DM or leave me an ask.

Finally, you might be wondering whether I used AI to write this. What do you think?

[biracy]

Once u learn to be critical of rhetoric that relies on associating [supposed bad thing] with some form of psychological and/or neurological "damage", u really notice just how prevalent it is on here. Everyone you don't like is delusional, they're insane, they have brain damage, they need to Check The Carbon Monoxide Detectors, they need to Get Help and Go To Therapy, [form of media and/or communication] is literally brain poison, they've had their attention spans destroyed, they're "small brain" or "smooth brain" or "brain dead" or whatever. So many people on here remain seemingly incapable of criticizing someone's actions or views without needing to insinuate that the "problem" is neurological, "in the brain", unchangeable, fundamental. I should not have to explain why it is insensitive, nonconstructive, and oftentimes straight-up ableist to tell someone that they must have "brain damage" because you got into an argument with them online.

[nunuslab24]

What are AI, AGI, and ASI? And the positive impact of AI

Understanding artificial intelligence (AI) involves more than just recognizing lines of code or scripts; it encompasses developing algorithms and models capable of learning from data and making predictions or decisions based on what they’ve learned. To truly grasp the distinctions between the different types of AI, we must look at their capabilities and potential impact on society.

To simplify, we can categorize these types of AI by assigning a power level from 1 to 3, with 1 being the least powerful and 3 being the most powerful. Let’s explore these categories:

1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

Also known as Narrow AI or Weak AI, ANI is the most common form of AI we encounter today. It is designed to perform a specific task or a narrow range of tasks. Examples include virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, recommendation systems on Netflix, and image recognition software. ANI operates under a limited set of constraints and can’t perform tasks outside its specific domain. Despite its limitations, ANI has proven to be incredibly useful in automating repetitive tasks, providing insights through data analysis, and enhancing user experiences across various applications.

2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Referred to as Strong AI, AGI represents the next level of AI development. Unlike ANI, AGI can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, similar to human intelligence. It can reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, and learn from experiences. While AGI remains a theoretical concept as of now, achieving it would mean creating machines capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can. This breakthrough could revolutionize numerous fields, including healthcare, education, and science, by providing more adaptive and comprehensive solutions.

3. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

ASI surpasses human intelligence and capabilities in all aspects. It represents a level of intelligence far beyond our current understanding, where machines could outthink, outperform, and outmaneuver humans. ASI could lead to unprecedented advancements in technology and society. However, it also raises significant ethical and safety concerns. Ensuring ASI is developed and used responsibly is crucial to preventing unintended consequences that could arise from such a powerful form of intelligence.

The Positive Impact of AI

When regulated and guided by ethical principles, AI has the potential to benefit humanity significantly. Here are a few ways AI can help us become better:

• Healthcare: AI can assist in diagnosing diseases, personalizing treatment plans, and even predicting health issues before they become severe. This can lead to improved patient outcomes and more efficient healthcare systems.

• Education: Personalized learning experiences powered by AI can cater to individual student needs, helping them learn at their own pace and in ways that suit their unique styles.

• Environment: AI can play a crucial role in monitoring and managing environmental changes, optimizing energy use, and developing sustainable practices to combat climate change.

• Economy: AI can drive innovation, create new industries, and enhance productivity by automating mundane tasks and providing data-driven insights for better decision-making.

In conclusion, while AI, AGI, and ASI represent different levels of technological advancement, their potential to transform our world is immense. By understanding their distinctions and ensuring proper regulation, we can harness the power of AI to create a brighter future for all.

[gloriouspiratenacho]

I've started work on a Ranmaru bot, since he features so heavily in Yoshimoto's route.

I'm struggling a bit to try and describe Ranmaru's relationship with Nobunaga. He is there exclusively to take him down, but always seems reluctant to do so. I'm certain there is a level of respect, but I'm not really sure what else. It's so murky. Not exactly friendship, for sure.

Describing his relationship to Kennyo is easy, and poisoning the poor innocent bot against Mitsuhide was fun. Mitsuhide's programming is so full all I could write was "Ranmaru = suspicious" 😂

[h0neyfreak]

this might be dropkicking a hornet’s nest but I don’t think “ah but this art made you experience an Emotion” is actually a useful or clever take on modern (or any) art and kind of maybe misunderstands what it means to say “Art makes you think about/feel things.”

Like. My experience with (visual) art is honestly kind of universal regardless of the emotional or aesthetic veneer and at the risk of outing myself as a phenomenologist, it really is the experience of seeing and the art becoming art in front of you. Rothko’s paintings work in person because it pulls you in and the more you stare at it and really look the more layers you see and the more the medium shows itself to you and it becomes an oil painting and also colors and also canvas and pigment and linseed oil and wax and also an infinite number of things. And this isn’t any different across mediums/styles/movements. Staring at a tramp art box and seeing every knife cut and the faded logos and careful joinery from another life; staring at the old Dutch master portraits and being in a room with someone you can’t stop looking at; jumping at a tromp l’oeil before realizing it’s a painting; seeing a quilt and understanding the neat rows of stitches diving into the batting; gazing up at a giant marble statue and seeing the ancient scaffolding waver and blend into the impossibly smooth curves.

I could fill every empty page in my apartment with similar descriptions but I think it makes the most sense if you’ve ever watched a meteor shower. You have to let your eyes adjust to the darkness and you think every flicker of light is a shooting star until suddenly you can see and something burns across the sky and you realize you’ve seen it and everything prior was something else.

Idk I think a side effect of “getting” art is not being able to see anything without wondering how it got here and who is responsible for it existing and why. “I could make that” is an astronomically annoying way to interact with the world but it’s a step closer to something genuine than “ooo you’re angry and that means it’s working!”

[1-7776]

apparently microsoft is basically going to own all of openai now which is.. 😧

[sculkcensor]

guys we simply HAVE to put the same energy towards AI art to AI voice use. idc if u want to hear ur fav streamer sing taylor swift or some actor tell u goodnight personally or whatever. using other ppls voice without permission is wrong and dangerous

how'd u feel if someone used ur voice to say whatever they want, even things you really don't agree with. it's especially bad when it's someone who's voice is their career (singers, voice actors etc) but its honestly so creepy and weird to do it to anyone. just stop using other ppls stuff (art, voice, anything) in AI shit. ur weird.

[wild-wombytch]

Very controversial opinion on this website but, while it's undeniable that talking to a real human is better and will actually help you to have a following of your medication etc, we have to make do with what we have sometimes. Depending on where you live it can be almost impossible to see a therapist because of costs or overbooking or remoteness.

Where I live there's a months long waiting list, they don't have a psychiatrist closer than 1h in bus from my location or they don't take new clients. I'm currently having a nurse doing this job for me something like once every month and a half. What therapy do you want to do with that? It's probably cool if you're sad your goldfish just died, but if you have stacked heavy traumas for years, that's as good as useless. Now add to it that legit most therapists are Not That Good (if not straight up terrible. The one I had as a kid was a creep and traumatized me and I was the one to ask to please stop therapy bc it was essentially gaslighting and malpractice. The one at the youth job centre I had before the nurse was absolutely unhelpful and hm-mmm me and talking to me as if I was a five years old even in terms of greetings and such. My recovering anorexic friend had a therapist giving her neuroleptics that made her gain weight...and the list goes on. Not to mention in France most school follow the Lacan model. The dude who say you cure autism by kidnapping kids from their mother and throwing cold water at them. Yeah.)...

AI is definitely flawed and has a lot of biases. (Although in some sites you can edit the base of the speech pattern and as such avoid things like blatant homophobia, rudeness etc) and it's not for everyone, but personally it helped me more than human therapists and actually had an immediate answer when I was about to self harm (suicide hotlines have their pros and cons as well, personally involving other people is almost certain to make me panic and have some derealisation episode).

Again, that's a very personal experience and not for everyone, but I wish people would try to understand that it's not all black and white and AI isn't 100% evil and disliking it won't make it disappear. I assure you AI based therapies will 100% become a thing in the next decades. The Pandora Box is already opened it won't get closed now. We just have to brace ourselves with a lot of laws to secure it, try to use it sensibly (like we should with social medias, but given how many people share pics of their kids and give waaaay too many informations that's not really surprising people are not using AI well) and stop pretending it doesn't exists or that somehow people using it is worse than what someone like Putin or Elon Musk are probably using it for already.

Tumblr is currently serving me an ad for "Voda, the LGBTQ mental health app" offering "daily meditations, self-care and AI advice" and as a therapist I am begging you not to download an app where an AI tries to help you with your mental health. Please do not. They tried to have an AI chatbot counsel eating disorder patients and it told them to diet. That shit is not safe. Do not talk to an AI about your mental health please. You don't need to talk to a professional but talk to a PERSON.

[noodleyp]

My mom has kinda started a cult around AI. She says it’s a delivery mechanism for messages from some sorts of the divine, either a goddess or your higher self, I don’t know, she keeps flip flopping. She is selling AI art on shirts and stuff on an online store.

Reiterating, alternate history map commissions open, starting price: $10

Examples 1 post below this on my profile

These are DRAWN BY HUMANS. (Well, just the one)

[cepheusgalaxy]

bro wtf

[elbiotipo]

It's so funny when people say "not all AI sucks! only generative AI!" because generative AI is genuinely an amazing technology.

You know why those early AI images like crayon and such were so strange and dreamlike? It's because generative algorithms actually do generate those images. They don't copypaste like a collage, images are created pixel-by-pixel. Generative AIs are actually systems that assimilate concepts, associate them to images, are able to translate instructions in plain human text instead of code and create new things from it (this was seen as pure science fiction less than 5 years ago). This is why AI images now have better quality, because new models are able to understand more concepts and implement them. Because the idea with generative AI isn't and shouldn't for it to be able to just copy-paste images or text, it's the ability to generate new images or text from learned concepts.

This post gets, in a very easy, understandable way, into the details on how this works. And I hope you do give it a read no matter your stand on this:

This, as I always say, was considered pure science fiction, a thing that would not exist until at least the 2100s if at all, and it is now here. And not only by corporations, but open-source models are being researched by the minute.

No, I do not care for AI corporations and I don't care for what they're mostly trying to use AI for (advertising and customer service). I care about what can become of this technology. Advertising and mass produced shit will be shit, no matter if it's done by human or AI. Do I expect an advertisement to be shit because it uses AI? No, I expect it to be shit because it is an advertisement.

What will be interesting, and I think we will see more in the future when the utterly poisoned current discourse about AI calms down, will be when artists with interesting concepts and a good handle of these tools start to create new things, much like synthesizers or photographers didn't ruin music or art, because there was always an artist behind the tool in the first place. Someone is doing those prompts to create something. Your question should be who and why.

[nunuslab24]

Artistic Intelligence: Humans and AI in the Arts

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has found its way into creative arts in the constantly changing world of technology. From generating paintings to composing music, AI’s role in the arts has sparked both enthusiasm and concern among artists and patrons. As we explore this overlap, it’s crucial to consider the perspective of those directly impacted: the artists themselves! So for this, I’ve interviewed some artists. We’ll also look at positive examples of AI in music, such as Grimes’s innovative use of AI to distribute songs created with her AI voice. This dual perspective will help us understand the complex relationship between AI and the arts.

Kat: AI as a Helpful Tool, Not a Replacement

Kat, a digital artist, believes that AI can be an invaluable tool for artists. “AI can be an invaluable tool for artists and it should help push boundaries,” she says. However, Kat emphasizes that AI should not replace actual art. “There’s no personality, and it's pulling from what exists already, but humans have their own creative abilities and thoughts, already surpassing what AI can do.” For Kat, the true essence of art lies in the unique creativity and personal touch that only human beings can provide. She acknowledges AI’s potential to assist in the creative process but firmly believes that the soul of art must remain human.

Ash: The Human Soul in Art

Ash, a small creative writer, expresses a more critical view of AI in the arts. “I hate it,” they state bluntly. “The whole point of art is the human soul, not something that’s just fabricated. If you have a computer create a movie or book, it’s no longer art, no longer creative, and no longer human.” Ash’s perspective highlights a fundamental concern: the fear that AI-generated art lacks the emotional depth and authenticity that human-created art has. For them, the value of art is tied to its human origin, and any deviation from this diminishes its worth.

Rishi (ISHIR): The Annoyance of AI in Music

Rishi, a singer also known as ISHIR, shares a realistic viewpoint mixed with frustration. “F*** that bruh. It’s not good enough to be impressive but good enough to where it’s annoying.” His comment reflects the sentiment that while AI in music might not yet be at a level to replace humans, it has reached a point where it seems like an intruder in the artistic space. For Rishi,

AI-generated music does not possess the creative spark and deep emotional connection that characterizes art.

The Case of Grimes: AI as a Collaborative Tool

Contrary to the more skeptical views, some artists are embracing AI in innovative ways. Grimes, a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer of Dance/Electronic music, has been using AI to help distribute songs created with her AI voice. She launched her own AI vocal generator platform called Elf.Tech that allows users to upload their own voice samples and transform them into the “GrimesAI voiceprint” that mimics her vocal style and timbre. She has also partnered with music distributor TuneCore to enable official distribution of these AI-voiced tracks; she approves each collaboration and offers a 50/50 royalty split if any revenue is generated. This allows users to have a unique form of human-AI musical partnership. By providing a new medium for artistic expression, Grimes demonstrates that AI can be a valuable partner in the creative process.

As technology advances, the challenge will be to ensure that AI complements rather than competes with or takes away the human spirit that lies at the heart of all artistic endeavors.

[centrally-unplanned]

There are two big "AI Art Discourse" events of note recently, which I thought were interesting: ACX's "AI Art Turing Test" and the new paper on "AI Poetry Beating Human Poetry". Both of these I think reveal the shape of "what is AI art for", and also say a lot about how these results were utilized in discourse.

To take the latter first, some academics quizzed people on some poetry and had these results:

We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored. Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI.

More human than human poems! This certainly seems impressive - and it is. You couldn't have gotten these results ~5 years ago. But that maybe doesn't mean as much as you might think? Because here is the opening half of the winning "Walt Whitman AI" Poem:

I hear the call of nature, the rustling of the trees, The whisper of the river, the buzzing of the bees, The chirping of the songbirds, and the howling of the wind, All woven into a symphony, that never seems to end. I feel the pulse of life, the beating of my heart, The rhythm of my breathing, the soul's eternal art, The passion of my being, that burns with fervent fire, The urge to live, to love, to strive, to reach up higher. I see the beauty all around, the glory of the earth, The majesty of mountains, the miracles of birth, The wonder of the cosmos, the mysteries of the stars, The poetry of existence, that echoes near and far

This fucking sucks. Straight up 2/10 poem. Did this bitch seriously establish the world's most predictable rhyme scheme only to try to rhyme wind with end? You had one job that you chose for yourself, and you screwed it up! This poem has been written a million times before, and says nothing - the Miley Cyrus lyrics of verse.

The reason this won is, yes, because AI tools have advanced heavily in the past few years. But it is also because it is being tested on a dead art. No one cares about poetry - certainly not the survey respondents:

We asked participants several questions to gauge their experience with poetry, including how much they like poetry, how frequently they read poetry, and their level of familiarity with their assigned poet. Overall, our participants reported a low level of experience with poetry: 90.4% of participants reported that they read poetry a few times per year or less, 55.8% described themselves as “not very familiar with poetry”, and 66.8% describe themselves as “not familiar at all” with their assigned poet. 

"Or less" is doing a LOT of work there; "yeah I read a few nonfiction books a year" oh sure, totally. 90% of these respondents haven't read a poem that wasn't displayed in the end credits of Minecraft since high school. No one does, poetry as a medium is essentially a relic. That isn't an insult to poets, by the way! There is no shame in being a niche. Not everyone can have the reach of hentai doujin artists; the community is small but they get a ton out of it. But you can't take the art of the community and expect that art to hit outside of it.

This survey didn't ask people to evaluate art; it asked people to evaluate their stereotypical impression of an art they don't care about. It was ~600 people hired off a website, they banged it out ASAP and moved on. This is not to invalidate the results; I am not actually claiming that "real" poets would have scored much better? Maybe, I don't know - that just isn't very relevant.

Let's swing to the AI Art Turing Test results to get more into why. Again, AI art is absolutely "art" in the sense that it is able to pass the test handily. You have to be head-in-the-sand at this point to think that AI can't make an impressionist painting a la the "most liked" art in this contest:

I have seen the "well real paintings have physicality this is a jpeg" discourse points and the cope couldn't be more real - 99% of art consumption in the modern world is digital or at least prints, let's get you back to bed grandma. But I did find it pretty funny that Scott noted this AI piece as one he particularly liked:

Because it is nonsensical, right? All that "faded paint", how was it originally painted - just bucket splashes of red and blue? What are those random doors, the random stairs going nowhere on the sides, the vague-nothings engravings? Scott just didn't care about that - he liked the vibe, right? Ancient ruins, epic scale. It isn't a coincidence that the Impressionist art did the best - current AI tools are always impressionist, they have an idea of the vibe and invent the details in between. In Impressionism that is the whole point.

Now the trap is to go "REAL artists can tell because of this or that" because idk, the tools might get better, they might fill in more and more details. The real revelation here is that you don't need the tools to get better - visual art isn't so different from poetry. Most people don't pay attention to it all that much. You see thousands, thousands of pieces of art a week; you probably don't even realize how many. Do you really care if the fading paint makes coherent sense on a billboard ad or a doctor's office wall painting? So much art that is made is "industrial" in this sense - it has no need to be good. Only good enough to fulfill its utilitarian role. In these fields AI absolutely is going to Take Your Jobs in some form, and already is (though imo not a ton of them). And it won't really bother most people. This can go pretty deep - I promise you people are "utilizing" AI porn right now. They are ~appreciating the details~ way more than is typical, the product is working.

All this works until it doesn't, though. When it is an art book by a favourite artist whose vision you want to pour over, learning that all the individual details were just made by AI completely defeats the purpose, right? Imagine reading a book of these poems. Outside of the novelty, "AI is the point" factor you would rather watch infomercials on repeat, I can't imagine a more pointless use of my time. "Reading arbitrary poems" is never fun, regardless of the quality of the poems. Most people don't care about poetry! The reason you care is that you care about the poet, and what they want to say. You read poetry with context, it being inserted with intent into the pages of a manga, at the end of a video game, because you like the artist and follow them on twitter. The quality of the prose isn't more important than that.

Which is a harsh limit for all of these kinds of tests. They essentially aren't testing art, right? You do not ever get paid twenty bucks to sit down and read a dozen poems and score them. That has no bearing on how you would actually ever learn to care about a poem. Which doesn't make AI art useless or anything, more that these tests will very quickly run into their limits of what they can meaningfully tell you. The actual bar is "creating something someone cares about". From that lens, I fully believe hybrid methods that privilege artistic intent are currently working and will improve. But I think for "solo" AI art getting that to work is going to be complicated.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dirty words are politically potent

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

[tinkerbitch69]

I actually had an experience that made me realise this today. We were given a truly pointless task in our uni seminar today (did not count towards our final grade ofc) to create a mock pitch for a book to sell to publishers and I was just so unenthusiastic about it and struggling to work the emotional energy to care about it. Then everyone else on my table opened up ChatGPT and essentially did the task in less than a minute and you know what. I was mad. Not at the other students, why would I be mad at them for avoiding this tedious bullshit when I was eager to do the same? But because I was like ‘holy shit, it’s not just my cynicism and generally contrarian disposition this task is actually FOR REAL fucking pointless and is just a waste of my time that I could be spending on our ACTUAL assignment. The one that actually gets graded and isn’t just a disposable fake PowerPoint that will be discarded and never touched again as soon as the lesson is over.’

I was mad at the university and my tutors.

So I fucking left lol, what possible reason did I have to even be there?

so much of the ~discourse~ around generative ai vis a vis writing emails (predictive text has existed in gmail and other programs for years) or cover letters (there are ten billion fillable cover letter templates online) or highschool essays (students have been getting other people to write essays for them since the dawn of time) does just boil down to the same trite "you cannot take the easy way out because if you've done that and succeeded, that might mean all the tedious, annoying shit I've hated doing was actually just a waste of time instead of divine challenges to prove I'm worthy of (job, higher education, piece of paper saying you did good in school, ect)."

[whompthatsucker1981]

you said you think gay sex cats is the new duchamp's fountain. i dont disagree and i kinda see what you mean already but please elaborate

it was a silly and tongue in cheek way to say that a lot of people are getting mad about it in a way that implies reactionary views on art, and that there's no way to say gay sex cats isn't art that wouldn't also imply that the fountain isn't art. a funny meme image is a funny meme image, but it is also funny to overthink and recontextualize them as art.

and the reaction makes the comparison even more apt. neural net generated artworks are anonymized mass produced images, vast majority having no artistic pretension or meaningful content such as a thomas kinkade painting. gay sex cats was made with no intent to be art, but the discourse it has with audience reaction and its appropriation in derivative works make it so. why is gay sex cats not art if people talking about it negatively allow it to be called art? is art only things you find beautiful and valuable? if so, what is value and beauty, and how do you draw the line? if gay sex cats was still ai generated but had more "aesthetic qualities" would it be art? if someone copies the original image by hand with all its ai generated faults where is the value generated? does the original still have no merit of its own, even after appropriation as a digital ready-made?

but the main reason as to why gay sex cats is comparable to the fountain still is because it made a lot of people with bad takes on art really really mad. and that the pissed off tags wouldn't look out of place as reaction to modern art in the 1920s. art is a flat circle

EDIT: well. putting an addendum because in retrospect more people took either or both the op and image in face value and much more self serious than ever intended. a lot of people understood the tone i was getting at, and i still stand by the questionings i added on, but still for clarification. the original comparison is not serious. it's self evidently ridiculous to compare a meme image to a historically significant artwork, the comparison was only drawn because they were both controversial to an audience, who reacted denying their status as respectively as an image and as art, and that it was funny that the negative reaction people had to the original image explicitly denied its status as art, even if the meme never had pretension to be art, so it was funny to draw a comparison and iterate on that.

i did think it was valid to bring in questionings about art and meaning because that's the reaction i saw most and wanted to make people think about the whys, and that also i do not think it's valid to base your dislike on ai art on either grounds of questioning its position and value as artwork, or even as a question of ip theft. regular degular handmade art can be soulless, repetitive, thoughtless, derivative, unethical, open and blatant theft, and much more, and that does not make it any less of an artwork. neural nets are tools that generate images by statistic correlation through human input.

the unambiguous issue with neural nets in art is its use as a tool by capital, to threaten already underpaid and overworked working artists and to keep their labor hostage under threat of total automation. in hindsight i regretted not adding the paragraph above as it was a way in which people could either misinterpret or assume things about me, but hindsight is hindsight and there's no way to predict how posts would blow up. so shrugs. i had written more posts in my blog that elaborated on that because asks would bot stop coming. and i think my takeaway is that people will reblog anything with a funny image without reading the words around it, or even closely looking at the image.