FriendOfDeSoto

All the so-called AI companies are [expletive redacted] that often obtained their training data in questionable ways. And they should be sued and made to pay.

What is missing in my opinion from a lot of artists, who now hold one fist in the air and a pitchfork in the other marching on Silicon Valley, is an acknowledgement of risk that they took when they put their artwork themselves on the internet. The risk used to be other people could take, copy, duplicate it but this was balanced by being able to monetize it. That nothing that ends up online is ever safe was known two decades ago. If your stuff was stolen from galleries and coffee table books, I'm not talking about you. If you made your stuff available so search engines and social media sites could bring you costumers, you're it.

Also, why are companies able to obtain training data in "creative" ways? Because you and me and all of us like cutting corners and getting shit for free. So we steal, copy, duplicate, torrent stuff. Sure, point your finger at Facebook for torrenting together their model. Also point your finger at the people who provided the training data this way. Many people will end up pointing their fingers at themselves here.

I think the author invokes the Luddites and doesn't realize that we might just see history repeating. The Luddites were skilled artisans fighting against slave labor automization. They lost. Many were displaced by industrial progress, a smaller number remained. Fast forward to today and visual artists like the author fight the evil automated LLMs. They will also lose; a small number will prevail.

Every technical advancement has brought these upheavals and we are in one right now. There are far fewer landscape and portrait painters around today because they had to go Picasso or impressionist when photography rolled around. There are far fewer negative developer jobs these days as entry level jobs in photography because use of film has fallen off a cliff. We also have fewer manual typesetters and no cavalry to speak of. Shit changes. Shit is changing now.

Art will prevail. Human made one will be sought after. But there market will not be the same. The only thing we can do now is trying to catch all those people and jobs this technological leap will shuffle loose. Like we tried our best with coal miners or factory jobs that went to China.

I don't think the author likes mastodon dot social...

I couldn't get through all of this blog post because it's repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what's missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don't dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It's still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one's instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I'm not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It's just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

I don't hate so-called AI per se. I see great use cases for people with disabilities. There are promising signs of it improving medical diagnoses (under properly tested conditions). I think even in my life I will learn to use some of the tools. Eventually. I try to avoid it right now as much as I can.

I hate the people peddling so-called AI as the solution to all problems, including already solved problems. I hate the mad rush on it because it risks negating all the positive greenhouse emission savings we have managed to get done. It will probably incur a greater water debt, i.e. more drinking water future generations will be forced to desalinate if they want to live. And it will make the next computing device you want to buy mad expensive because of the RAM shortage. I hate that this rush is a bubble that may not burst but drives prices up.

If I understand this correctly, what they need is an AI that can also drink a lot of beer! Solving two problems in one fell swoop. But where is Silicon Valley on this front? Nowhere. Sad!

This is sign that Google is worried that a market of 500 million people could decide to move away from the US tech giants. Very worried, judging by this flimsy fear-driven argument. Good.

I sympathize with your point of view here. I feel like that ship has sailed though. Messaging is the preferred means. That ship is not coming back any more.

Email is not well protected unless you and everybody communicating with you is taking extras precautions. Signal is E2E encrypted, WhatsApp also but owned by Meta so barf, Telegram's encryption status is complicated but probably better than plain email. There is a privacy advantage.

I treat instant messages that have the content of an email as such. I'll reply in my own time. Just because I got it instantly doesn't mean I need to act on it right away. I have some groups and contacts muted and have set quiet hours on my phone for evenings and nights. My advice is to look for ways to manage the stress you feel about this. That could mean going off the chat apps all together but I think you can also tweak settings and your behavior.

Two factors play into this. 1) This hype has been around long enough to have planned, built, and put online new data centers. So the bottlenecks some providers had in the early days have widened already. And 2) they need capacity for training more than using the models.

Background: it is already forbidden for members of the state parliament to display written or symbolic political messages on their clothing while working on the premises. There was a case where a member wore a shirt displaying something from the late Mr. Kirk - you may guess what side of the political spectrum he is on. He was reprimanded and fully covered the shirt under his suit jacket. But later images circulated from that day that showed the written message on the shirt while he was wearing his jacket on the premises; those images were apparently doctored by "AI." As a result parliament will add wording to their house rules banning such manipulation, threatening to suspend MPs who are violating this new rule.

I initially suspected this state assembly banned this for the whole state but it just applies to MPs. Nevertheless they claim to be the first to introduce such rules.

Just to translate this headline: "State assembly in Baden-Wuerthemberg (Southwest Germany) prohibits any "AI" fakes in connection with what is taking place at its public meetings" (i.e. committees and plenar sessions)

(Annotations) by me; ~~didn't read the article yet.~~ please see summary in the reply.

Astin's "major warning" is a summary of all already known and articulated concerns surrounding the introduction of so-called AI in the entertainment industry. The only thing I personally learned from reading this is that he is the president of the union.

You'd be surprised how many people don't take the time to read a long article like that but will have a quick glance at the comments.

Again, our proposal isn’t that we should cover all of this land in solar panels, or that it could easily power the world on its own. We don’t account for the fact that we’d need energy storage and other options to make sure that power is available where and when it’s needed (not just when the sun is shining).

This is a thought experiment more than a plan.