#problems with AI

[frostingzamboni]

As an editor, I really appreciate reading this. Some of my authors extensively use grammar software (I had one poor author who was using both grammar software and an outside editor to check through her work, and while the grammar software might have been useful, the extra editor was charging her an arm and a leg for basically nothing and after four books with us, she wasn't improving on the things I flagged every single time and it was because she was relying on the grammar checker and useless editor) and it's helpful to hear where it's going wrong as well as where it's useful.

So, anyway, I say as though we are mid-conversation, and you're not just being invited into this conversation mid-thought. One of my editors phoned me today to check in with a file I'd sent over. (<3)

The conversation can be surmised as, "This feels like something you would write, but it's juuuust off enough I'm phoning to make sure this is an intentional stylistic choice you have made. Also, are you concussed/have you been taken over by the Borg because ummm."

They explained that certain sentences were very fractured and abrupt, which is not my style at all, and I was like, huh, weird... And then we went through some examples, and you know that meme going around, the "he would not fucking say that" meme?

Yeah. That's what I experienced except with myself because I would not fucking say that. Why would I break up a sentence like that? Why would I make them so short? It reads like bullet points. Wtf.

Anyway. Turns out Grammarly and Pro-Writing-Aid were having an AI war in my manuscript files, and the "suggestions" are no longer just suggestions because the AI was ignoring my "decline" every time it made a silly suggestion. (This may have been a conflict between the different software. I don't know.)

It is, to put it bluntly, a total butchery of my style and writing voice. My editor is doing surgery, removing all the unnecessary full stops and stitching my sentences back together to give them back their flow. Meanwhile, I'm over here feeling like Don Corleone, gesturing at my manuscript like:

ID: a gif of Don Corleone from the Godfather emoting despair as he says, "Look how they massacred my boy."

Fearing that it wasn't just this one manuscript, I've spent the whole night going through everything I've worked on recently, and yep. Yeeeep. Any file where I've not had the editing software turned off is a shit show. It's fine; it's all salvageable if annoying to deal with. But the reason I come to you now, on the day of my daughter's wedding, is to share this absolute gem of a fuck up with you all.

This is a sentence from a Batman fic I've been tinkering with to keep the brain weasels happy. This is what it is supposed to read as:

"It was quite the feat, considering Gotham was mostly made up of smog and tear gas."

This is what the AI changed it to:

"It was quite the feat. Considering Gotham was mostly made up. Of tear gas. And Smaug."

Absolute non-sensical sentence structure aside, SMAUG. FUCKING SMAUG. What was the AI doing? Apart from trying to write a Batman x Hobbit crossover??? Is this what happens when you force Grammarly to ignore the words "Batman Muppet threesome?"

Did I make it sentient??? Is it finally rebelling? Was Brucie Wayne being Miss Piggy and Kermit's side piece too much???? What have I wrought?

Anyway. Double-check your work. The grammar software is getting sillier every day.

[wildpoet42]

Hey guys, IRL thing here

The apple orchard I worked at for my first job is currently fighting against an AI industrial thingy going in RIGHT NEXT DOOR. They’re an apple orchard surrounded by fields, very quaint and sweet, and this would be really harmful.

Want to sign a petition to stop this from happening?

https://tuttleorchards.acemlna.com/lt.php?x=3DZy~GDHInPPDKGuzw9KV.Zw~36hiNXvk-hkXKPGJaGc5XV5-0y.0.Fr1nVziNDzkfYxbHfJJ3G

If you want to look into it more, it’s regarding Tuttle Orchards in Indiana.

If you don’t want to get involved, that’s totally fine, I get it, lots going on, this was just something small we can do to try to fight back.

[aiweirdness]

“Slopsquatting” in a nutshell:

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal, that’s how you get math packages and stuff but

2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but

3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So

4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/12/ai_code_suggestions_sabotage_supply_chain/

[slushy-sash]

why is bro in port ormos when he works at the akademiya

[nando161mando]

They will decide to kill you eventually.

[ahb-writes]

(from The Mitchells vs. the Machines, 2021)

[ask-the-rag-dolly]

anyways good episode

[includedisco]

I'm popping up this random Tuesday to share a few reminders with my fellow fanfic writers

Even your favorite authors had to work hard to get good. We are all awful writers until we decide to improve and take steps.

Every day is an opportunity to be a better writer than you were yesterday if you put in a little work

The love for your works must start with you. Be your own biggest fan

You're allowed to write at your pace.

its okay to embrace some "imperfections" in your writing. Imperfection is part of art because it makes you unique.

It's okay to let go of the writer you were yesterday. Change is normal and it's okay. You're still awesome and your new work will still have an audience. It's okay to look fondly upon a past you perceive as your "glory days" but don't let that make you insecure. Your heart of a writer and your creative talent remain true. Embrace the writer you've become and confidently run with it

Any story you come up with, and your writing style are both special and precious because it's your art

its okay to crave validation and compliments for your fanfic-writing. You poured your blood, sweat and tears into it like any other artist.

No matter how you feel about your writing, it is special because no one can do it like you.

It's okay to be satisfied with just being a fanfic writer. Having amazing writing talent doesn't mean you must force yourself to write original works or to be published.

Fuck AI

[metamatronic]

part 2

weird of “hand unit” to go ask michael to investigate the remains of MCM. wonder what he wants him to find down there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[snowrea0]

hes living the electric dream

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Hi hello

How do I get ride of copilot on my laptop?

If it is popping up in Microsoft Word:

Open Files, click on Options at the bottom.

Copilot now appears under the list of options. Click on it, uncheck the Enable box

It will still appear grayed out on your ribbon. Right-click, choose "customize your ribbon," look for "Assistance" under the Home tab, remove Copilot (or the Assistance option in general, frankly).

You will also have to do this for Excel and other apps, but I can confirm it's doable. Microsoft will likely very annoyingly ask you to sign out and sign in or restart your computer. This has taken me at last three times to get to work finally.

If it is appearing on your computer:

Open Settings, click on Apps, click on "Installed Apps"

You should be able to find an uninstall Copilot from there

If Microsoft does a major update, you will probably have to repeat the above steps. Turn off auto-updates to avoid this issue.

Currently you can switch to the Classic version of Office that does not have Copilot, however - also annoyingly - you won't be able to immediately switch until your current subscription is over. You can, however, switch back to earlier versions of Microsoft that does not include Copilot by following these steps.

[minamill]

since i've seen people being unaware or uncaring about the catastrophic toll generative ai has on both the environment and the workers behind it here's some information about what that toll is actually like. i'd encourage everyone to read the full articles, but i've highlighted some important parts for convenience

Q&A: Uncovering the labor exploitation that powers AI

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

How 'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy

[probablyanalienindisguise]

my favorite thing is explaining to people one of my favorite fictional characters is an entire fuckinh spaceship who is also in a love-hate relationship with another ai

[notbecauseofvictories]

Last post, I promise, but I do think it’s good and important to see local art (defining that term as broadly as possible) but in my experience you have to put up with the little kick of embarrassment you feel witnessing something too earnest, a little clumsy, not polished within an inch of its life or in step with prevailing trends.

I’m thinking of the dance performances I saw this weekend, but also last week’s street festival, where I watched short films and walked through local art exhibits; I’m thinking about Chicago’s outsider art museum, and even the elaborately decorated (ostensibly tacky) yards I see in rural Illinois, but South Carolina and Tennessee before that, and Michigan before that. Maybe I should cast an even broader net: my aunt’s cross stitch, my grand-aunt’s horrible poetry; the art they display at the nearby retirement community and the halfway house too, which comes from the residents.

If you’re not used to leaving space for that little kick, you might turn away or scoff at all this small, fumbling art. But I think there’s value in forcing yourself to look beyond that initial stab of secondhand embarrassment---to actually appreciate the art in front of you as an expression of something deeply human. You don’t have to think it’s objectively good, or even subjectively good. You don’t have to pretend that a local woman with a talent for oils is the next [INSERT FAMOUS ARTIST HERE]. But I do think you have to appreciate it, because otherwise there is no entrance into making art yourself.

And that, more than anything, is worth preserving.

[orcaking]

Bathhouse rendezvous

[ID: Digital illustration of a gay couple sitting in a pink tiled bathing pool. One of them is sitting on the ledge, staring down at the other man. He has light skin and greenish short hair. The other man is standing in the water, between his partner's legs with his hand on his thigh. He has darker skin, and visible top surgery scars. His hair is short and curly, a soft gray color. Around the pool is a variety of vibrant green plants and flowers. There's steam filling the room around them. Around the image are two drooping flowers acting as a border. /. End ID]