you ever see the horror movies where the main character shows up to some old rich white person's mansion to take care of it during the summer?
rich people have to migrate south to their winter home or something i don't know i'm not the rich type of white, but many white folk believe we have more in common with rich white people than poor blacks. go figure right?
anyway after the main character settles in to the mansion they start looking around and realize that this mansion is full of hunting trophies and built on the back of enslaved people on top of native american burial grounds. something obviously super evil and represents generational trauma and injustice.
that's basically what it's like to be any sane person looking at AI at the moment. like sure yeah the AI is fancy it can do cool things. it can drink water, run faster, make greater art and code than any other human can even imagine. sarcasm aside, it certainly has brought some good things to this world. but you can say that about almost anything, the question is always cost.
a lot of talk about AI is focused on the environmental and economic costs, which is fair. tech giants are building a ton of infrastructure and throwing unimaginable amounts of money in to AI at the moment and because we live in a world with finite resources we have to deal with the question of whether these resources could be used better.
i am happy people are calling this out but i am also deeply troubled that this is how we are framing the objections to AI. so for a moment let's strongman that AI is actually a perfect product: it consumes nothing, it produces perfect results and is usable by all. it will make your life better by any metric for sure.
there is still the issue of consent, and consent matters. AI is built on top of violating consent: almost all the training data has been taken without consent from the authors of the data, from the places that hold the data, or from the legal system. to push AI is to argue that there is something more important than consent and we can build a society atop it. you can't build something beautiful on a rotten foundation like that. sooner or later it will collapse.
if you ever have the misfortune to read a comment thread by people who push for AI (kinda sad if they're not getting paid, though maybe they're AI bots) a good amount of the comments are 'it's inevitable' and 'you can't stop it'. the message here is that they don't care if you consent to this future, they will make it happen anyway.
tech people are a special type of unhinged that don't understand consent. they don't make things that care about consent. they will ask for permission to access some data then take that as consent to use it however they want. they will see that your wallet is open and take money out of it then blame you for keeping your wallet open.
they will never take responsibility for their misdeeds. having AI as a proxy to blame means nobody needs to take responsibility for anything any more. your AI racially profiles people? hacks another computer? locks you out of your bank? it's nobody's fault, but if it's someone's fault it's the fault that the AI could do that in the first place. the AI had access and that is permission and that is consent, apparently.
if AI is an amazing technology then surely we can work out how to do it consensually. if not, we should say no to it, even if it provides us all the candy we could ask for. consent and process is more important than outcome. we lived without AI for dozens of years we can live without it.
now luckily we're in a situation where AI is actually pretty bad and nobody wants to pay its cost. we should consider ourselves lucky that we have not been offered something perfect that costs our souls.
but it seems like we've come dangerously close, and that's one of the most haunting things i can think of lately.
Comments
Displaying 14 of 14 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
riri
I don't smoke, so *pulls up a lighter for other people who are joining the conversation*
Violation of consent is definitely a huge problem. Even if we give consent, what about content and products that have been released on the internet ages ago? How can consent be given to those? Adobe is facing a huge problem with this. Adobe has a software that lets users generate images or videos, and Adobe used artwork that has been published on Adobe Stock to train its AI. Unfortunately, these creators probably did not consent.
Also, they kind of shot themselves in the leg, or worse, the head, by doing this. They are making their own loyal customers (who published images to Adobe Stock) angry. So. Oh well. Goodbye loyal customers.
Another damage of AI is its impact on our cognitive function. Wrong use of AI can make us lazy who cant even think of our own original ideas, exercise our strategic thinking, searching/browsing skills, and all the things that AI can do for you.
M8sFavDiscordFemboy
*lights up a cigarette and also exhales smoke* I h8 the way ppl are exploiting creativity w/ AI
Yeah? Tell me more!
by Jookia; ; Report
For instance, real people on say, Instagram, post about the things they craft and they sell those. And then some dinglebutt decides to take their face, run it through AI and post videos where the likenesses of these people beg the viewers to kindly go on their Etsy page and buy their definitely not stolen backpack design that will certainly arrive at their house because they are very much somebody with authentic experiences of living in poverty and therefore are trustworthy for viewers to know that they won't cast a scam upon them.
by M8sFavDiscordFemboy; ; Report
error
*inhales your cigarette's smoke* *cough cough* damn right you are
I feel like the biggest problem of AI is how it's treated as this "necessary part" in every bit of the nowadays life.Smart fridges, watches, cars who can "kinda" drive themselves, ai music, movies, art and content.Like... WE DON'T NEED TO GET IT SHOVED DOWN OUR THROATS
Sure it's "revolutionary" but it doesn't have to become a part of our lifes and make us use our brains less.We don't need to "defend" it or "accept" it, we need to LIMIT it to just some domains and not let if get used in wrongful ways
I mean, ai could be more useful for other shit than to make human things such as music, art or movies, or to imagine donald trump as jesus
As an anecdote, my partner is disabled in such a way that asking an AI to help them do tasks has been a massive improvement in their quality of life. I don't think having an AI do a task that a person can't do even if they tried is a problem, perhaps it's actually empowering.
But that's not an argument for AI as it is today. AI is expensive and there's no way my partner could afford it if it wasn't subsidised by tech companies. AI is limited in behaviour by tech companies- it will avoid subtitling words in YouTube, it will avoid describing somebody's body parts, it isn't private so it can't be used to handle sensitive documents like government documents.
AI is not a tool for the disabled and people shouldn't be champion it as such. It's true that disabled people get SOME benefit from it, but that's purely accidental and more often than not this broken functionality is used to defend horrible things like Facebook's glasses that can record video.
The only path forward I can see would be to have the governments fund, develop and heavily regulate AI usage.
by Jookia; ; Report
Jubkey
Extremely well said. AI should be a choice. The only people I see loving and using AI is those who make it, and people of a middle age group bracket who really dont know the difference. Those older, dont understand it. And people of our age, know the damage. The fact every search engine or browser forces the use of AI, and puts so much in place to stop you from blocking the AI is ridiculous.
You can only ever turn it off on Google for example, if they choose that you are allowed. I, as a standard user, should get that choice too. On top of that, theres a lot of misunderstanding within AI. If you generate, not create, AI art or music, you didnt actually do anything. You wrote words in a box and a computer made it. You cannot claim to have made that, or let alone own it.
And those who says its inevitable, well, as long as those people think that way it is. I personally choose to not interact or view any AI content unless I have no choice. Again, as you said, consent. We cant stop greedy lazy fucks making AI systems, but aforementioned fucks should give us a choice if we use it.
Ultimately by using these systems we are providing consent for them to enter our lives. So that's something to think about, and whether it's a good idea.
by Jookia; ; Report
pocztowykoles
its so disappointing that when we know all this there are still ppl who happily use ai. like i cant even imagine that level of not caring about anything
"ai art is the only way people with disabilities or with no talent can create art"
by error; ; Report
in response to the previous reply:
i'm a disabled artist. there are so many disabled artists out there who've learned how to adapt and create something. art is probably one of the most accessible things out there!
by a_verybadpun; (edited); Report
just because you are talentless or disabled that shouldn't stop you from making art
not everyone is suited to make art and it's okay
by error; ; Report
absolutely!! it's okay to admit you suck at art instead of having to pretend. faking something you just don't have the skill or experience for is really cringe.. and i don't like using that word often
by a_verybadpun; ; Report
I think the past 20 years of STEMlords has rotted the brains of people to think that the point of art is to create something. That's usually the point of engineering after all, and art is just like engineering in their minds. That's why when they find a 'shortcut' to engineer something that has the visual outcome they want they feel smug and superior. But they completely fail to understand that the process is a huge part of the art. Trying to make something, failing to make something, learning more about yourself and the world, those are all just as important, probably more important, than whatever artifact you end up creating.
Putting on my developer hat, it's sad seeing developers just completely misunderstand this even in the context of engineering. You need to fail to develop and learn things and AI tools don't let you do that. Finding the answer to a problem is often a journey that takes you to other places, but the AI just bypasses that.
by Jookia; ; Report