#thingsthatmakeyouacey

[gothhabiba]

On the one hand, people who take a hardline stance on “AI art is not art” are clearly saying something naïve and indefensible (as though any process cannot be used to make art? as though artistry cannot still be involved in the set-up of the parameters and the choice of data set and the framing of the result? as though “AI” means any one thing? you’re going to have a real hard time with process music, poetry cut-up methods, &c.).

But all of this (as well as takes that what's really needed is a crackdown on IP) are a distraction from a vital issue—namely that this is technology used to create and sort enormous databases of images, and the uses to which this technology is put in a police state are obvious: it's used in service of surveillance, incarceration, criminalisation, and the furthering of violence against criminalised people.

Of course we've long known that datasets are not "neutral" and that racist data will provide racist outcomes, and we've long known that the problem goes beyond the datasets (even carefully vetting datasets does not necessarily control for social factors). With regards to "predictive policing," this suggests that criminalisation of supposed leftist "radicals" and racialised people (and the concepts creating these two groups overlap significantly; [link 1], [link 2]) is not a problem, but intentional—a process is built so that it always finds people "suspicious" or "guilty," but because it is based on an "algorithm" or "machine learning" or so-called "AI" (processes that people tend to understand murkily, if at all), they can be presented as innocent and neutral. These are things that have been brought up repeatedly with regards to "automatic" processes and things that trawl the web to produce large datasets in the recent past (e.g. facial recognition technology), so their almost complete absence from the discourse wrt "AI art" confuses me.

Abeba Birhane's thread here, summarizing this paper (h/t @thingsthatmakeyouacey) explains how the LAION-400M dataset was sourced/created, how it is filtered, and how images are retrieved from it (for this reason it's a good beginner explanation of what large-scale datasets and large neural networks are 'doing'). She goes into how racist, misogynistic, and sexually violent content is returned (and racist mis-categorisations are made) as a result of every one of those processes. She also brings up issues of privacy, how individuals' data is stored in datasets (even after the individual deletes it from where it was originally posted), and how it may be stored associated with metadata which the poster did not intend to make public. This paper (h/t thingsthatmakeyouacey [link]) looks at the ImageNet-ILSVRC-2012 dataset to discuss "the landscape of harm and threats both the society at large and individuals face due to uncritical and ill-considered dataset curation practices" including the inclusion of non-consensual pornography in the dataset.

Of course (again) this is nothing that hasn't already been happening with large social media websites or with "big data" (Birhane notes that "On the one hand LAION-400M has opened a door that allows us to get a glimpse into the world of large scale datasets; these kinds of datasets remain hidden inside BigTech corps"). And there's no un-creating the technology behind this—resistance will have to be directed towards demolishing the police / carceral / imperial state as a whole. But all criticism of "AI" art can't be dismissed as always revolving around an anti-intellectual lack of knowledge of art history or else a reactionary desire to strengthen IP law (as though that would ever benefit small creators at the expense of large corporations...).

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

americans who want to help gaza can also buy e-sim links for gazans, this post explains how to do it and send it to a person who is distributing them. (for the anon who was asking you) thingsthatmakeyouacey . tumblr . com/post/732602440274362368/backpacknomad-is-a-coupon-code-for-3-off (just remove the spaces)

Sharing this for anyone who wants to know how to help. Thank you 🙏

[embraceyourdestiny]

thingsthatmakeyouacey . tumblr . com/post/732602440274362368/backpacknomad-is-a-coupon-code-for-3-off

for the person that was asking about helping gaza here is the esim link

btw, i think the reason this situation makes some americans feel “helpless” is that there are so few ways to easily demonstrate support and alleviate our guilt over our complicity. in the past when there have been big humanitarian causes getting a lot of attention we have usually been able to donate food for 5 dollars or less and a few clicks, right now we can seemingly only give esims and show up at protests (or at the very least boycott a few companies) due to the blockade. i know many people feel genuine despair at these people not having food, and that american protests can feel ineffectual. but i also know americans want their easy guilt relief activism and dont know how to deal with their self image as a person who supposedly cares about human rights abuses in the face of the fact that they actually have to put in more effort to show support palestine.

thank you anon. i actually compiled a list of stuff so hopefully this will help (esim included but a different link, thanks for sending it in)

i agree. theres a lot of... things at play to make americans like this. and its not every american, im very proud at the hundreds of thousands of people doing protests and im glad we'll always have them to help. my issue is that at best lack of interest and at worst actual contempt towards victims of tragedy is such a common mindset in america and its horrible. and i think theres a sort of learned helplessness taught (intentionally) by america. "oh you dont know what to do so dont do anything!" seems to be a lot of peoples thought processes and its just irritating bc we live in a country with so much privlige and people just.... dont do anything. dont take initiative. dont believe they have the power. again its on purpose to a large degree but also you can break out if you try. it just takes choosing to be better and i really hope more people will make the right choice, its never too late when theres still time to help

[thingsthatmakeyouacey]

“hey @thingsthatmakeyouacey how come you’ve picked up so much about neo-N*zi tactics online” maybe because I’ve been yelling about n*zis in the ace community since 2011 as ace activists ghosted me to death 🤷🏾‍♂️

[resistandfight]

thingsthatmakeyouacey I decided to just make a post since asks got complicated so here we goooo. Sorry for no read more, everyone-- on mobile! Re: "definitions" of asexuality. Personally, within the queer/ace community I’ve seen people talk about how we need to encourage a "if it fits, use it!" attitude re: sexual orientation. Usually with aces it’s people asserting that those who’ve sexual trauma in their history or some mental illness still have the right to ID as ace if they feel like it fits. This has been an important step in conversation that's led, I think, to a little bit better inclusion in the community at large. Now, why is it so difficult to expand that line of thinking to include race and, more importantly, all the baggage that may come with that? Racial identity is just as much a part of a person as any history of mental illness or assault (or any other factors-- just using these as examples) and it carries a heavy weight that may make an apoc's more detailed definition of asexuality different from what a white ace may be used to. Furthermore, I've met other asexual umbrella folks whose finer detail definitions didn't quite fit with my definition of being ace/grace/demi, but you know what? That's not my call to make. As others in the community keep trying to emphasize, sexual orientation is deeply personal. Those people could've sat me down and told me their whole life story and I still would have no authority to label them with an orientation. Their experiences are their own, and if they feel those experiences mean they can find community within the asexual community, then we need to learn how to give them that. I just feel like it's important people keep in mind the one thing we can agree on in terms of definition of being under the asexual umbrella: that we experience no/little sexual attraction. That's it, that's all. There are no quantifiers to add to that. If that is something you feel is true for you and you feel the label fits, that's all it means to be asexual. No "but only if you're not a survivor/neurotypical/not taking racial baggage into account." Trying to add a "but" onto the basic definition feels to me to be SUCH a power assertion, conscious or no, of people in privileged positions-- a way to keep control by limiting the definitions of what it means to be asexual to be within narrow borders acceptable to them. People are so much more complicated than that, and finding a 'cause' for a person whose definition of asexuality differs from you just reeks of acephobia to me. You are literally telling people they cannot be something if it does not fit into you idea of what a 'normal' asexual is; that there must be a reason to their IDing as they do. Isn't that the same BS line of thinking allosexual people try to force on asexuals already? People within the asexual community need to be able to recognize their areas of privilege and, if they find themselves questioning whether it's correct for someone to ID the way they do, they need to be able to step back and examine why it is they feel that's a question they've a right to ask.