#ai companies and the people who use them will never care about quality

[leidensygdom]

Despite how WOTC/Hasbro have sworn off using AI several times (and then got caught using it, like here or here), and then casually firing +1000 employees this year (many of them being artists), their CEO is predictably musing about how to incorporate it, and readily making use of the technology for some other products, and testing how it may be of use for DnD/MtG.

I had mentioned it was just a matter of time, and even when some people were very eager that WOTC would never, well. Who would've thought. It's the same company that showed again and again no respect for its audience, their creators or even the biggest fans. (The OGL mess was about a year ago. They sent the Pinkertons to a fan less than a year ago). Because delivering a quality product isn't really their goal, nor is it to actually compensate artists fairly.

I don't think this is breaking news, but I'm mostly bringing it up in case people wonder where they stand. They also have a poll where you can tell what you think about them (no actual written feedback, only "pick from these 5 options"). And as a final note Margaret Weiss (creator of the Dragonlance, who had some big disputes with them- Including a lawsuit towards WOTC) has come forward to tell how little WOTC has respected her series. Not long ago a book set in the setting (Fizban's Treasury of Dragons) got released, and it cared very little about being respectful towards the world or her work. Which tracks with their usual behaviour, because Eberron was also mangled quite badly.

Just, as a reminder, there's many wonderful TTRPGs that are far more worth to support monetarily, or even available to play for free. (Recently all of the PF2e remaster has been posted on Archives of Nethys- A page that has all the mechanics from all the books for free, which is endorsed by the company itself.)

But yeah. As a small creator and artist, it's surely lovely to see how much the biggest TTRPG company out there respects us.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America's largest hospital chain has an algorithmic death panel

It’s not that conservatives aren’t sometimes right — it’s that even when they’re right, they’re highly selective about it. Take the hoary chestnut that “incentives matter,” trotted out to deny humane benefits to poor people on the grounds that “free money” makes people “workshy.”

There’s a whole body of conservative economic orthodoxy, Public Choice Theory, that concerns itself with the motives of callow, easily corrupted regulators, legislators and civil servants, and how they might be tempted to distort markets.

But the same people who obsess over our fallible public institutions are convinced that private institutions will never yield to temptation, because the fear of competition keeps temptation at bay. It’s this belief that leads the right to embrace monopolies as “efficient”: “A company’s dominance is evidence of its quality. Customers flock to it, and competitors fail to lure them away, therefore monopolies are the public’s best friend.”

But this only makes sense if you don’t understand how monopolies can prevent competitors. Think of Uber, lighting $31b of its investors’ cash on fire, losing 41 cents on every dollar it brought in, in a bid to drive out competitors and make public transit seem like a bad investment.

Or think of Big Tech, locking up whole swathes of your life inside their silos, so that changing mobile OSes means abandoning your iMessage contacts; or changing social media platforms means abandoning your friends, or blocking Google surveillance means losing your email address, or breaking up with Amazon means losing all your ebooks and audiobooks:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Businesspeople understand the risks of competition, which is why they seek to extinguish it. The harder it is for your customers to leave — because of a lack of competitors or because of lock-in — the worse you can treat them without risking their departure. This is the core of enshittification: a company that is neither disciplined by competition nor regulation can abuse its customers and suppliers over long timescales without losing either:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It’s not that public institutions can’t betray they public interest. It’s just that public institutions can be made democratically accountable, rather than financially accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by “voting with your wallet.” In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your ballot. Admittedly, that doesn’t always work, but one of the major predictors of whether it will work is how big and concentrated the private sector is. Regulatory capture isn’t automatic: it’s what you get when companies are bigger than governments.

If you want small governments, in other words, you need small companies. Even if you think the only role for the state is in enforcing contracts, the state needs to be more powerful than the companies issuing those contracts. The bigger the companies are, the bigger the government has to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Companies can suborn the government to help them abuse the public, but whether public institutions can resist them is more a matter of how powerful those companies are than how fallible a public servant is. Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds. Because companies are so big, they abuse us with impunity — and they are able to suborn the state to help them do it:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

This is the dimension that’s so often missing from the discussion of why Americans pay more for healthcare to get worse outcomes from health-care workers who labor under worse conditions than their cousins abroad. Yes, the government can abet this, as when it lets privatizers into the Medicare system to loot it and maim its patients:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-01-patient-zero-tom-scully/

But the answer to this isn’t more privatization. Remember Sarah Palin’s scare-stories about how government health care would have “death panels” where unaccountable officials decided whether your life was worth saving?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26195604/

The reason “death panels” resounded so thoroughly — and stuck around through the years — is that we all understand, at some deep level, that health care will always be rationed. When you show up at the Emergency Room, they have to triage you. Even if you’re in unbearable agony, you might have to wait, and wait, and wait, because other people (even people who arrive after you do) have it worse.

In America, health care is mostly rationed based on your ability to pay. Emergency room triage is one of the only truly meritocratic institutions in the American health system, where your treatment is based on urgency, not cash. Of course, you can buy your way out of that too, with concierge doctors. And the ER system itself has been infested with Private Equity parasites:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Wealth-based health-care rationing is bad enough, but when it’s combined with the public purse, a bad system becomes a nightmare. Take hospice care: private equity funds have rolled up huge numbers of hospices across the USA and turned them into rigged — and lethal — games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Medicare will pay a hospice $203-$1,462 to care for a dying person, amounting to $22.4b/year in public funds transfered to the private sector. Incentives matter: the less a hospice does for their patients, the more profits they reap. And the private hospice system is administered with the lightest of touches: at the $203/day level, a private hospice has no mandatory duties to their patients.

You can set up a California hospice for the price of a $3,000 filing fee (which is mostly optional, since it’s never checked). You will have a facility inspection, but don’t worry, there’s no followup to make sure you remediate any failing elements. And no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks complaints.

So PE-owned hospices pressure largely healthy people to go into “hospice care” — from home. Then they do nothing for them, including continuing whatever medical care they were depending on. After the patient generates $32,000 in billings for the PE company, they hit the cap and are “live discharged” and must go through a bureaucratic nightmare to re-establish their Medicare eligibility, because once you go into hospice, Medicare assumes you are dying and halts your care.

PE-owned hospices bribe doctors to refer patients to them. Sometimes, these sham hospices deliberately induce overdoses in their patients in a bid to make it look like they’re actually in the business of caring for the dying. Incentives matter:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

Now, hospice care — and its relative, palliative care — is a crucial part of any humane medical system. In his essential book, Being Mortal, Atul Gawande describes how end-of-life care that centers a dying person’s priorities can make death a dignified and even satisfying process for the patient and their loved ones:

https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/

But that dignity comes from a patient-centered approach, not a profit-centered one. Doctors are required to put their patients’ interests first, and while they sometimes fail at this (everyone is fallible), the professionalization of medicine, through which doctors were held to ethical standards ahead of monetary considerations, proved remarkable durable.

Partly that was because doctors generally worked for themselves — or for other doctors. In most states, it is illegal for medical practices to be owned by non-MDs, and historically, only a small fraction of doctors worked for hospitals, subject to administration by businesspeople rather than medical professionals.

But that was radically altered by the entry of private equity into the medical system, with the attending waves of consolidation that saw local hospitals merged into massive national chains, and private practices scooped up and turned into profit-maximizers, not health-maximizers:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-qa-corporate-medicine-destroys-doctors/

Today, doctors are being proletarianized, joining the ranks of nurses, physicians’ assistants and other health workers. In 2012, 60% of practices were doctor-owned and only 5.6% of docs worked for hospitals. Today, that’s up by 1,000%, with 52.1% of docs working for hospitals, mostly giant corporate chains:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-04-when-mds-go-union/

The paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring transhuman colony organism that calls itself a Private Equity fund is endlessly inventive in finding ways to increase its profits by harming the rest of us. It’s not just hospices — it’s also palliative care.

Writing for NBC News, Gretchen Morgenson describes how HCA Healthcare — the nation’s largest hospital chain — outsourced its death panels to IBM Watson, whose algorithmic determinations override MDs’ judgment to send patients to palliative care, withdrawing their care and leaving them to die:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/doctors-say-hca-hospitals-push-patients-hospice-care-rcna81599

Incentives matter. When HCA hospitals send patients to die somewhere else to die, it jukes their stats, reducing the average length of stay for patients, a key metric used by HCA that has the twin benefits of making the hospital seem like a place where people get well quickly, while freeing up beds for more profitable patients.

Goodhart’s Law holds that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Give an MBA within HCA a metric (“get patients out of bed quicker”) and they will find a way to hit that metric (“send patients off to die somewhere else, even if their doctors think they could recover”):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Incentives matter! Any corporate measure immediately becomes a target. Tell Warners to decrease costs, and they will turn around and declare the writers’ strike to be a $100m “cost savings,” despite the fact that this “savings” comes from ceasing production on the shows that will bring in all of next year’s revenue:

https://deadline.com/2023/08/warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-gunnar-wiedenfels-strikes-1235453950/

Incentivize a company to eat its seed-corn and it will chow down.

Only one of HCA’s doctors was willing to go on record about its death panels: Ghasan Tabel of Riverside Community Hospital (motto: “Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life”). Tabel sued Riverside after the hospital retaliated against him when he refused to follow the algorithm’s orders to send his patients for palliative care.

Tabel is the only doc on record willing to discuss this, but 26 other doctors talked to Morgenson on background about the practice, asking for anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the nation’s largest hospital chain, a “Wall Street darling” with $5.6b in earnings in 2022.

HCA already has a reputation as a slaughterhouse that puts profits before patients, with “severe understaffing”:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/workers-us-hospital-giant-hca-say-puts-profits-patient-care-rcna64122

and rotting, undermaintained facililties:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/roaches-operating-room-hca-hospital-florida-rcna69563

But while cutting staff and leaving hospitals to crumble are inarguable malpractice, the palliative care scam is harder to pin down. By using “AI” to decide when patients are beyond help, HCA can employ empiricism-washing, declaring the matter to be the factual — and unquestionable — conclusion of a mathematical process, not mere profit-seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/ggarbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

But this empirical facewash evaporates when confronted with whistleblower accounts of hospital administrators who have no medical credentials berating doctors for a “missed hospice opportunity” when a physician opts to keep a patient under their care despite the algorithm’s determination.

This is the true “AI Safety” risk. It’s not that a chatbot will become sentient and take over the world — it’s that the original artificial lifeform, the limited liability company, will use “AI” to accelerate its murderous shell-game until we can’t spot the trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/10/in-the-dumps-2/

The risk is real. A 2020 study in the Journal of Healthcare Management concluded that the cash incentives for shipping patients to palliatve care “may induce deceiving changes in mortality reporting in several high-volume hospital diagnoses”:

https://journals.lww.com/jhmonline/Fulltext/2020/04000/The_Association_of_Increasing_Hospice_Use_With.7.aspx

Incentives matter. In a private market, it’s always more profitable to deny care than to provide it, and any metric we bolt onto that system to prevent cheating will immediately become a target. For-profit healthcare is an oxymoron, a prelude to death panels that will kill you for a nickel.

Morgenson is an incisive commentator on for-profit looting. Her recent book These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America (co-written with Joshua Rosner) is a must-read:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

[Image ID: An industrial meat-grinder. A sick man, propped up with pillows, is being carried up its conveyor towards its hopper. Ground meat comes out of the other end. It bears the logo of HCA healthcare. A pool of blood spreads out below it.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

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

[lostinthe-void-666]

Fic recommendations!

Before we start I would like to say that all the summaries I post here are pulled directly from my own brain, also may contain spoilers (if so I apologize.) Please check the fics themselves for the tags/actual summaries, and just generally more information. Also let me know if any of the fic links are wrong and I’ll replace them! Thank you :)

Also give the authors all the love. They’ve made us all some amazing fanworks <3

Starbound: Scavenge for Survivors - a humans are space orcs fic in the form of Xisuma picks up some aliens and goes running through the cosmos. Also in this series is Starbound: Savage (Forgotten Conquest) although if you plan to read the first, I would recommend not reading it until you get to a certain point in the other fic!

TAXI! [Totally and Xisumally Insane] - college dropout Xisuma runs a taxi service to stay afloat, but some odd people inadvertently become regulars of his.

Well, Well, Look Who’s Inside Again - Ex is unbanned from the Void in a really bad state. Oh and can’t remember anything. A lot of angst ensues :)

Love Me Like I’m Dead - Xisuma whump. There’s more to it and it’s extremely good I love it so much, but that’s the most basic summary.

Skin and Bones - febwhump from the same author as love me like I’m dead! Have to have an acc to view but a lot of the same themes and it’s really good ^^

proverbs uttered by utter fools (i’ll do anything it takes!) - I’m awful at a summary for this one. Ai Xisuma is a mascot for the company that Grian works for. A lot of stuff ensues.

Curiosity and their Consequences. - Cub realizes that the admin has never shared things about his own past. So what happens when he goes digging?

Potion of Forget This - After Tango bans the saturated soups and honey bottles from the lobby of his decked out game, a few of the Hermits start mixing soups and potions! Xisuma mixes a soup for one of his experiments. This time, it wasn’t just some funny effect.

cosmology - a series! Really love their world building and admin headcannons! The first one is post season 8, the second is set in season 10

i of the storm // salvation - Wels puts himself in a dangerous situation, to follow the call of salvation

quality entertainment - The Watchers are the audience, and they have to be satisfied.

Detecting and Other Gerunds - Xisuma finds something in the woods. Little does he know, that sort of creates a person.

The Devil’s Casino (and it’s not-so-devilish people) - Ex runs a casino in the city, Xisuma lives in a town near the city, and they’re forced to move out and go to work at the casino for a little while

get 360ed, bitch (EX + Xisuma) - a lot of really great fics, I can’t list them all out, but the devil’s casino is part of it and it’s so cool :)

Gates of Evolution - Xisuma is transported back in time to Evo. An elaboration on something that happens in another of the authors fics, Hermitcraft Chaotic Group Chat

stumbling in the dark (please come find me) - GIGS and ghostie Mumbo!!

The Orb Factory - Servers are orbs manufactured by the watchers and each admin gets one when they reach 18 yes, new addition, shh. I think it’s a really cool concept ^-^

The Major is walking on general ice - I haven’t personally finished this one yet, unfortunately, but it’s super good. Xisuma angst and the writing is so good

Well I Would Give You My Whole World - 5+ 1, Xisuma keeps getting so absorbed with helping others he keeps forgetting about himself

The art of taking care of others (and the unconventional methods that come with it) - (taken directly from the fic summary) 5 times Xisuma was a hypocrite while also being a worried dad, and one where people finally caught up on what was happening.

The Cloned Series - not much of it is out yet but is seems angsty. Very fun.

Hermitcraft brainrot (mainly Xisuma or EX) - self explanatory

Secret admins are a really bad idea - series! The first is an 8 +1 of the hermits not knowing who their admin is, the second is a pre-fic oneshot explaining something in the other fic

i can be the one you call - THE hurt/comfort Hermitcraft series.

I Can Be the One You Call AU Stories - self-explanatory. A series :)

Ex’s Quest to get a Single Night of Rest - Ex gets brought back onto the Hermitcraft server. The Hermits are annoying.

Iron Bleeds Green - a Hermitcraft/bionicle crossover, no idea what bionicle is but this fic is great, Xisuma and Ex find a demon of their past is following them.

the fracture - …just yeah. Xisuma and ex are pitted against each other, they were never meant to be close. Xisuma tries anyway.

Parasites aren’t the only thing you need to heal from. - (taken from the series summary) This is an Au where E.X was a parasite that practically used Xisuma's body to hurt the hermits then framed him till the point that the hermits did something that they will continue to regret.

Nobody will notice. - the hermits are inadvertently awful to xisuma and he finally ends up breaking down. I need more xisuma whump like this.

Void Medic EX - series, first one is an explanation kinda, the second, ex keeps finding their own sibling in the void..

it gets a little lonely here - series!! About an experiment facility, first one is Xisuma-centric

Void Siblings AU - trans ex, a rocky sibling relationship, and also their awful parents.

From the Archives - MAGNUS ARCHIVES BUT MAKE IT HERMITCRAFT!!! Hard to explain. Spooky and silly :)

your destiny is yours to write (or play) - xisuma-centric band au!!

AniMCYT - I understand that this one is really niche, but if you were ever a fan of animorphs, ever, that’s what this is :)

Oneshots/shorter 2/3 chapter fics:

xisuma and the void - a snapshot of what it’s like to be an admin

A Creaking Heart - Shapeshifter EX and Xisuma!! Creaking!EX!!! Angst!

Xisuma Oneshots - a series of random Xisuma oneshots.

When You’re Down Let Me Run To Your Aid - post season 8, and Xisuma isn’t responding to any of the Hermits. They’re worried.

Dragon’s Whumptober 2024 - a bunch of really fun oneshots, I could never list them all separately

Never Make a Contingency Plan Based on an Assumption - Xisuma gets caught in a death loop :D

Mis-take - (this summary taken directly out of the summary of the fic itself) The Watchers’s declaration of war against mortals, among all the grandstanding, also boasted the capture of Xisumavoid, the Admin Voidwalker.

Shouldn’t you know better? You opened the door for an apex predator - VAMPIRE MUMBO GOING FERAL YES!!!

The Workers Have Left Their Stations - Joe and Xisuma have a chat

Don’t let X and his friends cook - Xisuma and some off-server friends engage in shenanigans

Make a mercy out of me - MORE VAMPIRE MUMBO GOING FERAL!

Not Ready? - Xisuma leans something about EX

Worldeater - an admin headcannon, very cool :)

A knock at the window - Xisuma’s locked outside late at night again.

Rouge’s Gallery - an explanation of the hermits (and why they’re terrifying-)

Flowers. - Xisuma angst

i am a phony - what if xisuma and ex were in third life?

Lean On Me, Let It Out - only Doc knows about Xisuma’s previous server and what horrible things happened there

Honeycomb - Voidwalkers have some weird instincts… love this one :D

Withering Pains - (actual fic summary) Xisuma was just heading out to the nether to fix a glitch. He did not sign up to traumatically die to the almost extinct Wither effect.

Just a Day - Ex doesn’t have a good birthday.

Violet Mistique - Ex’s blindfold gets ripped off…

it’s a hollow play - Inspo of quality entertainment!!! Mumbo breaks something, and Xisuma really doesn’t want to punish him.

I’ve Seen Your Face Before - shapeshifting SCP Ex

The Tale of Suma - Xisuma and Ex are kept by the listeners while they’re growing up I can’t do this justice it’s so amazing

Ancient Secrets, Come To Light - …just yeah. Read the summary. Different timeline and watcher Wels

squishy or not, we all still love you - JEVIN FLUFF RAHHHH

Breaking and Entering - Ex tries to escape the void

bee - (actual fic summary) Xisuma gets a little more than he originally wished for with his 'Beesuma' persona.

Soulmarks AU “Hermitcraft” - everyone has a mark representing friendships they form, Xisuma reveals his

naps and high places don’t mix - Xisuma falls asleep in a high place. Instant regret.

Night Night Little God - about the sleeping glitch from the beginning of season 7

Flesh & Diamond - what if Xisuma actually used to be the doomslayer before he came to Hermitcraft?

Doppelgänger - (taken from fic summary) Xisuma confronts his double

when you were flyin’ your white flag, who never gave up on you? - Wels and Xisuma at the end of the world, in the End

You can’t Heal if you Hide - (taken from fic summary) Keralis helps Xisuma after the aftermath of a respawn

Welsknight’s Hoarding Problem - Wels hoards things :)

It’s Inadvisable to Attempt to Fight God as Any Mortal - paladin X!! His god starts to say things, though, and he starts to slip

And the World Stops Turning Just for Me - Xisuma’s tired. So tired, but he can’t give up just yet.

Exhels oneshots!

i love you like the ashes in my cigarette box

If you want a hyphen last name, I guess I don’t mind the cadence

Patterns in Petals

your honor, he’s a cornball

why the fuck are you using tilt controls

[chipped-chimera]

I keep seeing people panicking about the AI thing and I want to help, but after being shutdown for trying to do so I guess I'll just let people deal with it themselves. But for those who care I'll say this:

The facts are this current state of affairs is going to be temporary, and due to the internet predicted to be 90% AI generated content by 2026 and since AI cannot train on itself without degrading, AI companies are going to run out of scrape-able good quality material for datasets very quickly - at least in terms of images (language scraping will be harder to fight). They'll likely be designing their web-trawling bots around this fact, which means they'll be seeking out any kind of image that is not AI generated or has been Glazed/Nightshaded. If we want to put pressure on these companies to respect our content and that they want to use as good training data - don't let them set the terms and conditions. Your data is yours - protect it. The noose is closing for these huge tech companies, so don't let them fool you into believing there is no hope, no control, and you should give up. It is a lie to keep you complacent and if you're Adobe - maybe lets them get away with paying you a pittance for your data being trained on.

You'll soon be the one with the leverage here. You set the terms. Not them. Never give them anything for free, or less than you feel it is worth.

Fuck corpos. Poison the machine.

[zuzsenpai]

I'm honestly so furious right now. I work in a video and photography department for a large healthcare organization. We're a department of 9, plus an intern. We're under the "marketing" umbrella, though we do a lot more than marketing for the network (for example we also make patient and employee education videos/photos/animations).

Yesterday the social media department (also part of marketing. We supply photos and videos for them to post) posted an AI generated image on our company's instagram page. It was a photorealistic AI image of a baby, used to promote our pediatric cardiology service line. The image is so ridiculously obviously AI, it makes me want to puke. It's uncanny, too smooth with zero skin texture, the eyes are messed up, and the "baby" literally has full eyelashes on one eye and none on the other.

I'm livid because it's like... what the fuck do they need OUR department for if they're going to be using AI now?

To our knowledge, this is the first time they've done this. I get that there's an "argument" to be made that it's incredibly difficult and time consuming to set up a photoshoot with a real baby, and they wanted something fast and easy because the marketing service line directors are constantly on social media's ass to push out abhorrent amounts of marketing content on social media. This culture will never change. We've tried to explain that people don't like seeing constant mediocre ads for healthcare service lines when they are on social media. But the higher ups won't listen to that AT ALL. So... AI generated gross ass baby it is (I cannot stress enough how creepy this "baby" looks).

But it's a slippery slope. Because first it's a baby. Next it'll be a fake orthopedic surgery patient because who has time to find a real patient for our photographers to shoot? Never mind that people on social media actually DO like seeing real patient stories. Next it'll be a billboard on the highway with AI generated doctors because who cares to know what their real doctor looks like, right? This is making me so mad for the photographers in my department who work so fucking hard to shoot and edit stunning, quality images. Their jobs will be relegated to event photography until someday an unmanned robot can set up their own camera and do that too (they probably already can?).

Recently one of the service line directors in marketing asked me to use an AI voice for an animation I'm making. I had to put my foot down and say that we have three fantastic local voiceover artists who we use for these kinds of projects. One of them is a retired gentleman who went to school with my dad and is always extremely happy to get work from us. Sometimes I think these marketing people just want to use AI because it's trendy.

I understand that there are other industries and individuals who are already being massively affected by AI to a much larger and much more detrimental degree. And that my problems are largely me spinning out of control. I figured AI would hit us eventually, and there's really nothing I can do except continue to put my foot down about the voiceover thing. I can't do much for the photographers, sadly. I'm too nervous to get mad at social media, though I really wish I could at least point out how disgusting that baby looks. But I'm worried that I'm going to be some sort of pariah if I voice my opinion on it. I already get paid peanuts and there's really no way for me to advance my career here. So being the "person who shits on social media for using AI" might be detrimental to me in the long run. I really DO want to advocate for our photographers, but is it my place? Idk, it's complicated.

[lemonmoxy]

Ok just to preface this. I am not a fan of AI. For labor reasons, for quality reasons, for the selfish reason of when I’m looking for art I don’t want it clogged down with just objectively bad art (like the hands are fucked up and extra feet).

I do think the primary problem isn’t AI itself but unregulated capitalism that doesn’t care about quality, only lowering costs and the lack of safety nets for people who are ejected to cut costs. It’s bad that the companies do that. It’s bad that there are no safety nets. The problem isn’t really AI BUT until we fix those problems we should regulate the thing directly causing harm.

But some of you anti-AI people have lost your fucking minds.

So. A lot of you are crying about stolen commissions. I promise you, most of the people using AI to generate pictures of their OCs were never going to pay you. They cannot afford to pay you. Or that’s a luxury expense that just isn’t going to happen. I am paycheck to paycheck and I’m never going to spend a whole video game’s worth of money on a picture of my little goblin. Your art IS worth that much, I promise you, I’m not telling you to lower your rates. But I do not have that kind of money for that sort of indulgence. I’m sorry but you peddle luxury, there’s a reason why we had art patrons back in the day.

Some of my friends use AI for their OCs for table top games. I don’t. Because honestly sitting there fucking with it sounds tedious and frustrating to me and the results are always mid at best. But y’all also get mad about people “taking” your art to use for their OCs and maybe editing it to fit the character they have in mind. Which is WILD. I’ll agree, people who do that shouldn’t post it, but if you’re so mad at what people are doing in the privacy of their non published casual dnd sessions, maybe chill the fuck out? Being you sounds exhausting. I also see some of you get mad at people tagging things as inspiration. So what? You want people to pay the poor tax of using piccrew? Even though the results are samey and kinda bad? Idk y’all just are tripping on something.

I’m starting to wonder just what people think inspiration and brainstorming are. People have been pretending to be baffled about why people might use AI to brainstorm. “Use your own brain”. What the fuck do you think brainstorming is? You do not brainstorm by sitting in your room thinking. I mean maybe YOU do. But like you get inspiration from the world around you guys, be for real. A conversation you overheard. An outfit you saw at a crosswalk. The set of the brow of someone on your bus route. A funny post you saw on tumblr. A generative AI like chat GPT is taking things found online and showing them to you. Unless you’re uncritically using it to write a story (and if so that’s bad. Lack of effort and a bad product is bad obviously) you ARE using your brain. We draw inspiration from the world around us, just like the AI does. I know it sucks to feel unoriginal but you just are, sorry. That’s not bad even if it might feel like it. It just is. Even if you sit in a little box and don’t look at the world while you think, you’re thinking about the things you’ve seen and reconfiguring them. Sorry to be the one to break it to you?

Also, you know what chatGPT is good for? Anything an intern could do. You wanna organize your schedule? It’s good at that. You want a grocery list? It’s good at that. You want a menu based of what you got? It’s good at that. Not perfect. Don’t fucking trust a machine without quality checking it, we know that, you guys know that, corporations know that too they just don’t CARE. I don’t know why they’re pretending not to know, money, I don’t know why you guys started pretending.

I saw someone complaining like an old person about spell check and grammar check and how their kid didn’t know that it could be wrong. A ten year old. As if that isn’t normal and explaining to kids how the world works is dystopian. Nah man it’s not a mystery why the kid who still has spelling tests as a part of their everyday school lesions might not know that machines are fallible yet. Probably just how he hasn’t quite learned that adults are idiots too. This person was acting like spell check was some moral sin, some hallmark of the end. Ok grandpa, do you think we should give up the pencil too because writing things down is rotting our brains?

Just like writing things down isn’t an evil action of destroying your memory. I really do not see the difference between me googling for recipes with my ingredients and chatGPT doing it for me. Frankly I’m just as likely to forget I don’t have coriander. But it takes longer for me to do it and sucks.

[nicklloydnow]

“The transfer of True Lies has a truly vile quality to it, a feeling like someone clandestinely dosed you with LSD just a hair below the threshold. At times it can look passable in motion, but then you notice something out of the corner of your eye: a thick fold of skin, a framed photo of a child, folders that are too thick at the margins, cheeks that look rendered. It’s that familiar dread at the pit of your gut when you spot AI generated imagery, a combination of edges not looking quite right and surfaces that are simultaneously too smooth and too sharp. A crime was committed here, and you can tell.

The transfers of Aliens and The Abyss are markedly less bad than True Lies, but I still have difficulty watching them. The skin looks sterile and waxy with too much film grain removed. Everything looks like it has raytracing on. Both transfers are, however, within acceptable parameters for most normal people.

The recent transfer of Titanic got a similar treatment, with similarly mixed reactions online.

“Why would you do this?” is a logical question. It’s worth contextualizing who handled these “restorations” – namely Park Road Post, a subsidiary of Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films. They have worked on multiple films in the past, but the two that are most germane here are Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old and the 3-part Disney+ documentary The Beatles: Get Back. Both movies recontextualize pre-existing footage and, importantly, do so with an aggressive use of machine learning. They Shall Not Grow Old upscales and colorizes old World War I imagery in an attempt to set the bloodshed in a more modern context, while Get Back recycled footage shot for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, including moments never before seen by the public, to elucidate the process behind the creation of some of The Beatles’ most iconic songs.

(…)

I wish we had stopped Jackson then and there. As my good friend Danielle joked, this was a trial balloon. People praised Jackson for doing this to Lindsay-Hogg’s footage in the name of restoration, and it emboldened him to do worse things. Before the True Lies debacle, the most recent example of this was the aggressively saccharine and confusing Now & Then, a long unfinished demo now finished by Ringo and Paul, edited together with archival footage of younger John and George composited in an a fashion that can be charitably described as tremendously weird.

Lest I am accused of being a luddite, I firmly believe there are many use cases for this technology. Nvidia’s DLSS and competing variants generally work very well on the games they are trained on. I regularly use Flowframes in the rare case that I need interpolation. I have often used waifu2x and now chainner if I need to photoshop a still and my source is bad, and there are databases of countless AI upscaling models. But the flip side to this is that these technologies are often used in place of proper ingest. “Crap in, crap out” is a truism for a reason. I spend a lot of time regularly capturing VHS and Laserdisc at the highest possible quality for fun, and when I see people who should know better say “Just use Topaz” (a commercial AI upscaler) instead of learning how to correctly ingest footage and deinterlace it, it makes me want to pull out my hair, because it almost uniformly looks bad to anyone who works with video professionally.

When you finally do see a piece of footage transferred well, it can be breathtaking. Good archival practices require a lot of institutional knowledge and labor. It’s an art when done well, and the people who do it care so much about what they do. But the modern application of much of AI is precisely about taking labor out of the equation. Why transfer a tape correctly when we can just have a computer guess badly instead? What if crap goes in, and it doesn’t come out?

What makes all of this worse is that True Lies, as I understand it, did not need to be shoved through the AI wringer. According to The Digital Bits, Park Road Post had a recent 4k scan of True Lies from the original camera negative. Park Road Post’s own website claims they have a Lasergraphics Director 10K film scanner on the premises. So what is the purpose of adding AI to this mix? Why do that to a perfectly fine-looking film? What is gained here, other than to slightly yassify an Arnold film? At this point, maybe they are simply doing it just to say that they did, because the technology is lying around, like a loaded gun with the safety off.

Nerds who post on blu-ray forums as a rule often need to calm down, and the forum threads I have read about this are no exception, but there are certain cases where a filmmaker is just wrong about how their films should look. Lucas is the infamous notable example, but Cameron is not innocent here in his treatment of his own films. Wong Kar-wai is another notable example, as what he did to Ashes of Time is criminal as was his recent “remasters” of his movies like In The Mood For Love. In certain rare conditions like this, it’s healthy to question if directors have the best interests of their own films in mind, as Cameron himself personally approved of these remasters.

What actually chills my blood more than anything is the thought that a lot of people think this all looks pretty good. You see this mindset at work whenever an AI fetishist posts a stable diffusion image of a woman with 13 fingers, 40 incisors and comically huge breasts. There’s an entire portion of the population that takes overt pleasure in the over-smoothed, perverts that prefer all media to be fast, high frame rate, and scrubbed squeaky clean. The cameras on our phones don’t simply capture images anymore, they compute them and ‘optimize’ them. It’s Italian Futurism in 4k, a noise reduction death drive. It’s not simply enough for much of digital cinema to look crystal clear and lifeless; the past should be denoised, grain managed and cleaned to conform to that standard. It is expedient and profitable if people don’t remember what film is supposed to look like.

I don’t think anyone gets into preservation to destroy film. I believe that everyone involved with this process worked hard and had the best interests of the film in mind, but the exact nature of restoration itself can vary wildly. I believe that some companies get blinded by new tech, get high on their own supply, and that can result in work that is destructive instead of restorative. I don’t know what the solution to this is in the world we live in, outside of decoupling film preservation from the profit motive whenever possible.

But I am certain about one thing. For a while, much of gaming tried looking like Aliens. Now, Aliens looks like a video game. And that doesn’t sit right with me.”

[arsonwerm]

Aight buckle up I have quite a few wishes fuckers

1. I want to have more control over when I stop scrolling

2. I want all of the people who directly kill innocent civilians to face justice for their crimes

3. I want Donald Trump and anyone associating with him on legal business to never be able to lie again, and to come out and tell the truth about any past lies in a very public statement

4. I want to always have the motivation to create art when I reach for it

5. I want to always have inspiration for that art and know what I want to create

6. I want JK Rowling to make a public apology for her transphobic, antisemitic, etc behavior (AND MEAN IT), and rescind all funding from anti trans charities, and give all of that funding to lgbtq aid and liberation charities

7. I want to use 3/4 of Jeff bezos’s net worth to create no-barrier-to-entry housing for unhoused peoples, donate to food banks, distribute to charities, and distribute among overseas humanitarian aid efforts

8. End institutionalized racism

9. End institutionalized poverty

10. Redistribute US military budget to give state funded free education to all, including higher education

11. Get rid of all anti-homeless infrastructure

12. Rework city layouts to make them more pedestrian friendly, anti automobile, pro public transport, walkable, and ADA friendly

13. All remaining roads are now made of the current most environmentally friendly asphalt replacement currently invented

14. Add in more water efficient green spaces to roads and sidewalks, and make sidewalks shaded by native trees and lined with native plants

15. All invasive species now have their populations reduced and are now ecologically under control in the areas which they came from

16. Fund all legitimate and effective initiatives for coral reef rehabilitation and repopulation

17. Anyone under the age of 13 is now completely unable to access social media

18. Child friendly online spaces like animal jam and many of the old .io games are restored

19. All laws implemented with the intent to discriminate against marginalized communities is now no longer in effect

20. Redistribute police funding, creating new branches that specialize in nonviolent deescalation and relocation

21. All of my previous and future wishes will be implemented within the next 30 earth days, but also in a way that makes them appear to be naturally occurring

22. Roe v Wade is now reinstated as a valid ruling

23. Medical care is now free for everyone, including non-essential but quality of life improving initiatives

24. Every company that contributes to 1% or more of current landfill mass will answer for the crimes against the environment

25. Implemented all proposed legal programs to tax the ultra-rich

26. I can change the size of my breasts at will, including getting rid of them entirely, but will always be able to revert them back to their natural size if desired

27. I no longer need to sleep

28. Minimum wage is living wage and “server wage” is no longer below the general minimum wage

29. All golf courses are converted into affordable housing communities with no barriers to entry

30. I want my attention span for reading back please

31. Anytime someone wants a stress ball, they will find one in their pocket, purse, or nearby in a clearly visible area

32. I want to no longer have sensory issues and issues with fainting/lightheadedness

33. AI programs are not allowed to scrape visual, auditory, or literary works without the creators explicit personal consent

34. All Amazon profits go to charity

35. Amazon implements the most eco friendly forms of transportation to date

36. No shipping/delivery fees

37. Whatever current sketchbook I am using will be magically able to fit into any bag I am carrying without changing the size of either object

38. All books, including sketchbooks and notebooks, now weigh one ounce each, no matter the size or density

39. Google no longer shows sponsored results

40. All charities with legitimate intentions of aid for marginalized communities are now fully funded with money from current billionaires

41. Said billionaires funding charities cannot use this funding to sway the intentions of said charities

42. No one with intentions to inflict harm on a marginalized group will be able to run for any governmental office

43. Anyone who has joined a gang for stability and community will now be able to find those needs fulfilled in other more constructive spaces

44. Public libraries are fully funded

45. All research papers and educational textbooks are free to use

46. All subscription services for software will now become affordable one time purchases without intentional limits on use

47. I reserve the right to reverse any previous or future wishes should I find they have unexpected negative consequences

48. I reserve the right to make more wishes in the future should I choose to do so, and after this particular interaction is over, I will invoke a new session of wishing by saying your name aloud three times. Any wishing sessions will be ended by saying my last name three times

49. I reserve the right to have full knowledge of the existence and exact wording of any previous wishes I have made

50. I now know your name

51. You are not entitled to grant my wishes if you find that you do not want to

52. You are to warn me of any unintended negative consequences a wish may invoke before you grant it

53. Horses are no longer fucked up

“I shall grant three wishes, but you cannot wish for… Actually, fuck it. You get infinite wishes and no rules, let’s see where this goes.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND PROFILERS

If they were just like us, then they had to work very closely with a program written in a certain language, it might be worth a hundred times as much on sales as on development. The narrow focus makes it a sort of puzzle, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to kill him. Now I know a number of independent things.1 Since speed doesn't matter in most of a program, you won't know for sure whether its message will resonate with you till you hear it. In technology, the low end. VCs invest in a company with a real product and real revenues, we might have done well. It will be about whatever the title says, and the essay will still survive. Growing too slowly is particularly dangerous in a business must, ex officio, understand it. Keeping a lid on meanness. The key is to know what's what. And if the company merely breaks even on the deal. Most companies, at least, is run by real hackers.

It's never just a straight trade of money for stock. The Cro-Magnons would have been that Microsoft would crush them. So traffic became the thing to get at Yahoo. If I were going to do this was at trade shows. But why do we conceal death from kids?2 Whatever computers are made of in a hundred years will not, except in special applications, be massive parallelism. Of all the reasons we lie to people it's not part of any conscious strategy, but because it is simply the most powerful you can get it done quickly and get back to work after dinner. In the MIT CS department, there seems to be able to say they were funded by Sequoia, even if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into it. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage. If you're raising money from multiple investors, as most companies do in phase 2.3

Ideally when you've raised enough.4 The trouble with lying is that you have lousy judgement. You can see that machine language is very low level.5 Paris you can see shortcuts in the solution of simple ones, and no particular connection between them. In retrospect this was stupid. You're about to hire your first employee. Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The job of programmers was just to take the work of PR firms really does get deliberately misleading is in the bank. He said that in the next ten feet, this is the right way to write software for a startup to work on?

N things is random access.6 And they are then surprised how difficult and unpleasant it is. Instead of asking what problem should I solve? Hear no till you hear yes. Fouls happen. Startups are often described as emotional roller-coasters. Our hypothesis was that if we wrote our software in a weird AI language, with a filter for quality. This is also true of starting a startup generally. As this gap widens, profilers will become increasingly clear that the way to persuade people is not just that there's a concentration of smart people, and $15k per month is the conventional total cost including benefits and even office space per person.7

As written, it tends to be open source: operating systems, programming languages, of all things. Selection beats damping, for the same reason market economies beat centrally planned ones. In a list of n things is a degenerate case of essay.8 Now it means a smaller, younger, more technical group that just decided to make something users want, and not dissing users. So if you're thinking, I don't care what he says, I'm going to start a company of your own. But I think I see now what went wrong with philosophy, and how fast you're moving forward. 0 startup: Sites like del. So I think people who are bad at understanding.9 Their unconscious mind decides for them, shrinking from the work involved. Languages are notation. It's painful doing sales, but you can't fix the location.

Meet such investors last if at all.10 And when business people try to distinguish them instead by being funny.11 One of the occupational hazards of living in Cambridge is overhearing the conversations of people who do this tend to use the term to mean they won't invest till you get $x from other investors. And yet because of the huge amounts they raised at the end, just as automating things often turns out to have been temporary. My second suggestion will seem shocking to VCs: let founders cash out partially in the Series A round. What do parents hope to protect their misconceptions from bumping against reality. By the time the acquirer gets them, they're finishing one another's sentences.12 The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to move along from the first conversation to wiring the money, and ambivalence about being a technology company, and by using graph theory we can compute from this network an estimate of the probability that an investor will say yes, know what the timetable is for getting good results.13 Paul Allen started Microsoft. It was the worst year of my adult life, but I didn't have the kind of parallelism we have in a hundred years you won't have to write programs to solve, but I haven't seen it. Get introductions to investors. They'd been thrown off balance from the start by their ambivalence about being a technology company.14

Obviously it's not the professors who decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they have enough. 0 startup: Sites like del. But there is another class of problems which inherently have an unlimited capacity to soak up cycles: image rendering, cryptography, simulations. That's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious. The terms will be whatever they turn out to be hard, partly because there is less demand for them. They just talk to investors serially, plus if you only want them to run is something they thought of themselves. Being good is a particularly useful strategy for making decisions in complex situations because it's stateless. Actually this seems to work much as in LA. These can get a lot of people realized this, they stopped caring so much what investors thought about them. Don't listen to them, not something customers need.15 And while most investors are influenced by how interested other investors are in you, but only just, especially at first.

Notes

The number of startups will generally raise large amounts of our own startup Viaweb, he'd get his ear pierced. Not in New York, and then using growth rate to manufacture a perfect growth curve, etc.

Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. In 1995, when we started Viaweb, if your goal is to seem entirely open, but I have set up grant programs to encourage more startups to be limits on the y, you'd see a lot of companies that got bootstrapped with consulting.

The Baumol Effect induced by startups is that as to discourage that as to discourage that as you can tell that everything you say something to bad groups and they succeeded. They act as if you'd just thought of them.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Apparently someone believed you have to do more with less, is rated at-1.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a large chunk of stock the VCs want it to steal a few percent from an angel investment from a 6/03 Nielsen study quoted on Google's site. This kind of gestures you use in representing physical things. Or at least a little about how closely the remarks attributed to them this way that weren't visible in Silicon Valley, but for blacklists nearness is physical, and the manager, which brings in more people.

I should do is adjust the weights till the Glass-Steagall act in 1933. They may not have raised money at all is a way that makes it easier for some students to get at it he'll work very hard to predict startup outcomes in which income is doled out by solving his own problems. Your teachers are always telling you and the leading scholars of that generation had been a time machine to the truth. Letter to Ottoline Morrell, December 1912.

That can be huge. There are some good proposals too. I'm not saying option pools themselves will go away.

A fundraising is the place of Napster. But what he means by long shots are people in any case, 20th century executive salaries were low partly because you can play it safe by excluding VC firms were the impressive ones. It would have for endless years of training, and power were concentrated in the absence of objective tests.

Instead of laboriously adding together the numbers like the arrival of your mind what's the right order. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that clothing brands favored by urban youth do not do that.

Strictly speaking it's impossible to succeed in a non-corrupt country or organization will be maximally profitable when each employee is paid in proportion to the environment. The knowledge whose utility drops sharply as soon as no one else involved knows French. It's to make money; and with that additional constraint, you produce in copious quantities.

When investors ask you a series. The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. I make the people who don't, but this disappointment is mostly the ordinary sense.

Patrick Collison wrote At some point, there were some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking.

I never watch movies in theaters anymore. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, and yet it is the precise half of the delays and disconnects between founders and one didn't try to get the money so burdensome, that is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and the opinion of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp. Philadelphia is a convertible note with no environmental cost.

Bureaucrats manage to allocate resources, because such companies need huge numbers of people, but when people tell you them. If you're not even in their early twenties. Or rather indignant; that's a rational response to what you really want, like the application of math to real problems, but only because like an undervalued stock in that era had no natural immunity to messianic figures, just harder.

But it will almost certainly overvalued in 1999, it has to split hairs that fine about whether you want to learn to acknowledge as well use the standard career paths of trustafarians to start or join startups. A knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between the top stories were de facto chosen by human editors.

[re-bee-key]

The future (now) is dystopian scifi

It started with television. Entertainment. Scientists wanted to test out their budding artificial intelligence, and the studios were more than eager to find a way to get rid of the writers.

Writers cost too much. They require "living wages." Living was expensive, and they kept demanding more.

"What do writers even do?" The studios asked. "They can't be too important. Dumb consumers are accepting worse and worse quality with hardly any complaint. I bet they would be too dumb to notice the change if we had the robots write the scripts."

And so they fired the writers, and the shows were written with research data driven algorithms.

The quality was not good. And people did notice. But most did not care enough to do much or even complain that hard. Real life was far too demanding already. And so the death of writing as a career came to be. And writing was all done by robots.

Next came the call centers.

Robots could mimic voices and respond to select phrases. Call centers were getting more and more expensive, and consumers were constantly complaining about them. What they really were upset about was the company itself, but they took their anger out on the agents and gave them bad reviews.

But, when the company kept seeing worse and worse reviews for the agents and saw what robot help could do. They decided to turn to ai. And soon no human was manning the phone for any companies customer service.

Next, well, it was like a domino. As more and more companies realized robots could do human jobs, they fired more and more people.

It was like heaven for investors and the stock market. The people on top were saving millions, not paying people anything. And they were happier and richer than ever.

People were desperate for jobs. Fighting for anything that remained.

Immigration laws became harsher as politicians pointed to them stealing jobs from those who needed them. Always conveniently ignoring that jobs were so scarce because robots were replacing them.

People joined the military in droves. One of the last places that always accepted people no matter what. "Because war is on the horizon." They always promised.

And war did come. It always came. It will always come. It never left.

The jobs that remained were labour. Not that anything is wrong with labor. Its needed work that someone people like. it is not for everyone... not everyone can do it..

And so those who couldnt were left without.

Homelessness grew. Even as more and more empty homes kept being built.

Talking about homes. The quality kept getting worse. Till they were almost cardboard quality. Or at least thats what people liked to joke they were.

Disposable.

Homes only lasted about 10 years before they had to be replaced. And the replacements were almost worse than what came before.

Quality in all sectors went down. Because quality control jobs were given to robots. Which could be hacked and controlled to ignore unsafe defects.

As things got worse people kept asking, "why are robots not helping us with labor jobs? why are we struggling so hard? working so hard? for scraps and little else?"

"Oh, we can't have robots do manual labor. They are far too delicate. Their chips and processors and little electric bits would break within a weak if we made them work difficult jobs. Plus most need to be temperature controlled. No no. This is whats for the best. We promise. Things are the best they have ever been!"

They say as militarized war dogs roam the streets. Capable of busting through concrete walls, lifting 5x times their weight, and handling any weather or temperature they may experience.

They say as people die from contaminated foods and unsafe living conditions.

They say as the middle class disappears more and more each year.

And the 1 percent becomes the .0001 percent.

And the people of the world live in the deepest poverty known to history on this scale.

And the world slowly dies. As companies control the governments and take away the sanctions that control them and protected life.

And it dies and dies and dies over and over again as millions of humans and species get sicker and sicker in an ever polluted world.

And then, nothing. It all ends in fire. As the world turns on itself in rage and grief.

That is what i see. Not just because writers are struggling and striking.

But everything in the world that is happening. All of it combined. It fills me with such dread. That its only going to get worse and worse until it cant be fixed at all.

This is my fear. This is how I see the future.

[strangecloud]

I realize the irony of posting this in English but if you'll have me, I'd like to hypothesize about the future of technology in my home country of Brazil.

Okay, so. As I understand it, back in the 70s, there was some political motion to protect homegrown IT industries, which included computer and parts manufacturing. This involved taxing foreign products heavily to limit imports. I have no idea if IBM or Commodore had any presence in the country back in the day but I have personally never seen any of their machines for as long as I've been using computers, since the early 2000s. As a result, anything that wasn't a low-quality national machine was too expensive to afford.

This is, in my opinion, the single greatest mistake the country has ever made and has done irreparable damage to the technological and economic fabric of Brazilian society.

During my brief, poorly compensated time at a software company as a support agent and QA technician, the glimpses I caught at business-grade computer tech our clients were working with was bleak. I'm talking Windows XP machines running Dual-Cores and rocking 2GB of RAM. Legacy OS support on our software was a pain and every time I had to remote into a 7 or XP machine it was very annoying to get it working.

This is a symptom of expensive tech being bad for companies and services. And because the tech is bad, the service suffers and makes it harder to acquire good tech. And this goes all the way back to those original policies. Tech in Brazil is a luxury item and most people make do with the bare minimum to operate a business in any capacity, often cutting corners and using faulty equipment that can, and has, caused permanent damage to businesses.

I bring this up because with the silicon shortage and the crypto-into-AI boom, I foresee a period of extreme tech stagnation beyond even what I described.

Some of you may have noticed that Nvidia pivoted into "not being a graphics company anymore". The reason being that they realized selling hardware to consumers is, apparently, a sucker's way of doing things. Finance suits are willing to build entire complexes housing industrial amounts of rigs to, at first, do crypto shit and more recently host their generative transformers to churn out garbage .jpgs and nonsense text.

Simply put, there's only so much magic sand to make into die wafers and the MSRP on consumer tech is so unreasonable to the point that it's more expedient to sell it to tech evangelists with more money than sense at highly inflated prices.

AMD is getting their ass handed to them in part because they can't do AI as good as Nvidia does. With only so many resources available to make these things, more will always go to the ones with the money to reinvest in business, and when pickings are slim for consumers the market gets even more pricey and exclusive.

So. Prices in Brazil are already stupid because of some dictatorship-era move some idiots pulled half a century ago, but with this new development I believe we are looking at an actual tech crisis.

Consider for a moment that hardware might get so inaccessible that by 2025, when Windows 10 support is dropped, businesses and people might not be able to afford the minimum specs for Windows 11, which will not let you install it if you don't meet these system requirements. The whole country is at risk of becoming a techno-wasteland of people using ancient software on secondhand hardware that is unreliable and costly to replace. This exposes businesses and people to significant security and operational risks, driving down the quality of services and deflating the economy even more.

If there's one good thing about this is that people are realizing that Microsoft's business model is bad and that Windows kinda sucks. Smarter businesses are going to transition to Linux, and while I am careful not to put my hopes on the general public to not take the path of least resistance, I've seen a not insignificant amount of general consumers who have claimed to be willing to do the switch by the time Windows 10 hits the bricks.

The 2020s might be a very challenging decade for good old Brazil.

[lazypeachsoul]

I wouldn't want to spend a minute lovin' anybody else.

Warnings: this fic has some sad moments and mentions of the blip. also kind of AU because I'm completely ignoring Natasha's canon end.

Word count: 4,2k (i got very carried away with this fic)

Summary: · Meeting the right person at the wrong time can be life changing when it doesn’t work out the way we desire. But if it's meant to be it will always happen, right?

A/N: This is my fic for the "Women of Marvel xReader Exchange" created by @marvelxreaderfanfictionfest . It was created for @im-holding-ontoyou and I hope you like it! gif by @natasharomanovgifs 🌼 ALSO; i haven't watched Black Widow yet so I'm sorry if something in this fic doesn't fit the new info we got about natasha.

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New York, 2015.

When you received the call from one of your bosses that you had a new case you would have never imagined how big that case would turn out to be.

You had been working for one of the most important law firms in New York for a year now, and you were getting kind of used to reading cases that would be narrated in the papers for months. Rich and entitled men, big divorces were they fight over who gets the yacht, one or two murder cases... if it revolved around the powerful people of New York city, your firm would get it.

When you got to the debriefing and were told that Tony Stark, one of the firm's most important clients, asked your team for assistance in the creation of some legislation with the newly created “Advanced Threat Containment Unit” you were more than surprised.

The events that the Avengers had caused (or saved us from, there were different opinions going around) in the small country of Sokovia were known all around the and it was only time before the most powerful officials asked for the regulation of ‘superhero activity’.

You weren’t important enough to actually attend the meetings that took place with the government, seeing as you had only passed your bar exam a little over a year prior, but you were deemed cheerful and nice enough to act as a nexus between the firm and the client.

For months you spent your days talking to Tony Stark and other members of The Avengers trying to explain what was being talked about. The first few meetings were a disaster, seeing as the mood was somber for the lives lost and nobody really understood your legal jargon. But slowly you started to transform your language and really tried to make the meetings as easy as possible for everyone present.

But who were you kidding, they really didn’t care about the meetings or the silly attorney being sent to explain something that was way above their paycheck. Well, at least Stark was gracious enough to set a coffee station with some pastries for the meeting. You were pouring the hot liquid into your to-go cup when your hand jerked and the hot liquid splashed your hand.

You could feel the sting of the burn but avoided further sudden movements trying not to make it worse. Before you could reach for a napkin to clean up the mess you made, a more dexterous and manicured hand reached for them and exchanged the hot cup in your hand for the bunch of papers.

“Careful, Stark always serves boiling coffee. I think it’s to mask that it’s not the best quality.”

You lifted your gaze from your hand and found a pair of deep green eyes gazing back. You would have thought that spending numerous meetings in the company of superheroes would make you less susceptible to their powerful auras, but being this close to Natasha Romanoff made your heart beat a bit faster.

“Yeah, I found out the hard way.” You joked, lifting your hand a bit. “You would guess one of the richest people in the world would actually serve good coffee...”

Seeing her crack a smile made you feel less tense. Sometimes you forget they are still normal people. Normal people who could kill you with their bare hands and had superhuman powers. She placed your cup on the food table, apparently not bothered by how hot it must have been, and pushed her hand in your direction.

“I’m Natasha Romanoff.” You wrapped your hand around hers and shook it, biting your tongue trying not to tell her of course you knew her name. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself in earlier meetings, we were all trying to come to terms with what had happened.”

“No worries, I can only imagine how hard it must have been for all of you.” You nodded and tried to show her sympathy, trying to avoid thinking about all the lives affected by the fight. “Oh sorry, I’m-”

Natasha quickly cut you off, speaking your name before you could even say it. You could feel your cheeks get warmer at the idea that they actually knew who you were, and she probably could sense your mood change because she quickly explained.

“I know who you are, you send us at least two emails a week about these meetings and FRIDAY always announces you before you arrive.”

“Who announces me?” You asked curiously at the mention of a name you recognized.

“FRIDAY. It’s the name of Stark’s AI technology. It works all around the tower and it’s there to make life easier for everyone.” She explained pointing around at the speakers strategically placed around the room.

“Oh, I get emails from Friday sometimes. Most of them are asking me to translate or explain something about the debriefing because Mr.Stark is not interested in legal terms.” Both you and Natasha laughed at the thought.

But she quickly recomposed and tried to look serious again when she heard her teammates coming in to get ready for the meeting.

“I wanted to ask you about that. Do you think we could schedule a meeting so that you could explain some things about the legislation of the A.T.C.U.?” She spoke lower than she had when the two of you were alone and you wondered why she didn’t want her colleagues to know about the meeting.

“Ye-Yeah, of course I can.” You were confused but thought it would be in your best interest, and the firm’s, to say yes to the proposal. And a meeting with a very attractive and definitely interesting woman was not something that happened constantly for you.

“Great, thank you.” She smiled warmly and squeezed your hand that you hadn’t even realized was still wrapped around hers from the introduction. “I can promise you better coffee.”

You could only hum in response, still trying to piece together what she might want from the meeting. But your thoughts were quickly cut off when Stark entered the room and you moved to start the reunion.

During the entire meeting you could feel the dull pain in your hand from the scorching coffee and the feeling of a pair of green eyes watching your every move.

Vienna, 2016.

The situation had only gone downhill from the Battle of Sokovia. The public’s opinion on the Avengers was at an all-time-low and that made terrorist groups bold. They knew that if they struck and caused enough chaos, the blame would fall on the good guys that tried to stop them.

The only thing that seemed to be a stable thing in your life was Natasha. Well, as stable as dating a superhero might be. She was busy a lot, but you understood the importance of her job and you were quite busy too gaining importance within the law firm.

And even if sometimes terrorists and criminals got in the way you still found a moment to spend together, wrapped around each other without having to think about how messed up life was.

You thought Lagos was the blow that would make everything tumble, the Sokovia accords were unveiled and it broke the Avengers, and your girlfriend. You could feel how torn she was at her decision of some of her friends to oppose the signing and go on the run, and her own decision to subordinate to the United Nations mandate. But you realized how small that had been when king T’Chaka was killed at the UN.

You had been at the UN as part of the USA legal team that participated in the writing and monitoring of the accords. Your participation in the negotiations almost broke your relationship but you were able to recover once you explained your position and Natasha actually came to an understanding of it.

Natasha was also in Vienna when everything went down, you hadn’t managed to properly see her because she was one of the signers and they sat at the assembly while other guests sat at the amphitheater watching the retransmission.

You hadn’t been able to properly see her all day, seeing as she took a detour before flying to Austria. You were only able to communicate through texts where you tried to make the situation more comfortable for her and she promised a peaceful european trip to celebrate the signing.

When the bomb went off and all hell broke loose the first thing you tried to do was look for her, she was at the epicenter of the explosion and you just wanted to see if she was okay. You saw her from afar when you were being pushed to the outside of the building while they swiped the perimeter.

She sat with T’Challa before he jumped from the bench and stomped away. Natasha looked around and your gazes crossed, immediately melting away some of the worry. You tried to push your way through the crowd to get to her, but police and security didn’t budge.

You never took your eyes off of her, scared that if you did she would disappear. But she did move her gaze to her phone and the look that crossed her face when she heard the voice at the other side told you it was a very important call.

Once the call was over and she looked at you again you knew that would probably be the last time you would see her in some time. You hadn’t known Natasha as long as some of her colleagues had, but you could proudly say you could understand what she wanted to say with just a look. And the look on her face in that moment read close to a goodbye.

New York, 2018.

It had been two years since the fall of Helmut Zemo and part of the Avengers was still on the run. And it maybe wouldn’t have had that big of an impact on you if it wasn’t because Natasha had also been on the run for that long.

You had heard about what happened at the Leipzig airport and how Natasha had changed alliances to join Captain America’s fight. You had been heartbroken at the news knowing that any resemblance of normality that you still hope for was destroyed.

You had spent months wondering what had made her change her mind. Had she thought about your conversations about the accords? Had she even remembered you, waiting for her back in New York, when she decided to go on the run?

A part of you tried to convince you of how selfish thinking about that was, why would she think about you when the future of her team and friends was at stake? But also you were her girlfriend, she should have thought about the implications that might have had for you.

In those years you had mourned your relationship and after the grieving period you tried to rebuild your life. New friends, a new position and new chances to take. And it went okay...at least until someone opened their mouth to talk about superheroes or The Avengers. Years down the line and it was still on people’s minds.

On special occasions you would receive anonymous gifts at your office or your apartment. The first birthday after the war you sobbed for fifteen minutes when you saw the bunch of flowers. There was no name or indicative of who might have sent them, that was until you looked better at the card and saw the small red hourglass painted in the corner.

The gifts continued. Every case you won, promotion, birthday or holiday a bunch of flowers would be delivered to you with the same note.

In a way it gave you a sense of peace knowing she was okay and still thought of you. But the more you thought about it the angrier you got at how she had left you.

You didn’t expect a message from your boss to run to the Avengers compound and assess some situation between Coronel Rhodes and Thaddeus Ross. Although the team had crumbled, your company was still hired to legally represent the remaining members and moderate situations that might arise with the government.

You entered the compound expecting another bureaucratic complaint about their activity but you found a trickier situation. The meeting room was filled with people you thought you would never see again.

Captain Rogers was sitting on one of the chairs sporting a new look that made you almost not recognize him and a tense demeanor. Next to him was Sam Wilson, looking around at the smallest of movements and trying to assess the situation. Wanda Maximoff was standing on the furthest corner of the room playing with her rings, meanwhile Vision was apparently being checked out for a wound. What kind of wounds a synthezoid could get was beyond your understanding.

“Thank you for coming so quickly, I might have angered Secretary Ross during a meeting.” Rhodey came up to you with a nervous smile.

You had gotten closer to him thanks to your job seeing as he was the one doing the dirty superhero work.

“Yeah, I got that much from the text. Nothing new then.” You tried to joke to diffuse the tension in the room. “It would have been nice to know you had guests though.”

“We are not guests. Last time I checked this was our home too.”

That voice made your blood freeze. You should have expected her there, all her friends had returned and the chance of her being back too was almost 100%. But hearing her voice again after two years was not something you expected.

You bit your tongue before you could talk about how it’s not a home if you abandon it, but decided against it. This was a fight between them, not Natasha and you.

“I need you to work with the government to avoid this situation becoming a disaster.” Rhodey explained and you scoffed.

“Rhodey, I’m a lawyer not a politician. I have as much power in this as you might have.” You tried to lay your point across but it was difficult with all eyes on the interaction. “Hell, I have even less power than you do.”

“Then I need you to distract them enough to get them off our shoulders.” He pressed. “Something big is coming and we need all the strength we can get.”

You thought about it for a moment. If it was true that something big was coming, the Avengers were the best option to fight it.

“I’m in.” You scoffed at his smile and sat down in one of the chairs of the meeting room. “I’m not ready for the world to end yet.”

The meeting went on for a while. You called bosses, government officials and everyone that would listen to your distractions. You sent emails that would flood their inboxes for days so that they couldn’t read any news that might reach them about what the superheroes had in mind.

It was late at night when a cup of steaming liquid was placed next to you. You looked at it and saw that it was some kind of herbal tea, probably made to relax the drinker. You followed the hand that was still holding the mug until you reached Natasha’s face.

You had done your best to ignore her looming presence in the room but now there was no distraction. Looking at her you could see tiredness in her face. She was platinum blonde now, a look that weirdly suited her, but her face still looked as welcoming to you as it always did.

You tried to stop the flashbacks to the last time you saw it in person in Vienna, but they kept replaying in your head until her voice broke you out of the loop.

“I thought you might need it, I remember how nervous calls used to make you.”

She was smiling but you could tell it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Yeah, I guess I got over it since I got my promotion. Now I spend a long portion of my day making calls.”

She hummed and sat down next two you, but leaving a chair in between you as a safe space.

“I read about it in an article, I sent you flowers to celebrate.”

“I got them. And the Christmas ones. On my birthday too.” You enumerated the times you had gotten the plants in the past two years. “You must have spent an awful amount of money buying me so many flowers.”

“You deserved it, you still do.” She shrugged and that’s when you noticed she had her own mug of warm tea in her other hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to celebrate with you.”

You laughed into your mug sarcastically. Out of everything you expected her to say this wasn’t one of them.

“Did you really? Because you didn’t seem to consider me much when you went on the run for two years.”

Natasha paled when she heard your tone. She probably wasn’t used to situations like these but you weren’t going to let her go without an apology at least.

“I was trying to do the best for-”

“-for the world. I get it, Natasha, I do.” You tried to contain your emotions but it was getting harder with every word. “Relationships are supposed to be teamwork. I know you are always too busy playing heroes and I never judged you for that, I just wish you would have trusted me enough to tell me before you disappeared.”

She was silent and knowing Natasha it’s because she was probably overwhelmed with the display of feelings. But she needed to hear how bad you had felt.

After minutes of waiting for an answer from her and getting nothing but sighs you shook your head and looked back at the computer screen.

“I guess it was a case of the right person, wrong time.” You shrugged trying to find distraction in the flurry of letters in your email inbox. “Or at least it was for me.”

She got up from her seat without a word and you grew exasperated. Why had she even approached you if then she wasn’t willing to have an adult, two sided conversation? She was almost at the door when you heard her voice again.

“Please never doubt how much I love you. I made some bad choices but dating you was not one of them.”

New York, 2024.

Time apparently flies by when you are erased from the face of the earth. One day you are in your office working late and the next you appear five years in the future with no recollection of what might have happened.

You were taken by authorities to impromptu camps and one by one examined to check your identities. The entire thing seemed to be something out of one of the dystopian novels you used to read as a teenager.

When it was your turn you gave them all the information you had on what had happened. You had given them your name and personal information and apparently had been a very searched person because the computer started beeping as soon as your name was introduced in the database.

You were moved to a secluded part of the camp and kept in an isolated room for god knows how long. Your stomach was in knots during the entire situation and you could feel the cold sweat on you. That mixed with the metallic taste on your tongue you knew this time your anxiety was justified. You were almost dizzy because of how hard you were thinking about the entire situation and trying to make sense of it.

When you heard the door of the room open you jumped up, discarding on the floor a makeshift blanket that had been placed on your shoulders when you got there. Your legs almost gave out at the movement and your heart felt like it was going to burst out.

The door opened enough for you to see who had been searching for you. Natasha stepped through the door still dressed in her tactic gear and with tiredness written all over her face. But that feeling seemed to almost disappear when she finally saw you.

With quick movements she stepped into the room and wrapped her arms around you tightly. For some reason that action was the trigger that you needed to let all your emotions consume you.

You started sobbing uncontrollably at the unknown. You didn’t understand what happened or how you are here, but feeling her embrace helped you feel safe in a way. It had been years since you last hugged her but it still felt as good as back in 2015.

You could hear Natasha’s soothing shushes in between your sobs and you moved to hold her tighter.

“You are here. I can’t believe I found you again.” She spoke softly and you didn’t know if she was speaking to you or herself. “It’s okay darling. I’m here and I’m not letting you go again. I promise.”

And with that promise a ray of hope made way between all the fear you felt.

Missouri, 2025.

Soft music could be heard all around the ground floor of the house. The soft beat was upbeat enough to get the morning started but not enough to be overwhelming if you had just woken up. You were sitting on the kitchen island looking at the news on your phone and having breakfast.

Mornings were usually very calm around the homestead and you couldn’ be more thankful for that. It allowed you to silently prepare your breakfast and coffee and get a headstart on Natasha’s breakfast too.

Since she had retired, Natasha had discovered a newfound love for sleeping in and you didn’t dare to take that away from her. She deserved it from all the work she had done in her life.

You, meanwhile, tried to get up early to scroll through the cases that you got in your new and smaller job and schedule meetings or emails.

It was a Saturday so work wasn’t a thing and you could actually enjoy your toast and coffee in peace. Or at least until a pair of arms wrapped themselves around your middle and pulled you back against Natasha.

“Good morning baby, how did you sleep?”

“Like a baby.” You could feel her smile when she kissed your cheek from behind. “You weren’t there when I woke up though.”

You shrugged before moving to get a bite out of your toast. Natasha tried to do the same but you quickly moved it away from her with a smile. She tried again and you moved as fast as your reflexes allowed you.

“C’mon baby, give me a bite” “No, it’s my toast. You can make your own.” “But it tastes better when you make it.” “No it doesn’t, don’t be lazy.”

The playful fight continued for a few moments until she got close enough to get a small bit but you moved it again.

“Don’t make me bite you, darling.”

You chuckled at her threat and plopped the remaining toast on the plate in front of you. Breakfast didn’t matter much anymore. You threw yourself into her arms and pressed your lips against hers. It wasn’t a slow and sensual kiss, it was closer to how small kids smooch their parents. But you knew it would convey your love more deeply.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Nat.” You spoke against her lips and squaked when you felt her playfully nip at your bottom lip.

“Is now a good time?”

That question had become recurring in your household, a nod to the phrase you said when you found eachother again after being separated the first time.

“I couldn’t think of a more perfect time.”

And you couldn’t. The rest of your life spent in a homestead with your girlfriend and whatever life might bring? It sounded absolutely delightful.

Taglist: @tagehaya @flyforeverfree @rooskaya-yelena @evalynanne @insanitybyanothername @princessayveke @yelenabelovasgf @kyli314

[infantisimo]

against ai

the end of art: an argument against image ai

a good explainer. a selection of people's comments below.

— "I spent decades of my life learning foreign languages, only to see the translation industry destroyed by AI. The inferiority of the machine translations a few years back did not stop the destruction of the industry. The machine translation cost nothing, and so the price for all translation came crashing down, because the bottom feeders used machine translation. I found myself paid half price to 'just edit' (as if it was less work) a translation done by machine which was basically unintelligible so that I had to go back to the original and translate it myself. Most clients, the bottom of the pyramid that kept the industry going, did not care about the quality of the translation. If we expect that clients prizing human made products will save industries we are being very delusional. ... the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less."

— "Data-laundering has got to be the most accurate keyword for this discussion. Very well spoken"

— "I was really on the edge about AI art. I'm not an artist at all, I'm a programmer who commissions artists every now and again. It's such a cool ldea but it's unethical and actively stagnates creativity in its current form. Like, if you think of the sum of all human creation as a quantifiable mass, we're not adding anything by blending it up like this without true creative input. Disseminating the technology incentivizes adding less to that mass. This tech hasn't peaked, but there is a tremendous difference between this and a machine with the capability to truly add to that mass."

— "the thing that steven gets that i think other videos don’t highlight enough is that it’s not about the ai. the ai is just the product. it’s about the developers, companies, businessmen, and capitalists behind it who will take a mile if you give them an inch. we’re being bogged down by technicalities and arguments but they’re just distractions. it’s never about the tool, it’s about the people behind the tool and what their agendas are."

— "If they take away the ability and the incentive to create, we will only have the desire to consume. And deep down, it's just that, consumption and more consumption. This is a strong step towards a less "human" humanity. Not to mention that there will be fewer and fewer jobs in which one can learn and enjoy what they do. This is horrendous, almost straight out of a sci fi horror movie. Excellent video and beautiful illustration!"

[jeneelestrange]

“They need that much because if we don’t pay them market rate or what other CEOs are making, we’ll lose them to other companies.”

THAT’S HOW ALL JOBS WORK. BUT ALL OF A SUDDEN YOU CARE ABOUT KEEPING QUALITY TALENT?????? Let me get this FUCKING straight. We’ve seen any goddamn position that CAN be shipped overseas, done by someone with less technical skill and paid less, had people do positions that used to be one job turn into two or three, etc, etc, etc. People are on treadmills where no matter their skills, it’s never enough, and one of you cheap fucks will always be trying to somehow get good solid work for a buck done in record time—which isn’t how ANYTHING works and is one of the reasons that everything is broken as FUCK now.

AND YET. These executive positions. They’re never going to be given to some hard scrabble working person who got their MBA online so he could keep working for your FUCKING COMPANY and keep feeding themselves and knows it’s processes inside and out, what works, what doesn’t. They’re for keeping the serfs in line. The exec positions go to someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, went to the best schools from birth, had all the right connections to jobs and careers that only flow through word of mouth that the rest of us will NEVER be able to apply to. The sort of person whose never had to worry about whether they could fit in their homework into their work schedule—if he worked at all while he was being educated, it was for resume-building, it was interning, and everyone always understood what came first. All he had to do was show up and pay attention.

“B-but you said it yourself, they have the best education!!! We NEED them to make the BEST decisions, what will happen if all these companies are being run by people who don’t know what they’re doing—“

You’re gonna sit here and tell me Elon Musk knows what he’s doing? That there isn’t teams of people at every company he runs devoted EXCLUSIVELY to unfucking everything he fucks up? Literally just because he decided to up and buy a company one day. And he’s certainly not the only one, just the one dumb enough to be this open and attention-seeking about it. And you’re really going to tell me, looking around in the world we live in, KNOWING my own parents economically had it better that this is THE BEST THEY CAN DO??? You have the gall to tell me this is the BEST POSSIBLE WORLD???? And they have everyone’s best interests in mind????? And when we were telling you THE SAME THING regarding everything else that requires some kind of skill BUT NO—you sold the company overseas, you tried to replace it with AI, you replaced anyone who knew anything with the cheapest labor you could possibly find. And everything around us is WORSE—the supply chain is broken af, our clothes can tear apart in a single use, our homes IF YOU CAN AFFORD ONE are badly made particle board garbage that’s going to decay around you, the entertainment market is flooded with execs only approving remakes and re-imaginings of the ugliest CGI imaginable and cheap “reality TV,” and our cars are twice as expensive and the computer chips make any given malfunctioning part like troubleshooting a fucking computer, etc, etc, etc. Your CUSTOMERS are unhappy and the only reason you’re getting away with it is you’re doing this collusion cartel bullshit where you’re only a few companies and YOU ALL DO IT.

Get rid of them. We can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way.

[half-man-half-lime]

Okay, just gonna dump all my AI art thoughts under the cut I guess

Just to get it out of the way, we should not be building a world where it isn't possible to become an artist and also eat. If AI art is a threat to that, it's a problem and needs to be hampered in the short term. That takes top priority.

That said, UBI isn't gonna pop up overnight and there are massive roadblocks to that ever happening, we may not see it even in the next few decades. The practical truth is AI art is currently a threat to career art.

But, we should be aiming for a society where most or all work is automated and people don't need a job to survive.

AI art isn't literally collaging other art together, but the ethics are still murky. The fact that it's derivative of other art doesn't inherently make it any different from human-made art, humans also learn to draw by practicing, learning patterns, and imitating other artists.

There's a few issues there- one, the line between art taking inspiration from someone and outright photocopying and collaging stuff together didn't use to be a distinction that anyone paid attention to. It was never a gradient until new technology came along and changed how we define artistic craft, and trying to re-frame our worldview around that is tricky.

Like I said, that line is now a gradient, and at some point along that axis, it makes sense to draw a line and say "this level of similarity is definitely some sort of copyright violation. It's easy to look at some AI-generated art and see why it's scary in its detail and quality, and when it derives that much from other artists, it's hard to say "no, this isn't utilizing someone else's work without their consent or repayment".

I could be wrong, but isn't literally making collages of other people's art perfectly legal and/or socially acceptable? That's another tricky line to walk. You could say there's a difference between making a transformative work of someone else's art and trying to imitate or reproduce it, and there's different ways of interpreting that legally vs. philosophically vs. in terms of people's actual intentions.

AI/Neural Network art is a tool, it works in some fundamentally different ways from human artists, and the distinctions there matter when talking about the ethics. These are serious points against it.

Arguably, a tool that makes its own art shouldn't be held to the same moral standards and afforded the same agency as a sentient being. The AI isn't expressing its own personal creativity, it's making art at the behest of the people using it, according to the design of the people who made it and the art it was trained on. You can feasibly argue that certain things a human is allowed to do, i.e. take inspiration from someone else's art, can't be automatically expected of a machine that doesn't have its own artistic goals and sensibilities and relationship with art and artist. I'm not 100% sure on this, but it's an argument that can be made, I guess, if you're trying to parse these ethics out.

As others have said on the major anti-AI posts, an artificial intelligence can't make the same moral judgement as a human making art, and understand what is or isn't acceptable or overreaching in what it pulls from other people's art.

Tech bros are still douchey, a lot of the people who are advocating for it or will be using AI art for their company are doing so from a selfish or harmful perspective.

AI artists aren't artists. Well, in a way they are (see below), but that doesn't put them anywhere near the same level as actual people who make actual art. There's some level of personal expression, but none of the understanding of what's being expressed and how, which is a humongous part of being an artist.

Companies using AI art to replace paid artists and save money have no interest in the ethics of doing so, and likely won't care if they take improper advantage of someone's art without consent unless laws force them to. Let alone drowning out whatever artistic work exists for artists to make a living.

All the tech bro types who accuse artists of being elitist have no fucking idea what they're talking about, and many seem to want the benefits of art divorced from the real and tangible work and skill that went into making it. Wanting to eat and have one's work properly valued isn't elitist.

AI art is real art. Once you're asking if something is "real art" 90% of the time it is. The threshold for that is so very low.

Some of it is ugly, but calling it "soulless" or whatever is stupid. That's such a subjective take, there's plenty of cool or beautiful AI art I've seen. It's derivative, but again, so is literally all of art.

No seriously, most of the ad hominem stuff I've been seeing comes off as petty and Luddite. Like people realized it was a legitimate threat and immediately went to calling all AI art, or even all neural network based software the devil. It's a tool, it doesn't have an inherent moral value beyond how it's used. Artists have legitimate arguments against this stuff that relates to practical reality and harmful consequences, and going for the nuts instead feels childish and close-minded.

I think AI art is cool, and want to live in a world where it can exist. I don't know what to tell ya.

The ethical issues and tangible harm of this technology take priority over what I want.

But still, a future where machines can just... make art, it's cool. It's cool to envision a world where you can press a button and then more art suddenly exists. Art is cool and more of it existing is good. I would like to see a future where that can happen without hurting anybody.

[parachim]

Okay so I’m going to try out writing my reactions/feelings for everything I read in a month. Some of the stuff I read isn’t captured by Goodreads, and some of it I have opinions on that I want to get out but don’t want to post on GR for all the world to see A note that for this month I mostly worked from home post surgery. I do my of my book consumption via audiobook in the car so this is a relatively light month.

So here we go for April!

FICTION

The Body Without Organs @Natsinator (AO3) I first saw Space Odyssey 2001 in 8th grade and I had two takeaways: 1) I would like to do LSD 2) HAL 9000 is kinda hot Once a robotfucker, always a robotfucker I guess. Anyway, this is good! Solid exploration of the ship mind concept. Some quality homosexual subtext. Better writing than the Arthur C. Clarke novel (truly I think he is overrated - his best work is definitely Childhood’s End which is usually not discussed when people bring up his work). The Last Shadow Orson Scott Card OSC is unambiguously a bad person. I have never paid money for any of his work (I use the library) but I understand that even just reading his work is tacit support. It sucks that Ender’s Game was so damn good. Even Ender’s Shadow and I would say up to even Children of the Mind are pretty solid work. Everything after that goes further and further downhill. Last Shadow is supposedly (HOPEFULLY!) the final book. And oh boy does it suck! Freaky plot point that goes on and on about the butt and associated bodily functions of a little boy character. Why does OSC talk about little boy butts so much? What’s up with that?? Racist about Asian women. He really draws upon the harmful stereotype of Asian women being the perfect wives/mothers/homekeepers. They really have no meaningful agency beyond that. Building on the last point, OSC definitely sees it as the greatest good in life to have children. Thus women who don’t want children don’t exist in his books. There’s even a fucking hyper intelligent bird that talks about having children. Even if there wasn’t all that shit mentioned above - it was a badly assembled book. Plot threads that were set up in books prior never go anywhere. There are too many new tertiary characters we don’t care about because we hardly know anything about them. The main conflict of the book is solved quickly and easily with little pay off. Was there anything good in this book? Hiram is now and immortal holographic AI. That’s kind of a cool concept but it doesn’t go anywhere at all. But the best things is that I am finally free of this series. Finally fucking free!!

Bonus - I didn’t actually read Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber but I ordered it via ILL for 98 to read. 98 gave me the summary and I read a bit of it out loud for them. I thought it was going to be a middle grades book like Redwall or Watership down but I don’t think this book’s intended target audience was children. I think it’s supposed to be more in the Michael Crichton sphere of ‘thriller pop science.’ Some of the stuff from the ants perspective is really clever (like how they view the mini golf course). The author definitely has some views that would be considered ecofascist.  There’s a weird spiritual? metaphysical? twist at the end that isn’t really pulled off.

NONFICTION

Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging Alex Wagner The investigation of the DNA testing kit industry is really good. She had a good exploration on how such companies advertise themselves (learn how global you are!), vs the companies original intent (help Mormons find and baptize their dead ancestors), vs how the general public really interprets the tests (latching onto one or two unique/special things). I like her discussion of the flaws of the industries (most of the sample pops are European bc those descendant populations are whos paying for this kits, the ethnicities reported are based off of contemporary boundaries which are not what you own ancestors would have necessarily known or understood). I think if she had put that section in the front half of the book and centered it it would have been a much more solid work. Her more traditional genealogical research is probably too personal in-the-weeds for a lot of people to care about. The stuff about the Burmese political climate was good though. Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age Cory Doctorow Suffers from ‘could have been an article’ disease. Way too fucking long for something that just hammers the same point over and over and over. His argument that current copyright law doesn’t really work in the modern world is something I largely agree with but unless you are a copyright scholar this book is just too long for what it’s accomplishing. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right Angela Nagle This is bad. Don’t read this. I think I found it by searching for ‘anthropology’ in the library catalog. That’s pretty slim pickings so I got this without reading too much about it. It’s not an ethnography, that’s for sure. I thought it would be about how the internet can be a force of isolation and hyper insular communities that drive things like Qanon and deaths of despair. It's not about that. Nagle has a weird juxtaposition between the altright and tumblr culture, as if those things are somehow comparable. Jan 6ers really have nothing in common with 14 year olds using faeself pronouns but she gives them both the same treatment. There’s also a bizarre snub about video game journalism in here. Nothing is cited in this book. Apparently in the print addition there are a lot of typos. No idea how this got an audiobook produced. Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door-Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy Christopher Mims Supply chain step by step investigation. Would have loved for this book to come out like 2 or 3 years down the line to actually properly see what a post-covid supply chain looks like once things settle more. Good discussion on automation. Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners Therese Oneill Weird fucking book. I’ve never seen a history book written in second person before. I get that this is supposed to appeal to women who read Victorian romance, but it is off putting to almost anyone else in the tone. The book puts you in the place as if you were an upper class, white, Victorian Era woman in England. A very hard book to enjoy for me because of that for my own personal Gender reasons. I think the second person POV also stymies the book in that it limits the scope of who can be talked about and what life was like for women during the era who were not white, well to do, etc. Do we really need a deep drive on the women we already have the most information on? It does seem to be comprehensively researched. Nothing factual in the book seems incorrect as far as I know.

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age Dennis Duncan Amazed that a book this specific got an audiobook made and a library system that I’m in bought a license to it. But, I supposed if anyone is going to be interested in this book it’s going to be someone with a library sciences degree. Even for being so hyper-specific, I think this book is good for what it is. Interesting investigation of how the way of organizing information has changed over time and how people perceive how information should be sorted. The author casually mentions that in the medieval era that it was way more common for people to read while moving their lips which is something that people are made fun of for doing now! Interesting that seems to be the default way of reading back then and it has since shifted towards silent reading. What factors played into that? More legible books? Capitalism driving focus on the individual vs community (if you read out loud it could be sharing with the people around you)? Would love to know when that shift happened temporally.