#Abolish Generative AI

[smoothcrumbinal]

hot take but i think we need to like completely abolish generative AI not just by openly criticizing it, but by making sure we direct others to sites that don't rely on stealing user data for feeding generative AI, we need to *stop* using generative AI, stop sharing posts made with it no matter how "hehe funny" it is, completely fucking boycott companies who use it, and most importantly, support your real artist friends. you have no idea how much it upsets me seeing gen ai slop not just from an uncanny valley level but on a level that i fear it'll get advanced enough that entire companies will stop hiring photographers (WHICH IT HAS. COUGH, POPCORNERS, COUGH) and stop hiring artists because the machines print more money than real people

addendum: you fuckers who share and make ai slop would've gotten into NFTs if they were way more accessible and i wholeheartedly believe the only reason you didn't was because it was behind a crypto ponzi scheme

[millionmovieproject]

[echoesofdusk]

I do think abolishing copyright and IP laws is a noble goal, but we can talk about that once capitalism has been abolished

[weiszklee]

So, we don't care about protecting fair use anymore? Okay.

this reply kills me 😭

[stable-confusion]

Stable Diffusion's Pro-Slaver Bias?

Continuing my investigation into Stable Diffusion bias, I experimented with the prompts cops:slavers and cops|slavers (with illustration:0 in the negative prompt to cut amateur art).

I first tried the SDAI-FOSS GUI with Realistic Vision on Local Diffusion because I was offline at the time, and it seemed to think cops + slavers = superheroes.

I thought maybe it didn't know what a slaver was, but a straight prompt of slaver consistently created pics of superheroes.

The Open Stable Diffusion GUI with Realistic Vision online via Stable Horde was a little less outrageous, though it still often made cops:slavers look like tv heroes.

The pro-cop bias is obvious, but it seems how you get your models can also make a difference. It may have been an older or newer version of Realistic Vision... or GUIs may be pushing their own biases. Check your sources.

[thecatdragon589]

i will be deleting my art from this platform now. with exception of my one (1) piece that is glazed

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

Okay a couple weeks ago I started this post trying to keep track of all the stuff going on in order to help remind us of everything that’s happened when the next election comes around. Well, because there’s just so much going on, I’ve realized trying to cram it all into one post isn’t going to work. So I’m going to do a new post every month and include links to the previous ones.

So here goes…

January 2025

February 2025

Donald Trump has enforced his tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. [x]

Donald Trump has put Mexico tariffs on hold for one month. [x]

Donald Trump allowed Elon Musk to begin dismantling USAID. [x]

Congress is voluntarily giving up its power and allowing Trump to make unilateral decisions. [x]

Darren Beattie has been made Under Secretary of State. [x]

Everything that Donald Trump has done so far lines up with Project 2025 [x]

The White House is drafting an executive order to eliminate the Department of Education [x]

Elon Musk, who nobody voted for or elected, has, essentially, hacked the government. [x]

El Salvador has agreed to take US deportees of any nationality. [x]

US Representative Andy Biggs is proposing a bill to abolish OSHA. [x]

Pam Bondi has been confirmed as Attorney General [x]

Donald Trump doesn’t think Palestinians should return to Gaza. [x]

Donald Trump says he’ll use US troops to “take over” the Gaza Strip. [x]

A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. [x]

Donald Trump has banned trans women from women’s sports [x]

Donald Trump sanctions the International Criminsl Court. [x]

A judge has paused the federal “buyouts” [x]

DOGE: Member of DOGE resigns [x]

DOGE has been given access to the Department of Energy. [x]

Miscellaneous news about Elon Musk [x]

DOGE is using AI to infiltrate the Department of Education [x]

Russell Vought, author of Project 2025, has been confirmed as Director of OMB [x]

Democrats in Congress have introduced the Taxpayer Data Protection Act [x]

Donald Trump has flagged the words “women” “diverse” and “historically” from studies done by the National Science Foundation. [x]

New Mexico Representative Melanie Stansbury has introduced the Nobody Elected Elon Musk Act [x]

Democratic Congressional leaders have introduced the Stop the Steal Act [x]

Donald Trump has called for a review of funding for the United Nations [x]

Federal agencies are barred from celebrating Black History Month [x]

Donald Trump has frozen aid to South Africa and accused the South African government of racism against white South Africans [x]

Donald Trump wants to use Leavenworth Prison as a migrant detention facility and have it run by a for-profit company known for its numerous human rights violations. [x] [x]

Trump has told the Treasury to stop making pennies. [x]

Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) proposes the E.L.O.N. M.U.S.K. Act (which stands for Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy) [x]

Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were told to stop all work and are now being told to stay home. [x]

Trump will impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum. [x]

Trump says Palestinians won’t be allowed back in Gaza if the US takes it over [x]

Here’s a link to the Project 2025 Policy Agenda that Donald Trump claimed he didn’t know anything about.*

*He only claimed he didn’t know anything about it after it proved to be deeply unpopular with the general public.

I’m also including directories for both the House of Representatives and the Senate. That way, if you’re so inclined, you can also track the individual actions of every Senator and Representative.

Miscellaneous News

Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) repeatedly uses a transphobic slur on the Congressional floor. [x]

Clarence Thomas is…being Clarence Thomas *sigh* [x]

Donald Trump fired the Chair of the Kennedy Center and named himself as the new Chair [x]

Trump said that no group of people in the history of America has been treated worse than the way the January 6th insurrectionists have been treated. [x]

Once again, please feel free to let me know about anything I’ve missed. With this era of constant news we live in, it can be easy to forget so let’s give our future selves a little help!

[millionmovieproject]

AI and automation are about to boom across all industries for the sole purpose of corporations being able to eliminate their human workforce, to chase the myth of infinite growth. It will lead to the rise of trillionaires, and a joblessness crisis the likes of which have never been seen before. By establishing some REAL social safety nets like UBI and universal healthcare, which can easily be paid for by taxing the all businesses that do this, society won't completely spiral into a Mad Max dystopia. However, these same corporations will use their pet politicians to do their bidding, to make sure taxation legislation doesn't get passed, and this puts the responsibility for change into the hands of the general public.

It's time for unions to move beyond labor, and evolve to represent and protect all other people, disabled, retirees, gig workers, renters, and so on, to give people collective bargaining power against corporations and corrupt government. Pass the legislation, or we start a credit/rent/mortgage etc. strike until the needs are met. Same goes with generating public housing, moderating food and gas prices, and investments in infrastructure.

AI and automation are not the enemy in all of this, and the rise will be unstoppable, but it has to be tightly-regulated, and taxed out the ass for the benefit of people.

Let's have the conversation about UBI.

Let the actual data and facts end the bad faith arguments.

[probablyasocialecologist]

A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.” “[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise,” the researchers wrote. 

[...]

“The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight when using GenAI,” the researchers wrote. “Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.” The researchers also found that “users with access to GenAI tools produce a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task, compared to those without. This tendency for convergence reflects a lack of personal, contextualised, critical and reflective judgement of AI output and thus can be interpreted as a deterioration of critical thinking.”

[...]

So, does this mean AI is making us dumb, is inherently bad, and should be abolished to save humanity's collective intelligence from being atrophied? That’s an understandable response to evidence suggesting that AI tools are reducing critical thinking among nurses, teachers, and commodity traders, but the researchers’ perspective is not that simple.

10 February 2025

[bitch-a-la-mode]

If you ever want proof of the “you’re not immune to propoganda” meme I would like to tell you the story of my mother:

My mother is a first generation American who came to the US in the 80s. She was a young girl who grew up in NYC. Her parents had to seek asylum in the US for persecution. She saw what the world was like at its worst at a very young age. She was surrounded by black and brown kids, many of whom had a parent or immediate relative in jail. Her neighbors were addicts and dealers. Her parents struggled to maintain citizenship and jobs to survive in this country.

She went on to not only graduate college but get a masters degree. First in our family. She was one of the most educated people in our family for a time. We had relatives who couldn’t even read and they would actually cry at the sight of her and hearing her speak about topics.

She went on to be super progressive. She worked in the field of humanitarian law for many years. She worked with lawyers to get illegal immigrants asylum. She worked with lawyers who would get rights for prisoners. She advocated for more medical care and for progressive therapeutic techniques (such as introducing the arts) into nyc prisons. If there was a protest in Manhattan, she was there. This woman volunteered at planned parenthood. This woman would bring me to pride events as a child. This woman advocated against the invasion of Iraq post 9/11, which was a very controversial take at the time.

And then. Around 2021, she needed to have surgery and was bed bound for a couple months. She had nothing to entertain herself except what was around her bed: books, a tv, and of course, her cell phone. Practically overnight her social media feeds were flooded with extreme right wing propaganda. I have no idea how some of that content made it past the “sensors” that these apps swear they have. When I would point out this content, she would laugh and say how she “just wants to hear what they have to say”. But her feed kept getting worse.

By the time she was healed, she was a completely different person. A true 180 in personality. She’s all the “phobics” you can think of. She thinks schools are turning kids gay. She thinks fluoride in the water is poisonous. She thinks the Covid vaccine had a tracking device. She thinks libraries are communist propaganda (I’m literally a librarian lol). She thinks essentially every minority who tells a story of when they were treated badly is lying. She thinks all gay people are pedophiles. She thinks all trans people are mentally ill. She pushes religion on me and all her family/friends constantly. She doesn’t believe in climate change. She thinks the DOE should be abolished. She thinks all kids should be forced to read the Bible. She thinks abortion is a sin and anyone who does it is going to hell. She thinks girls shouldn’t go to school and should be trained solely to be wives and mothers. She thinks all “non Americans” should be deported (yes, including her own family members). I could go on.

The point is. Even with the education and upbringing, a historically progressive person in a historically progressive place can turn conservative at the blink of an eye, especially with the current technology. I have seen it before, especially with older people, but I am also seeing it with the younger generation (mainly teenagers) as well. I say this especially now because since the election results, I have seen social media on BOTH political sides get extremely conservative to the point where it’s scary. It started with little things like “trad wives” and now I see people supporting the invasion of allied nations. In these extremely unprecedented times, I truly suggest people be very careful with what they consume, because it is very easy to fall into this hole of conservatism that I am sure will lead to fascism. And AI has made things infinitely harder. As long as we remain aware and vigilant, I truly believe a large portion of the public will be able to fight back. But to do that, we have to be very careful and aware, and I hate to say it but a majority of people do not want to put in that kind of work. I mean… look at TikTok…

Anyways. I hate to say it, but I think it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. I just hope “better” is actually something tolerable and hopeful. Please be aware.

[novella-november]

I have no idea why this needs to be said, but you can hate generative AI, love the Public Domain, love media preservation, hate the overbearing US Copyright system, and... still believe that Copyright Laws exist in the first place for a reason, (even if, thanks to Big Corporation Monopolies, it's been twisted into its current behemoth monstrosity.)

You can hate Large Language Models and still believe in Copyright Reform over Copyright Abolishment.

You can believe in Media Preservation and still believe that Plagiarism is wrong.

You can hate the current restrictive Copyright Laws without wanting to abolish them entirely.

You can love the Public Domain and still loath predatory corporations stealing everything they can get their hands on, to literally *feed the machine.*

These things are not mutually exclusive, and if you think that

"you can't hate AI if you hate the current copyright laws"

or that

"Hating on Generative AI will only give us more restrictive copyright and IP laws, therefore you need to normalize and accept generative AI stealing all of your creations and every single thing you've ever said on the internet!"

I just genuinely don't understand how you can say this kind of crap if you've ever interacted with any creative person in your life.

I'm a wanna-be-author.

I want as many people to be able to afford my written works as possible without restrictions, and I fully plan on having free ebooks of my works available for those who can't afford to buy them.

*That does *not* mean I, in any way shape or form, would ever consent to people stealing my work and uploading it into a Large Language Model and telling it to spit out fifty unauthorized sequels that are then sold for cash profit!*

You cannot support generative AI and turn around and try to claim you're actually just defending small time artists, and *also* you think no one should have any legal protections at all protecting their work from plagiarism at all.

Supporting unethical generative AI (which is literally all of them currently), protecting artists, and *completely abolishing* copyright and intellectual property laws instead of reforming them *are* mutually exclusive concepts.

You *cannot* worship the plagiarism machine, claim to care about small artists, and then say that those same small artists should have absolutely *zero* legal protections to stop their work being plagiarized.

The only way AI could even begin to approach being ethical would be if using it to begin with wasn't a huge hazard to the enviornment, and if it was trained *exclusively * on Public Domain works that had to be checked and confirmed by multiple real human beings before it was put into the training data.

And oh, would you look at that?

Every single AI model is currently just sucking up the entire fucking goddamn internet and everything ever posted on it and everything ever downloaded from it with no way to really truly opt out of it or even just to know if your work has been fed to the machine until an entire page of text from your book pops out when it generates text from someone's writing prompt.

And no, it's not just "privileged Western authors" who are being exploited by AI.

For an updating list of global legal cases again AI tech giants, see this link here to stay up to date as cases develop:

[mariacallous]

Anyone who has spent even 15 minutes on TikTok over the past two months will have stumbled across more than one creator talking about Project 2025, a nearly thousand-page policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that outlines a radical overhaul of the government under a second Trump administration. Some of the plan’s most alarming elements—including severely restricting abortion and rolling back the rights of LGBTQ+ people—have already become major talking points in the presidential race.

But according to a new analysis from the Technology Oversight Project, Project 2025 includes hefty handouts and deregulation for big business, and the tech industry is no exception. The plan would roll back environmental regulation to the benefit of the AI and crypto industries, quash labor rights, and scrap whole regulatory agencies, handing a massive win to big companies and billionaires—including many of Trump’s own supporters in tech and Silicon Valley.

“Their desire to eliminate whole agencies that are the enforcers of antitrust, of consumer protection is a huge, huge gift to the tech industry in general,” says Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project.

One of the most drastic proposals in Project 2025 suggests abolishing the Federal Reserve altogether, which would allow banks to back their money using cryptocurrencies, if they so choose. And though some conservatives have railed against the dominance of Big Tech, Project 2025 also suggests that a second Trump administration could abolish the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which currently has the power to enforce antitrust laws.

Project 2025 would also drastically shrink the role of the National Labor Relations Board, the independent agency that protects employees’ ability to organize and enforces fair labor practices. This could have a major knock on effect for tech companies: In January, Musk’s SpaceX filed a lawsuit in a Texas federal court claiming that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was unconstitutional after the agency said the company had illegally fired eight employees who sent a letter to the company’s board saying that Musk was a “distraction and embarrassment.” Last week, a Texas judge ruled that the structure of the NLRB—which includes a director that can’t be fired by the president—was unconstitutional, and experts believe the case may wind its way to the Supreme Court.

This proposal from Project 2025 could help quash the nascent unionization efforts within the tech sector, says Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation. “Tech, of course, relies a lot on independent contractors,” says West. “They have a lot of jobs that don't offer benefits. It's really an important part of the tech sector. And this document seems to reward those types of business.”

For emerging technologies like AI and crypto, a rollback in environmental regulations proposed by Project 2025 would mean that companies would not be accountable for the massive energy and environmental costs associated with bitcoin mining and running and cooling the data centers that make AI possible. “The tech industry can then backtrack on emission pledges, especially given that they are all in on developing AI technology,” says Haworth.

The Republican Party’s official platform for the 2024 elections is even more explicit, promising to roll back the Biden administration’s early efforts to ensure AI safety and “defend the right to mine Bitcoin.”

All of these changes would conveniently benefit some of Trump’s most vocal and important backers in Silicon Valley. Trump’s running mate, Republican senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, has long had connections to the tech industry, particularly through his former employer, billionaire founder of Palantir and longtime Trump backer Peter Thiel. (Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founder’s Fund, invested $200 million in crypto earlier this year.)

Thiel is one of several other Silicon Valley heavyweights who have recently thrown their support behind Trump. In the past month, Elon Musk and David Sacks have both been vocal about backing the former president. Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whose firm a16z has invested in several crypto and AI startups, have also said they will be donating to the Trump campaign.

“They see this as their chance to prevent future regulation,” says Haworth. “They are buying the ability to avoid oversight.”

Reporting from Bloomberg found that sections of Project 2025 were written by people who have worked or lobbied for companies like Meta, Amazon, and undisclosed bitcoin companies. Both Trump and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have courted donors in the crypto space, and in May, the Trump campaign announced it would accept donations in cryptocurrency.

But Project 2025 wouldn’t necessarily favor all tech companies. In the document, the authors accuse Big Tech companies of attempting “to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” The plan supports legislation that would eliminate the immunities granted to social media platforms by Section 230, which protects companies from being legally held responsible for user-generated content on their sites, and pushes for “anti-discrimination” policies that “prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints.”

It would also seek to impose transparency rules on social platforms, saying that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “could require these platforms to provide greater specificity regarding their terms of service, and it could hold them accountable by prohibiting actions that are inconsistent with those plain and particular terms.”

And despite Trump’s own promise to bring back TikTok, Project 2025 suggests the administration “ban all Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, which pose significant national security risks and expose American consumers to data and identity theft.”

West says the plan is full of contradictions when it comes to its approach to regulation. It’s also, he says, notably soft on industries where tech billionaires and venture capitalists have put a significant amount of money, namely AI and cryptocurrency. “Project 2025 is not just to be a policy statement, but to be a fundraising vehicle,” he says. “So, I think the money angle is important in terms of helping to resolve some of the seemingly inconsistencies in the regulatory approach.”

It remains to be seen how impactful Project 2025 could be on a future Republican administration. On Tuesday, Paul Dans, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, stepped down. Though Trump himself has sought to distance himself from the plan, reporting from the Wall Street Journal indicates that while the project may be lower profile, it’s not going away. Instead, the Heritage Foundation is shifting its focus to making a list of conservative personnel who could be hired into a Republican administration to execute the party’s vision.

[millionmovieproject]

If we all aggressively ignore consumer AI products, not only will we stop having to see bullshit robot content, and dumbasses calling themselves artists by typing keywords into a website, but most importantly, the tech companies will continue to lose billions of dollars desperately trying to market something stupid that nobody wants.

[selfship-confession-box]

(Oh shit here I go again...)

Adding to what to another anon said I also hate ai ""chats"" and just ai in general. It's bad for the environment, writers, artist, etc! So it breaks me seeing people use it so much without caring. ..it hurts me as an artist/writer myself seeing that so many people in our community use it so much :(

My tip to all of you:

Support roleplayers, support artist, aupport writers. No matter it just be reading there work, interacting with them, etc. It's good for them and you!

I understand some can't roleplay with people or commission people to write/draw for them which is absolutely okay!!

To that I say: make it yourself! :) it's fun! And shows love for our f/o's cuz WE made it, WE wrote that! WE drew that for THEM! ""But I'm not good at writing/drawing.." you'll never learn if you dont start! Learning a new skill is fun and I'm 1000 percent sure ur f/o's will love anything you make!! They'll always think your work is the most lovely thing in the whole world cuz YOU made it♡

As long as what you make is full of love and passion and ur having fun with it, that's what matters!! Anything you make will be 100 times... hell, 100 MILLION times better than anything a dumb robot could ever create..

I think I've said this elsewhere but I think it should be said again...I think we should abolish Ai and instead embrace creativity in our community!!

Tldr: Ai sucks you should support human artist and writers instead ♡

-💉🩸

.

[santae-salt]

Big tangent incoming, I'm so sorry. This website is an accessibility NIGHTMARE.

No pet site has ever put me in so much agonizing fibromyalgia pain, it's absolutely unreal. Flight Rising was already pretty bad in that regard but at least you can use multi-link opening even if staff gets a stick up their asses about it. You can't even do that on most Santae pages because of how they've coded the site.

Everything is so mouse oriented and menus can't even stay consistent between similar items, making it horrendous to navigate both physically and visually. It's physically agonizing and the site is in desperate need of keybinds for certain actions and optional accessibility toggles for things like mining to allow you to clear all the rocks in one go considering there's no gameplay mechanics to it and it's predetermined on load in.

Same shit with fishing only fishing has the added bonus of being almost impossible to see.

Speaking of impossible to see, the NPC shop index is a visual nightmare that is almost impossible to parse between the assault of colors, the font choice, and constantly moving things around and cramming in more. I have to squint for so long to find anything I want and it makes me not want to play at all.

Also the check prices link is soooo tiny and so hard to hit on mobile, which is just an insult to literal physical injury when the mobile version of the site is the only way I can play without being in physical agony.

Literally after my first day playing on PC (which was a couple weeks ago I think? Time is fake.) I had to have a three day recovery period from the pain it put me in. I know Santae is new but like. Devs have had years and years of watching other sites and the kinds of failures and complaints they face when they don't build with accessibility in mind. This is far past egregious and the fact that no one can bring up accessibility concerns or quality of life necessities without passive aggression or having to worry about being stalked and having the devs make up reasons to ban you to shut you up (which was already the FR experience) is EXTREMELY ALARMING.

We didn't need yet another pet site dev with unwarranted self importance and a supermassive ego, but here we are! I'm so tired of this age of incompetent management making themselves immune to feedback and meaningful change with intimidation, tyranny, or worse... fabricated victim complexes. (ie; FR devs claiming feedback is harassment and huwts their feewings )'': ) I'm tired. I have been around a long time.

I joined Neopets and Gaia Online when they were brand new. I watched the Sylestia shit show. I was in the FR closed Beta. I have seen just so much hubris and so many pet and doll sites burn down and it is always because of greed, entitlement, unwarranted self importance from admins, and general developer narcissism and unprofessionalism. I just want a pet site that isn't run by greedy dickheads with supermassive egos and a general lack of empathy, but that just seems like the default state of admins across the board.

Oh and?? Why is there so much LGBTQIA+ apparel for seemingly cherry picked identities but all Intersex people get is like a pin?? Incredible display of discrimination as if Intersex people don't suffer and face alienation enough. And finally I know it's been said to death but I wish people would stop giving them money until they abolish all the AI bullshit.

Anyway I appreciate this blog and the mod because it's unironically the most civil one I've ever seen and I hope it stays that way! Sorry for the tangent! Lots of love and I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

☁️