#ai art is destroying humanity

[josiebelladonna]

dave grohl once said, “you have to go out and suck because that’s how you get better at it“. i mention that because the whole world seems to have undertaken this mindset of “it’s there, therefore i take” as well as “all criticism and critique no matter how innocuous = bad”, and i feel like the rise of ai may have had something to do with it because of how it functions (scraping and taking to an infinite degree + little to no effort put in) plus the utterly rabid and delusional defense of it, and how quickly it’s risen, too—practically overnight. for me, it’s all pretty much come out of nowhere.

you combine all of these things together and to me, it comes as no surprise that it seems like you have to walk around on eggshells with most people now, artists across the board are either disillusioned or getting bupkiss on their work, and why someone like me might seem “mean”.

these things have completely blindsided us and… for what? for what reason did all of this had to happen? to take from other humans out of your own very human sense of insecurity and then get pissy when they called you out, or to yell at them and antagonize them because they saw you in very obvious pain and wanted to help you because everyone else kept sitting on their hands with you?

something i learned really quickly when i took machine shop and started working with my hands more: machines genuinely don’t have a soul. they don’t care if you have long hair or jewelry or appendages, so it’s imperative that you wear tight clothes, tie up your hair nice and snug (double for someone like me who has nappy, coarse hair that sticks out if you sneeze too hard) , and take off anything that dangles. they also don’t care if the scraped data belongs to you or if it means you lose a job or passion for life, and i wonder just how much of that has carried over to humans in the past few years. when i was plagiarized from and then ostracized for calling it out three years ago, it made me wonder if she and anyone who listens to her has a soul at all. when i was ostracized and then betrayed last week, it was because i had genuine concern for my friend at the time and it looked like no one was doing anything to help them (hell, they weren’t doing anything to help themselves: they got up in arms with me because of a small, out-of-context detail that said i didn’t understand their relationship and blew that up). all of it, anti-human and i could be wrong, but it’s so reminiscent of the rise of ai.

this is what ai has done to us in this very small window of time, the arts aside.

all humans—yes, even those of you who claim to not be artists because damn it, all human beings are born artists whether you want to admit it or not—are now paying the price because of this bullshit.

[cheebuss]

Wuts the height diff between humanized 079 and humanized 682???

I hadn't really thought about it but I feel like everyone is shrimp sized next to 682

[sciderman]

How do you feel about the increase in really weird NSFW ads on here (advertising panels that look like sexual encounters, and AI art apps that pride themselves on porn) but will take down NSFW posts from their users, even if it isn't technically sexual.

i hate all social media and it's consistent prioritising the advertisers over the users and the internet simply was a better place before capitalism sunk its hooks into it

[aux-squiggle]

Are they...

Are they ADVERTIZING cheating on coursework using AI..?

[littlefeatherr]

AI is absolutely ruining the photography arts. Almost every nature/animal photography blog I've followed for years is now posting it. Have some respect.

[fatfemmefreaquency]

watching nanowrimo power torch their brand is… wild

i don’t even go here but i swear it’s like they woke up and said “hey how do we completely destroy customer trust in as little time as possible?” and then they just… did it

hey maybe if your main audience is artists don’t accept sponsorship from a corporation that directly plagiarizes those artists in order to fuck them over and make their careers disappear. that’s just common sense.

anyone with a brain could have seen how this would end, and yet

[a-birdhorse]

AI bros be like: No you don't understand I couldn't have made my horrible flesh golem without robbing all of those graves and that's why it's okay for me to rob graves. Please think of all the apprentices who could use the golem to cheat on their exams, please I promise it's a public good, you can use it too if you want, please just let me keep robbing graves so I can give it more kidneys it neeeeeeds them. It's so strong and has a soul and I just need fifteen more livers before it will become god please just give me back my shovel pleeeease! I promise it will cause untold devastation but like in a safe way so I just need to break into one more family crypt bro you just have to listen to me.

[mjhartwork]

my future career is being automated and I’m not sure how best to adapt to survive

[child-of-plut0]

AI is killing creativity

[spicyicymeloncat]

*goes to like something* *sees ai art tag* *scrolls away in disgust*

[uselessgay10101]

Ooookkkkk so! there's a lot of AI hate (which i totally understand bc some of the things done with AI are unfair and downright up setting), BUT AI isn't doing it on its own. If you feel as if AI is stealing jobs, don't ask if there's some way to stop AI from advancing, but if there's a way to stop ppl who are using it wrongly

AI isn't MEANT to take away jobs it "allows computers to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence" so we human don't have to work as hard jobs and can focus on things that actually matter to us

I am not saying, "Oh yeah, let AI keep advancing till we're all overthrown by robots." HAH! no no...no..I'm also terrified of that prospect!

I am saying don't let the ill actions of some humans color your vision in red for a virtually useful and helpful instrument of advanced technology

[petalsandpurity]

You know what scares me?? I literally cannot tell what is AI anymore. And the fact that I’ve seen news articles about two industries consider using AI rather than human workers. (Replacing copywriters and screenwriters.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[horizontwinflames]

Horizon AU: Twin Flames - Isaac's final armor and weapons variations (Zero Dawn Act). Text transcription under the cut after the images!

REPOST, EDIT/USE OR FEED MY ART TO AI ISN'T ALLOWED

Edit: Updated some text on the Oseram and Banuk arts.

You can read Isaac's lore here: [LINK]

Will he use those variations in the story? Yes! :D hehe. Also, in this AU only Aloy wears Oseran armor while only Beta wears Carja armor, because Oseran's armor is too heavy and noisy for Beta's stealth strategies, while Carja's armor is too weak for Aloy's melee fighting style.

This AU has an ongoing fanfic! You can read on Ao3: [LINK]

Text transcription:

Ravager's cannon: It gives Isaac the ability to fire rapidly like a Ravager can, but with much more precision. It can also do charged-up shots for more heavy damage. This is the most noiseless ranged weapon from Isaac, allowing the charged shot to be used for sniping. Up to two coils can be equipped.

Stalker Blade Tail: The swiftest and lightest melee weapon from Isaac's arsenal. It's the best pick to fight against lightweight machines and stealth attacks. Its thin shape and ability to spin and move up and down (at an angle of about 120 degrees) can also be used for precision attacks (e.g., to take off machine components or stealth-stabbing humans).

Nora's stealth armor: The natural materials of this armor allow Isaac to camouflage better within the natural landscape. The lack of metal pieces also helps reduce noise while moving. This armor is resistant to shock and ice damage but weak against fire and corrosion damage. Up to three weaves can be equipped.

Thunderjaw’s Disk Launcher: Isaac can use the disks like a Thunderjaw can or launch them at a high speed. It’s not an easy weapon to use, as its recoil can destabilize Isaac if he’s in movement, and it has a very slow recharge, but it’s the heaviest damage dealer from the arsenal. Its firepower can make big explosions and great area damage. Up to two coils can be equipped.

Thunderjaw’s Tail: It is the second heaviest and slowest melee weapon Isaac has, but when used correctly, it can cause great damage to his targets, destroy some types of human constructions, stun machines, and even kill humans on the spot. Its shovel-like shape also allows Isaac to throw objects away (with very poor precision) or even yeet Aloy and Beta to help them reach places or to aid in some fight strategy.

Oseram's tank armor: Made of the best Oseram hard leather and steel, this armor greatly protects Isaac, making him much more resistant to various damage kinds. However, the materials weigh him and consequently slow him down, thus making him sink underwater, and he needs to use more energy for his leaps and high jumps. This armor is highly resistant to corrosion and fire damage but has some weak spots for ice and shock damage. Up to three weaves can be equipped.

Bellowback’ Snout: This weapon is an adapted version of the Bellowback’s ranged elemental weapon for Isaac. It gives him the ability to shoot fire or acid projectiles. It can also be used as a close-range defense weapon; hence, it can be used as a flamethrower or acid jet-like gun as well. Up to two coils can be equipped.

Stormbird’s Tail: Isaac can use this weapon like a Stormbird: an electric whip-like melee weapon, still keeping the shocking damage but in a much smaller range and potency. However, if not used cautiously, the whip can get stuck in places or be grabbed by bigger machines. This tail is also useful for Isaac to balance himself while climbing or walking in places such as metal columns in ruins. Isaac must have this tail equipped to be able to swim underwater correctly.

Carja’s speed armor: The sisters arranged the traditional Carja clothing adornments in a way that makes Isaac more aerodynamic, and the lightness of the materials also helps Isaac run faster, leap further, and jump higher than he normally could. Although pretty, the materials of this armor aren’t made for battle, leaving Isaac vulnerable to all kinds of damage - especially physical damage. Up to three weaves can be equipped.

Scorcher’s Mine Launcher: Aside from the normal mines a scorcher can use, this version of its weapon also has the option to use stick mines. Either version of ammos can be used on battle strategies of timed controlled explosions, as the mines won’t explode until they get hit. These mines have two versions: fire and electric explosions. Up to two coils can be equipped.

Frostclaw’s Front Paw: The closest Isaac will get to “grabby hands” so far. It’s the biggest physical damage dealer but the slowest melee weapon due to its heavy weight. Isaac can not just inflict heavy damage but also use the big hand to grab huge objects and machines way bigger than him. This weapon is so heavy that it may destabilize him during curves at high speed, compromise his balance while climbing, and increase the needed energy to sprint, jump, and leap.

Banuk Power Armor: The Sobecks learned with the Banuk crafting how to improve the energy flow and distribution on a machine. This armor increases Isaac's total stamina energy and reduces the needed charge to sprint, jump, or leap. The improved energy flow also helps increase the damage from Isaac’s melee and ranged weapons. However, the increase in the energy flow makes Isaac heat up way faster if not used correctly. Up to three weaves can be equipped.

[level20mallow]

This right here is why ChatGPT and other generative AIs need to be banned:

Like we're not even going to pretend that the legal system has any legitimacy anymore, are we?

[itsacenotherobrine]

Art Name: Against Art AI This problem should stop, not only can it make art in a few minutes, but it can also steal art from other creators. It's not only me who disagrees with this, but also others. And ye, I finally finished the 1st semester in 11th grade and has finished all of my school tasks. And I can finally do speedpaints. Speedpaint: https://youtu.be/ljfxZ8KXCuw Follow Me Here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsaceherobrineas/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EsuNoWorkshoppu DeviantART: https://www.deviantart.com/itsacenotherobrineas Twitter: https://twitter.com/HerobrineAce Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCB8WrxRJLkjJ4rr5jp-K9A Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/itsacenotherobrine Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/itsacenotherobrineas Discord: https://discord.gg/ZKwvrQXPAy Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/itsacenotherobrine ===================================== Good news! For those people who are interested in my drawings, you can finally ask me to draw for you! (With a price ofcourse) More details in these links below! Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/itsacenotherobrine DeviantART: https://www.deviantart.com/itsacenotherobrineas/gallery/82568517/c-o-m-m-i-s-s-i-o-n-i-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-i-o-n Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EsuNoWorkshoppu/photos/pcb.304351648505669/304351428505691/