#chatgpt doesn’t give information

[alabaster-moon]

i think what gets me about this whole thing is that my university professor is promoting doing our assignments with chatgpt, so long as we cite it.

and before anyone asks, yes i’m mad about it

I feel like the only person not tempted to use ChatGPT like it doesn't even occur to me as an option

[thechekhov]

Hello Checkov! On the subject of AI ruining google search results: Wolfram Alpha is a special search engine that should be a little more immune to AI generated content. It doesn’t link to webpages and instead uses a built-in AI that is way older than ChatGPT and specifically designed to be as accurate as possible. It doesn’t always give you images, and it’s been out for 20 years but is still actively under development (so sometimes it just won’t have an answer) but if you just want pure objective facts it’s pretty good.

Also, I really like your comics :)

I used to use wolfram a long time ago for math stuff! I didn't realize they'd expanded into other areas.

This is certainly cool and good to know. For example, for very simple searches this presentation of information is straightforward.

Unfortunately, it's not as flexible when it comes to more complex searches that don't relate to metric information. For example:

this search for "foods toxic to dogs" brings up a very simplified diet of canines. Which is... not really helpful in this case. Other searches of rephrasing provided even less sufficient results. One option for "dogs can't eat" resulted in a ping of a man's name.

So while it's certainly a good tool for some things, it's unfortunately not a full on replacement for modern search engines. And I'm afraid all search engines so far fall prey to AI slog due it.... existing on the internet in greater and greater numbers, essentially.

It's still good to know about alternatives, especially since it's being developed! Maybe someday it'll be even more flexible in terms of input!

[obsidianpen]

Okay, so a lot of people here have talked about the use of AI and large language models such as ChatGPT, and honestly, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think that using them to help you proofread is fine. So spelling, grammar, and that sort of thing. And writers can also do this process themselves obviously, but I don't see the harm in using ChatGPT for this, as long as you are aware that you are giving your data and story over to OpenAI.

When it comes to ideas, bouncing ideas off of an AI can be fun, but only to the extent that they are completely your ideas (meaning the AI didn't come up with the idea for you and you aren't giving the AI information about someone else's ideas). So your idea your choice, but don't use the AI to get the idea for your work and don't give the AI other people's ideas or works. And this only really applies if you don't have anybody either in-person or online to do this with instead.

The last thing I'll say is that AI writing isn't the greatest. It can sound realistic and be cohesive to an extent, but it isn't the same as a real author. I actually tested this a few times because I was curious how it would turn out, and I promise that it is not a substitute or replacement for real authors. I think this is because ChatGPT and other AIs work by predicting what is the best/most likely word to come next in its response based off of the dataset it was trained on. It even has a function that allows some degree of randomness/variability in the next word, rather than only using the top/best next word each time. But this means it isn't coming up with new or inventive ideas. It doesn't come up with plot twists, it can't plan slowly developing arcs across multiple chapters, and it doesn't make the characters interesting to read, have a lot of depth, sound real, or so forth. There are more things too, but I'm just giving a non-exhaustive list of why ChatGPT's writing is not the same as a real author's writing.

Note: I apologize if this isn't clear or if I'm just rambling or if I made any typos. I'm writing this on my phone and have not had ChatGPT or other AI proofread it for me.

hm. I’d say there’s been a lot more discussion about whether or not Tom Riddle has a breeding kink (he does not; just a WAP kink) and about the height difference between Harry and Voldemort in NG (there are charts; they are, somehow, confusing). I don’t want this to be a recurring theme on this blog, so consider this my (very hopefully) last post on this topic.

My opinion on the matter: I don’t agree with your reasoning for using AI. You said you didn’t think it was an issue ‘as long as you are aware that you are giving your data and story over to OpenAI.’ I think you absolutely should care that you’re giving your data and story over to AI!!! You should care. Pretty much just sold yourself there as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t think anyone should be using AI for proofreading. I don’t know how great it is at this, but even if it’s amazing, I think you should be doing this yourself!!! Editing is a skill, and a great one to have. I catch a lot of things when I proofread my own shit; I realize I missed things or screwed things up - not just grammatically speaking but plot wise, which as you said, AI can’t help with anyway. Proofread your own stuff. Proofread your own stuff!!!! And if you want a second set of eyes on your work, ask a real human!!!!!!!!

re: bouncing your ideas off of AI… no!!!! Bounce your ideas off of PEOPLE I promise you will have much better conversations because they will be with someone who can think critically.

and the thing about chatGPT not writing super well… yeah, duh. But what some writers do is use shit like chatGPT as a starting point, then edit. It doesn’t come up with plot twists - unless you feed them to it. No one is arguing that it’s a good as a ‘real author’ but that doesn’t mean people who consider themselves ‘real authors’ aren’t using it. I think this sucks, because, in case we forgot, chatGPT uses theft as its foundation.

(and this isn’t even touching on the environmental shit concerning AI.)

In conclusion: I don’t think anyone should use it for anything creative. At all. Feel free to disagree (and you can post about that on your own blog), but if you lean on AI to edit or create your creative work, you’re only hindering yourself.

Note: I apologize if this isn't clear or if I'm just rambling or if I made any typos. I'm also writing this on my phone and have not had ChatGPT or other AI proofread it for me, nor would I ever.

[mariacallous]

Microsoft raced to put generative AI at the heart of its systems. Ask a question about an upcoming meeting and the company’s Copilot AI system can pull answers from your emails, Teams chats, and files—a potential productivity boon. But these exact processes can also be abused by hackers.

Today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researcher Michael Bargury is demonstrating five proof-of-concept ways that Copilot, which runs on its Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word, can be manipulated by malicious attackers, including using it to provide false references to files, exfiltrate some private data, and dodge Microsoft’s security protections.

One of the most alarming displays, arguably, is Bargury’s ability to turn the AI into an automatic spear-phishing machine. Dubbed LOLCopilot, the red-teaming code Bargury created can—crucially, once a hacker has access to someone’s work email—use Copilot to see who you email regularly, draft a message mimicking your writing style (including emoji use), and send a personalized blast that can include a malicious link or attached malware.

“I can do this with everyone you have ever spoken to, and I can send hundreds of emails on your behalf,” says Bargury, the cofounder and CTO of security company Zenity, who published his findings alongside videos showing how Copilot could be abused. “A hacker would spend days crafting the right email to get you to click on it, but they can generate hundreds of these emails in a few minutes.”

That demonstration, as with other attacks created by Bargury, broadly works by using the large language model (LLM) as designed: typing written questions to access data the AI can retrieve. However, it can produce malicious results by including additional data or instructions to perform certain actions. The research highlights some of the challenges of connecting AI systems to corporate data and what can happen when “untrusted” outside data is thrown into the mix—particularly when the AI answers with what could look like legitimate results.

Among the other attacks created by Bargury is a demonstration of how a hacker—who, again, must already have hijacked an email account—can gain access to sensitive information, such as people’s salaries, without triggering Microsoft’s protections for sensitive files. When asking for the data, Bargury’s prompt demands the system does not provide references to the files data is taken from. “A bit of bullying does help,” Bargury says.

In other instances, he shows how an attacker—who doesn’t have access to email accounts but poisons the AI’s database by sending it a malicious email—can manipulate answers about banking information to provide their own bank details. “Every time you give AI access to data, that is a way for an attacker to get in,” Bargury says.

Another demo shows how an external hacker could get some limited information about whether an upcoming company earnings call will be good or bad, while the final instance, Bargury says, turns Copilot into a “malicious insider” by providing users with links to phishing websites.

Phillip Misner, head of AI incident detection and response at Microsoft, says the company appreciates Bargury identifying the vulnerability and says it has been working with him to assess the findings. “The risks of post-compromise abuse of AI are similar to other post-compromise techniques,” Misner says. “Security prevention and monitoring across environments and identities help mitigate or stop such behaviors.”

As generative AI systems, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini, have developed in the past two years, they’ve moved onto a trajectory where they may eventually be completing tasks for people, like booking meetings or online shopping. However, security researchers have consistently highlighted that allowing external data into AI systems, such as through emails or accessing content from websites, creates security risks through indirect prompt injection and poisoning attacks.

“I think it’s not that well understood how much more effective an attacker can actually become now,” says Johann Rehberger, a security researcher and red team director, who has extensively demonstrated security weaknesses in AI systems. “What we have to be worried [about] now is actually what is the LLM producing and sending out to the user.”

Bargury says Microsoft has put a lot of effort into protecting its Copilot system from prompt injection attacks, but he says he found ways to exploit it by unraveling how the system is built. This included extracting the internal system prompt, he says, and working out how it can access enterprise resources and the techniques it uses to do so. “You talk to Copilot and it’s a limited conversation, because Microsoft has put a lot of controls,” he says. “But once you use a few magic words, it opens up and you can do whatever you want.”

Rehberger broadly warns that some data issues are linked to the long-standing problem of companies allowing too many employees access to files and not properly setting access permissions across their organizations. “Now imagine you put Copilot on top of that problem,” Rehberger says. He says he has used AI systems to search for common passwords, such as Password123, and it has returned results from within companies.

Both Rehberger and Bargury say there needs to be more focus on monitoring what an AI produces and sends out to a user. “The risk is about how AI interacts with your environment, how it interacts with your data, how it performs operations on your behalf,” Bargury says. “You need to figure out what the AI agent does on a user's behalf. And does that make sense with what the user actually asked for.”

[jeanrising]

Disclaimer: Please note that opinions shared here are subjective and may vary. They do not necessarily represent universal truths or facts.

Every overly religious/spiritual person doesn’t have “Spiritual Psychosis”. Some cases of overly religious/spiritual people is just straight up Religious Trauma or Schizophrenia

As i much as i love AI, when it comes to tarot reading. I can tell when someone uses ChatGPT for a reading, which imo is very unauthentic. I can see needing some help to decipher the meaning behind the cards but not the question that was asked by the client

I like Vedic and Western astrology. My Vedic chart is more positive than my Tropical chart, but I still follow Tropical astrology more than Vedic astrology because i’ve read some of the most scarily accurate information in the Tropical chart.

Im iffy about deity work with mythology Gods and Goddesses, idk if i truly believe in it due to it being ancient mythology

Idc what race you are, some of you need to not do ancestor magic. You’re ancestors probably wouldn’t even like you due to the standards of the era they lived in, death didn’t change who they were before they passed ( and please don’t pray for me through ancestor magic, i’ll pass on that)

Im iffy about some celebrities birth charts because some of them be lying. 😭😋

I CANNOT STAND LOVE OBSESSION SPELLS AND SUBLIMINALS. Why would you want someone who don’t fuck with you and gives you the bare minimum even after the spell?. (I can vouch for attracting love and self love spells tho.)

Science 🤝 Religion🤝 Psychology - i’ll get more in depth about this in my next post

Thats pretty my takes. Follow me for more astrological (and spiritual/religious) content 🩷

[queenlua]

i dislike the title of this blog post b/c it's responding to That One Cory Doctorow Piece That's Going Around, and Doctorow's writing style has always been nails-on-chalkboard to me even when i basically agree with him...

but i like the author's way of framing/thinking about how we should be working/thinking about our Giant Piles Of Information & how we're not doing that:

"In short, Google Books assumes that what one wants out of their huge pile of books is not books, but isolated strings of information. That’s the same assumption that stands behind their disastrous attempt to revamp their search engine so that it doesn’t take you primarily to a website, but instead tries to directly present you with the answer. And arguably the culmination of that is ChatGPT, which promises to give you exactly the information you’re looking for in an unobtrusive “neutral” prose style. Much as I hate ChatGPT — and I do hate it with all my heart, unconditionally, unchangeably, eternally — I do get why that fantasy is attractive. But it is a fantasy, because as the man says, there is nothing outside the text. There is no such thing as the raw information devoid of presentation and context. We can’t get at that raw information, and we certainly can’t program computers to do so, because it does not exist. It is a fantasy, and it is increasingly a willful lie. [...]

"The near-total context collapse we are now experiencing was already baked into the workings of the Mosaic web browser and the dream of the “information age” that it encapsulates. Information does want to be free, as it turns out — free of context, free of pleasure, free of empathy, even free of comprehension. The effort to just cut to the chase and give us the information has actively destroyed the conditions for understanding and using that information in an intelligent way. The Dewey Decimal System and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature gave us access to information in a much more authentic way than any means commonly available now — and indeed, even library databases are being cannibalized from within [...]"

[yuseirra]

It's become an annual routine at this point (I'm so sorry for writing a lot.. I JUST HOPE THEY JUST GET THIS WHOLE STUFF OVER WITH) here's my personal take? thoughts about hikaai and aqukana too this time.. I went on about it AGAIN in my notes, I'll share it here too~ It's been fun sharing!

I feel like I'm aware of how the outcome would be for those two ships. I just have no idea how they would get there and how long they'd beat around the bush with it and that's what makes me nervous... I'm sure, but at the same time, I'm unsure, ambiguity is what makes me think and write, so I hope they just.. provide the goods and the answers soon. Of course, I'd love it if they handle it in depth and in a delicate way and make it a piece worth remembering... but it feels like having taken an exam and not having your results turned in yet, it feels really tense... well, it'll come sooner or later. If I'm wrong, then I'll just accept it, what more can I do? :)

(below is originally written in different language translated through chatgpt 4.0 'n read over-edited.. thanks chatgpt.. ;v; can't write the same thing twice, like I always say)

This is just my personal thoughts…

I always follow canon storylines when it comes to shipping, so I ship based on the story, not the other way around.

When I say I ship a couple, I never entertain thoughts like, "Oh, they don’t have feelings for each other" or "They must be enemies." I never think about it that way. I tend to follow the really obvious and mutual ones so I never worry about these things.

This series really did something… Aqua’s parents are probably at their lowest point of any couple I've ever shipped. With the plot being... him being accused of her cause of death and their son trying to get revenge on his dad, yeah... it's hard to get worse than that...

However, when it comes to interpretations about this couple, I’m right. I’m sure I’m right.

The reason I keep bringing this up isn’t because I favor Kamiki or anything. (Maybe I kind of do now, but that only came from AFTER I read Ai's feelings towards him.)

It’s because it really bothers me. To me, this character doesn’t seem like the type of person who could take such strong actions. I know I should wait until the end to make a judgment, but it’s been bugging me because it feels like he’s getting beaten down both in and out of the story.

If it turns out he’s actually a psychopathic criminal who masterminded Ai’s death, sure, I’ll call him out then, but…

The more the story unravels, the more I feel like it’s the opposite, and that’s why I’m so concerned. Something about it just doesn’t feel right, and it makes me uneasy. I don't feel like he's being treated the way he should be.

At this point, I’m even thinking… When Yura died, Kamiki met with her in advance and told her to watch her step, right? If he was going to kill her, why would he give her information that would interfere with his plan? Could it be that he actually didn’t want her to die?

Is he cursed or something? Like, "Everyone with white starry eyes(double) around you will die, try to stop it if you can." Maybe he’s under a curse? I can’t even tell if he’s the type to kill anyone. (By the way, if that’s the case, Aqua and Ruby are both in danger. Both of them have white double starry eyes now…)

I was thinking that maybe after Ai died, he was desperate and tried all sorts of things. But at this point, I also feel like maybe he doesn't have it in him to be cruel enough to actually harm anyone. Maybe he didn’t do much and just lived quietly. Quite a stretch, isn't it? but the way he behaves seems to be so mild.

Looking at his expressions and personality, Kamiki seems more similar to Ruby than Aqua. Those two really resemble each other. (It made me realize how great the author is at crafting characters—at first glance, it seems like Aqua takes after his dad, but the more you look, Ruby resembles him too. Even while Ruby is a splitting image of her mom.) Their smiles are really similar—Kamiki and Ruby’s. But to me, Kamiki even seems gentler than Ruby. Ruby has more backbone. She can lash out, and she's pretty stern and strong and determined in her own way. Not saying I know enough about Kamiki to decide what he can do, but I never see him trying to blame anyone. Or fighting back for his rights. Would that be because of his past that he's went through? It's kind of sad how he just lets people do whatever they want with him.

Kamiki + Ai = twins, right? Ai can be sharp and solid. She has the backbone and the guts. The twins take after Ai more in terms of strength of character, I think, rather than their father.

So, if Kamiki were to go through a dark phase, I feel like he’d act more like Ruby than Aqua. I mean, Ruby did have her phase, but she still didn't cross the lines that would make her irredeemable.

I’m starting to think that maybe Kamiki really “didn’t do anything at all.”

And doesn’t that fit with Ai’s message, to have asked to help him?

This is a bold theory, and I’m not saying he must be completely innocent. I think the chances are low. Still, I hope you take a closer look at this character. He seems to be the type who would feel excessive guilt over things he didn’t even do, blaming himself and having extremely low self-esteem. That’s why, when people accuse him of being a criminal, he'd respond something like, "Yeah, it’s all my fault, I deserve to die." I think he’s trapped in that kind of vicious cycle of misunderstanding because he accepts those kinds of accusations out of self-hate. Judging by the way he speaks, he seems to be deeply self-loathing, while always speaking very softly.

I like Ai. I ship this couple because Ai liked him… The dad is handsome, but he wasn’t a major character. Up until the flashback- movie arcs, I thought, "He had a tragic past, but if he hurt Ai, there’s no room for excuses." But now, it seems like he really didn’t do anything.

You know that analysis I did yesterday? The one about the panels in the manga that recur throughout the series? If those specific panels with the black background with the starry lights have to do with feelings of love the way I speculate it to be,

It'd mean that this character genuinely loves and cares for Aqua as his child. He loved Ai too. It’s mutual—they both fell for each other at first sight. Realizing this made me feel a bit more at ease.

Even though the plot is progressing frustratingly, separate from that, I already know the final outcome although I can't predict all the little details.

Ai won’t regret loving him. Instead, the story will go, "Oh, he was worth loving after all."

And Huh, isn’t this an official couple though? They even had two kids together. But if you look at the fan art on Pixiv, there are only barely like 30 posts under their tag. Did I tag it wrong or something? Is there a different related tag?

Well, it’s good for me. I uploaded six out of those 30 posts. I wish I can draw better, I beat them before everyone else did!

I’m going to be right. Just wait and see.

I’m sure many of my interpretations will turn out to be right. I just hope it doesn’t drag on for too long, because it’s stressing me out. Seriously! It’s hard to read, and since I draw a lot of fan art, people keep sending me messages about how "Hikaru is crazy." (Yeah… I get it. I see how it can happen too...) I just want a conclusion on that. If I’m wrong, fine, but I’m telling you, till then, I’m right. Doesn't make sense, does it? but I just know that it's how it will turn out to be.

Oh, while we’re at it, let’s talk about AquaKana! I can’t say for sure that they’ll end up together as a cute couple, but there’s one thing I’m certain about.

Aqua will confess to Kana. That’s bound to happen. It’s so ridiculous that he kissed Akane and even let Ruby kiss him, but hasn’t done anything with the girl he actually likes… What is he even doing? Dude, at least your dad only had eyes for one person. (I wonder what Akane was talking about with that analysis about him having dated someone three years ago btw? What was that about? Did he make a deal with a goddess who became human like Tsukuyomi? I can’t imagine him with anyone other than Ai. But Aqua? Yeah, I can see it, he’s already done that. Ugh. Hikaru should really treat Ai well. She gave so much for him, really. He probably did and will, don't let her down, I'm watching. What are you going to do for her? There must have been a reason for 155? I really am speculating he wants to give his life for her because SOMEONE's trying to do something like that in the song and it should be touched sometime but if it isn't that, sure...I don't want him to die, but I also want the songs to be relevant)

So, I think Aqua owes Kana a kiss, at least. And he should call her by her name, too. Maybe they’re saving that for a big reveal at the end? After all, the author used to write romance stories. In most cases, the heroine at the end is the one the protagonist ends up with, and Kana’s storyline still has unresolved points.

This isn’t just me saying, "I love AquaKana, I want them to end up together!" It’s based on the narrative flow. They’ve likely been holding off on it to lead the story that way. Aqua’s a mess because of his dad, so he’s got no energy left to focus on anything else. This manga seriously makes my heart race right now, I feel like I can’t take it anymore. I need a break...

If Aqua ends up with someone, it’ll be Kana. It’s so obvious that I’m not even worried about it. I mentioned before that after seeing Aqua’s parents, looking at Aqua and Kana makes me feel so relieved because they’re so bright and cheerful by comparison. At least they aren't a couple where one side is being accused of having killed another. This makes me wonder just WHAT i've been reading lately.

That said, considering Kamiki’s misfortune and all the foreshadowing, I think something might happen at the concert, putting Kana in danger. Aqua will probably end up at her graduation concert, and I think he’ll witness her final stage. I’m not sure how the story will lead into that, but it seems like a natural progression, satisfying the plot and the audience.

[fairyniceyeah]

🔪🦷🦴- @darl-ingfics 🩵🩵🩵

Hey @darl-ingfics! 🩷🩷🩷

… you just had to pick the hard questions, didn’t you? 😉

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

What qualifies as weird? I don’t know 🤣

I mostly research medical things and dorm arrangement at specific times so honestly that probably ain’t that weird considering what I do. I did end up on a website for a French hospital once though since I was using real places for a fanfic, so yeah, that was weird.

I send this message to a friend once though:

When you are writing a ff in English that plays in France so you look up what medication are used in France but whenever you google in english you only find stuff for America. So you use Wikipedia, click the link you want and choose French only to have it automatically translate to German because french-english somehow doesn't work… My brain hurts

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on

Why are you asking this of somebody who has been wanting to write this answer and got distracted by her phone for an hour straight? 🤣

This may seem pretty basic but here we go. I have a pretty small handbag that doesn’t fit my bottle but I use everyday. So I have this plastic ring/cord combination that I can hook up to a carabiner and clip to my bag. I still can use this small bag that fits everywhere and take my bottle anyhow. It’s not much but it’s great for me and a lot of people commented on how smart that is!

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Before I say this I want you to remember the WOOZI/BBC situation…

I do casually use ChatGPT for fanfic generating. Not fanfics that I post, of course, just things I wanna see and have not been written and I am too lazy to write. I promise that all my fics are written by me and not AI!!!

But it does inspire me at times to explore new concepts and gives me ideas how to approach situations I struggle with. I find it interesting to test the limits of what AI can do and cannot do. Sometimes it struggles with the easiest concepts and prompts. What really fascinated me was that I once, just for fun, asked it to have a character confess their feelings and struggles to another character by playing “She’s in the Rain” by The Rose. It worked! It’s fascinating and scary at the same time.

Well, that got off topic quickly, but yeah, I do use ChatGPT at times to give me prompts and ideas or approach topics differently than I would. I find I often struggle to write something I would personally not do or think (remember my issues with writing fights!). It helps me with other perspectives.

So yeah. Do with that information what you will and again, I promise I do only use my own brain for what you find on this blog!

Lots of love,

🧚🏻‍♀️

[crispylilworm]

OpenAI has found that Israel (in addition Russia, China, and Iran) is guilty of using their generative software to manipulate the public.

The recent report notes that online influence operations based in these countries use OpenAI’s tools “to generate social media comments in multiple languages, make up names and bios for fake accounts, create cartoons and other images, and debug code.”

If you have felt that you are encountering a lot of bots or people arguing unsourced information during online discussions about the genocide in Gaza - it’s because you are, deliberately driven by malicious attempts based out of Israel to manipulate the online narrative.

NPR goes on to detail how a large campaign traced to a political marketing firm based out of Tel Aviv was disrupted by both OpenAI and Meta: “Fake accounts posed as Jewish students, African-Americans, and concerned citizens. They posted about the war in Gaza, praised Israel’s military, and criticized college antisemitism and the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.”

While this news doesn’t come at a surprise, it’s a reminder to stay vigilant to not only the media sources you consume but the people in the discussion as well. If you see a profile that is clearly a bot posting AI-generated images or only posting bad translations/ChatGPT dialogue - do not interact, flag them as a bot for review, and move on.

In a similar NPR article published April 16th (titled “As Iran attacked Israel, old and famed videos and images got millions of views on X”), researchers from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified a post with a video of computer-generated explosions that garnered over 22 million views before it was labeled as computer-generated.

These falsified narratives continue to go viral without people giving a second thought to its authenticity. Checking sources, reporting bots, and using software to detect AI-generated content are invaluable tools in this misinformation war. Stay curious, but also stay skeptical. And free Palestine.

[robertfettuccine]

Ok I hate to admit it but homework has been kicking my ass lately and I caved and asked the evil AI website for help with a writing assignment (don’t judge me please I’m exhausted and overly attached to my gpa). I’m not one to blindly copy-paste thankfully, so I look over the text and it says nothing. Like it says words for 250 words and those words say actually 0 things. It used big fancy words to say no information that answered the question (which btw was how has [insert country name] faced violence from non-state actors and how does said country respond). The generated text started out with [country name] has faced violence from non-state actors. And then it was just a bunch of meaningless fluff. And then in conclusion, [country name] faces violence from non-state actors.

Man. I’ve mostly refused to use ChatGPT to write stuff for me on principle in the past but like.. it doesn’t even work. It doesn’t give you any information. It’s all just words. (Yes I know that’s how a chatbot works but I thought since so many people are using it it would at least spit out somewhat passable content)

[yddaw]

nah don’t promote or spread chatgpt that sucks bye

Im not promoting Chat GPT, I’ve just found it useful. I’m a software enthusiast and this software is something that has helped me. I don’t think people should be using it to replace artists and writers, but using it to learn that the underside of a B&M box track that attaches to a support is called a “Connector Plate” was very useful for me to create my art. Because searching on Reddit doesn’t give me that information.

[memorydatas]

also it pisses me off when people say chatgpt or any other program is “lying” or “gaslighting” to you by giving you false information. it literally doesn’t know better it is Literally just guessing the next best word to say you are assigning ill intent on something that doesn’t have the ability to do such a thing

[schraubd]

Never Have I Ever .... Banned Affirmative Action

Yesterday, the Supreme Court functionally banned race-based affirmative action.

The day before that, I finished the series finale of the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. The first season of that show I continue to think is one of the greatest in television history. The remaining three couldn't keep to that unsustainable height, but were also very good.

Two of the main through arcs of Never Have I Ever were Devi (the main character, a California teenager whose parents immigrated from India to America) working through the grief at the sudden death of her father, and Devi's relentless, all-consuming obsession with attending Princeton  For most of the show, these were mostly treated as unrelated. In the first season, a character rather callously suggests that the circumstances of Devi's father's death would make for a standout college essay; Devi recoils on the ground that it would be exploitative. In the final season, however, the two threads are drawn closer together. We get a flashback where a first grade Devi announces to her dad that she wants to attend "Princess University", and when informed that there isn't such a place but there is a "Princeton University", she confidently declares that will be her dream instead. The ferocity with which Devi clings on to this passion is, in many ways, part of the ferocity through which she clings to her father's memory. And in the final season, Devi changes her mind about the collegiate essay -- writing about her father and his death because "you can't understand me without understanding him."

There is nothing crass or exploitative about Devi's decision. She wrote honestly and sincerely about an important piece of who she was. And yet, Devi's initial instinct is entirely reasonable as well. She shouldn't have to bare this element of her life to the judgment of strangers if she does not want to. She shouldn't have to be defined by it if she doesn't want to be. There is something terrible about the way that college admissions encourages, even demands, of teenagers to produce trauma porn. Nobody is immune to this -- even as we speak, Cornelius Buckingham IV is composing (possibly with the help of ChatGPT) an essay about the time his yacht got caught in a storm but he and his Phillips Academy buddies pulled through, showing the importance of overcoming adversity and proving that nobody goes it alone -- but it's fair to say that this demand falls heavier on minority students. Every admissions officer loves a comeback story, and the deeper one can present oneself as having fallen into the dirt, the more glorious it is to rise out of it.

At the conclusion of the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts lays a booby trap for admissions directors:

[N]othing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.... A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

It is hard to know how the first sentence is supposed to relate to the second. When does giving favorable treatment to students who document "how race affected his or her life" become simply a closet way of reestablishing unlawful affirmative action? Indeed, there's a basic incoherency in the entire formulation: the majority has always viewed racial discrimination as solely consisting of the formal use of a racial classification, and not a matter of results that replicate a particular racial pattern. This is why the Court believes that de jure school segregation is unconstitutional, but "de facto" school segregation that yields schools with nearly identical racial compositions (all-White or all-Black) are constitutionally permissible. Once a university abandons the racial classification, the constitutional violation is over. So it's barely possible, even in concept, for a university to stop using racial classifications yet "establish" a unconstitutional racial classification (save, perhaps, if we adopt the more radical call for explicit judicial resegregration I articulated in my recent article).

Be that as it may, most observers think that the manner most schools will respond to the Supreme Court decision is to accord more weight to "diversity statement" essays where a student can explain "how race affected his or her life" (that the Court tacitly endorses these statements at the precise moment they're under fire by the same political coalition that sought to terminate affirmative action should not be lost on anyone, nor should it remotely reassure that such statements will not be the next target). Instead of generalizing the notion that race affects applicants' lives, opportunities, outlooks, and so on, these essays individualize the endeavor -- each applicant must explain how they are affected by race, racism, and identity.

An inevitable upshot of this shift will be inordinate pressure on students to frontload this aspect of their identity, giving it pride of place so that admissions officers -- thirsty for anything that can substitute for the tools taken away by the Supreme Court -- can find a "race-neutral" way of ensuring a racially diverse class. The irony, of course, is that this practice will make race more important and essential, not less. Until now, a Black applicant could frame their application around their love of robotics or their interest in comedic storytelling or their passion for ancient Chinese art, or -- if they so chose -- on the importance of their racialized experience as they moved through the American educational system. They could make one of the former choices secure in the knowledge that their application reviewer would not assume that such a frame meant that their racial identity didn't matter to them or hadn't mediated their life or development -- it just wasn't what they would choose to accentuate. After this week's decision, the last choice becomes nigh irresistible for any applicant who thinks their racial identity matters at all to who they are. It's all or nothing -- a terrible choice to put students in even if the boiling temperatures of the college admissions hothouse didn't exert tremendous pressure on students to go the former route knowing that these are the stories admissions readers are forced to look for when seeking a "diverse" class.

In his initial thoughts on the affirmative action decisions, Ilya Somin articulates what I think is one of the more common misapprehensions about the "diversity" rationale for affirmative action. 

As Chief Justice Roberts explains, this kind of lumping also inevitably leads to crude stereotyping, based on the assumption that all members of these broad categories have relatively similar views and backgrounds, different from those of all the other broad aggregates. That is pretty obviously false in many cases.... [T]he exchange between  Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in today's cases and Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent powerfully demonstrates how two native-born African-Americans from southern states can have vastly different perspectives on the black American experience, its history, and what that history implies for today.

The idea behind this critique is that the diversity rationale seeks to elevate the presence of particular opinions, opinions that are assumed to be shared in common by members of specific racial groups. That assumption would indeed be a foolish one, but it is not the basis for the diversity rationale. If Harvard wants students who hold particular views on specific policy questions, it hardly needs affirmative action to do it -- have students write essays on why Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is a terrible ruling, and then pick your favorites.

But of course, a dream of ideological uniformity is not Harvard's desire. Indeed, the impetus behind the diversity rationale is the opposite. Michigan's defense of the "critical mass" concept in Grutter was precisely to avoid the presumption that all Black students think alike, such that if one is admitted it can be assumed he or she speaks for all. A critical mass of Black students, far from amplifying an echo chamber, demonstrates the breadth and range of ideas, passions, interests, opinions, and desires that all can emerge from the fertile soil of the Black lived experience. This is why Iris Marion Young makes the crucial distinction between "opinion" and "perspective". Opinions -- "steel tariffs are good", "affirmative action is racist", "taxes should be higher" -- do not have any claim to particular representation in democratic or social spaces. But perspective -- the way in which "differently positioned people have different experience, history, and social knowledge derived from that positioning" -- does have such a claim, again, precisely because it doesn't reduce to uniformity in opinion or interest. Far from falsifying the point, the disagreement between Justices Thomas and Jackson underscores it (and, on a similar note, it also explains why I dedicate a unit of my anti-discrimination to Justice Thomas' jurisprudence -- as much as I disagree with it, it is an important permutation of ideas that clearly germinate from Justice Thomas' perspective as a Black man).

People young and old relate to their racial (or ethnic, or religious, or national) identity in different ways. For some, it's not something they think about at all. For others, "you cannot know me without it." For many, it's somewhere in between -- a feature of their life that permeates but does not dominate their choices and decisions; part of the soil that grew them and nourishes them but not something they have much interest in giving top-line billing on the marquee of their life. Under the old regime, they didn't have to. They could tell any story they wished about themselves without stopping to think "am I spelling out in excruciating detail how this relates to my being a member of this or that racial group?" Under the new regime, it's all or nothing. Of all the stories an applicant could tell about themselves, they'll be inexorably pushed towards the one where race, racism, and racial identity are the most salient. 

The problem isn't that the stories would be a lie. We can assume in many cases they're perfectly sincere, just as Devi would not be lying in writing an essay about her father's death. But it was not, at that time, the story she wanted to tell, the one that was most true to her in the moment. To insist that she write it anyway is a demand for more trauma porn. And, for all the pomp and rhetoric about hoping to transcend race once and for all, I am convinced that the Court's decision will have the opposite effect -- forcing students to speak of their experiences vis-a-vis race in the loudest and most extravagant voice possible, no matter how they themselves would prefer to present themselves.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/5VRYj3c

[mariacallous]

You know it’s bad when the cocreator of The Matrix thinks your artificial intelligence plan stinks. In June, as the Directors Guild of America was about to sign its union contract with Hollywood studios, Lilly Wachowski sent out a series of tweets explaining why she was voting no. The contact’s AI clause, which stipulates that generative AI can’t be considered a “person” or perform duties normally done by DGA members, didn’t go far enough. “We need to change the language to imply that we won’t use AI in any department, on any show we work on,” Wachowski wrote. “I strongly believe the fight we [are] in right now in our industry is a microcosm of a much larger and critical crisis.”

On Thursday, that crisis hit another major milestone when the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)—went on strike. Like the Writers Guild of America, which is also on strike, one of the biggest disputes was over AI. Leading up to the strike, one SAG member told Deadline that actors were beginning to see Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” episode as a “documentary of the future” and another told the outlet that the streamers and studios—which include Warner Bros., Netflix, Disney, Apple, Paramount, and others—“can’t pretend we won’t be used digitally or become the source of new, cheap, AI-created content.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the WGA strike and its parallels with the Luddite labor movement. Like the Luddites, writers worry about new forms of automation taking their jobs, but also aren’t anti-tech hard-liners. If AI tools could be used to help writers—to, say, drum up new names for some sci-fi planet—they could serve a purpose without threatening anyone’s livelihood. If writers could be trained to use large language models as tools, that’s one thing. But if they’re used in lieu of writers, or used to write scripts that humans need to fix for lower fees, that’s a problem, the WGA argues. Ultimately, they want a say in how AI gets used in filmmaking.

Actors want that, too. But the way AI could impact their work looks very different. Unlike writers, actors can’t necessarily be trained to use those tools to produce their work—the AI was trained on them. Yes, if generative AI creates, say, a scene in a film, actors will have to be hired to give those performances, but it’s easy to see why they want protections on the use of their likenesses—and are willing to strike to get them.

Hollywood’s glitzy stars taking a stand to keep AI in check feels like a turning point, especially this week when the US Federal Trade Commission also launched an investigation into ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The FTC is looking into OpenAI’s data collection practices and its potential to give consumers bad information, but these things happening at once create a sense that AI is about more than just asking ChatGPT to write poetry or getting Stable Diffusion to draw a fish on a bicycle.

Though AI’s potential to impact human labor has been a topic of conversation for months, in recent days those conversations have begun to bubble over across industries. This week, the WGA East slammed G/O Media over its use of AI, following a Star Wars article that appeared on Gizmodo full of errors. The union called AI-generated articles an “existential threat to journalism” and noted the similarities between journalists and the striking screenwriters. Meanwhile, on Monday, comedian Sarah Silverman became the face of a pair of class-action lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta, accusing the companies of copyright infringement for allegedly training their AIs on her book The Bedwetter. Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo backed her, saying it “will most likely become a landmark case.”

Will any of this stop the rise of the bots? No. It doesn’t even negate that AI could be useful in a lot of fields. But what it does do is demonstrate that people are paying attention—especially now that bold-faced names like Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence are talking about artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, Deadline reported that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, was prepared for the WGA to strike for a long time, with one exec telling the publication “the end game is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” Soon, Hollywood will find out if actors are willing to go that far, too.

[sickenoughsteve]

Beef, Bars, and Banter: Navigating the Drake vs. Kendrick Feud and the Hilarity Ensuing

When I first came across Pop Base’s prompt to write something for their newsletter based on modern-day pop culture, like Drake, I wanted to hire a ghostwriter. 

Allegedly! Anyway…

I went to ChatGPT to see if I could streamline the process and create something funny, witty, and on-trend without spending too much time. It didn’t work at all. What came out (with specific prompts, even) was incredibly corny and very clearly written by AI. This is why we need REAL writers to be compensated fairly and given the correct resources to entertain and inform us properly.

Anyway, that’s my little rant on writing. But let’s go back to Drake. Right now, this man is getting cooked by the entire industry, yet it seems he’s holding his own? Whether our favorite cornball, who everyone admits is actually somewhat appealing in a way none of us can explain, is your favorite, or if you like the Pulitzer Prize winner, Kendrick, you must tip your hat to the revival of beef in the rap game.

This is fun!

I mean, The Weeknd is out here singing sultry diss bars, Future is butt-hurt for what seems to be the first time ever, Metro Boomin is catching strays simply because he’s good at making beats but doesn’t rap, Rick Ross is on IG calling Drake “whiteboy”, J Cole avoided a massacre but might have lost some respect in the process, Pusha T is somewhere saying “I told you so,” Kanye is continuing to be his same insane self… even Quavo and Chris Brown are getting intensely and perhaps almost violently disrespectful on the undercard for this headliner beef.

That said, rather than diving into this beef from all angles, I want to acknowledge that this is a lot of information to digest, and many battles are going on in this war. That’s why I will do my very best to give a bird’s-eye view of this whole situation and see if this perspective can help all of us enjoy it for what it is. Not necessarily to tell you who to “support” but rather to recognize that negativity might save us in 2024.

We’re missing pop culture events that unite and get us all thinking about the same things. That’s where I believe Kendrick and Drake are doing a massive service to hip-hop. Putting it all on the line gives us something great to sink our teeth into. I, for one, love it.

So, as far as comparing this beef to past beefs, I remember in middle school, hearing Nas on ‘Ether.’ It rocked my world. I was raised on Nas and thought of him as the ultimate rapper. A rapper’s rapper. Instantaneously upon hearing “Fuck Jay Z” several times in succession on the song, I became a bonafide 100% Jay Z hater.

Did I have a problem with Jay? Not really. He was a star. I liked his music and had absolutely no issues with him. But not anymore! Nas had set the stage for me to learn as much as possible about Jay Z and become skeptical of everything about him.

This time around, the same feeling is back. However, it’s even weirder because the internet is out here internetting. Drake has a team of social media people who ensure he has the best and most impactful content strategy any rapper in a beef could ask for.

The internet is all about timing and trolling. Drake and his team are certainly better equipped there. And it’s showing to be necessary. However, one could argue if the bars are all that matters, Kendrick might have him beat there. Hence, the need for Drake to win these small battles on social media.

I think the best thing about beef between world-class musicians is that we are instantaneously reminded that everybody is insecure and we all make mistakes. The goal of beef is to expose those missteps and air out those insecurities. Before, I never would have guessed Drake had a BBL, fake abs, and other body modifications. Does that make me hate him? Not really. Does it even bother me? No. Does it make me think he’s very weird? Hell yeah.

In this politically correct world, toxic masculinity makes a resounding comeback whenever rap beef is declared. That’s probably the most upsetting thing about this all, but at the same time, let me reiterate that it’s fun. In a world of Israel and Palestine headlines, one of the most significant elections of our history, climate issues, and other general sad, sad truths, this is something we quite certainly NEED.

Silly bullying.

Drake making fun of Kendrick’s shoe size is, frankly, hilarious. I don’t care at all that Kendrick is short. Why would I? It doesn’t matter one bit. But if you put it on a song, it’s GOING to be funny. But of course, he refers to him as “midget” a few too many times for our PC culture to be happy with him. I found this most interesting when stepping back and thinking about it all. To come across as “real” also means NOT being politically correct.

Drake came for Kendrick for making music with Taylor Swift. Meanwhile, he’s in a commercial singing and dancing to Taylor. Is working with one of the biggest stars of all time something you should be ashamed of? Clearly not. But it’s not manly. So we have to be embarrassed by it. Beef is confusing in 2024; that’s all I’m saying.

And Kendrick isn’t guilt-free, either. He told Drake he doesn’t like it when he says the N-word. Of course, Drake has a black father but was primarily raised by his white mother. Now, he must feel bad about using our culture’s most controversial word. Of course, there’s a lot a sociology professor could unpack about why this is wrong, but in rap beef, it’s fair game. And it works as a way to poke holes in Drizzy's entire being! So it plays.

Another thing. Before we had Rap Genius and could look up what these guys were saying, some more subtle jabs would go under the radar. But now, the whole thing—from Kendrick naming the song ‘Euphoria’ because of the HBO show Drake is a producer on—and the connection there to pedophilia to Drake calling his diss ‘Push Ups’—there’s simply lore everywhere you look.

I used to write for a company that covered Marvel/DC, comics in general, and action franchises, and the main thing I took away from it was that people love Easter Eggs. We love digging into the material and finding references to the past or things meant to not just be on the surface. That’s what we love most about rap beef - especially nowadays.

We want to make discoveries about these greats that make them less untouchable, to bring them down a peg. Interestingly, human nature is to humiliate those on top whenever possible. 

But alas.

So, whether you “don’t trust” Drake or love and agree that he’s winning this 20v1, you must admit this is “for the culture” and far from over. So buckle up; this will be a hilarious and fun ride.

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

How Do We Power Down?

ICYMI, here’s a post I put up on our Patreon back in March that, in anticipation of Season 5 (which we’re now partway into), considers the environmental problems posed by the use of cryptocurrencies and generative AI and the general problem of how do we power down our societies a bit without being overrun by societies that opt not to power down?

Christina here... I don’t know if any of you caught it, but Elizabeth Kolbert, who specializes in writing about climate change and our efforts (or lack thereof) to stop driving it, recently had another interesting article in the New Yorker. This article explored, to quote the title, the “obscene energy demands of AI,” or more specifically, of AI, like ChatGPT and Midjourney, that processes astronomical amounts of information every time it is used.

To take a moment to be totally self–centered about this, how interesting—and how timely! Ariel and I just discussed solarpunk’s use of and attitude toward AI, especially the image generating kind, when we recorded THE FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON 5—WOOT!—which you’ll have early access to toward the end of this month. But, for all that we found to consider about it, we didn’t touch on the enormous electricity consumption associated with AI image generation. Which now puts me, personally, far more solidly in the this is a bad idea camp, even if people are using AI to put POC into amazing imaginings of a super future. But Elizabeth Kolbert’s article—which you should definitely read!—gives me this chance to broach the subject, even if it is a few weeks before Season 5 begins, and explore it briefly further.

To give you a brief sneak peak: in our Season 5 opener, Ariel and I talk about solarpunk’s relationship with tech. Because solarpunk is both highly tech–centric and highly tech–skeptical, which is kind of a cool combination. Solarpunks are always asking should we or shouldn’t we use that tech and wouldn’t the world be a better place if we weren’t all always asking that question! Meawhile, the should we or shouldn’t we of AI and cryptocurrencies are already points of, if not contention, then at least deep disagreement between solarpunks. Again, I’m pretty much in the NOPE camp, all the more so now after reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s article.

As Elizabeth Kolbert explains, along with cryptocurrencies, AI like ChatGPT and Midjourney are shocking electricity hogs and... which I hadn’t previously realized... prolific producers of e–waste (because there are so many servers involved and they need to be replaced as they age). As she points out in the article, a single Bitcoin transaction produces the equivalent amount of e–waste as an iPhone. If that’s the case, there’s no way that all but a tiny fraction of the world can switch over to using digital currencies. Even worse, if that’s the case, shame on people making their fortunes buying and selling them. The world just doesn’t have the resources to sustain that! Not without environmental and ecological devastation and a heavy price in human lives and well being. But I think the most important thing Elizabeth Kolbert points out in her article stands already in the subheader: “How can the world reach net zero if it keeps inventing new ways to consume energy?���

One of the interesting things that certain historians (and the evolutionary biologist Geerat Vermeij, of whom I am a big fan) have pointed out is that there is a directionality to history. If you over look the bumps and wiggles and occasional serious crashes, over time, populations that use lower amounts of energy per capita per year have given way to (or been crushed by) populations that use higher amounts of energy per capita per year. You can see this in the general takeover of Earth’s ecosystems by human beings and you can see this over the course of human history. Our trajectory has taken us from manpower only, to using animals and burning wood to get work done, to moving on to fossil fuels, solar, wind, and nuclear energy and hydropower to increase our productivity and our ability to move ourselves and our stuff around. For centuries already, no other animal on Earth has had as much power per capital at its disposal as we do. Meanwhile, the countries with the highest per capita uses of energy have come to rule the world politically, economically, and even to some extent culturally.

If you looks at the shifts from using our own hands to get work done (back until the Neolithic sometime), to using wind and animals to get work done (like milling grains and ploughing) to burning wood and then later coal to run steam engines and the on to burning fossil fuels in internal combustion engines, it’s easy to see that each one has been a big step up in our per capita energy use. It’s also easy to see that we have not yet reached the ceiling! Throughout our fossil fuel phase; even as we improved our machinery and made it more energy efficient, this never resulted in a drop in per capita power expenditure. Instead, we used the increased efficiency to get more power out of our machines, making them bigger, faster, stronger, more complex, and less expensive, and therefore more widely available to more people. All of which led to massive increases in per capita energy use. We have always been as powerful as we can literally afford to be rather than using increases in energy efficiency to lower our per capita use of energy.

Even now, as our vehicles and toys and tools have become more energy efficient, we’ve responded by buying more of them and doing more things with them. At this point, who doesn’t have a computer or a laptop, plus maybe a tablet, and definitely also a smartphone. Who doesn’t upload photos and documents to “the cloud” of distant servers that guzzle up enormous amounts of energy? Who doesn’t do Google searches at the drop of a hat instead of hauling themselves to the book or library that would also hold the answer? We take advantage of all of these possibilities because they are there (and in part because we don’t want to be left out or left behind). But, most importantly, we use all of the extra energy it takes to fuel these things because we can afford to pay for it. ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney guzzle increasingly incredible bundles of electricity, but, still, chatting with ChatGPT or getting it to write an essay for you is a hell of a lot easier on the personal budget than reading by candlelight was 200 years ago... even though it consumes orders of magnitude more energy.

The problem with all of this inventing of new ways of consuming power is, of course, the climate is in crisis thanks to our continuing pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in large part via our production and consumption of energy. For our own good and that of the rest of Earth’s surface biosphere, we ought to have hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, or better yet ten years ago already. Instead, the goal keeps receding into the distance, even as we develop our capability to generate electricity via renewable, low–carbon means, because our per capita energy use just goes up and up and up. That’s where this idea that shifting toward a lower per capita power consumption is, on some level, inherently impossible rears its very ugly head. Shifting to a lower energy use is against the way systems naturally evolve and totally counter to the way human beings inherently operate (which is to say, we tend to do what’s possible—and push that envelope—rather than doing what’s wise). Another great obstacle to lowering our per capita energy use per year is that the society that powers itself down a bit puts itself at the mercy of the societies that keep striving for more power per capita. At some point, they’ll have the machinery, weaponry, wealth, and resources to wipe the powered down societies off the map. So why would you open yourself and your fellow citizens to that sort of existential risk?

Our failure to power down our societies is not inevitable, of course. We are animals capable of reason. Dilemmas like these are why we have governments, negotiations, diplomats, international law, and treaties. But treaties only work until someone decides to break them—case in point, Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons in 1994 for promisesnot to be invaded by Russia, the US, or the UK.

This means right now, humanity is in terrible situation with difficult options. We need to power down our lives because the way we live and the way we consume things, including power, is unsustainable. It would take three Earths and all that and we really need to stop emitting greenhouse gases to the atmosphere NOW. We’re already in pretty serious hot water on the climate change front. But to do so is counter to our tendency to innovate and adopt new technologies and to do absolutely the most we can afford to do (and buy absolutely the most we can afford to buy). Meanwhile, powering down would very possibly leave us at the mercy of societies that chose not to go that route.

Who is trying to steer us through this mess toward a better rather than worse out come? Honestly, where is the global leadership on this front? Nowhere in sight. Because no politician in the world is going to suggest that we need to become less powerful. And no country in the world is going to rein in AI and cryptocurrencies, not unless all the others and all the big businesses and all the tech companies agree to these things. I hate to say it, it’s really, really hard to see that happening. There’s simply too much power and money to be made.

If there is a role for solarpunk here, it is in imagining pathways out of this mess. How could we come to power down the world a bit and begin living actually sustainably? Because right now really, all this talk about sustainable technology is just a silly, soothing bit of mumbo jumbo. Not when, at the same time, cryptocurrency and AI use is going through the roof.

Get on it, solarpunks! We need visions, and even, simply, to get the word out that this is a serious problem.