#AI has a very limited value

[ffcrazy15]

Adam Conover did a good video on this recently. The whole thing is beginning to look a lot like a "line must go up" housing-crash bubble. Worthless things being hyped up and sold as valuable things doesn't actually make them valuable, and sooner or later people figure that out and the value plummets back to its actual worth.

Thankfully they think it won't tank as much of the country as the 2008 housing bubble did because it's not so integrated into our economy, but still. Tech-hype growth has been an unsustainable investor-fed ponzi scheme all along. There is no such thing as permanent exponential growth. It doesn't exist. And unless they invent the damn holodeck in the next year or two, it's going to become clear that they've got nothing consumers would want, their whole house of cards is going to fall a part, and a shitton of ordinary people in Silicon Valley are going to lose their jobs.

(full article here)

[dirty-bear-rick-sanchez]

Crazy that in Raising Gazorpazorp Rick turned down mojitos. They had their alcoholic character refuse cocktails.

it’s kind of like the ‘I can’t believe this country hates women more than it loves guns’ subplot from Bojack Horseman but with alcohol.

[theogonies]

what they look for in a partner ft. the cast of touchstarved

characters: ais, mhin, vere, kuras, & leander

word count: 2k

content warnings: some suggestive elements but nothing explicit, mentions of corruption kinks (ais), brat taming (kuras), and light exhibitionism (vere and leander), leander is a little emotionally manipulative

AIS.

Considering his relationships with MC and Vere, it's not exactly a secret that Ais has a thing for brats. He loves teasing, and wants a partner who can keep up with him, giving as much as they get. He's all about the thrill of the chase, learning exactly which buttons to press to get you flustered--so don't make it too easy on him.

Surprisingly, he's not usually the one to make the first move. He'll flirt, but struggles to take initiative when things start to feel too real for his comfort.

He finds people who can find a cool head in moments of crisis insanely attractive. Whether it's pulling him back when he's about to pick a stupid fight or constructing a perfect alibi on the spot when you find yourself in trouble, the contrast between your self-control and his impulsivity always gets him itching to push your limits even further.

Humans and Monsters alike, he's grown accustomed to the absolute devotion of his followers. So being around someone who isn't constantly bowing and scraping to him is a refreshing change of pace.

He still greatly values loyalty, and it's something that he's more than willing to return--he's a ride or die type of guy. What he's not interested in is empty flattery; telling it like it is is, in his eyes, a much more valuable kind of devotion than total obedience.

I definitely think he's got a bit of a corruption kink, and is drawn to people with a more innocent, even naive personality--easier to get them flustered that way. More importantly, though, he enjoys the interplay between his impulsivity and his partner's willingness to stick by their personal code of ethics, no matter how impractical. For all the teasing he does, he has a very deep and genuine admiration for people with strong moral principles and sense of self.

The only thing he loves more than drawing out your hedonistic side is knowing that he's the only one who can do it. It's a very specific, psychological kind of possessiveness, knowing that you want him enough to show him the greedy, impure side of yourself that you hide so carefully from the rest of the world.

On the other hand, narcs are a major turn off. It's one thing to tell him off for fucking up, and another entirely to get others involved. He fantasizes about a Bonnie and Clyde, us against the world type of love.

MHIN.

Another one who isn't particularly subtle about what it takes to get them heated. Mhin loves it when you can keep up with their acerbic personality. Even more than sharp tongues, they're drawn to people who are physically assertive enough to follow through on their threats.

Mhin is all bark and no bite, a fact that they're very much aware of. Deep down, they desperately want to feel safe and protected. It's not exactly that they're insecure; they don't have any hang ups about their own strength. But it's exhausting to keep their guard up all the time. So, they figure that their perfect match is their perfect equal--and 90% of their bluster is just that, a test so see who's willing to break past their emotional barriers and strong enough to keep up with them.

They're a switch, and definitely have a thing for size difference. One of their biggest fantasies is dominating a partner who's bigger than themself.

One of Mhin's most immediate turn-offs is people who look too clean and polished all the time. They're enamored by scarring and callouses--basically, the physical traces of a person's life, especially those associated with hard work. They're not particularly interested in fashion or flashy clothes, either; rather than being with someone who's always up on the latest styles, they admire those who know how to make things last, and who would rather underdress than overdress.

It's not hard to get them flustered. Put them in a good ol' fashioned kabedon, whisper simple praises in their ear, and they'll absolutely melt (not that they would ever admit that to you, of course). Mhin's affection is very subtle, blink and you'll miss it (they're big on acts of service, and usually quite sneaky about it), but they like partners who are more forward than themself, whether verbally or physically.

While they are a loving partner (once you break past those oh-so-strong emotional walls), Mhin isn't a super relationship-oriented person. They have goals of their own outside of romance, and would prefer to be with someone who feels the same way, supporting each other in the pursuit of their own, independent dreams.

VERE.

It's not exactly that Vere is a commitment-phobe. When he falls for someone, he falls fast and hard, and he's never been one to be secretive about his feelings. But he views relationships of all kinds--platonic, romantic, sexual, even antagonistic--with a kind of levity that can be offputting to many. Love, to him, is a game, and he has zero interest in dropping out of the race the moment he takes the lead, so to speak.

Even in a committed, monogamous relationship, Vere is a flirt and a bit of a player--with his partner and outsiders alike. In his eyes, it's not a sign of disloyalty, but rather, a way of keeping the spark alive. Possessiveness is an immediate dealbreaker for him (although he's not opposed to a good ol' jealousy fueled romp in the sheets--that's half the fun of teasing).

Vere tends to bottom more often than he tops, but he's attracted to switches far more than he is fully dominant types. He likes having dynamic interplay in a relationship, especially sexual, and wants to be with someone that isn't content with always falling back into the same old routines.

Physical attraction is very important to Vere, although he doesn't necessarily require that his partner is conventionally attractive. He's especially drawn to unique senses of style and physical traits--a particularly intense look in a person's eyes, a scar or blemish that gives their face an interesting character, even an interesting tilt to the way they hold themself. The only thing he loves more than standing out in a crowd on his own is hanging off the arm of someone who does the same, intentionally or not.

He likes to imagine himself and his partner as a power couple--the two most powerful personas in the room, the ones that everyone else wants to either fuck or become.

While he is very attracted to confidence, there's a bit of a feedback loop here, because he's also extremely good at psyching up his partner's self-image--stick with Vere long enough, and it's hard not to see yourself as someone powerful and desirable.

Massive tit guy. 'nuff said.

KURAS.

Kuras is also attracted to oddballs and quirky types, although unlike Vere, he's not super interested in physical appearance or their ability to stick out in a crowd. He's much more drawn to interesting personalities: people with unique tics, speech patterns, responses, and the like.

His favorite part of relationships (sexual, romantic, and otherwise) is gradually learning what makes the other person tick, so unless he gets the sense that there's something interesting lingering under the surface, it can be hard to get his attention. He needs to feel like there's some kind of puzzle to be solved, and a tricky one at that.

On the other hand, once his curiosity has been captured, he's an incredibly attentive partner--even if it's not entirely unlike the kind of attention an entomologist would give a bug under the microscope.

He's also drawn to outspoken, forthright personalities to counter his more polite and subdued persona. There's something he finds incredibly amusing about a person who speaks their mind even when they know it'll get them into trouble.

For that reason, Kuras is, much like Ais, attracted to bratty types. Unlike Ais, he expects them to learn the rules at some point down the line. While his form of discipline is a gentle, cool-headed one, he still views himself as more of a teacher than a playmate.

He very much prefers to feel in control of a given situation (even if that isn't immediately obvious in the way he presents himself). It can make him stubborn, to the extent that he'll reject the advances of a person he's interested in just because he wants to be the one to confess.

While this characteristic can make him come across as rather clinical in his approach, it gets its chance to shine when paired with his detail-oriented nature. From a grand confession of love to a simple weeknight dinner date, he's extremely methodical about preparing the perfect romantic atmosphere for his partner's tastes, from the locale and decor to the scent of his cologne.

While his partner needn't necessarily come across as kind at first impression, it is deeply important to Kuras that they have a good, generous heart. All the better if he gets to be the one to make them feel safe showing it to the world.

He likes 'em a little clingy and needy, too. Independence isn't necessarily a turn-off, but he needs to feel like all the effort he puts in is appreciated, or he'll move on to some other curiosity.

LEANDER.

We all know that this man loves to flirt, and in a much more grandiose, romantic sense of the word than Vere or Ais at that. In the same way that he gets a bit of a rush putting his strength to use in a fight, he likes using his charm and good looks to get a reaction out of people.

That's not to say his teasing is ingenuine; Leander comes on strong because he knows what he's looking for, from his partner's looks and the way they carry themself in a crowded room to the way they respond to his advances. He wants to be with someone who'll fall as fast and hard as he does, and as manipulative of a tactic as it may be, he's willing to put on the mask of a romantic until he finds the one that responds in kind.

Leander doesn't play games. Once he commits himself to a person, that's it. His absolute devotion is yours, and he expects that loyalty to be returned. Some of his biggest turn-offs are people who don't seem sure of what they want, or who won't express their feelings to him straightforwardly. He'll put up with some level of shyness, but too much beating around the bush and he starts to feel more like a therapist than a partner.

Total ass man. He has no compunctions about grabbing it in public to get a rise out of you--not to mention how utterly shameless he is behind closed doors.

He also really likes long hair. He has a lot of restless energy and tends to fidget when forced to stay still for long periods of time, so playing with your hair is one of his favorite ways to calm his mind. Braiding it and running his hands through it if it's straight, or spiraling your curls around his fingers--he doesn't mind either way, just wants it silky-soft and long enough to play with. (He also loooooves helping you wash and care for it.)

He's very physically affectionate in private, and even more so in public. He likes showing his partner off, and being shown off by them. To some this might make him come across as rather shallow (his favorite date nights involve going to bars or out dancing--anywhere that gives him the opportunity to turn some heads), but to him, it's a way of demonstrating that no matter how many may want him, he's decided you're the only one deserving of his attention.

[c-53]

The difference in how all of the ai handle Mjolnir is very amusing.

Leela does everything in her power to assure you are being sent where you can do the most good. You’re her only ally left, and she wants to keep you safe and as well armed as her limited capabilities can allow, but does think you are just as ready to sacrifice yourself for this victory as she is.

Durandal considers you his unkillable one man army. His most powerful and most valued asset. He revels in sending you into the worst of it, setting you loose where you can do the most damage, and hand feeding you the tools to make the carnage possible. You’re entertaining, and he makes it VERY clear every other asset he has is disposable EXCEPT for you. You’re his favorite

And then Tycho has absolutely NO faith in you and is like ‘2 clips of pistol ammo should be enough, you’re just going to be hiding behind my Hunters anyway. I hope you die. You better not die. Oh shit um you’re all I’ve got left.. uh. Favor for a favor?’

[rubyfunkey]

Exactly one person asked me to share my thoughts on Leander so here's all the notes I've been taking and thoughts I've had since playing the demo a billion times (not all of these are polished thoughts some are simply just observations that i think might be important to understanding him)

- Leander seems to value information the most out of all the LIs

     - He is the only LI that asks the MC what they think about everyone

      - He asks the most questions

      - He repays the MC for their information by providing them with room and board

- Leander sways the MC's opinion

      - When discussing Vere, no matter what the MC says about him, Leander makes it clear that getting close to Vere is a bad idea, and that he is a very dangerous individual. Notably, he says "-but like any monster, he's dangerous." which seems to conflict with how he views Ais, despite both being monsters.

      - When discussing Ais, when the MC mentions that they met him at the Seaspring, Leander chokes on his drink. If the MC states that Ais was upfront, Leander asks if the price of the Seaspring's effects seem worth it, and implies that he views Ais's "red-eyed minions" as another form of pet that Ais keeps. The topic seems to upset him so deeply that he requests a change of subject. If the MC states that Ais was intimidating, his reaction is almost the complete opposite, almost pleasant, and the subject of the Seaspring drops entirely. When asked if Leander is afraid of Ais, he says not at all, and explains that he sees the two of them as rivals. The MC worries if being rivals with a monster is smart, and Leander downplays the seriousness of it, saying that Ais isn't a bad guy. To me, when paired side-by-side, these two interactions read as Leander trying to sway the MC away from the Seaspring, or maybe even Ais himself. His reaction to knowing that the MC is intimidated by Ais is casual and amused, because he doesn't need to say anything else about it; The MC is already scared of Ais. If the MC WASN'T intimidated by Ais when choosing to say the former option, they probably would have been at least a little more apprehensive after seeing Leander's reaction to the Seaspring's effects.

- When discussing Kuras, regardless of what dialogue option the MC chooses, Leander seems to think fondly of him, with the exception of his bedside manner. If the MC chooses to say that Kuras seems like a good person, they will then ask Leander if he believes that Kuras could cure them. When asked this, Leander's face will drop*, and he will pause before responding, saying that Kuras is good, but he's "only a doctor". If the MC states that they found Kuras to be cold, Leander heartily agrees, saying that "he never warns you when something's gonna sting, and he's stingy with the pain medicine too". His response to both options is mostly the same, what caught my eye was his reaction to asking whether or not Kuras could cure us. Maybe he has some bitter experience with the limitations of Kuras's capabilities, or maybe he just doesn't want to entertain the possibility of the MC seeking assistance from someone outside of himself. Considering his response to hearing that you visited the Seaspring while meeting Ais, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

*I’m not sure how reliable the sprite expressions are re: understanding character motivation, but I’m going to use them anyway. With a grain of salt.

- When discussing Mhin, if the MC chooses to say that Mhin seems lonely, Leander states that he believes that Mhin actually prefers things that way, and goes on to say that if Mhin wanted to be our friend, we would know. If the MC chooses to say that they find Mhin to be irritable, Leander simply agrees, saying that even paying Mhin for work can be a struggle. His responses while discussing Mhin aren't as foreboding, but they don't really need to be. Leander seems to shoot down any hope the MC may have of being close to Mhin, and if they don't show interest in befriending Mhin, then there's nothing more to say.

- Leander is "friends" with everyone, but has something to say about each LI that makes them seem unpleasant or even dangerous to be around

- Leander is the only LI whose silhouette is unaltered

      - "not all monsters are inhuman"

- When selecting Leander on the Choose Your Fate screen, the description reads: 

Leander offers you something that should be impossible: a taste of normalcy free of your curse. As the first person to withstand your touch, he could change your life, but some things are simply too good to be true.

      - When discussing the Senobium with Leander, Leander states "things that seem too good to be true are often just that". He then proceeds to offer himself as "something that should be impossible" for the MC, as the Choose Your Fate screen says.

- LEANDER is an ASSHOLE

      - During the scene where Leander is asking you to show him the curse, regardless of whether or not you hold back or choose to trust him, he will grab your hand to prevent you from pulling away. IF YOU CHOOSE TO HOLD BACK, his grip is tight, his face falls, he takes a deliberate step closer, and even reaches for the MC's throat causing the player to worry that they've just ruined him and are now going to get choked out for the second time that day as a result... He then smiles and says he's just fine. I've seen a few people stating that they believed this was the curse beginning to take effect before he managed to push it away, but personally, i think he was just being an asshole. Like, some small punishment for you not trusting him like he asked you to. A silly little guy moment. I hope he chokes

     - When first mentioning the Senobium to Leander, his face falls, but he doesn't immediately comment, instead he continues to drink, ignoring the fact that his Bloodhounds have begun verbally accosting you. He only speaks up and snaps at them once he notices you're looking. The first couple times I read this part, Leander's response seems uncharacteristically snide in comparison to how he acts for the rest of the demo, which is NOT me saying he's been written inconsistently, it is me saying he is fake as hell. I hate this dude

- He seems genuinely concerned when asking the MC if they're alright after their run-in with the roughneck. When he asks them if they'd like a drink, he orders the same as them regardless of what they choose. He doesn't do this when you first meet him, he orders beer regardless of your choice. I don't know if this is important to my research. Compels me though

- "Acquaintances are merely friends you haven't shared a drink with yet" -Guy That Has No Friends

Here is a small list of things I believe I could confidently conjure some bullshit out of upon further research (or with enough imagination):

- The Bloodhounds' motto (As Above, So Below)

- Leander's earring. Maybe.

- Leander's quote, "They [flowers] don't last long, but they leave an impression"

- Another quote, "There are solutions to every problem, and alternatives to every solution"

- The ouroboros on Leander's Kickstarter charm

- The fact that Leander likes masquerades and hates sleep

Here is a list of things relating to what the other four LIs think about Leander that caught my attention:

- Literally everything that Vere said

      - Vere either has history with Leander that neither of them have talked about (unlikely given how "subtle" Leander was about his relations with Mhin), or Vere is able to read Leander in a way that the others either can't or don't make known to the MC. Vere clearly has sharp senses and sees through the MC like they're made of water, I'm not sure if this is just a thing for the MC but it could probably be assumed that he sees things in Leander that we can't.

- Ais' comment about Leander's resolve

- I could pretend like something Mhin said re: Leander interested me, but I don't think there was any deeper context to their words other than the not-at-all-subtle feelings of forced-down affection and open annoyance. Love Mhin though

- My thoughts on what Kuras had to say are similar to Mhin's, he seems to be fond of Leander and didn't have much untoward to say, unless you count what he said about the company that Leander keeps

I have no idea what's going on with this man. I believe that he may be involved in some harmful magick-y malarky that is having unseen and horrific effects, or maybe he's simply a charismatic manipulator whose personality is just as monstrous as his peers. I have silly little theories but I would be very shrimpterested in hearing what other people have to say.

TLDR; there's something WRONG with this man and I will be spending the next two years crafting a version of him in my brain that is almost certainly dead-wrong but goodness won't it be fun

[anam-mana]

I’m gonna be honest guys, I don’t think Leander is or will develop into a Yandere.

Do I think he is a monster and there’s something very dark and disturbing about him as a person. Yes. All the clues point in that direction. But I don’t think he has any interest in limiting the freedom of the MC in the ways yandere’s usually do.

For one, the first thing Leander does after learning about our curse is send us out into the city by ourselves literally encouraging us to “explore” in his words. And if you say that went badly for you later his response is not to suggest you should have stayed, but rather to suggest he go with you next time.

He hates and is disgusted by what is being done to Vere. And is equally disgusted by the idea of people being bound to a group mind instead of being allowed to live individually by their own singular will, in the case of discussing the Seaspring. Which, along with the fact that Leander is described as “rebellious” by Red Spring Studio, suggests that he values individuality and freedom for others, as well as for himself.

And to top it all off, Leander in his last seen with the MC, when asked if he’s recruiting them into the Bloodhounds, answers “not yet.” Because, he want’s the MC to find and choose their own path first. Which indicates that clearly the high value he puts on free will extends to the MC.

The only thing that really indicates towards him being a yandere would be that he has a jealous streak, as indicated by both his quiz results and his insisting HE be the one to get you a drink instead of Ais. But there are plenty of jealous character in the world that aren’t yanderes. There are even characters who are EXTREMELY jealous but don’t ever hit yandere territory. So I don’t find his jealousy to be red flag to a yandere nature as much as I find it to be a red flag about his personality.

I think what makes Leander a monster is probably much more nuanced, because thus far, the hints that he may not be who he presents himself as to us are themselves very nuanced.

Or, it could be worse than that, as my theory is that he is both a monster AND exactly who he presents himself as. He is a man who would crush a skull, AND the man who would hold your hand to soothe you because he knows you’re starved for touch. He is a man capable of unspeakable cruelty, AND untold amounts of kindness. He is a monster, AND he is just human. And sometimes humans are monstrous.

To me, that’s what Leander appears to be, and I find that both deeply compelling and horrifying.

Anyways, he’s my fav and I love him.

[secretmellowblog]

I hope tumblr doesn’t die because No other social media site is as good for long, thoughtful, nuanced analyses of media. Yeah tumblr is also full of dumb shallow hot takes and shitposts, but you can make dumb shallow hot takes and shitposts anywhere —-there are no other popular social media sites that let you easily format and share long essays on the media you enjoy, and then have conversations around those long essays.

Fandom on all the other big social websites just seems so utterly …shallow. And it’s not because people on other websites aren’t thoughtful or don’t have deep things to say, but because these sites’ formats do not allow for any kind of long nuanced conversations.

Tiktok? Things have to be crammed into a super short video with an attention grabbing headline, and you can’t hyperlink sources. Instagram? Everything has to be in an image format with strict limits on length, and nothing will be shown to your followers anyway because of how Instagram’s algorithm works, and also no hyperlinks. Twitter? Strict character limits, and if you split it into threads it means someone can retweet a part of your essay completely out of context, and also very little freedom with formatting.

It frustrates me so much. If I go into the Tumblr Les Mis fandom I’ll find really compelling long essays on the original novel (including essays being written for the ongoing book club) on the story’s historical context, or the parallels between different characters and their narrative foils, or the way the politics were defanged for certain adaptations, or the way Victor Hugo’s personal life and failings affected the novel. But on tiktok I’ll get the same five shallow stale jokes from 2013 over and over, or maybe the same “DID U KNO THAT IN THE MUSICAL JAVERT AND VALJEAN SING THE SAME LEITMOTIF” style of basic Intro To Les Mis 101 For Babies media analysis (which is what Tiktok considers deep media analysis), or stale “LOL JAVERT ACTS GAY” style jokes as if we’re living in the early 2000s and calling a character gay is still a funny punchline. And it’s impossible to have any kind of deeper thoughtful discussions than “DID U KNOW <x Kool Fact>” or “lol <shallow observational joke>” on tiktok because the platform just isn’t built for building niche communities around in depth conversations. it’s built to churn out bland generic content for as wide an audience as possible, which means pointing out a small detail like an Easter egg and calling it “cool” is deep media analysis, because you cant have longer more in depth conversations without alienating people. And I hate it. Bc like, it’s not because there aren’t smart clever thoughtful people on Tiktok— there are—it’s because Tiktok isn’t built for these conversations, and anyone who wants to have them has to really fight against the things the website encourages or prioritizes!

Or like, if I go into the LOTR fandom on Tumblr, I’ll find tons of extremely long analysis and fanfic, and analysis of queer readings of the story. On Instagram people will still shriek in terror if you suggest the characters are gay, and most of the popular lotr posts are stale memes recycled from like 2007. There’s really no room for thoughtful media analysis, and even if you did create it, instagram’s algorithm would make sure no one saw your post anyway.

And everyone’s going to say “the algorithm shows you what you’ve seen before so maybe it’s your fault ~” or whatever but i do look for things I want! I do! “The algorithm” doesn’t know me or what I want or value or care about beyond this meaningless surface level.

The only thing that was worthwhile about these sites was the great visual art people were creating, but now the websites are overwhelmed with meaningless soulless machine-generated AI glurge, and it sucks. It just really, really sucks.

I’m honestly confused about why people don’t use tumblr….There’s no character limits! You have freedom with post formatting, and can insert images throughout textposts to illustrate specific points you’re making beneath the paragraphs where they’re necessary! You can add hyperlinks, linking to your sources! People can reblog your entire essay and share it, and then add on with commentary that then becomes part of a larger conversation! People can find your stuff through the tagging system! Reblogging means posts stay in circulation for years instead of being dead 30 minutes after they’re uploaded! If you want to have genuinely interesting text conversations about a piece of media, there really isn’t a better social media website for it anywhere.

To be clear, I’m definitely not saying Tumblr media analysis is *always* clever and thoughtful or etc etc. there are shitposts and nonsense here too (plenty of which I’ve created lol.) I’m saying that Tumblr gives people the tools for in-depth insightful analysis to happen. Whether people choose to do it or not is their own decision XD. But the reason lengthy in-depth conversations and book clubs are even possible here is because Tumblr is built for allowing these conversations to happen, in a way other sites simply aren’t.

It’d really suck if it died, because it’d be a huge blow to…being able to easily find long insightful in-depth media analysis written by fans. I currently don’t think there’s anything that could replace it.

[procrasimnation]

Some thoughts on the discourse around inZOI, which no-one asked for:

I don't think it's currently easy to quantify how much more wasteful normal consumer AI use is than playing a cloud-based game, particularly given that many people play these games for hours at a time. There is probably more noise around the energy cost of AI versus the energy cost of cloud-based gaming because people don't like generative AI for other reasons (many of which are valid). I am not criticising this, it's just how humans work and it is not a bad thing if this is the issue which causes someone to look more closely at the regulation (or lack thereof) of data centres for the first time.

There may be uses of generative AI that would justify the energy cost (noting this should still be accompanied by meaningful regulation of the impact of these data centres), but there is very little social value or use in being able to have whatever pattern you can imagine on an object in a game. My personal view is that the appropriate extra energy cost of implementing it is 'basically zero.' It seems unlikely this is the case, particularly if the AI feature means the game needs to be cloud-based. However, I do accept it's possible I casually use online infrastructure with equally bad use-to-cost value and societal impact.

There are obvious ethical and IP issues around the datasets that AI is trained on and inZOI have been evasive on this issue to date. While the Sims has a thriving community of people just grabbing textures that others have created online and sticking them on objects, there is a difference in impact and scale between FreePatreonModder1004 sticking a t-shirt with a stencil they yanked off deviantart up for their audience of 150 people and a corporation making it a selling point of their game. In those cases where AI is being used unethically, energy cost isn't really a factor in the same way because you just shouldn't do it lol.

I don't like the partnership with Curseforge, for obvious reasons. There's a limit to how far I can take this point because EA partnered with them too (although that started before their donations came to light and I'm not convinced it is still ongoing) and I'm here shilling their product like a goon every day, but it's there.

[ot3]

ok i think you have really good, reasonable, down-to-earth takes across the board, but your ai perspective is genuinely very confusing to me and i would love your help in understanding. especially wrt your last post. to reiterate: you are saying that people who hate ai art should also hate game consoles and off-season produce, and that hating ai art betrays a hypocritical attitude toward what forms of labour deserve protection and value? if i have this wrong please correct me!

if i have that write, then if i can ask in good faith: how is it that ai art generators can be seen as equivalent to gaming consoles and off-season produce? do you mean from a tech perspective or a labour perspective? i understand neither. gaming consoles are machines - designed and made by humans - designed to run games - games that were made by (typically) huge human labour forces and artists and writers and designers. off-season produce is able to be grown thanks to technology - but still has to be grown and watered and harvested by human labour. midjourney is a computer program, admittedly designed by people, yes, that then goes and autonomously scrapes data off the internet (“data” here being art and photography created by humans) to then autonomously spit own a hashed together image when prompted. without appropriate compensation for the people whose art and photography has been included in such a dataset, i do not see how they might count as similar to the greenhouse farmers or console designers. i am sincerely clueless as to how something like midjourney entails equivalent labour worthy of equivalent protection as items made or grown by hand, or how disliking ai art, and feeling uncertain about what it might mean for human labour the future, is hypocrisy. are you able to clarify any of this?

i'm not saying that people who hate ai should also hate video game consoles or out of season fruit. im saying that people who look at ai and see something that is fundamentally incapable of being interesting or enjoyable because it existing involved stealing the labor of Creatives seem not to care as much about the labor theft that goes into providing them with other luxury goods. i picked out game consoles and out of season fruit as my specific examples here because they're things people could easily choose to live without.

without appropriate compensation for the people whose art and photography has been included in such a dataset, i do not see how they might count as similar to the greenhouse farmers or console designers.

this is the part where we're not quite on the same page, i believe. the point i was trying to make is that the people who are responsible for making your consoles and for making sure your grocery store has produce are not adequately compensated either. they just aren't. i'm not talking about engineers who design consoles or people running greenhouses, i'm talking about miners, factory workers, and agricultural laborers.

the metals for your console were mined by someone whose labor is exploited. the console was assembled by people whose labor was exploited. the fruit from the greenhouse was planted by someone whose labor was exploited, tended to by someone whose labor was exploited, and then harvested by someone whose labor was exploited.

i don't think there's anything wrong with disliking ai art or feeling unsure about where it leaves human artists. i think that's a completely natural way to react to it. i think discussing AI image generation as if the lack of compensation in the labor necessary to develop it makes it uniquely exploitative, thereby putting all AI image generation off limits to everyone forever, means people don't spend enough time thinking about the stolen labor that goes in to making the rest of their life possible.

[commsroom]

i think there's something to be said about what exactly it means to be "non-human" in a story that is as much about humanity as wolf 359 is, where even the dear listeners are defined less by their own perspective and more by what they fail to understand and therefore reflect about the human perspective - to the point that they don't even have their own voices or faces or identities that aren't either given to them or taken from humans. they speak to humanity as a mirror.

even pryce and cutter are "very much humans" - pryce defined by her resentment of and desire to transcend its limitations, and cutter by his aspirations to redefine and create a "better" type of human - and find the idea that they might not be human laughable. it's interesting that they have distinctly transhumanist aspirations when their goal is the narrative opposite of common science fiction fears: that we will expand the definition of humanity so much that we'll lose whatever it is that makes us human. pryce and cutter's transhumanism narrows the definition of humanity to the worthy and the useful, as defined by them; "there will still be a humanity; it'll just be our humanity."

in direct opposition to that, i think it's meaningful that the show instead expands the definition of humanity in ways that include lovelace and hera, who in another show with different themes might be considered (in the descriptive, non-moralistic sense) non-human. i will always make a point of saying that personhood and humanity are two often-related but meaningfully distinct concepts, especially when talking about sci-fi and fantasy. i am talking about humanity.

the question of how hera identifies, and what social pressures influence that, is a complicated one. i've talked about it before and i will talk about again. what's important for the purposes of this post is that i think the show considers her fundamentally human. think about her role in shut up and listen - consider jacobi's lion example and the concept of different paradigms - that even things that are close to humans, comparatively speaking, understand the world in different ways. whatever differences hera may have from the others, it's primarily in experience, not fundamental understanding. she shares their emotions, their concerns, their values, their thought patterns. she has an appreciation for music, which the show considers a hallmark of humanity. she fits within the framework of humanity as the show defines and is, in her own words, left feeling "uneasy" about how difficult it might be to communicate with beings who don't. and it's significant that this takes place in shut up and listen, of all episodes, specifically because the way she is clearly and unambiguously included in the show's understanding of what it means to be human highlights the ways she and lovelace are othered by eiffel's careless comments that suggest otherwise.

(i don't want to get too into these details for this particular post, but it's worth noting that hera will refer to 'humans' as a category, often when she is upset and feeling isolated, but has never said that she 'isn't human' - she has never been upset that people are treating her 'too' human. i've seen it said about the line "you need to get it through your heads that what goes for you doesn't always go for me", but that's a frustration related to ability and safety, not identity. far more often, she will refer to herself in 'human' terms - referring idiomatically to experiences or body parts etc. that she doesn't literally have - and is upset primarily with comments referring to her status as an AI. it does not diminish how being an AI influences her perspective and experience, but again, so much of that is in terms of ability that it feels almost inseparable from a discussion about disability.)

lovelace's humanity and hera's humanity are so interlinked and directly paralleled in the text that i think it's impossible to really argue one of them is "not" human without making implications about the other. in desperate measures, lovelace tells kepler he's "not human" and he responds "you're hilarious. on a multitude of levels." later, defending lovelace against kepler's repeated dehumanization, hera very pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." in out of the loop, hera says she's never met anyone who "worked so hard at being inhuman" as jacobi, who says "what do you know about being human?" hera very emphatically responds, "i know plenty." later, defending hera against jacobi's repeated dehumanization, minkowski pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." with the care taken towards language and the way scenes and turns of phrase will parallel each other, that's not a coincidence. it might seem strange to have the "non-human" characters be the ones to express criticisms based on perceived "humanity" (something hera will do in other contexts as well - "we don't have funerals for animals" etc.) but in the broader context of the show, i think it's the point.

so, whether hera would ever call herself human, or be comfortable with that, is a complicated question for another time and depends on a lot of other factors. but wolf 359 is a show about humanity, it includes her within its definition of what it means to be human, and i wouldn't be comfortable definitively saying she's not human because of that. it can't be a neutral statement within the particular context of this show.

[swaps55]

Teaser Tuesday

Tagged by @stormikins. Thank you!

I have been down with the plague for several days, which has been apparently...helpful for getting my head back into Mezzo? Or maybe I just don't have any capacity for fucks when it comes to trying something I've been very afraid to try. So here is a preview of a POV I have never attempted and have been deathly afraid of:

“Adjusted harmonic frequency triggered positive response within subgroup A neurons,” Mordin says aloud. “Excellent.”   Silence answers. “EDI,” he prods. “Permission to speak freely.” Normandy’s AI extraordinarily useful peer reviewer, but programming blocks proving problematic. STG notorious for volunteering opinions at all times, wanted or unwanted. Not used to asking for one, and EDI defaults to standby unless invited or required to participate. Was only after accidentally invoking her help while thinking out loud that EDI’s potential value became apparent. Has improved both speed and quality of results. Speed important. Lives at stake. Exciting work.  “Agreed, the results are positive,” EDI says. “However, I believe we can further adjust the resonance pattern to create greater disruption in both monofilament rigidity and seeker swarm homing behavior.” Mordin’s console flashes. He skims through EDI’s notes. Quick learner. Good ideas. Lacks intuition that allows organics to see around facts, but already seeing improvement. EDI is…creative. “Intriguing. Will set up a new trial with altered harmonic configurations. However, fear diminishing returns in the JO-A neurons. Especially sensitive to low frequency sound.” “I see. You may be correct.” “Hm. Perhaps modulating—” The door to the lab swishes open. Odd. Third watch on Normandy limited to essential personnel only. Operatives Lawson and Taylor not awake at this hour. Dr. Cole and Dr. Chakwas unlikely to require aid without an emergency, but no klaxon sounding no alert issued—ah. “Commander Shepard. How can I help?”

Tagging @laelior, @sorchacahill, @urrone, @mallaidhsomo, and anyone else who would like to share something!

[shituationist]

assuaging my anxieties about machine learning over the last week, I learn that despite there being about ten years of doom-saying about the full automation of radiomics, there's actually a shortage of radiologists now (and, also, the machine learning algorithms that are supposed to be able to detect cancers better than human doctors are very often giving overconfident predictions). truck driving was supposed to be completely automated by now, but my grampa is still truckin' and will probably get to retire as a trucker. companies like GM are now throwing decreasing amounts of money at autonomous vehicle research after throwing billions at cars that can just barely ferry people around san francisco (and sometimes still fails), the most mapped and trained upon set of roads in the world. (imagine the cost to train these things for a city with dilapidated infrastructure, where the lines in the road have faded away, like, say, Shreveport, LA).

we now have transformer-based models that are able to provide contextually relevant responses, but the responses are often wrong, and often in subtle ways that require expertise to needle out. the possibility of giving a wrong response is always there - it's a stochastic next-word prediction algorithm based on statistical inferences gleaned from the training data, with no innate understanding of the symbols its producing. image generators are questionably legal (at least the way they were trained and how that effects the output of essentially copyrighted material). graphic designers, rather than being replaced by them, are already using them as a tool, and I've already seen local designers do this (which I find cheap and ugly - one taco place hired a local designer to make a graphic for them - the tacos looked like taco bell's, not the actual restaurant's, and you could see artefacts from the generation process everywhere). for the most part, what they produce is visually ugly and requires extensive touchups - if the model even gives you an output you can edit. the role of the designer as designer is still there - they are still the arbiter of good taste, and the value of a graphic designer is still based on whether or not they have a well developed aesthetic taste themself.

for the most part, everything is in tech demo phase, and this is after getting trained on nearly the sum total of available human produced data, which is already a problem for generalized performance. while a lot of these systems perform well on older, flawed, benchmarks, newer benchmarks show that these systems (including GPT-4 with plugins) consistently fail to compete with humans equipped with everyday knowledge.

there is also a huge problem with the benchmarks typically used to measure progress in machine learning that impact their real world use (and tell us we should probably be more cautious because the human use of these tools is bound to be reckless given the hype they've received). back to radiomics, some machine learning models barely generalize at all, and only perform slightly better than chance at identifying pneumonia in pediatric cases when it's exposed to external datasets (external to the hospital where the data it was trained on came from). other issues, like data leakage, make popular benchmarks often an overoptimistic measure of success.

very few researchers in machine learning are recognizing these limits. that probably has to do with the academic and commercial incentives towards publishing overconfident results. many papers are not even in principle reproducible, because the code, training data, etc., is simply not provided. "publish or perish", the bias journals have towards positive results, and the desire of tech companies to get continued funding while "AI" is the hot buzzword, all combined this year for the perfect storm of techno-hype.

which is not to say that machine learning is useless. their use as glorified statistical methods has been a boon for scientists, when those scientists understand what's going on under the hood. in a medical context, tempered use of machine learning has definitely saved lives already. some programmers swear that copilot has made them marginally more productive, by autocompleting sometimes tedious boilerplate code (although, hey, we've had code generators doing this for several decades). it's probably marginally faster to ask a service "how do I reverse a string" than to look through the docs (although, if you had read the docs to begin with would you even need to take the risk of the service getting it wrong?) people have a lot of fun with the image generators, because one-off memes don't require high quality aesthetics to get a chuckle before the user scrolls away (only psychopaths like me look at these images for artefacts). doctors will continue to use statistical tools in the wider machine learning tool set to augment their provision of care, if these were designed and implemented carefully, with a mind to their limitations.

anyway, i hope posting this will assuage my anxieties for another quarter at least.

[fromtenthousandfeet]

About what you mentioned with wondering if Jungkook didn't get a lot of help with those older songs. I'm not sure about solo songs, but if we're talking group songs, I never valued those credits too much. Specially if compared to solo songs. I remember Jungkook fans loved to brag about him having more credits than Jimin, but most of those credits are from group songs while most of Jimin's credits are from his own songs (Jimin may have more credits now after Face and Muse, I'm not sure). And that's better in my opinion. Cause I feel like there's a limit to how much involvement a vocalline member can have in a group song.

Think about it, if you write down the lyrics of every BTS song at least half of it will be the rapline's verses. When you listen to the song those verses go fast, but there's normally a lot of lyrics. And the biggest section of the song for the vocaline is the chorus, which tends to have only a few lines and then is repeated usually three times without any change in lyrics. So, like I said, at least half of the song is the raplines's verses, and I'm pretty sure they write those themselves, I sincerely doubt the vocaline has ever written any rap verse. So that means that every time a vocaline member is credited in a group song, there's only half the song they could've have contributed to. Which is not to say they made that entire half, cause while the vocaline doesn't write the rapline parts, the rapline does often write the vocaline parts, so rapline is included in both halves. And then there's the other non-BTS people credited in the song, often producers. So that's a minimum of 5 people (3 rappers + 1 vocalist + at least 1 producer) all writing that half of the song. So how much do you think the 1 vocalist really wrote?

We don't normally get the answer for that, but there's one example. We know exactly what Jimin's contribution to Dis-ease was. He made the brigbe of the song, that's it, no other parts. And sure, that one part is literally the best part of the whole album and one of fans favorite parts in any BTS song, but that's just Jimin and his magical touch, I doubt the other vocalist could do so much with so little, that's a Jimin only specialty (shout out to him changing the course of k-pop history with his 20 seconds in BST). Anyway, the point is that this is probably what the vocalists contributions to group songs normally look like, just one part of the song.

In contrast, the vocalists are probably way more involved when it's their solo songs. No three rappers to take half the song here. Also, when the song is only yours you can write more personal lyrics, while in the group you have to be a little more general because it's a song six other people have to sing too. Think of how personal Jimin got to be in FACE, he simply couldn't have done that in a group song. And Jimin is also big on melodies (NO shout out to him being robbed of his credits in BST), and if the song is only his he can fully decided what it's going to sound like. There's just a lot more control someone gets to have in a song that is only theirs. With a group songs there's only so much space for your own ideas when there's 6,7,8 other people involved.

When you look at the credits of Dis-ease and Alone (my favorite), Jimin is credited in both songs. But are those credits comparable? Honestly, I would rather one solo credit than ten group credits. So when people brag about Jungkook's credits, which are mostly from group songs, I'm not impressed. Because when solo era came around he had zero involved in his own album and no credit in a random BTS song people don't even realize he wrote some lyrics for is gonna change that.

Seriously though, what BTS songs did he even write? You mentioned Magic Shop and I had forgotten about that and can't remember much more. I think he did one of their japanese songs, which is weird cause he didn't seem to speak japanese very well in AYS, so how the hell did he write that? Honestly, I think the majority of fans have no idea he wrote any of these group songs, people are way more aware of solo songs. All fans know Jimin wrote his own albums, you don't need to look at the BTS wiki to find out about that.

I’m sharing without comment because it’s should be sleeping. Anon, thanks for sharing your perspectives.

[faresong]

reference page for one of his casual outfits.

+ misc. clarification on his 'ranking' below

KAI SATOU (27) — he/hir — Japanese & Wa Chinese ASU-NARO: Technical division (special operation unit) — Level 3 Clearance Ex-patriarch and consultant of the Satou Family. Asunaro Alliance (Chidouin Clan) subsidary.

{ Technical Division } — Double-meaning in both medical developments/research, but additionally important in the technological aspect of weaponry (which inevitably leads into trade.) The Satou Family specializes in this division and, due to the Family's high status, any acting within this department will ultimately defer to Gashu. However, even among valued researchers (ie. those who work with repairing/building obstructors), there are very few new recruits into the Family through this department as the candidate requirements for its trust are extremely strict under his ruling. Rarely anyone is involved in the AI development; with those who breach confidentiality being met with death.

{ Special Operation Unit } — Subtly referring to its 'less savory' practices; though managed by the Hiyori House, there are units within other Families. In recent years, Kai has been referred to reconnaissance work rather than assassination targets once his inability to kill was revealed. Despite punishment and expected execution, they instead elected to utilize him for gathering information on the Chidouins (at least, that is what the order claims). Everyone within these units are aware of the Death Game in some capacity.

As seen in { Level 3 Clearance } ... Kai is only given very limited information on this project after his disobedience. He was once permitted Level 4—alongside those such as HIyori, Emiri, Michiru, & various old guard—but Kai has completely broken Asunaro's trust and shown himself to be a willing, dangerous traitor if he deems it necessary. The only details he holds were through his father and what little was revealed in the Death Game's beginnings, as well as Gashu's interest in replacing Kai with Michiru and Emiri (now his superiors, despite his seniority); as development continued, other candidates have been completely omitted from report requests. The bulk of this work is instead entrusted to those working under the Hiyoris at Levels 3/4.

In more distinct detail, as applied to its medical field:

— Level 1: Simply citizens with which Asunaro holds no further interest. Unaware of the scope of Asunaro; follows typical confidentiality required by government. — Level 2: Involved in upcoming projects to varying degrees, with signed confidentiality for all patented projects. Primarily excused as typical medical research and development; no peek into AI, obstructor work, etc. Coincides with security detail (at least, those who weren't raised in Asunaro), who are the only few who interact with Level 3 agents to convey orders & information. — Level 3: Reserved for those who have caught Asunaro's interest or were born in Asunaro but haven't yet completed their training... or, simply, those they cannot fully trust. Prior to Gashu's induction, he was placed here—as was Emiri and Michiru. Those in this level are slightly more aware of the depths of Asunaro in terms of the eerie amount of information they gather on each volunteer/patient's personal lives alongside medical records... these extensive profiles, which will make their assignments easier to complete, but will nonetheless leave people on-edge. At this point, the only 'out' is either death or dismissal (with lasting negative impact on one's future work.) Many working here are involved in finding human candidates for trial tests, engineering obstructors, etc. and will defer to Gashu Satou. Their yakuza roots begin to seep into daily life; as Megumi and Hayasaka particularly bear the brunt of, though Hayasaka's been given Level 4 for divulging technical information. They are under heavy surveillance and scrutiny. — Level 4: Trusted agents who know of the Death Game in detail and are actively contributing to it; involved in artificial intelligence, organizing (re)construction of the DG grounds, managing the specific candidates involved, so on and so forth. As stated above, those under the Hiyori name are sent to gather basic information—however, it is Sou Hiyori (Midori) himself who gathers most of the details beneath for AI purposes. The Chidouins are an exception, given to Kai as per the Godfather's request... Everyone on this level is aware of the Chairman, but have rarely spoken to him personally; only a select few know his family name, and perhaps that is the extent of it. Many others only refer to Asunaro as the clan they work for, rather than a particular Family name (successor of the Hades Incident) ...Kai is included, left unaware of the true nature of the family he now loves so dearly. — Level 5: Those who know the Godfather/Chairman Chidouin personally. The Floormasters belong here.

{ Ex-patriarch } — As Kai was intended to bear the mantle of leading the Satou Family established upon being the victor of the Assassin's Trial; the Godfather's strong right hand. However... Kai never proved himself past the Trial and was thereby never given the opportunity, once of-age, to succeed Gashu for the title's claim & responsibility. Gashu simultaneously acts as a supervisor of Asunaro's medical branch and manages its yakuza involvement as { Chidouin Clan subsidaries } beneath this front. Kai has been all but expelled from his own Family.

{ Consultant } is simply meant to clarify Kai's role as an assassin beneath flowery language. As all assassins loyal to Asunaro, they are allowed a certain level of freedom; 'do as you please, so long as you hit the mark' ... Kai managed to abuse this to keep himself alive for so long, using lies and certain manipulative tactics (not only in adjusting records on these victims, but at times... electing them for any other punishment beside death. to give them time) to keep his targets alive & fuel the hope that Asunaro would find some use in him despite initial reluctance to kill.

Assassins are given the general rundown and then left to use their own discretion. Naturally, there are suggestions Asunaro may offer for when and where to kill, a deadline by which this person can no longer interfere, but they are given permission to scout on their own rather than rely on informants. The only word of caution is to not get caught; despite the teachings to withstand torture, any rescue mission is less than ideal and will certainly leave questions on one's performance. Ultimately, Asunaro's only request of their assassins is to kill or retrieve these targets. Anything more raises undue suspicion, and Kai was forced to balance this for much of his life and work as a yakuza agent.

[lesbian-forte]

Criticisms of Vocaloid and why I like SynthV

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind here, but I would like to say my piece after certain takes seem to miss the point entirely. This might be a bit of a rant.

Vocaloid has gone stagnant in recent years. Yamaha doesn't care. Yamaha doesn't need Vocaloid and is a large corporation that gets much more money off of their DAW software and actual instruments as opposed to something as niche as vocal synths that are both only big in Japan and also only if they're in the top ten or so.

Yamaha stopped putting effort into Vocaloid during the V4-V5 transition. There is a reason V4 has so many cancelled voicebanks. Several developers were working on V4 and Yamaha rendered their devkit suddenly worthless. Devs would have to purchase a V5 devkit and start work over, or quit Vocaloid. And as vocal synth companies are generally very small, few of them would want to continue or even be able to afford it.

So they moved. Miku splitting off for Piapro gave them an opening, and others started looking for alternatives. Then IA went to CeVIO. And more and more. And by the time V5's sun was setting, all the third parties that worked on that were gone too.

But for a while, you didn't hear much from most of them. If a company released a V4 at the tailend of its lifespan or a V5, they had to wait for exclusivity to expire. And Yamaha's exclusivity deals are harsh (ending distribution of existing song voicebanks in the case of utaus with the same VP) and long, borderline predatory. So voices that companies wanted to update couldn't receive them until those expired, or else refresh that deal and stay constrained by a company that didn't even want to bother with them.

So, come V6, Yamaha was desperate. Internet Co had made an ultimatum that if a Vocaloid 6 didn't come out soon, then they'd be going too. That was their last, and after Crypton packed their bags, most important third party. So they accelerated their plans and looked at what the new guys were doing to be so successful.

They took the wrong lesson.

AI is not inherently better. Sample-based voicebanks will always have their place. Traditional samples can allow an unnaturally large range and harsher voice acting than would be possible to maintain. AI is more accurate to the voice provider, and you have a greater degree of freedom with its tone, plus updates and additional features are so much easier- but Yamaha took 'AI' at face value and made a low-quality copy that sounds significantly worse than prior Vocaloid versions and pushed it with Gumi. They could have stuck to improving their concatenative synthesis render quality further- that's what SynthV started as, R1 was just a very well-rendered sample-based program that is probably just a fancy utau under the hood.

But Vocaloid jumped on the bandwagon by doing the absolute bare minimum and claiming the ear-grating engine noise that can cause actual nausea is remaining faithful to the 'Vocaloid sound' even though styrofoam on the mic and a sometimes pleasant metallic twang sound nothing alike. They didn't improve accessibility, V6 has the same stability issues as V5, and the shiny new feature Vocalochanger is just RVC but worse.

Then, less than a year after product launch, they start up VxB and don't do anything to improve the software they're actively selling. Internet Co themselves called this out in the form of a Gumi tweet. Then Internet Co got in talks with Tokyo6 and saw a possible out, so they gave it a go. They're still under contract by Yamaha so what they can do is limited, but we saw them stray as well. And the result is a much better quality version (though arguably still worse than her V4) despite being an exact port.

We're still getting a Gumi Solid V6 because V6 can't do emotions and they still have to be separate banks, and VxB still got a major update even though it's dying in April with radio silence for V6 development, while CeVIO/VoiSona is releasing 2.0s that get major acclaim like Ci Flower's reputation totally getting turned around, and SynthV is sitting pretty with several voicebanks announced and several coming out in December alone, and the most recent in-progress update including both voice-to-midi (which is what vocalochanger should've been) and Spanish.

I do not like V6, V5, or Yamaha. It could've been amazing for Gumi or Una to get updates so they'd have crosslang (or better crosslang) capabilities, as I work in English. But the result was extremely poorly implemented and Yamaha has made no effort to fix that.

I use SynthV all the time, I'd do the same for CeVIO if it offered crosslang as well rather than just dictionaries and a couple English banks. I'm not against trying new things. But I either want the other programs to have the things to suit my needs in a quality manner that's intuitive to use or for the voicebanks I love to get versions on programs that already do. It's not that complicated.

The jokes and the yammering from rabid SynthV fans dissing Vocaloid can get to be too much sometimes. But you have to consider where that actually comes from. It's in response to suddenly being spoiled with a cheap, accessible, high-quality program when the expensive, poorly constructed, difficult one has been dominating the market with anti-consumer, anti-third party practices for years.

P.S.: Also you can do robotic tuning and mixing on realistic vocal synths, it's called doing the same thing as before and then adding it in post. You think utaites swallow vocoders or something? No, they just use different tools to get the same result as engine noise. Not fighting the voice when you're trying to go for realistic vs manual tuning and adding some very easy effects on when doing it the other way around is better, actually.

[canmom]

ai analogies

with photography, the 'inputs' or 'creative choices' include the subject, the framing, and technical qualities like exposure, focus, aperture and iso. the output, the thing that's judged, is then the qualities of the image - composition and colour and narrative. since photography is very quick, a photographer will typically take many shots of a subject, and then pick out the ones they like best to share with the wider world, so there is also a curative element.

with collage (and also photobashing, and even the limited space of a dollmaker game), the 'inputs' are the choices of existing images, and the composition created by arranging them. so there's a curative element in selecting what to collage, and then new meaning is created by juxtaposing two previously unrelated images, the spatial relationships between them, and so on. (see also graphic design!) the visual qualities of the original image are relevant insofar as they affect the composition, but you don't judge a collage containing a painting or photo on how well-painted the painting or well-shot the photo is, rather on how well it uses that painting or photo.

with 'readymades' and similar genres of conceptual art, it's kind of similar, right? you put the existing objects in a new context and create meaning through how they're arranged. people respond to whether the idea it communicates is interesting. (often these days they come with some text which gives a key to inform you how to interpret the artwork.)

anyway. with drawing and painting, which are comparatively laborious to create, you are constantly making thousands of creative choices, from the broad scale - composition, value structure, how you construct a figure - to the tiny, like line weight, rendering, shape design. to navigate this vast space of possibility, you will be informed by your memory of other pictures you've seen (your personal 'visual library') and techniques you've practiced, reference images you've gathered, and so on. the physical qualities of your body and the medium will also affect your picture - how you move your arm, how watercolor moves across the paper, etc etc.

broadly the same is true for other very involved media like sculpture or computer graphics or music (of all kinds!). more fine-grained control implies both more work and more scope for creative choices.

when someone sees an image created by whatever means, they take all of this in at once, for a gestalt impression - and if they feel like it, they can look closer and appreciate the particular details. many artists will think about trying to create a composition that 'leads the eye' to take in particular points of interest and convey the narrative of the picture.

so then, 'AI'. your inputs are the design of the neural net, the selection of training data, the text/image used as a prompt and then finally the selection of an image produced by the program. (you can modify that image of course but let's not get into that for now). chances are you don't have a lot of control over the first two since the computation involved is too unwieldy, though some image generators can be 'finetuned' with additional training data.

'AI art' is like photography in that you typically generate a lot of images and select the ones that 'come out well'. like a photographer looking for a subject, you might search around for an interesting prompt. it's unlike photography in that you have very limited control over all those other parameters (at best you can try to verbally describe what you want and hope the AI understands, or ask it to generate similar pictures and hope one has the qualities you want).

'AI art' is like collage in that you are taking existing images and creating new meaning of of them, by generating a latent space and transformation algorithm that approximates them. it's unlike collage in that you have no real knowledge of what specific images may be 'most' informing the corner of latent space you're probing. you can look at an AI generated image and say 'this looks kinda like a Nihei manga' but it's not using a specific image of Nihei. still, there is something similar to the relationship between images in collage when you do things like 'style transfer'.

'AI art' can be like conceptual art or for that matter political cartoons in that often it's just providing illustration to a concept or joke that can be expressed in words. 'Shrek in the style of The Dark Crystal' or 'cats that spell "gay sex"' is what you're getting across. but 'AI art' as a subculture places very high concern on the specific aesthetic qualities, so it's not that simple.

briefly, sampling in music often tends to foreground that it's a sample, either one the audience may recognise - the Amen break for example - or just by being noticeably different from the texture of the rest of the piece. even when the sample isn't easily recognised, though, the art of sampling is to place it in a new context which brings out different sonic qualities, e.g. by playing it rapidly in succession, or heavily filtering and distorting it, overlaying it with other sounds, or playing it right before the drop. it's similar to collage and photobashing.

paintings then. AI art rather obsessively tries to imitate paintings, drawings, 3D graphics etc. some of its proponents even try to position it as obsoleting these art forms, rather than a new derivative art form. a lot of the fear from artists who work in those media is that, even if the AI generated images are a poor substitute for what we make, it will be 'good enough' to satisfy the people with the money, or discourage people from learning how to paint with all its nuances.

so, 'AI' may make results that look like a painting, but the process of making it is hugely different. rather than gradually constructing a picture and making decisions at each turn, you try out successive prompts to get a page full of finished pictures, and generate variations on those pictures, until you find one you like. it's most similar to the client who describes an image they want and then makes requests to tweak it. there is still creativity in this, because it's kind of replicating the back-and-forth between an artist and client/art director/critique-giver/etc. however, in this analogy, it's hampered by the limited communication between you and the 'artist'. and it's a different sort of input, so we respond to it differently.

generating and posting AI art could also be compared to the kind of thing we do on this website, where we curate images we like and share them. you're all looking at the outputs of the same image generator and pointing and saying 'ooh, that one's cool'. what's kinda troublesome in this analogy is that AI obfuscates all that stuff about credit and inspiration, collapsing it all into one mass. unless their name was used in the prompt, you can't tell if the 'AI' image is 'drawing heavily' on any particular artist. this isn't a new problem - firstly websites full of uncredited images abound, secondly any creative process is inspired by loads of things that we can't enumerate or hope to divulge, so the idea of tracing the paths of inspiration is perhaps a mirage anyway. still, for me (sakuga fan type of person!), knowing what i can about the specific people involved in creating artwork and how they went about it is important, and that's heavily blackboxed by 'AI'.

none of this would be helped by harsher copyright laws. it's great that people can create derivative works and respond to existing art. that is the scaffold that launches us somewhere new and hopefully interesting. simply putting someone's work into an image generator to create similar pictures is not a very interesting statement in its own right, and a lot of AI illustration produced at the moment has a weirdly glossy, overproduced feeling that is offputting and leaves nowhere for the eye to settle (when it isn't just mush), but that's not to say AI is never going to be able to be used to say anything interesting or become a meaningful art form in its own right.

'AI' is kinda like a bunch of things but not exactly like any of them. (this isn't to get into the economic questions at all, that would be a much longer post!). but since there are people very sincerely devoted to this being an art form... I want to know how to 'read' these works - what I'm looking for in there, what a meaningful comment would be. bc right now when I see an illustration and realise it's AI generated image it's like... a sense of disappointment because whatever I was picking up on isn't actually part of the 'statement' in the way i thought. so it's like oh... that's nice. the machine picked a cool perspective huh? all the things i would normally appreciate in an illustration are outside the artist's control, so responding to them feels irrelevant! so what is the right mode here? there's more to it than just the choice of subject. but I feel like I have more to say about even a picrew.