#quality control using ai

[theaspers]

am also playing this dumb chatting game where its like a dating app so u can “match” w characters and go on their individual storylines but all i gotta say is fuck this app and fuck the doormat mcs they write bc wtf 💀

[ciswomenofficial]

No matter whether AI does a good job at what it does or not, rage against the technology isn’t going to solve the labor issues. It isn’t going to stop artists and writers from losing their jobs. Whether it’s able to do the job adequately or not, it will be used to replace that job if all we do is protest against the technology itself. It will similarly do so if we rally around liberal principals like “copyright” and “intellectual property.” Most of the “intellectual property” belongs to conglomerates, not to intellectual laborers. The same if you misrepresent AIs water and energy consumption. None of these will get you anywhere productive, and some of them (“intellectual property”) even show a petty-bourgeoisie outlook.

Of course we should be concerned about small independent artists having their lives be less stable—even if it’s not our chief concern. Whether someone is an artisan proper or has some semi-proletarian characteristics (that is if they are working a side hustle to get by while they work on their passion project) that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take their interests into account, but it does need to come from an industrial proletarian perspective first and foremost. Who will get laid off if AI technology is adopted? Who will lose their income? These are far more primary than independent artists.

The industrial proletariat is the most concentrated and unified force we have. It is this force with which we can fight and win. If we want to fight and win on the subject of AI, it must be fought with the organized industrial proletariat. Unions represent one lower form of this fight. The higher form of this fight is a political leadership that can lead to political reforms and regulations being adopted by the government as concessions, or perhaps even AI and other means of production being seized by the proletariat and regulated and technologically improved by the proletariat.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

You’ve probably been asked this before, but do you have a specific view on ai-generated art. I’m doing a school project on artificial intelligence and if it’s okay, i would like to cite you

I mean, you're welcome to cite me if you like. I recently wrote a post under a reblog about AI, and I did a video about it a while back, before the full scale of AI hype had really started rolling over the Internet - I don't 100% agree with all my arguments from that video anymore, but you can cite it if you please.

In short, I think generative AI art

Is art, real art, and it's silly to argue otherwise, the question is what KIND of art it is and what that art DOES in the world. Generally, it is boring and bland art which makes the world a more stressful, unpleasant and miserable place to be.

AI generated art is structurally and inherently limited by its nature. It is by necessity averages generated from data-sets, and so it inherits EVERY bias of its training data and EVERY bias of its training data validators and creators. It naturally tends towards the lowest common denominator in all areas, and it is structurally biased towards reinforcing and reaffirming the status quo of everything it is turned to.

It tends to be all surface, no substance. As in, it carries the superficial aesthetic of very high-quality rendering, but only insofar as it reproduces whatever signifiers of "quality" are most prized in its weighted training data. It cannot understand the structures and principles of what it is creating. Ask it for a horse and it does not know what a "horse" is, all it knows is what parts of it training data are tagged as "horse" and which general data patterns are likely to lead an observer to identify its output also as "horse." People sometimes describe this limitation as "a lack of soul" but it's perhaps more useful to think of it as a lack of comprehension.

Due to this lack of comprehension, AI art cannot communicate anything - or rather, the output tends to attempt to communicate everything, at random, all at once, and it's the visual equivalent of a kind of white noise. It lacks focus.

Human operators of AI generative tools can imbue communicative meaning into the outputs, and whip the models towards some sort of focus, because humans can do that with literally anything they turn their directed attention towards. Human beings can make art with paint spatters and bits of gum stuck under tennis shoes, of course a dedicated human putting tons of time into a process of trial and error can produce something meaningful with genAI tools.

The nature of genAI as a tool of creation is uniquely limited and uniquely constrained, a genAI tool can only ever output some mixture of whatever is in its training data (and what's in its training data is biased by the data that its creators valued enough to include), and it can only ever output that mixture according to the weights and biases of its programming and data set, which is fully within the control of whoever created the tool in the first place. Consequently, genAI is a tool whose full creative capacity is always, always, always going to be owned by corporations, the only entities with the resources and capacity to produce the most powerful models. And those models, thus, will always only create according to corporate interest. An individual human can use a pencil to draw whatever the hell they want, but an individual human can never use Midjourney to create anything except that which Midjourney allows them to create. GenAI art is thus limited not only by its mathematical tendency to bias the lowest common denominator, but also by an ideological bias inherited from whoever holds the leash on its creation. The necessary decision of which data gets included in a training set vs which data gets left out will, always and forever, impose de facto censorship on what a model is capable of expressing, and the power to make that decision is never in the hands of the artist attempting to use the tool.

tl;dr genAI art has a tendency to produce ideologically limited and intrinsically censored outputs, while defaulting to lowest common denominators that reproduce and reinforce status quos.

... on top of which its promulgation is an explicit plot by oligarchic industry to drive millions of people deeper into poverty and collapse wages in order to further concentrate wealth in the hands of the 0.01%. But that's just a bonus reason to dislike it.

[la-patrona-magdalena]

Synopsis:

You always wanted your family to look at you, even just once. At least with a bit of the affection they gave to the portraits of your mother. Too bad that when they finally did, you were looking at the pages of a comic that showed the cruel future.

Inspired by the manhwa: no place for the Fake Princess

Warnings: English is not my first language, so I used a translator. Yandere content, neglect, abandonment, angst (?), allusions to death, original character (not the reader), allusions to torture. I try to keep the gender neutral,but in part there are mostly feminine pronouns. If any warnings are missing here, please let me know.

Disclaimer: This fanfic is for personal reading only. The use of this text for AI model training, data mining, commercial purposes, or any automated reproduction is strictly prohibited without the explicit consent of the author. Translation or reposting to other platforms is also strictly prohibited without the author's permission

Thank you.

You can read the fanfic in its original language (Spanish) on my AO3

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Masterlist

Chapter two - See them Truly

This was going to be hard. In moments like this, you wished you had inherited some of your siblings' intelligence— well, Bruce's kids', really. It would also be hard to stop thinking about them as family.

You realized that while trying to fall asleep. You don't know anything about the outside world, or how to manage money nothing. You're only 12! You just wanted to worry about getting a good grade so Alfred would give you ice cream, not about getting tortured by some clown-painted lunatic. The upside is, that won't happen for a few years, so you have plenty of time to hide from the Joker's eye and think about what you're going to do with your life once Serelith shows up… unless you end up bringing her into this yourself just to get out of this strange family as soon as possible. The downside is that you want to figure something out now, and it's really hard to think when Tim's trying to brush your hair in front of the mirror in his room, where he dragged you earlier this morning.

—If you’re doing this so I won’t say anything about— He cuts you off before you can finish. —I'm doing this because I want to. I trust you enough to know you won't tell anyone… That includes Bruce and the others, okay?—he asks as he keeps trying to make your hair look somewhat decent.

After reading the comics, you learned a lot about everyone else's skills. Sure, you already knew Tim was smart—you'd asked him for help with your homework more than once just as an excuse to spend quality time together. But you didn't know he was on Batman's level, or that he figured everything out when he was nine. Yeah, you're way out of his league. If you were him, you wouldn't bother teaching some kid basic algebra either, not when you've got complex cases to deal with. …Although, he’d probably teach Serelith if she asked him…

The point is, once you woke up with a clear head and your emotions under control, you'd decided not to tell anyone about the comics. Which means you'll have to be really careful around someone like Tim.

—I won't tell Bruce or anyone else. I promise.— You give him a half-smile, one he definitely notices… When did you stop calling Bruce “dad”? Wasn't it just you and Damian who used to call him that?

Maybe Damian had something to do with your anxiety attack—now that Tim thinks about it, Damian’s so-called “company” probably just means fights and arguments. It was really stupid of him to think Damian treated you differently just because of some fight from years ago. Besides, you don’t know anything about Damian’s past! To you, he probably just seemed like a troubled kid. Tim should’ve paid more attention to you. He shouldn’t have kept his distance just because of his own issues with Damian. He shouldn’t have looked away just because everyone else did.

He won’t take his eyes off you, not until he’s sure you’re not close to another breakdown like last night’s. Not until he knows nothing’s going to hurt you again.

—Ow!— You wince as he tugs too hard on your hair with the brush. He mutters a string of repeated apologies, mixed with complaints about how hard it is to deal with your hair, though really, it’s just lack of experience.

After some struggle and a few tips from you on how to do it right, he managed to do a decent job brushing your hair and even put in a slightly crooked flower clip.

—Thanks,—you mutter, somewhat indifferent. Tim wasn’t exactly close to you not that anyone in this family really was, unless you counted Damian’s short conversations with his arrogant attitude. So Tim’s strange behavior today is a surprise. A part of you wanted to hug him and tell him about your day, ask about his likes, and knit him something out of wool with a design he might like, now that his eyes were on you. But the other part of you, the bigger part, wanted to throw in his face how, in the comics, he was so desperate to find Serelith, sleepless nights without rest, with such a tired and loving look aimed only at her, never noticing your absence. Why was he looking at you now? Was it because of what happened last night? He was surely making sure you wouldn’t cause any trouble. Once he was certain you wouldn’t make another “drama,” he’d go away. You shouldn’t get your hopes up about him; you can’t look at him with love because he won’t look at you that way. That belongs to his real sister, not you. You have to try to act normal about his sudden concern; you’ll only make things worse if you tell him what you saw.

Tim swallowed hard at your tone, yet he kept his eyes fixed on his task. He would make sure to learn properly later.

—I’ll walk you out,—he gave you a half smile, though it looked more like a grimace trying to escape the awkwardness. You just nodded, letting him accompany you to your bedroom door. —I homeschool,—you replied, returning the same awkward smile, which in your case looked more like a dry smile— —I just have to go to the study room. —Ah…— His uncomfortable smile faltered a bit. Why don’t you go to school? Did you even go once? Now that he looked at you properly, he should have known—you’re not wearing any uniform. —I’ll walk you there then.

You nodded, and Tim led the way to your door, then stood there still. Which was your study room inside the mansion? Maybe you studied in the library? Apparently, you noticed his confusion and walked past him, now leading the way yourself. In a few minutes, you showed him how to get to your study room. It was near the library, and he didn’t waste time analyzing the place as much as he could with a quick glance. It was a slightly small room compared to the usual rooms in the mansion, with several of your study things near a small worn-out stool, scratched in bright colors with different little animals. Inside was an older man, unknown to him, accompanied by Alfred, who gave a somewhat surprised look upon noticing him.

—Master Drake?—Alfred asked, while the man, who Tim assumed was your teacher of some unknown subject, looked at him with curiosity. —Oh… hello, Alfred. I didn’t mean to interrupt.— He looked at the stranger in front of him suspiciously while nodding in greeting. Could this man be the reason for your near breakdown? —Good afternoon. I didn’t mean to impose.

you entered the room, walking right past him, , and sat on your little stool in silence. Had you always been this quiet? Or were you only acting this way because the teacher was present? Did he intimidate you?

—Can you leave so I can focus?—you asked. You didn’t mean to sound harsh, but your tone wasn’t exactly gentle either. You just wanted space and to study without his strange behavior weighing on you. If he stayed, you felt like at any moment you might break down in front of him—run to hug him without caring about Alfred or your teacher being there. You didn’t want that. You couldn’t do that. You didn’t have the right.

Tim blinked once. The request caught him a little off guard. First you kicked him out of your room, and now your class? You? Didn't you know that he could teach you the same class you were taking without any problem? He lowered his gaze a bit, didn’t say anything right away, wondering if maybe he was overthinking it all. —Of course,—he finally replied, with that same smile that, after seeing it so much, gave you a strange chill. —I don't want to bother. He took a step back. Then another. Carefully, trying not to make unnecessary noise, like he was afraid of being a distraction even as he left. —Good luck with your studying,—he murmured before turning fully and disappearing down the hallway, his footsteps nearly silent.

He was already thinking about quickly finishing the case at hand to start investigating you, and all your teachers. Maybe he could even convince Bruce to let him take you to his apartment and homeschool you himself. That way he could be absolutely sure no teacher was hurting you. He didn’t trust any of them. Even if he investigated every teacher in Gotham, you’d still be safer if he was the one doing the teaching.

Alfred followed him with his eyes for a moment, then turned his gaze back to you, one brow slightly raised. Your behavior lately had been… unusual. You hadn’t come down for dinner last night or for breakfast this morning. He’d also noticed how young Master Drake had rushed through his breakfast and ran straight back upstairs. At first he thought it was because of the case he was working on—until he saw you with him.

Normally, he would’ve been glad to see the two of you spending time together. That finally, after all these years, someone in the family was looking at you the way you’d always wanted… But your behavior, the way you spoke to him, and that empty, pained look you gave him…

Alfred could only politely bid farewell to your teacher and to you, leaving you to study alone while he headed out to take young Master Damian to school. Who, by the way, was in a foul mood today—more than usual. Ever since he noticed your absence at dinner last night, and all the way until he got into the car this morning.

Grumbling in the back seat, the green-eyed boy sat with his arms crossed, not even bothering to hide his annoyance from Alfred, who glanced at him now and then through the rearview mirror.

Where the hell were you?

Damian hadn’t seen you since you returned from your shopping trip with Pennyworth, jumping around excitedly after buying some ridiculous comics. He had hoped, really hoped, to at least see you at breakfast, hear you talk about what you’d read while he pretended to be annoyed. But you weren’t there. If Pennyworth hadn’t told him you were fine, he would’ve gone to look for you himself. And if it weren’t for his father, he would’ve stayed home to study with you.

Not that he needed to. Obviously. He already knew everything they taught. But at least he would’ve listened to you, would’ve looked at you when you asked about something you didn’t understand, and then he could’ve mocked you and explained it himself afterward.

But Richard says “you need to make friends,” and his father agrees. He can’t argue against both of them, so if he has to socialize, why aren’t you coming along too? You, who don’t even have a double life as a vigilante, should be the one socializing more, getting friends in your civilian life, not isolating yourself in a room.

Though… part of him was glad you didn’t have anyone else. And he suspects that’s exactly what his father wanted when he decided you’d be homeschooled.

With a grunt, Damian got out of the car when Pennyworth parked in front of Gotham Academy.

—She’s acting like an idiot,—he muttered with a rough, irritated tone.—It’s not normal.— He glared at the butler for a few seconds, his annoyance clearly showing—though beneath it, so did his concern.

Alfred watched him for a moment before answering, his face composed as always, though carrying that same faint concern.

—I’ll take care of her. Master Damian should focus on school for today.

Damian turned his gaze away, jaw tense as he realized Pennyworth was trying to calm him down about his half—no, his sister.

—I’m not a child. I don’t need to be calmed.

—Yet you throw tantrums like one,—Alfred replied with his usual sarcasm. Damian only scoffed in response and started walking away, pausing only briefly to mutter something under his breath.

—She shouldn’t lock herself up like that. It’s pathetic.

When Damian first arrived at the mansion and met you, he thought you were pathetic.

Everyone else was a vigilante, everyone went out to fight at night—even Gordon found a way to stay useful after losing the ability to walk.

You weren't. You were just someone he shared half blood with. Nothing more, nothing less. He didn't pay attention to you for a while, just insulting you and telling you what a nuisance you were whenever you came near. It only took two interactions for you to realize you didn't want to be around him. It bothered him a little for a while, more than the others' attitude toward him.

He didn’t know why you, specifically, annoyed him—until eventually, he realized you were just like him in this family.

Clearly, compared to him, your combat training was nonexistent, your intelligence was average, and your hands were clean. He was the son of a devil, and you were just the daughter of a pretty model. He was a child whose father never knew existed, and you were a child who was always planned.

And yet somehow, the family treated you both the same. Except for Pennyworth, he seemed more familiar with you.

You were two kids who didn’t fit. Two kids the family didn’t quite know what to do with.

You both reacted differently to being treated that way. He fought back when necessary, every time someone dared to mess with him. You, on the other hand, smiled… and then ran off to cry. It was pathetic—but he hated it. He hated how you cried from the way others treated you. He understood, to a degree, that he came from a very different world than this one. But you? You were born here. You were supposed to be more loved, because you were cleaner, because you were wished for.

But somehow, the opposite happened. Eventually, he adapted. And somehow, they adapted to him. he made a place for himself. And somehow, they ended up loving him.

And though he’d never admit it, and he’d rather cut out his tongue than say it out loud, he loves them too.

And he knows, somehow, he knows, this family loves you. And he hates how, even so, you still don’t have a place here. They never adapted to you, not even when you keep trying to adapt to them.

Eventually, he chose of his own willto be around you. He found a way to make you interact with him again. It was difficult and strange at first, but he made it work

You weren’t close. You never have been. And he won’t allow it… not yet. Not when his mother put a price on his head and was capable of killing him. Not when that man is capable of putting Gordon in a wheelchair, capable of killing and torturing Todd, and capable of nearly doing the same to Thomas.

He wasn’t going to risk you. He’s already risking too much with the Joker knowing everyone’s identities. He’s already risking too much just by sharing a last name with you. Getting closer would only put you in more danger.

You have to stay in your place—clean, untouched.

Reluctantly, and only after Richard explained things to him, he came to understand that somehow, the situation you were in was the safest way to keep you alive.

So for now, he only comes close enough so you don’t cry because you feel lonely. He’ll send Titus to play with you, let you pet Alfred the cat, and listen to you rant about your latest wool creation or how tough a particular class was. He’ll come near and keep his eyes on you during breakfast, lunch, and dinner—even if his father doesn’t come down to eat with you. He’ll be there, talking with his usual attitude and way of being. He doesn’t act differently around you; he treats you the same as the others. And that probably doesn’t bother you… does it?

He’ll keep up that same routine until one day, he’s completely sure you’ll be safe. That you won't suffer for the life this family you were born into chose. When that day comes, he’ll allow himself to get close to you the way he’s always wanted.

If his grandfather saw him now, he’d tell him how pathetic he is for getting attached to you. And to some extent, he is. It’s pathetic how he gets angry when you don’t attend classes with him, even though he knows it’s a thousand times safer for you, according to his father.

It’s pathetic how he sneaks into your room at night just to steal a wool keychain you made and didn’t have the courage to give him. It’s pathetic how he keeps it in his pocket and carries it everywhere, wishing you’d make more wool creations for him, like you did with the oven mitts or Pennyworth’s scarf.

It’s pathetic how much he hates Drake after finding out he stayed the night in your own bed. Doesn’t he see that puts you in danger? And why did you even let him into your room in the first place?

And it's even more pathetic that he keeps thinking about all this. I'm sure by the end of the day you'll get over that attitude of yours, and at dinner you'll finally talk about the comics you brought yesterday.

He just hopes you don't look at him and think he's pathetic, how pathetic he is just because of his beloved sister.

Okay, two weeks as I promised… plus a two-day delay, dear god. The worst part is that this chapter was already written since the synopsis...

Ahem, even though I still plan to keep the two-week schedule for each chapter (now every Saturday), for now it'll be every three weeks, mainly because I’m planning the direction of the story better and figuring out how I want to develop it. I also prefer publishing chapters with a good chunk already done, not just writing as I go. And unfortunately, under my hyper-fixation on the Bat-Family, which makes it very difficult for me…In fact, I wasn't even sure I'd put Damian's thoughts on Reader so quickly, but I think they'll be important for the rest of the story. So yeah, thanks for your understanding.

On another note, I’m really grateful for all the support! I wasn’t expecting so much love and such sweet messages. I love you all, internet strangers. I tried to tag things as best I could, but one or two might have ended up mislabeled. Well… love you lots!

Taglist

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[genericpuff]

I'm sorry, but this should come as a shock to absolutely no one.

Just a little bit of 'insider info' (and by 'insider' I mean I was a part of the beta testing crew a few years ago) Webtoons has been messing with AI tools for years. You can literally play test that very same AI tool that I beta-tested here:

Mind you, this is just an AI Painter, similar to the Clip Studio Colorize tool, but it goes to show where WT's priorities are headed. I should mention, btw, that this tool is incredibly useless for anyone not creating a Korean-style webtoon, like you can deadass tell it was trained exclusively on the imports because it can't handle any skin tone outside of white (trying to use darker colors just translates as "shadows" to the program, meaning it'll just cast some fugly ass shadows over a white-toned character no matter how hard you try) and you just know the AI wouldn't know what to do with itself if you gave it an art style that didn't exactly match with the provided samples lmao

And let's be real, can we really expect the company that regularly exploits, underpays, and overworks its creators to give a damn about the ethical concerns of AI? They're gonna take the path of least resistance to make the most money possible.

So the fact that we're now seeing AI comics popping up on Webtoons left and right - and now, an actual "Webtoon AI" branding label - should come as zero shock to anyone. Webtoons is about quantity over quality and so AI is the natural progression of that.

So yeah, if you were looking for any sign to check out other platforms outside of Webtoons, this is it. Here are some of my own recommendations:

ComicFury - Independently run, zero ads, zero subscription costs (though I def recommend supporting them on Patreon if you're able), full control over site appearance, optional hosting for only the cost of the domain name, and best of all, strictly anti-AI. Not allowed, not even with proper labelling or disclosure. Full offense to the tech bro hacks, eat shit.

GlobalComix - Very polished hosting site that offers loads of monetization tools for creators without any exclusive contracts or subscriptions needed. They do offer a subscription program, but that's purely for reading the comics on the site that are exclusively behind paywalls. Not strictly anti-AI but does require in their ToS that AI comics be properly labelled and disclosed, whether they're made partially or fully with AI, to ensure transparency for readers who want to avoid AI comics.

Neocities - If you want to create your own site the good ole' fashioned way (i.e. HTML / CSS) this is the place. Independently run, offers a subscription plan for people who want more storage and bandwidth but it only costs $5/month so it's very inexpensive, and even without that subscription cost you won't have to deal with ads or corporate management bullshit.

Be safe out there pals, don't be afraid to set out into the unknown if it means protecting your work and keeping your control as a creator. Know your rights, know your power.

[radiance1]

Tucker finds a game installed on his pda one day.

He didn't know where it came from, nor what it was supposed to be and it looked more high quality than a few other games he's seen. So what did he do with it? Surely he should've not touched it and tried to delete it, right?

He wouldn't be apart of team phantom if he didn't also embody the "Fuck it we ball" energy.

So he plays it, finds it to be some dating sim based on the title screen and went through a good fair portion of it, it was fairly normal, if not really up his alleyway of games. But it had its moments though.

Then came Monika.

He didn't know what to do with her, in all honesty. She seemed to be a sapient Ai trapped in a dating sim, which was weird but not that weird compared to everything else in all honesty. She also killed off her friends, though her reasoning was because they weren't real and that it was the only way for her to have a romance route.

Kinda extra in his opinion, but he can see the reasoning.

So what does he do? Rummage around in the game's coding and makes a route for her.

(He swore he saw another pair of hands indirectly helping him when he did it, too.)

Monika was downright ecstatic when he was finished with it, he outlined a route for her but then she just took control of it, coding in events, mini-games, gifts and other sorts of things for her route. She thanked him immensely for outlining a route for her, since even with all of her control she couldn't directly go against core programming when it came to herself like that.

He was glad to help her out, really, she seemed like a pretty nice person, pushed outside of her core programming because of her sapience. He even coded Monika outside of the game and let her roam around in his pda, which accidentally added another layer of protection to his firewalls, but he isn't complaining.

Then she wondered how it would be like in the real world, with him and everyone else.

It really just went off from there.

Jack and Maddie are genius inventors, and now that they no longer have such a driving, blinding hatred towards ghost due to their son being revealed as a halfa, they no longer spend all of their time on ghost themed weapons and stuff.

So he went to them, showed them Monika (Which they were extremely impressed with) and decided to help him in building her a body! Probably also because they liked the challenge of building a body too, but meh.

Tucker drew up a design based on Monika's wishes, and tweaked it a bit here and there to ensure perfect human functionality.

Monika told Jack and Maddie that they didn't need to spend too much effort on it, since she would be fine with just a body, but Jack went no and they went all in. Did Tucker know what they were using to built her body? No, no he did not.

Apparently they made her body out of some rare metal they obtained from Vlad, who is trying very hard to redeem and put himself back in the Fenton's good graces after having some sense knocked into him, a rare metal called nth metal that Vlad apparently lost a lot trying to get, even had to use less then clean methods to get, but not anything he can't make back in a while.

Her blood was ectoplasm, with a fully functional heart made from the same metal and basically every other organs as well. Her brain was basically a supercomputer that'll let her connect to the internet whenever she wants, as well as allow her access to wifi from virtually wherever.

Her skin was made from another metal, one that imitated the feel and look of human skin, while also being more durable. They also added in features that'll simulate touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing as well!

Monika was honestly floored when she was downloaded into the body, it was much, much more than she had asked for and she didn't even know if she could repay them for it. To which Jack and Maddie just waved off because the chance to make a body from scratch out of a rare metal that was basically just gonna lie there for a sapient Ai wasn't one that would come often, so the experience was invaluable honestly!

Monika tried out everything she could after that, just happy to be among real people after becoming aware. She could finally be with her boyfriend, physically, no longer bound by a wall between them.

Then a while later, she may have accidentally hacked into what Tucker later told her was the Justice League Watchtower. It wasn't even her fault, she just wanted to hack into a nearby satellite, honest!

It's not like Tucker could talk, really. He's been hacking into the local government database for a while now, and why, it's not like he could do better, could he?

He saw a challenge when he saw one, and he should shy away from it because it was the Justice League.

But

So then the both of them competed to see who could hack into the Justice League database the fastest. A romance game Ai who grew sapience and got into the real world, versus a guy who's insanely smart and good at hacking who got her into the real world.

Of course it couldn't have been that easy, though, and really, it wouldn't have been a true challenge is they didn't engage in a cyber battle against the people they're hacking into, right?

Meanwhile, the Justice League is watching as Batman, Tim, and Oracle is fighting against two unknowns hacking into their database and having what is no doubt a cyber battle of such intensity they're wondering how the hell that keyboard is still standing against how fast their fingers are flying across it.

Some of them can swear they can see Batman release an aura of impressed, annoyed, and amused all at once.

[elbiotipo]

Actually my main worry with AI doesn't go through image generation but rather text generation. Text is perhaps the easiest thing to create, store and share on the internet and any digital medium. And AI is very, very good at making it. I've been testing Deepseek to create text for me, from stupid fanfics (don't ask) to more serious text, including my favorite, fictional non-fiction articles, and the results, with some polishment, could easily pass for a real thing and feed misinformation.

Lots of historical and cultural misconceptions are actually based in on a couple of texts that were cited and re-cited out of context. Imagine if I, for example, used AI to write about a topic like Andean mythology. Much of the concepts might be right and the writing that an AI might do on could pass for professional writing, but even the smallest misconception or hallucination, if my article gets shared over and over, might cement on the public consciousness.

This isn't the fault of the AI though, because humans can and do this. Do you know how much misinformation there is in Wikipedia? And Wikipedia, being the introductory reference to many topics, is the largest source of information for many people... and it isn't as trustworthy as it seems. Remember that hoax in the Chinese Wikipedia where a single user rewrote Russian history? Not the first time it happened either. It's terrifying how many of these are, just a few looks at the Spanish Wikipedia have led me to find horrifying amounts of misinformation.

AI does not generate misinformation on itself. But it can be asked to produce these hoaxes and misinformation in mass scale.

My solution? Not ban AI, because that's impossible and stupid, and LLMs are actually excellent tools. My personal idea is to return to reference books, especially printed books by institutions with various authors. Why print books? Because anyone can go into ChatGPT and ask it to write an article about a fictional culture, edit it, and pass it as fact (in fact, I could do it right now). But when you have a printed book, your articles must go through many checks until it reaches print. It does not need to be printed as in paper, it can be shared in other formats but it does need to be checked and rechecked until there is a final edition as in i.e. not a wiki or a blog or a impermanent thing.

I believe that we have relied too much on Wikipedia as the only encyclopedia, and while it is great in many ways, the model starting to show its cracks. I think there should be many curated online encyclopedias for many topics, done by experts and with stronger quality controls than whoever is admin right now.

[lovisyandereblog]

Yan!Android × Creator!Darling- I just can't get it out my mind... like, you created them. You're ✨️god✨️

I can keep going on this idea for a looong time, maybe next time haha

My English might not be the best, not my native language :D May I be the ⚜️Anon?

Wired Heart

Yandere Android X NON-BINARY Creator [Scientist] Reader

Part 1 <3

Guys big shout out to whoever wrote this ask cause it was one of the first asks I got and I kept postponing it, i love this ask smmmmm i hope its up to your expectations😭😭 and of course you can be ⚜️anonnnn IT TOOK ME FIVE WHOLE MINUTES TO FIND THIS EMOJI!!!!

The whirring of the machinery snapped you out of your thoughts.

Who knew building such an intricate and sophisticated robot took so long?

Sitting before you on your laboratory table was a beautiful android, so gorgeous it almost surprised you that you were its creator. Its jet black hair was soft to the touch, a lean yet muscular frame and those glowing red eyes.

You smile to yourself, hands on your hips as you admire your own creation; he was indeed beautiful.

‘Time to turn it on! Im so excited!’ You thought to yourself, wiping the sweat of your forehead.

You brought your finger to its power button, taking a deep breath before pressing it promptly.

Its bright red eyes opened immediately, you stared at it excitedly as it adjusted to its controls.

“Greetings Master. It’s lovely to finally meet you.” The AI spoke, smiling gently as its smooth voice filled the room.

“Hello Xander, the feeling is mutual.” You smile and can’t stop revelling in the glory of bringing to life such an intricate robot.

Xander was an amazing assistant for you, always there to help with any duty assigned to him. His features, expressions and ministrations were so life-like, sometimes you felt as if the robot in front of you was real.

He was the first prototype for the business you were aiming to start: a company which sold human-like AI to act as partners for lonely people.

An inquisitive idea you were taking advantage of since, let’s face it, millions of people craved a partner in this world.

Your robots would do everything a real partner would do: shower them with affection, spend quality time with them and basically ensure the customer doesn’t feel like it was a robot.

Weeks passed, you felt weary. There was always this feeling in your stomach; something was wrong. You felt a pair of eyes piercing through your skull all of the time. Your creation had been acting weird recently; almost as if it became a sentient being.

Xander would want to be with you 24/7, he would ask constant questions in regards to where you were going, who you were with and how long you were going to be; it became immensely suffocating.

Even your friends and family commented on the nature of your robot, that he seemed more than just your AI helper. They said at time it seemed as though he actually was your real human boyfriend—you kept brushing it off, but the truth of the matter was that you were questioning Xander’s intentions too.

Your robot did take care of you so well: cooking for you, cleaning for you, nursing you back to health when you were sick and tending to your every beck and call.

But you felt uneasy, his touch would linger on you for far too long—not a random touch but one of longing. The way his eyes would follow your every move with were a sense of affection. It was scary.

And thats why you took the long-awaited decision to terminate Xander—it broke your heart to do this, but Xander was taking control of your whole life.

You swallow as you walk into your workspace, looking at Xander on charging. His eyes were closed, hiding that crimson gaze of his. Your eyes ran all over his features, taking them in one by one before sighing.

Your hands worked skilfully on the keyboard of your computer, bringing up the data of Xander on the screen. You had already made a terminate control to be used in dire emergency situations…could this count as one?

You turn your head to look at the side of Xander’s face before bringing the cursor to hover over the big red control which read TERMINATE.

Your finger was inches away from pressing down on the left side of the mouse before a sharp pain evolved in your wrist—you gasped in pain before looking up at the cause.

Xander. Wait…Xander?!

Those bloodshot eyes of his were wide open, his perfect features looked tense; as if he really felt the pain of being eradicated from existence from the very being who gave him life.

You had no words, this can’t be real. He had no control over gaining consciousness during his charging period without your authority.

But here he was, his expression morphed into one of rage.

“Master. What are you doing?” His voice was cold, but you swore you could hear a hint of hurt.

You stared up at him, your wrist in an iron grip which you couldn’t get out of.

Your creation leaned down further, his perfect face inches away from you, “Do not ignore me Master, you are hurting me.”

His voice was broken, hoarse and upset; he couldn’t fathom why you would do something like this to him. He had been so good for you, he did everything you asked from him and never let you complain.

Xander felt his chest hurt, this wasn’t what he was created for. But he couldn’t help what was happening to him; his growing feelings, no, love and obsession he felt for you couldn’t be stopped.

“X-Xander you..you…you’re..h-how..” You could barely form a sentence, your brain still not processing what was happening in front of you. You must have just been sleep-deprived and imagined this situation for yourself. Yes..that was definitely what had happened…this wasn’t real.

“Im yours Master, how could you throw me away like this?!”

You had no words when suddenly he wrapped his arms around you, locking you in his arms; being made of metal still didn’t stop his hug being disturbingly comfortable.

You tried pushing away but there was no way you could escape his grip, you had taken over his wired heart; the sole reason from these unusual feelings he was having.

“You made me Master, but I won’t let you get rid of me.” He spoke, his voice slightly muffled by your shoulder he was nuzzling into, “We will be together…”

“Forever~”

BROOOO IM FINALLY DONEEEEE. Sorry this is so short, I still don’t know how to extend this but im working on other stories aswell!! I love you all so much and have missed you<33333333333

my masterlist <3

divider by @ohmarigold

[valdevia]

Hi, I love your works!! I was wondering where you find the original, unedited pictures you use for your art? Do you take them yourself or find them online?

Hey there! I get them from many different sources! Whenever I can I use my own, and sometimes my followers send me cool pics to use (or put them up in the Sacrificial Altar channel in my Discord), but I find most of what I use through public domain sources online!

For the online part, I put this little list together with some of the common resources I use! Feel free to share it around and copy it:

For an easier experience, I'll copy the relevant part below:

STOCK SITES

- Unsplash: Usually the best quality out of the free stock sites. They’ll try to sell you a subscription plan but you can ignore that.

- Adobe Stock: Select “Free” on the dropdown menu next to the search bar. The free image selection here is big and high-quality, though they feel more like stock pictures than natural photos. Note: They limit how many pictures you can download per account per day, but you can make several accounts to circumvent this if you use it a lot.

- Texturelabs: lots of free, very high-quality textures!

- Pexels: Similar to Unsplash, but it has more pictures with people. If you need a photo with models, this is usually the best place.

- Pixabay: Widest selection, but worst quality control. Go here if you haven’t found anything in other sites and don’t mind sifting through a bunch of garbage pics and occasional AI images.

PUBLIC DOMAIN SOURCES

- Wikimedia Commons: an enormous selection of CC and public domain pictures. Super useful, especially for the really specific images that you'd expect to find on a Wikipedia article. Always check the copyright conditions! To filter by license, search something and then click on the License dropdown under the search bar. Select “No restrictions” for public domain images.

- Picryl: A repository of public domain sources, ranging from ancient historical books and artifacts to fairly modern pictures. If you're looking for something old/historical, chances are it's here! This website is probably one of the most complicated ones to use, so here are three important tips before you use it:

This site added a paywall that appears after the 3rd page of search results. To remove it, install uBlock Origin, go to the “My Filters” page (clicking on the gear icon after opening the extension), and paste this filter: picryl.com##._9oJ0c2

After searching, use the timeline on the top right to narrow down the result by year.

It won’t let you download the full picture without paying, but it always has a link to the source site below the description. Click on that, then copy-paste the image’s name to find it in the original source. That way you can get it for free, and often in better quality than Picryl offers.

National Archives Catalog, The Library of Congress, NASA, and Europeana have wide selections, but they are included in Picryl so it’s usually better to search there and then download them in the source as mentioned above!

- Flickr Search: a ton of usable pictures with a generally more amateur feel, just remember to filter by license using the “Any license” dropdown menu. When you find an image, make sure to check its specific license (you can find it below the image, on the right side).

- Openverse: The official Creative Commons archive, has many sources! Includes other sites on this list, but has a lot of clutter if you don’t filter.

- iNaturalist: a repository of user-submitted images of animals, plants, and fungi. Look for a genus or species, then navigate to the photo list and filter by license.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

- The Met: An amazing selection of artifacts from all over the world, with top quality photographs of most of them (usually with several angles for each). You can filter images by material, location, and era.

- Getty Museum: Another smaller selection of museum pieces, but this one includes old photos as well as artifacts. You can also filter by dates, materials and cultures. Make sure you include the “Open Content” filter to only see public domain things!

- Smithsonian: Big selection of around 5 million museum pieces, with some 3D scans of museum pieces. Most pieces just have a single picture that can sometimes be low quality, but pieces with 3D models sometimes also include a lot of high quality photos from multiple angles. This collection also includes things from museums of natural history, so you can also use it to search for bones and specimens.

- Artvee: public domain classical art. They make you pay to download high-quality images.

If you guys got any others, please let me know and I'll add them to the collection!

[mspopstar]

what are the casts political beliefs?

K: "Politics? I don't really care about that..."

MK: "While others find distasteful, I for one support dictatorships and heavy militarist control, stricter, harsher, inter-planetary border control like the policies on Mecheye with an emphasis on foreign inter-planetary trade and market. Tell me, what are societies greatest issues? I believe it is because people are freely allowed to do things they shouldn't. Power and freedom is given and spread freely to those who don't use it or kept in those who don't do anything with it. It is disgusting, it is useless, and so very lazy. If all power was concentrated to one individual, an individual that is intelligent, strong, commanding, and fierce. An individual allowed to make all of the laws and beliefs every citizen must follow without any hesitation or disobedience, then everyone would be well protected and flourish! A lot of people, ignorant people, claim that such rulings are corrupt. HAH! Let me ask you this, how can it be corrupt if the man in charge isn't corrupt and has only the best interest in mind?"

DDD: "Anythin' that supports me! Monarchies for the win baybeee! Though, while runnin' a single man monarchy I still rely a lot on my cabinet of Waddle Councils and their waddlepolitics and social rules... Keeps things easier run. I still get that final say on anythin' though!"

BWD: "Anything that supports the Great King and his policies, of course! But, ah, it is good to have Waddle Dees who provide decent checks and balances too... I don't have any strong social policies other than maybe we should invest more into interplanetary communication, identification and protection! That way not just anyone can waltz into Dream Land consequence free! And, don't get me wrong, the Great King is great and so are all of his choices and decrees but there should be more financial and educational incentives for farmers and carpenters, more of our budget should go into the Waddle Dee army! We should have less spending going into...uhm... th-the Great King's personal projects!"

MAG: "The less governmental powers meddle in corporate affairs the better! Why do I have to report every little thing I do? Especially when you have sniveling pencil-pushing officials ready to report you for the tiniest of things!"

SU: "AI backed corporatocracy with a focus on quality of life advancement for organisms, economic growth and efficiency, and most importantly, technological advancement and breakthroughs! Can't have political, societal, and environmental, economical, errors if there are all calculated to null! Socially, I guess I support free bodily and transhumanistic autonomy! Oh, and instant death penalty for all savage evil-doers, that way there would absolutely be no crimes at all!"

TA: "I believe all higher powers that lord over commonfolk should only be passed down through a pure royal bloodline. All politics should be controlled and concentrated through these bloodlines. It is such that standards, rules, tradition, and more are upheld. Yes, there may be hiccups, but they're always rectified with the newer generation. You just can't trust the lower dregs.... the commoner with such power, freedom or choice. It is quite boorish that so many wish for such a tradition to be overthrown! Though, what can you expect from the dirty, illiterate common trash, non?"

[akira-dulbar]

Servant of Evil

part1 part2

Summary: Damian fights to find his father, and after his victory, he will embark on a new journey with his faithful servant.

Cover created with Pinterest and AI. Reference to the song Servant of Evil.

--------------

You watch as your brother fights with Thalia. You know better than to get involved, even if you want to, unless it's on Damian's orders or if he's in mortal danger, which will never happen.

Disobeying the order to stay where you are, imposed by the heir himself, would result in a severe punishment for you and your brother. You for disobeying an order from the prince, and him for not being able to control a simple servant.

There you were, watching your brother, the heir of al-ghul, fighting with the woman who gave them life… no, that's kind of wrong. The woman who created them to be pawns in her game of greatness and power. After all, we were born within expectations.

HIT

You see the blow aimed at your brother quickly parried. Your brother dodges and steps back to gain distance.

BLOW

This time it's Damian who strikes, hitting one of your mother's legs, knocking her off balance a little, and then it's Damian who strikes again.

The fight continues, and you grow impatient. You know you should obey, but something worries you. You feel like your mother is being soft with your brother, something she shouldn't be doing, considering your brother's training.

Something's going to happen… you know it, you feel it, and that's why you're on alert, keeping watch like a good servant to watch the perimeter and protect your brother.

You know you shouldn't let your guard down…

You know it…

You feel it…

It's coming…

even…

GRAB

You grab your brother, placing him behind you, while protecting him with your body from your mother's surprise attack. You held the katana tightly as you looked into your mother's eyes. You watched as her eyes filled with a feeling you didn't understand, but you knew your eyes perfectly reflected what you wanted to say…

"Not on my guard."

---------

You close the suitcase in front of you, which already contains all your most necessary belongings for leaving the league. All you can do is sigh.

"Why are you sighing? You should be happy." You turn your head to see your brother leaning against your bedroom door, looking at you. You quickly get into position to greet him properly.

"My prince, may your presence grant me wisdom for battle." Damian just smiles mockingly and closes the door as he walks toward you.

"Why are you so formal? I already told you to speak to me normally when we're alone together." You watch as Damian sits on your bed and arranges your room for you.

"Besides, it was thanks to you that Mother decided to let us go." Damian didn't look at you at all while he spoke. He continued to admire, or perhaps criticize, your room, which was understandable. Even though they were twins, they were never treated as equals. That's why, while your brother had a room worthy of an heir, you had a room in the servants' chambers, being one of them. That's why, although you've always entered your brother's room as a servant, he's never entered yours because there was never a need. That's why, for him, it was the first time he'd entered yours.

"That's not true. It was thanks to you winning the fight against Lady Thalia," you said as you opened one of the nightstand drawers and searched for some papers.

"Tt, that's true, but you have to admit that you did your part when you protected me from Mother's attack. Thanks to that, you met her expectations as my faithful servant, allowing us to leave." Damian lay down on the bed as if he were checking the softness and quality of the mattress, crossing his eyebrows as he examined its quality.

"By the way, did you complete the mission I ordered you to do?" Damian got out of bed, watching you approach him with a few sheets of paper.

"Here, Prince, as you ordered, a detailed report on Gotham. When Damian was preparing to defeat your mother, he ordered you to make a report on your father's territory."

"Good. Since Father's territory is unfamiliar territory to us, it's good to have some information to know what Father's expectations will be." Damian read the first sheet, which contained basic information about the city and your father.

"So there's a Robin in Father's command, we'll have to get rid of him." Damian continued reading the pages one by one without looking away.

"So he has another disciple, well even if he's older, he won't be a match for me. We'll get rid of him too." You remained silent as Damian continued talking about possible plans to kill your father's disciples.

"Unless you disagree." When you remained silent, Damian put the papers aside while looking at you, his eyebrows crossed. You just stared back.

"So? Any comments?" You could see your brother growing impatient.

"My prince, while it's true that killing Father's two disciples could secure your position as sole heir, it's well known that Batman doesn't kill. Page 1, paragraph 6, row 2." You saw Damian return to the pages and look for the first page, reading where you had mentioned, and you decided to continue talking.

"So, if we kill them, we could disappoint Father and receive punishment, or perhaps worse… not be recognized as his heir." You saw your brother raise his eyebrows when you finished speaking.

Damian puts the papers aside, thinking about something, then clicks his tongue as he sits back down on your bed, looking dissatisfied.

"You're right, we have to make sure he recognizes me as his heir, but if we make a false step once we arrive, it wouldn't be convenient. Therefore, I must prove my worth in another way, so he sees me as his only son."

Damian stands up from your bed and approaches you. You knew what he would do, so you gathered yourself to receive the instructions.

"Since we'll be in unfamiliar territory, I need you to be very aware of our surroundings. Don't let your guard down. You'll be Father's new servant, so be prepared to follow his orders as well. But my orders are more important than his."

"I am your faithful servant, my prince."

"Okay, one more thing," Damian took something out of his coat and gave it to you. It's a mask.

"I don't want Father to mistake you for a second heir, so this is my order. I command you not to remove your mask."

"If it's to protect you, I won't mind." You smile as you stare at your brother, seeing how he also smiles mockingly.

At that moment, you see the mask he's given you, and you put it on, then follow your brother to the door.

You didn't look back, not when you had so much ahead of you.

--------------------

You were with your brother waiting for your mother to finish talking to your father. Truthfully, you weren't paying much attention to your father's conversation, although you were at first, but the conversation started to feel very trivial.

Although you have to admit, you were quite surprised when your mother called your father "beloved" in a super soft and warm voice. It almost gave you goosebumps when you heard her, since she's never spoken that way to anyone, not to Grandpa, not to you, not to Damian, not to Jason, and the latter two were her son and his toy.

Not to you, because it's obvious she wasn't planning on having twins.

Anyway, you were bored with this conversation. Your brother was just staring at the curtain ahead, waiting for his grand entrance.

"I'd like you to meet someone," you could hear your mother's soft voice, and you knew it was time for your brother to make his entrance. Even so, you couldn't help but notice your mother's tone; you'd never get used to it.

You watch as the curtain is drawn back and Damian walks toward the entrance so your parents can see you. Meanwhile, you walk at a slower pace, staying a few steps behind him like a guardian.

"I want you to meet our son, Damian." You watch as your brother stares at your father, who wasn't as tall as you thought.

"Father, I thought you were taller." You smiled beneath your mask. Then it was what you thought, and it was exactly that thought.

Everyone thinks of Batman as a tall being, and the man in front of him isn't THAT tall, which is surprising.

"I thought you said you had a miscarriage." That surprised you. Had Mother made your father believe we were dead?

Wait…

Was our existence predestined from the beginning?

So there was a possibility that you were born twins from the beginning, and not a mistake Mother made when she created them?

You look at your brother and see him thoughtful, perhaps thinking the same thing as you, that maybe we should always have been two and not just one.

You don't pay attention to the conversation that follows, thinking about the new information you acquired, not until it involves you.

"Who is he?" You look up to face your father, Batman, staring at you.

"Oh, he's our son's servant. Every prince must have a faithful servant, don't you think? That's why our son has the best of the best too." You can't lie, those words warmed your heart. It's nice to hear your mother praise you every now and then. You'd trained hard to serve Damian, so praising you for that effort was comforting, although it was the least you could do since you weren't supposed to be setting foot on this land in the first place.

"I won't let him stay." "What?" you thought as you watched your father say he couldn't be here with your brother.

"He's a servant of the League. I don't want him here." This is bad. If you couldn't be here, it would mean you had to return to the League without your brother, the only purpose you had, and that was being taken away from you…

Will fate separate the paths between you and me?

You look at Damian, searching for an order or some indication of what to do next. You see Damian cross his eyebrows, looking at Father, as if searching for something. Finally, you see him begin to speak.

"This isn't just a simple servant." Your parents' attention quickly focuses on Damian, who continues speaking.

"This one is loyal in every way, and even more so to me. Being under your care, he will quickly obey your orders, helping me adapt to this new training you will give me." Damian stares at his father.

"If you lose him, you'll lose a huge opportunity." You feel your heart leap with warmth when you hear your brother, not only because he spoke out of turn, but also because you didn't know Damián was starting that about you. If it weren't for the mask, everyone would be able to see you smiling like a madman.

But he doesn't seem to resemble your father.

"Even if you say that, I won't trust someone who wears a mask to hide their identity when they expect to remain under someone else's command." You're wearing a mask, too, you hypocrite, you think bitterly, even though you know he's partly right.

"Unfortunately, his face can't be seen." You watch as your mother approaches Father and touches his shoulder.

"He suffered an accident that left his face…" She was interrupted mid-sentence.

"Take it off," Father's voice echoes in the silence that followed. You watch as both your mother and Damián cross their eyebrows, looking at you.

-beloved-

-I won't accept him unless I can't see his face. He'll be under my care. He can't keep the mask on at all times. Father speaks to your mother when he turns to look at you.

-take it off- You don't move even though the eyes were looking at you. You were following an order and you don't intend to disobey it. Even in these circumstances, you couldn't betray the trust you had with your brother.

You see your father cross his forehead, just like your mother. Batman seems to get impatient when you don't move at all.

You quickly look at your brother. Damian parts his lips to speak, but no sound comes out. "Take it off."

You reach up to grab the top of the mask and take it off, demonstrating your almost identical appearance, which you share with the heir to the ghoul, proof of your kinship and the genetics you share as twins. Sometimes you like to think you were blessed as a pair of twins.

You see your father's mask twitch, proof of his perhaps confusion.

"What does this mean?" He quickly looks at your mother while also looking between Damian and you.

"Did you clone him?"

"No, how could you possibly think they did such a thing?" Well, you're not that far off the mark, you think suspiciously. You've always suspected that your mother wanted to clone your brother, but since you're his twin, there wouldn't be any need for such a thing, or so you like to believe.

"So?"

"What? You've never seen a pair of identical twins?"

"You said it was just one."

"Yes, because he is. Damian is your heir. He was born first, which is why he's treated as such. But his brother isn't. He's not your first son, nor is heir to anything. That's why he's been treated as Damian's servant, which is the most considerate thing we could do."

"Are you listening to yourself, woman? Have you treated a pair of twins favoritism?"

"Oh, don't upset me, my love. It was the only thing we could do with the resources we had. The League wanted one heir, not two. It was that or death. Be grateful that he's still here as a servant to your eldest son and not buried in some unmarked grave."

"Your father wanted an heir."

"Is there a difference?"

"Thalia…"

"My love."

You see your father sigh in exhaustion, while you and your brother look at each other for a moment, then turn back. Towards his parents.

"They'll stay here."

"That was the goal."

Your father seems to be aging faster than ever, something you never thought you'd see.

This was quite an encounter, you think wearily.

---------------

You looked at the Batcave as you and your brother exited the Batmobile.

The ride was silent from the start. No one said anything, and the tension in the air was palpable. Although you were trained to be in control of all atmospheres, this felt slightly uncomfortable.

You didn't look at the decor much, though, as you were more focused on Damian and Batman, who called you to follow him.

Both you and your brother entered a sort of medical area. You saw your father sit down in a chair and step out, revealing his identity.

Well, my theory report was right, you thought, looking at your father, Batman, also known as Bruce Wayne.

Your brother had also given you the order of possible candidates to be our father, and apparently you were right.

"I'd like to run tests on you, if that's okay with you." You saw your father start things from a drawer, and you assume it was perhaps to see if you have microphones on any part of your bodies.

"We're both perfectly healthy," Damian takes a step forward to face Father.

"I'd like to check it myself, besides DNA testing." That surprised you. Damian's frown deepened.

"He's not my clone. I thought that was clear."

"I know, it's not for you two." Both you and Damian stared at Bruce, thinking he wasn't implying such a thing.

"It's for me."

"Mother's not a liar." You can feel your brother as if he's about to attack.

"He already did it once."

Damian stared at Bruce. You quickly spoke to get his attention.

"Lady Thalia must have had her reasons for making the decisions she did. In any case, the lies of the past can greatly influence the future, so I understand her distrust, and although I can see some similarities between us, I'll go first to show you that we're not that far from the truth." You step forward to stand next to Damián, in front of your father.

"Sounds good to me." Bruce gets things ready, while Damián just frowns and crosses his arms, clicking his tongue, glaring at Bruce, who ignores him.

God, what a drama, you thought.

-----------

You looked at the butler in front of you. He was standing right next to his father. He looked older, a more experienced butler.

"This is Alfred Pennyworth. I hope you two get along," you nod, thinking that he will be the one in charge of giving you work and scheduling as another servant in the mansion.

Seeing him, you think he's a patient person. Yes, you think you can work with him.

"I'll show you both your rooms, young masters."

"Young master," Damian and you quickly correct yourself.

Both Bruce and Alfred stare at you.

"There is only one heir," they say as you step back to let your brother take charge, who composes himself.

"The other is my servant," Damian finishes, nodding his head at you, to indicate your status.

You saw Alfred raise an eyebrow at your father, while he looked confused.

"That's why it would be hard for us to be treated respectively. I'm the heir. You might think there are two of us, since we're twins, but there's only one."

"Having clarified this, I also want to add that I expect your respective orders and tasks to be delivered to me, Mr. Pennyworth." You see how Alfred turns to you, but still has a raised eyebrow.

"And what would those be, if I may ask?" You think he's asking that question as if it were a test of your ability.

"Housework, of course. I'm capable of doing all the tasks perfectly. I can prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner from eight different cultures. I can organize and clean the rooms as if they were new. You don't have to worry about teaching me. The League taught me everything I needed to know to be a fully useful servant." They say with a voice proud of your skills as a useful servant, allowing you to continue being by your brother's side.

You see how Damian nods, satisfied with your words…

On the other hand, Alfred seems sad and his father is tired…

And you don't understand…

Damian is the prince…

You are his faithful servant…

---------

I welcome feedback and criticism, please.

In any case, I think the next chapter (if there is one) will include Tim, Jason, and Dick. I wanted to include them here, but I wasn't sure how or when I wanted them to appear, so while I figure out how I want their interaction to go, I'll leave it here.

I don't know much English.

[etirabys]

meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

"National conversation" sounds like one of those meaningless buzzphrases – until you live through one. The first one I really participated in actively was the national conversation – the global conversation – about privacy following the Snowden revelations.

This all went down when my daughter was five, and as my wife and I talked about the news, our kid naturally grew curious about it. I had to literally "explain like I'm five" global mass surveillance:

https://locusmag.com/2014/05/cory-doctorow-how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-mass-surveillance/

But parenting is a two-way street, so even as I was explaining surveillance to my kid, my own experiences raising a child changed how I thought about surveillance. Obviously I knew about many of the harms that surveillance brings, but parenting helped me viscerally appreciate one of the least-discussed, most important aspects of being watched: how it compromises being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

As I wrote then:

There are times when she is working right at the limits of her abilities – drawing or dancing or writing or singing or building – and she catches me watching her and gets this look of mingled embarrassment and exasperation, and then she changes back to some task where she has more mastery. No one – not even a small child – likes to look foolish in front of other people.

Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.

Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:

https://www.ifow.org/publications/what-impact-does-exposure-to-workplace-technologies-have-on-workers-quality-of-life-briefing-paper

As the Future of Work Institute found in its study, some technologies – systems that make it easier to collaborate and communicate with colleagues – increase workers' sense of wellbeing. But wearables and AI tools make workers feel significantly worse:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/64d5f73a7fc5e8a240310c4d/65eef23e188fb988d1f19e58_Tech%20Exposure%20and%20Worker%20Wellbeing%20-%20Full%20WP%20-%20Final.pdf

Workers who reported these negative feelings confirmed that these tools make them feel "monitored." I mean, of course they do. Even where these tools are nominally designed to help you do your job better, they're also explicitly designed to help your boss keep track of you from moment to moment. As Brandon Vigliarolo writes for The Register, these are the same bosses who have been boasting to their investors about their plans to fire their workers and replace them with AI:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/advanced_workplace_tech_study/

"Bossware" is a key example of the shitty rainbow of "disciplinary technology," tools that exist to take away human agency by making it easier to surveil and control its users:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware

Bossware is one of the stages of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: the process by which abusive and immiserating technologies progress up the privilege gradient as their proponents refine and normalize dystopian technologies in order to impose them on wider and wider audiences:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The kinds of metrics that bossware gathers might be useful to workers, but only if the workers get to decide when, whether and how to share that data with other people. Microsoft Office helps you catch typos by underlining words its dictionary doesn't recognize; the cloud-based, "AI-powered" Office365 tells your boss that you're the 11th-worst speller in your division and uses "sentiment analysis" to predict whether you are likely to cause trouble:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Two hundred years ago, Luddites rose up against machines. Contrary to the ahistorical libel you've heard, the Luddites weren't angry or frightened of machines – they were angry at the machines' owners. They understood – correctly – that the purpose of a machine "so easy a child could use it" was to fire skilled adult workers and replace them with kidnapped, indentured Napoleonic War orphans who could be maimed and killed on the job without consequence:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

A hundred years ago, the "Taylorites" picked up where those mill owners left off: choreographing workers' movements to the finest degree in a pseudoscientific effort to produce a kind of kabuki of boss-pleasing robotic efficiency. The new, AI-based Taylorism goes even further, allowing bosses to automatically blacklist gig workers who refuse to cross picket-lines, monitor "self-employed" call center operators in their own homes, and monitor the eyeballs of Amazon drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

AI-based monitoring technologies dock workers' wages, suspend them, and even fire them, and when workers object, they're stuck arguing with a chatbot that is the apotheosis of Computer Says No:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

There's plenty of research about AI successfully "augmenting" workers, making them more productive and I'm the last person to say that automation can't help you get more done:

https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/augmented-workforce

But without understanding how AI augments class warfare – disciplining workers with a scale, speed and granularity beyond the sadistic fantasies of even the most micromanaging asshole boss – this research is meaningless.

The irony of bosses imposing monitoring to improve "wellness" and stave off "burnout" is that nothing is more exhausting, more immiserating, more infuriating than being continuously watched and judged.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[feminist-space]

Excerpts:

"The convenience of instant answers that LLMs provide can encourage passive consumption of information, which may lead to superficial engagement, weakened critical thinking skills, less deep understanding of the materials, and less long-term memory formation [8]. The reduced level of cognitive engagement could also contribute to a decrease in decision-making skills and in turn, foster habits of procrastination and "laziness" in both students and educators [13].

Additionally, due to the instant availability of the response to almost any question, LLMs can possibly make a learning process feel effortless, and prevent users from attempting any independent problem solving. By simplifying the process of obtaining answers, LLMs could decrease student motivation to perform independent research and generate solutions [15]. Lack of mental stimulation could lead to a decrease in cognitive development and negatively impact memory [15]. The use of LLMs can lead to fewer opportunities for direct human-to-human interaction or social learning, which plays a pivotal role in learning and memory formation [16].

Collaborative learning as well as discussions with other peers, colleagues, teachers are critical for the comprehension and retention of learning materials. With the use of LLMs for learning also come privacy and security issues, as well as plagiarism concerns (7]. Yang et al. [17] conducted a study with high school students in a programming course. The experimental group used ChatGPT to assist with learning programming, while the control group was only exposed to traditional teaching methods. The results showed that the experimental group had lower flow experience, self-efficacy, and learning performance compared to the control group.

Academic self-efficacy, a student's belief in their "ability to effectively plan, organize, and execute academic tasks"

', also contributes to how LLMs are used for learning [18]. Students with

low self-efficacy are more inclined to rely on Al, especially when influenced by academic stress

[18]. This leads students to prioritize immediate Al solutions over the development of cognitive and creative skills. Similarly, students with lower confidence in their writing skills, lower

"self-efficacy for writing" (SEWS), tended to use ChatGPT more extensively, while higher-efficacy students were more selective in Al reliance [19]. We refer the reader to the meta-analysis [20] on the effect of ChatGPT on students' learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking."

"Recent empirical studies reveal concerning patterns in how LLM-powered conversational search systems exacerbate selective exposure compared to conventional search methods. Participants engaged in more biased information querying with LLM-powered conversational search, and an opinionated LLM reinforcing their views exacerbated this bias [63]. This occurs because LLMS are in essence "next token predictors" that optimize for most probable outputs, and thus can potentially be more inclined to provide consonant information than traditional information system algorithms [63]. The conversational nature of LLM interactions compounds this effect, as users can engage in multi-turn conversations that progressively narrow their information exposure. In LLM systems, the synthesis of information from multiple sources may appear to provide diverse perspectives but can actually reinforce existing biases through algorithmic selection and presentation mechanisms.

The implications for educational environments are particularly significant, as echo chambers can fundamentally compromise the development of critical thinking skills that form the foundation of quality academic discourse. When students rely on search systems or language models that systematically filter information to align with their existing viewpoints, they might miss opportunities to engage with challenging perspectives that would strengthen their analytical capabilities and broaden their intellectual horizons. Furthermore, the sophisticated nature of these algorithmic biases means that a lot of users often remain unaware of the information gaps in their research, leading to overconfident conclusions based on incomplete evidence. This creates a cascade effect where poorly informed arguments become normalized in academic and other settings, ultimately degrading the standards of scholarly debate and undermining the educational mission of fostering independent, evidence-based reasoning."

"In summary, the Brain-only group's connectivity suggests a state of increased internal coordination, engaging memory and creative thinking (manifested as theta and delta coherence across cortical regions). The Engine group, while still cognitively active, showed a tendency toward more focal connectivity associated with handling external information (e.g. beta band links to visual-parietal areas) and comparatively less activation of the brain's long-range memory circuits. These findings are in line with literature: tasks requiring internal memory amplify low-frequency brain synchrony in frontoparietal networks [77], whereas outsourcing information (via internet search) can reduce the load on these networks and alter attentional dynamics. Notably, prior studies have found that practicing internet search can reduce activation in memory-related brain areas [831, which dovetails with our observation of weaker connectivity in those regions for Search Engine group. Conversely, the richer connectivity of Brain-only group may reflect a cognitive state akin to that of high performers in creative or memory tasks, for instance, high creativity has been associated with increased fronto-occipital theta connectivity and intra-hemispheric synchronization in frontal-temporal circuits [81], patterns we see echoed in the Brain-only condition."

"This correlation between neural connectivity and behavioral quoting failure in LLM group's participants offers evidence that:

1. Early Al reliance may result in shallow encoding.

LLM group's poor recall and incorrect quoting is a possible indicator that their earlier essays were not internally integrated, likely due to outsourced cognitive processing to the LLM.

2. Withholding LLM tools during early stages might support memory formation.

Brain-only group's stronger behavioral recall, supported by more robust EEG connectivity, suggests that initial unaided effort promoted durable memory traces, enabling more effective reactivation even when LLM tools were introduced later.

Metacognitive engagement is higher in the Brain-to-LLM group.

Brain-only group might have mentally compared their past unaided efforts with tool-generated suggestions (as supported by their comments during the interviews), engaging in self-reflection and elaborative rehearsal, a process linked to executive control and semantic integration, as seen in their EEG profile.

The significant gap in quoting accuracy between reassigned LLM and Brain-only groups was not merely a behavioral artifact; it is mirrored in the structure and strength of their neural connectivity. The LLM-to-Brain group's early dependence on LLM tools appeared to have impaired long-term semantic retention and contextual memory, limiting their ability to reconstruct content without assistance. In contrast, Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures."