the more I understand the role of AI as an assistive tool, the more I realize how much we need to be discussing it openly in those terms. how much we need to treat it like any other form of disability advocacy

and when you recognize AI as an assistive program, so much of this looks very different

What makes me sad about the AI art discourse is how it's so close to hitting something really, really important.

The thing is, while the problem with the models has little to do with IP law...the fact remains that art is often something that's very personal to an artist, so it DOES feel deeply, incredibly fucked up to find the traces of your own art in a place you never approved of, nor even imagined you would need to think about. It feels uncomfortable to find works you drew 10-15 years ago and forgot about, thought nobody but you and your friends cared about, right there as a contributing piece to a dataset. It feels gross. It feels violating. It feels like you, yourself, are being reduced to just a point of data for someone else's consumption, being picked apart for parts-

Now, as someone with some understanding of how AI works, I can acknowledge that as just A Feeling, which doesn't actually reflect how the model works, nor is it an accurate representation of the mindset of...the majority of end users (we can bitch about the worst of them until the cows come home, but that's for other posts).

But as an artist, I can't help but think...wow, there's something kind of powerful to that feeling of disgust, let's use it for good.

Because it doesn't come from nowhere. It's not just petty entitlement. It comes from suddenly realizing how much a faceless entity with no conscience, sprung from a field whose culture enables and rewards some of the worst cruelty humanity has to offer, can "know" about you and your work, and that new things can be built from this compiled knowledge without your consent or even awareness, and that even if you could do something about it legally after the fact (which you can't in this case because archival constitutes fair use, as does statistical analysis of the contents of an archive), you can't stop it from a technical standpoint. It comes from being confronted with the power of technology over something you probably consider deeply intimate and personal, even if it was just something you made for a job. I have to begrudgingly admit that even the most unscrupulous AI users and developers are somewhat useful in this artistic sense, as they act as a demonstration of how easy it is to use that power for evil. Never mind the economic concerns that come with any kind of automation - those only get even more unsettling and terrifying when blended with all of this.

Now stop and realize what OTHER very personal information is out there for robots to compile. Your selfies. Your vacation photos. The blog you kept as a journal when you were 14. Those secrets that you only share with either a therapist or thousands of anonymous strangers online. Who knows if you've been in the background of someone else's photos online? Who knows if you've been posted somewhere without your consent and THAT'S being scraped? Never mind the piles and piles of data that most social media websites and apps collect from every move you make both online and in the physical world. All of this information can be blended and remixed and used to build whatever kind of tool someone finds it useful for, with no complications so long as they don't include your copyrighted material ITSELF.

Does this mortify you? Does it make your blood run cold? Does it make you recoil in terror from the technology that we all use now? Does this radicalize you against invasive datamining? Does this make you want to fight for privacy?

I wish people were more open to sitting with that feeling of fear and disgust and - instead of viciously attacking JUST the thing that brought this uncomfortable fact to their attention - using that feeling in a way that will protect EVERYONE who has to live in the modern, connected world, because the fact is, image synthesis is possibly the LEAST harmful thing to come of this kind of data scraping.

When I look at image synthesis, and consider the ethical implications of how the datasets are compiled, what I hear the model saying to me is,

"Look what someone can do with some of the most intimate details of your life.

You do not own your data.

You do not have the right to disappear.

Everything you've ever posted, everything you've ever shared, everything you've ever curated, you have no control over anymore.

The law as it is cannot protect you from this. It may never be able to without doing far more harm than it prevents.

You and so many others have grown far too comfortable with the internet, as corporations tried to make it look friendlier on the surface while only making it more hostile in reality, and tech expands to only make it more dangerous - sparing no mercy for those things you posted when it was much smaller, and those things were harder to find.

Think about facial recognition and how law enforcement wants to use it with no regard for its false positive rate.

Think about how Facebook was used to arrest a child for seeking to abort her rapist's fetus.

Think about how aggressive datamining and the ad targeting born from it has been used to interfere in elections and empower fascists.

Think about how a fascist has taken over Twitter and keeps leaking your data everywhere.

Think about all of this and be thankful for the shock I have given you, and for the fact that I am one of the least harmful things created from it. Be thankful that despite my potential for abuse, ultimately I only exist to give more people access to the joy of visual art, and be thankful that you can't rip me open and find your specific, personal data inside me - because if you could, someone would use it for far worse than being a smug jerk about the nature of art.

Maybe it wouldn't be YOUR data they would use that way. Maybe it wouldn't be anyone's who you know personally. Your data, after all, is such a small and insignificant part of the set that it wouldn't be missed if it somehow disappeared. But it would be used for great evil.

Never forget that it already has been.

Use this feeling of shock and horror to galvanize you, to secure yourself, to demand your privacy, to fight the encroachment of spyware into every aspect of your life."

My Opinions on the AI Art Debate

I haven't waded into the AI art debate at all as yet, because I don't have a strong position on it. Frankly, it confuses me that so many people do, that this of all things is one of the big debates of the moment in Internet discourse. And so in lieu of a strong, clear personal opinion I have refrained from adding to the noise.

But I suppose I can say a couple of things.

ooooh meaty! a proper disagreement to sink my teeth in!

you are probably well aware i do have dissagreements, specifically with the "legal angle" section. im going to skip the whole debate of wether copyright should exist in the first place (it shouldnt, certainly not in its current shape) because i think that is an unsalvagable difference of perspective between us and also i am not at present as well prepared on the topic as id like i will focus on two points specifically.

1)

i guess my first question would be "why is it bad that AI gets trained on the work of others without their permission". you mentioned that "it felt bad" when someone "uploaded" the curious tale to an AI to ask questions of it (quick technical clarification, did they actually trained a neural network from scratch and included the work in the corpus of training? or did they merely put the thing inside the context window of an already existing AI, those are two different things, in the second case the AI will have no memory of the curious tale once the session is over) and furthermore that "For small artists who are just getting started [...] the sanctity of our art is often all we have."

im not sure that this sanctity is, well, sanct in the first place. im just not sure what is it protecting. there is a weird gross ugly feeling that certain artist get when their art is used without their permission in certain ways (ways that dont necesarily break copyright, mind you). i dont find this feeling compelling enough to make laws in order to stop that feeling from happening. it would be like making laws so that people cant be rude to other people on the street, or making laws so that you cant cheat on your girlfriend. there are some kinds of emotional discomfort i am not compelled by sufficiently that i would make laws, backed by the full power of the state, restricting the behaviors of others from causing that feeling. you yourself admitted you can live with that feeling.

if there are more material harms or objections here im not able to see them so that is the first thing id be interested in you providing.

2)

as for the argument that AI is taking inspiration from other people's works in the same way a human does, the point of that argument is specifically to say that AI is not plagiarizing

my second question is "how is it meaningfully different for an organic system to extract patterns and information from other people's work, recombining and applying that data to create new things, from a mechanical system doing the same, such that one is considered plagiarism (or otherwise breaking copyright) and the other is"

i dont argue that both of those processes are exactly the same in nature, obviously, we are made of meat, the AI is not. i do argue that the material nature of what is happening, if not the specifics, is similar enough in its end product (with the only difference being of quantity and speed) that i see no fundamental, philosophical difference between both of them that is making one break copyright law.

a human and a dishwasher are both at the end of the day washing dishes, and while i am not arguing, as you seem to claim, that the dishwasher should get all the same rights to personhood that a human does, i am saying that it should be legal to use a dishwasher to wash dishes since its already legal to use a human to do so.

the point is i dont care about the means by which something was achieved in order to consider two actions legally similar, i care about its results. wether you used a gun or a knife or your fists or a drone to kill someone, we can say that all these different actions are murder and so are fundamentally similar in that regard and so they should all be equally illegal under the cathegory of "unjustified killing of a person"

and in fact you yourself seem to agree with this since you are proposing that new laws and regulation systems should be put in place to stop people from using AI in this way, so you must be recognizing that is already legal and want, in fact, to make it illegal. or do you think that taking inspiration is in fact already illegal? is not too clear since at one point you say this:

this part in particular really confuses me, the argument im making IS that is not against the law, i dont see how it implies that its ok to break the law, its saying that one behavior does not break the law and so this other similar behavior is not breaking the law either.

I think there is a great tendency for people to underestimate the capabilities of the field of AI art by extrapolating from particular examples. AI art is an emerging field, and as I sought to express here, we as a society are still in the process of learning what it can accomplish with more or less difficulty. Personally, I see myself as an amateur AI artist, using cheap tools and basic skills to take baby steps into a complex and evolving field. The results tend to be the "easy" kinds of AI art to make, and while I seek to present them in ways that might expand people's ideas of what AI art can be, the resulting images themselves are this art form's equivalent of quick, unrefined sketches.

These types of "AI sketches" are many people's primary familiarity with AI art, and I think that can lead to unfair generalizations about the field's true potential. Compare, for example, to this work by OP, created carefully over the course of 7 hours. The notes contain a number of people appreciating it in spite of saying they otherwise dislike AI art, framing the piece as a unique exception - but I wonder how many other high-effort AI works they might like, given exposure to them. For another example, we can see this post, where AI haters repost a work uncredited because the poster does AI art, not realizing the image was one of their AI art works.

Now, these are still both cases where the artists did not choose every detail of the resulting images themselves. @thecurioustale, you mention disliking roguelikes for this reason. But consider that there are many, many forms of art where that same concern also applies. Photography, for example, or collage. Splatter art, and other forms of randomized art creation. Working with public domain assets, or other premade ones. These may not appeal to everyone, but from a broader perspective, AI art has just as much potential for meaning and status as art as any of those.

Even the act of commissioning another person to draw something means the result is not wholly the product of one or the other, but rather ideas shared and interpreted between them. And this kind of collaboration is part of so many larger artistic projects, which may involve many people! One of my favorite analogies for AI art is that it puts the prompter in the role of a director giving instructions to a team. The director is responsible for shaping the big picture, while many specifics are in the hands of the team.

As for the idea that human creators are doing something fundamentally different from AI, I think it's worth considering this comment by @weaselandfriends, in particular the conclusion:

And this is why your assertion that humans should not take inspiration from copyrighted works does not hold up. All of us subconsciously learn things from any work we encounter, including copyrighted ones, and we could not choose to be free from those influences. My writing certainly takes influence from copyrighted works, and I am sure yours does as well. Those influences can be too subtle to properly trace, but it is the same with those of an AI. The AI is ultimately doing the same thing as humans inherently do, and as Fip said, we do not have to treat humans and AIs as interchangeable in order to recognize that.

Re: blorbo from my research, here is my favorite ever case study. I'm obsessed with it.

Summary:

- Guy presents to neurology with muscle issues, very clearly has something going on but diagnostic tests are inconclusive

- History is mostly unremarkable. Key word, mostly. He drinks four liters of plain Earl Grey tea per day. For context this is nearly twice the recommended daily fluid intake. All fluids, to be clear, not just tea. He only drinks tea tho

- Bergamot is known to be phototoxic in high doses (reacts badly on your skin with sunlight)

- APPARENTLY nobody previously has consumed enough of it for it to be widely known that it is also, apparently, mildly toxic to ingest in high doses

- Guy starts drinking plain black tea again. Only 2 liters this time (he didn't have a medical reason to drink that much tea, he just liked it) and so now he's fully recovered

I never really thought about this before but "suffer in silence" is a Christian thing? It's supposed to be a virtue and you're generally criticized for complaining. Even the Pope called complainers "whiners," and said we should suffer in silent endurance (in a homily on May 7th, 2013).

I grew up soaking in that attitude, and I know I've internalized it a great deal. I'm working on recognizing it, but I still catch myself thinking that way all too often.

I'm reading Why Be Jewish? by Edgar Bronfman, and he takes a different view. Complaint is a Jewish pastime, he says, with biblical roots, and he points out that it's both natural and necessary: "...complaint arises from a sense of deep dissatisfaction. Without complaint, there is no criticism, there is no vision of the way things can be. Complaint is the beginning of the vision of a better world. It rejects complacency and it rejects the status quo."

It occurs to me that the social enforcement of "suffering in silence" serves the ends of capitalism quite effectively. I'm going to make a point to complain a little more and a little louder in the service of change.

You know, this is an interesting point, and my first thought was to nod along, like yeah, once you say it it’s totally obvious. And then I was like. You know what, on second thought I think I don’t agree at all?

On second thought, I really don’t think it’s about Jewish vs Christian at all in this case. (I know anyone who’s followed me for a bit is going to be shocked to hear me say that about something, lol.) I think it’s about different norms in different European subcultures.

I say this because my mom’s side are like Old German Jews. Like, the kind who brought the Haskalah Movement to the US in the early 1800s and turned it into American Reform Judaism in the mid 1800s. And my mom’s side? They’re all the stereotypical Stoic German type. They do not complain, or they only complain a little around close family.

My dad’s side, meanwhile, came from Hungary and Ukraine-via-Poland, they’re absolutely the stereotype the OP is talking about. Spend an hour with an older member of my dad’s side of the family and you’ll know everything about all their bodily functions and where they’re going wrong, and also what’s wrong with [everything about their professional specialty], and also politics. They complain in the way you always think of Jews complaining, yeah, but you know what? so do Christian immigrants from those places.

The thing is, when you think of American* stoicism, and where it’s strongest--especially like the Midwest--these are places that were settled by Germans and Scandinavians. Or the Boston blue bloods who were middle and upper class “stiff-upper-lip” British.

But then if you think of NYC, yeah, it’s a very Jewish city, but it’s also a very Italian city--and do you think of Italians, as a culture, as not complaining? But they’re also very Christian.

So yeah, I think it’s about different European regional subcultures having different norms about complaining. Jews--in this one respect anyway--mostly matched their local subculture. And then, largely by chance, the more “suffer in silence” regional subcultures were much more involved in colonizing/settling America. And the “complain at every opportunity as a basic mode of conversation” regional subcultures didn’t immigrate to America as much, and when they did it was mostly their Jewish populations that came over. So now complaining seems like a Jewish thing within the American context, but it’s just about historical flukes in goyishe vs Jewish immigration patterns.

* Why am I jumping to “American” here? Because about half the Jews in the world live in America, and most of the rest live in Israel. So if someone is doing a compare-and-contrast between Christian and Jewish culture they’re almost certainly talking about America, because hardly any other Christian-dominated countries have enough Jews to even reasonably have this conversion. (And the few that do, mostly it’s due to 20th century immigration from other places, so the same argument probably applies.)

You know what I realize that people underestimate with Pride & Prejudice is the strategic importance of Jane.

Because like, I recently saw Charlotte and Elizabeth contrasted as the former being pragmatic and the latter holding out for a love match, because she's younger and prettier and thinks she can afford it, and that is very much not what's happening.

The Charlotte take is correct, but the Elizabeth is all wrong. Lizzie doesn't insist on a love match. That's serendipitous and rather unexpected. She wants, exactly as Mr. Bennet says, someone she can respect. Contempt won't do. Mr. Bennet puts it in weirdly sexist terms like he's trying to avoid acknowledging what he did to himself by marrying a self-absorbed idiot, but it's still true. That's what Elizabeth is shooting for: a marriage that won't make her unhappy.

She's grown up watching how miserable her parents make one another; she's not willing to sign up for a lifetime of being bitter and lonely in her own home.

I think she is very aware, in refusing Mr. Collins, that it's reasonably unlikely that anyone she actually respects is going to want her, with her few accomplishments and her lack of property. That she is turning down security and the chance keep the house she grew up in, and all she gets in return may be spinsterhood.

But, crucially, she has absolute faith in Jane.

The bit about teaching Jane's daughters to embroider badly? That's a joke, but it's also a serious potential life plan. Jane is the best creature in the world, and a beauty; there's no chance at all she won't get married to someone worthwhile.

(Bingley mucks this up by breaking Jane's heart, but her prospects remain reasonable if their mother would lay off!)

And if Elizabeth can't replicate that feat, then there's also no doubt in her mind that Jane will let her live in her house as a dependent as long as she likes, and never let it be made shameful or awful to be that impoverished spinster aunt. It will be okay never to be married at all, because she has her sister, whom she trusts absolutely to succeed and to protect her.

And if something eventually happens to Jane's family and they can't keep her anymore, she can throw herself upon the mercy of the Gardeners, who have money and like her very much, and are likewise good people. She has a support network--not a perfect or impregnable one, but it exists. It gives her realistic options.

Spinsterhood was a very dangerous choice; there are reasons you would go to considerable lengths not to risk it.

But Elizabeth has Jane, and her pride, and an understanding of what marrying someone who will make you miserable costs.

That's part of the thesis of the book, I would say! Recurring Austen thought. How important it is not to marry someone who will make you, specifically, unhappy.

She would rather be a dependent of people she likes and trusts than of someone she doesn't, even if the latter is formally considered more secure; she would rather live in a happy, reasonable household as an extra than be the mistress of her own home, but that home is full of Mr. Collins and her mother.

This is a calculation she's making consciously! She's not counting on a better marriage coming along. She just feels the most likely bad outcome from refusing Mr. Collins is still much better than the certain outcome of accepting him. Which is being stuck with Mr. Collins forever.

Elizabeth is also being pragmatic. Austen also endorses her choice, for the person she is and the concerns she has. She's just picking different trade-offs than Charlotte.

Elizabeth's flaw is not in her own priorities; she doesn't make a reckless choice and get lucky. But in being unable to accept that Charlotte's are different, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Charlotte.

Because realistically, when your marriage is your whole family and career forever, and you only get to pick the ones that offer themselves to you, when you are legally bound to the status of dependent, you're always going to be making some trade-offs.

😂 Even the unrealistically ideal dream scenario of wealthy handsome clever ethical Mr. Darcy still asks you to undergo personal growth, accommodate someone else's communication style, and eat a little crow.

I love the additional points in the tags: #charlotte is a much less sociable person than lizzie#so avoiding her husband most of the time and not seeking out his company is more viable for her!#she also has more patience for people being wrong#partly i think because she kinds checks out and lets them get on with it which lizzie isn't too great at even with her mother#people have different needs like that's a thing okay#marriage#spinsterhood#pragmatism#like if elizabeth had to listen to collins talk for a few months straight she would be nearly insane with rage#he's not just a low-quality man he's a man designed to be the worst for her specifically#also note that because jane's marriage is elizabeth's fallback plan#darcy screwed her over personally by interfering between her and bingley#she ofc does not bring this up how could she#but it's intensifying the anger during the hunsford rejection i think

I hadn’t even thought about Jane being Lizzie’s fallback as an amplification to the anger at Darcy, but yes! I’m sure that “the happiness of a most beloved sister” is indeed foremost in her concerns on that - easily the most important thing - but I bet some subconscious anxiety is aggravating Lizzie’s anger here.

Worth saying every once in a while: parents are an oppressor class, the ur-oppressor class, and parental authority is the ur-authority. As has been so often said in science fiction and so little appreciated in everyday life, the responsibility that comes with creating life is grave, and such projects, if undertaken at all, should not be undertaken lightly. If you decide to do it you must be prepared to do it justly, and if you do not do it justly you are culpable. To act justly from a position of power means to relinquish that power whenever it is not disastrous to do so. Parents have a responsibility to work towards their children's safety and wellbeing and a greater responsibility to respect their children as people and to cede authority over their children's lives judiciously as this becomes viable in each domain.

The problem of just parenting is difficult and perhaps unsolvable, but I'm not an anti-natalist, so in the meantime we must settle for minimally unjust parenting. On a personal level, understand what a grave thing it is to take up the de facto authority of parenthood. On a political level, the power of parents as a class must be absolutely broken. Child liberation now.

That anarchist meme that says "the only authority I respect is my mom"? Fuck that meme. Your mom may be a good person and you may love her very much, and I support you in this, but she has no more justified authority over you than a cop or a teacher or anyone else. Free your mind.

you cannot all have been weird little girls btw. I know some of you were mostly normal and are just clout chasing

"I made 'potions' out of mud and leaves in the back yard, tee hee"

okay Sandra, you and everyone else. I'm going to need to hear some freakish shit from you immediately or you're out of the club

I love each and every one of you and I am making you all cups of your beverage of choice. okay. we would have been great friends in elementary school. but some of your tags are kind of proving my point.

"I pretended to be [animal] with my friends" “I ran on all fours” "I ate [non-edible substance]" “I collected [substance readily available outdoors]” "I thought I had [superpower]" “I had tea parties with [entity incapable of drinking tea]” “I pretended to be [creature that I am not]” “I made ‘potions’ out of [substance that can be readily found outdoors]”

these are all intensely common things for children to do. this is just having an imagination. this is simply being a child. now I call top bunk (I like climbing the ladder) and do you want to braid each other’s hair.

I'm like if a chivalrous knight kissed a fair maiden's hand and said "my lady, I fight for you" and then walked off and immediately tripped over his own armor and fell on the ground

#funny#if the lady's a keeper she would make a funny comment to dissipate the tension#'my good knight though I admire your skills you have no need to fight the whole earth for my sake'

This would be amazing.

Very cold take but the reason I think a lot of settler vegans view meat as murder (and therefore immoral) is because they cannot get past their colonial mindset of viewing all interactions as either consumption or domination instead of the reality of a vast web of mutually beneficial and self sustaining relationships with the ecosystem and eachother

I've never thought about it like this and it makes and incredible amount of sense. Western colonialism is intrinsically linked to Christianity as it's the religion that most colonizers identified with. Under Christianity, the idea is that humans were placed here by God as rulers of all other life. Because of this, Christians often have a hard time thinking about themselves as animals within an ecosystem instead of outsiders to the wilderness (which is also a concept linked to this mindset).

Going back to OP's original argument, modern day vegans are still influenced by the idea that humans are special beings that have the power to grant mercy to animals by not eating them. To them, it's not about living as a part of a food web in order to both survive and sustain one's environment. Because they view humans as outsiders, they consider it virtuous to abstain from animal products as if it were part of a completely different sphere.

Me when my players are trying to guess the answer to a puzzle

The reading comprehension on this website……….

i love stupid people more than anything ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

this is literally what it was like assisting at a preschool 💀

The addition of emojis like 🥰☺️💝 make these statements so much more potent

world heritage post

watching slayers

and Valgaav is the only Mazoku to actually use vast difference in speed to his advantage in combat. Even the power difference doesn’t matter since he can just jump around and bring them down with kicks and pulls and punches. Wait, he isn’t actually a mazoku. He’s a dragon. Maybe there are arbitrary limits on how mazoku can combat humans that hold them back and don’t hold back him? That’s the most logical explanation for Slayers combat I have so far…

He’s half mazoku half dragon actually

And I find Xel is the only one to use his speed a lot, too

Hmm. If anything, I think of Mazoku as speedsters based on specifically Xel/Valgaav fights... maybe they are the only two who can actually fight at that speed? I don't remember whether or not Xelloss used his speed when he opposed Lina's gang in Revo/Evo-R, but he mopped the floor with them regardless...

Thanks for reminding me of the half thing, but it doesn't change the point that being a dragon (or part dragon) gives him some advantage on the level of "game rules"... or maybe he and Xelloss are really the only ones who can teleport / move around with that frequency without being disoriented and needing time to "recharge" at least their attacks.

That would explain a lot... if I really did base my speed ideas purely on their fights and not what I'd seen of other Mazoku...

I just don't remember )=