"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/33936586
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Also; the reason why it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism is that ending the world actually is easier than ending capitalism.
I really disagree with this meme. For just one example, capitalism isnt why people are using ai to generate nudes of unwilling people and children. Without capitalism I do very much doubt AI would be where it is right now, but the cats out of the bag and it isnt going away if we didnt have capitalism.
That is unfortunately just human nature. The tool here is not to blame, but the person using it. People were making drawings of people unconsentually well before ai, then with the addition of photoshop the issue became even worse. Now AI is just the next step in allowing humans to follow their darker interests.
But the tool is so much more valuable than that.
If people think the big risk of AI is fake nudes... man, I wish that was the worst that could happen.
It doesn't solve the energy and emissions crisis we are facing but sure.
Nor does it resolve the inherent biases introduced by humans working on it
(the energy and emissions crisis are also byproducts of capitalism)
The Aral Sea is essentially gone and it was killed by poor Soviet planning. Capitalism was not the driving factor rather ignorance was and ignorance is held equally by all sides.
Capitalism isn’t the only thing driving environmental collapse. It’s industrialization
Okay Tyler Durden
Central planners in the Soviet Union didn't even have computers and they lacked the level of scientific understanding we have today of the environment, of our resources, and of the limits to growth. We've all heard about Mao killing the sparrows in China.
This isn't a reason to never try central planning again.
They don't disappear if capitalism disappears. I agree with you capitalism needs to end in order to deal with them but there are hard issues that we have to deal with even with capitalism gone.
Even if the causes ceased we would still be left with residual emissions and degraded natural systems to try and deal with and a lower EROI society to do it.
Completely untrue.
The environmental impact would still be as bad, it would still spout out misinformation, it would still scrape for art against people's will, the images would still be shit and not art anyway, and would still make an intellectual sinkhole.
It is not just Capitalism…is is centralization in all its forms. Too much power in the hands of the few always leads to poor outcomes for the many. This is bigger than Capitalism.
What market structure is a good model for decentralization? Socialism generally involves a central authority deciding on resource allocation, and most other approaches also have an emphasis on centralization.
I think you have to pick the low hanging fruit and go from there. For instance, we are here and already have made a small, but measurable dent to Reddit traffic. Imagine if everyone came over here, Reddit would no longer be viable as a profit company. Google would collapse if we all supported Peer Tube. Of course these are not going to change the world, but I am convinced if/when decentralization gets traction, we will find ways to implement it everywhere it makes sense. It is about balance as there are benefits to centralization and I am not suggesting everyone is decentralized, but right now the scales are out of balance and we have some tools to start to rebalance. We just have to want it. Well maybe need it which seems to be coming.
There is nothing in socialism that requires central planning. There are specific branches that do, but market socialism would, if anything, use it less than the current system.
Problem is that AI is going to be used to make it harder to overthrow capitalism. It’d be interesting to see the uses of AI in a world where it wasn’t being used to chip away at some of the last occupations where talent and skill mean anything.
Machine Learning is especially useful for many different kinds of research as an advanced mode of statistical analysis.
Text and image generation is not especially useful in any field other than to cut corners on paying human artists and writers and programmers to do the job properly.
Text and image generation are the ones that upset me. C-suite types (and their pettier, aspirational counterparts) don’t care about “art” - why publish a few good novels that you have to pay royalties on, when you can generate thousands? Even if they’re shit, there was zero effort on your part.
If you lack aesthetic appreciation - why would you bother hiring an artist for anything?
The wealthy of this era don’t seem to value art. Midjourney can make Kinkade knock offs faster than even Kinkade himself could. There’s not room in their world for Twombly’s and Motherwell’s - except perhaps as investment schemes.
It's also going to be used to eliminate positions where "talent" and "skill" aren't required, which is where a gigantic portion of a lot of countries populations work.
When ownership decides "I own the AI that run the factory and the AI inside the Robots that perform all the physical tasks in the factory, so why the fuck should any of my profit go to pay parasites on society?" that's when we get into the "let them all starve" portion of capitalism...
Unironically any good argument against AI boils down to an argument against capitalism. Every other one is horribly misinformed.
Crazy how my socialist world view gets proven right time after time. Reality really does have a left wing bias, huh?
Companies are the original AI. They turn humans into a machine that does whatever the owner want. Kind of like the dreaming humans in the Matrix movie.
I remember sitting in an art class where the teacher proclaimed using premixed black paint was improper: a true artist must mix their own black paint. I thought a lot about that when I first started using Photoshop and viewing digital art. I think about it now with AI.
Right now AI is a tool of MBAs who see it as a way to extract money from budgets by cutting costs on artists and writers. AI's only proper use is as a tool by artists and writers.
I disagreed with that teacher then, and still kinda do, but I understand them completely: they were focused on fostering the artistic drive of the creator and eschewing shortcuts. I just think the artistic drive includes so called shortcuts as there is no predefined or 'true' path to being an artist.
There are some really good quotes from famous painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saying that photography is devoid of all artistic merit, and that it should never and will never be taken seriously as an art form. Every time a new tool comes along, the art community freaks out. It happened with the invention of the camera, it happened with the invention of digital art software, and we are currently watching it happen with AI. Eventually, it'll just be another tool in an artists toolbox.
Uh... that's just plain wrong. Everyone who seeks power (read: all governments) will abuse this technology the exact same way they've abused every other technology which came before it.