Asklemmy

Well, I'm a mod of [email protected], so...

The rise of what recently/popularly has been referred to as "AI" is a massive scam/bubble.

There are two core issues I have with AI generated content:

1. Ownership - All the big players are using proprietary software, weights, models, training methods, and datasets to generate these models. On top of the lack of visibility, they have farmed millions of peoples data and content without their knowledge or consent. If it were up to me, all AI research and software would be 100% open source, public access, non-copyright. That includes all theoretical work in scientific publications, all code, all the datasets, the weights, the infrastructure and training methods, absolutely everything.

2. Lowest common denominator - AI has unleashed the ability for individuals and organizations to produce extremely low effort content at volumes that haven't been seen before. I hate how search results are becoming totally poisoned by AI slop. You just get pages and pages of sites that abuse SEO to become the top search result and are nothing more than click-farms to generate ad revenue. This is a systemic issue that stems from several things, primarily Capitalism, but also the way we cater to powerful corpos that push this sludge onto us.

I have no issue with AI tools that are actually helpful in their context. For instance, animation software that uses AI to help generate intermediate frames from your initial drawings. Screen reader software that uses AI to help sight-impaired folks with more accurate text-to-speech. AI tools that help with code completion, or debugging.

These are all legitimate uses of the technology, but sadly, all of that is being overshadowed by mountains of sludge being shoved on us at every level. Because those implementations aren't going to make rich people even richer, they aren't going to temp investors to dump billions more into AI startups and corpo tech. Helping blind people and indie animation studios is boring and low-profit, therefore in a Capitalist system, it gets shoved to the bottom of the stack while the high-margin slop gets pumped down our throats.

Peel back the veneer of AI and you find the foundation of stolen training data it's built on. They are stealing from the very content creators they aim to replace.

Torrent a movie? You can potentially go to jail. Scrape the entire internet for content and sell it as a shitty LLM or art generator? That's just an innovative AI startup which is doing soooooo much good for humanity.

I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a rusty spork.

It's just deeply inauthentic. I'd feel tricked if I listened to a song that I enjoyed and found out it was actually a meaningless machine printout.

As someone who has had her art stolen for usage in an AI output, AI generated images are considered a form of art theft for good reason.

I avoid AI content because it's sort of an intellectual goo. It looks like there were some thoughts behind it, smells like it, and then you notice the distorted letters or certain writing style patterns. The AI we have currently is not sentient, so if there are no humans in the loop doing quality control then you end up with an AI telling people to eat rocks while citing The Onion. I lose trust in anything when I spot that a part of it was AI generated - without being explicitly marked as such - for this reason

Then there's AI's heavy association with corporations/VCs/tech bros, giant waste of electricity, bias in the training data, legality and ethical implications of training AI on data from the entire internet, people losing jobs, companies running sweatshops of people in 3rd world countries to manually classify said data, the list goes on and on

I think it’s a bad idea in general, currently being produced in unethical ways by people with unethical aims, consistently failing to deliver on a tenth of what was promised and already ruining a lot of stuff despite its frailty.

I think stable diffusion is cool. 🤷‍♀️

I have no problem with it. I’ve been using it to make images for my website that I would otherwise not be able to afford to pay a graphic designer to make.

I also use it to help me figure out wording to get the right tone to my message. I’ll read a few iterations and then work off of the one that I like best. The AI one is not always better, but it’s great to get quick alternatives for comparison.

Define the terms please. AI has existed for decades. What are you focusing on now?

It's useful in some circumstances, but businesses are pushing for it in way too many areas. Luckily most have seen the light and that it is no where close to replacing humans. AI can't write a movie that will captivate audiences. (Hell I get bored with character chats after a few messages). AI can't animate a movie. It can't make a video game, or build useful programs.

What it can do it does well. Give you a jumping off point, give you different perspectives, allow you to get started - and I think we'll see it used in that area. For text based AI, it's great at something like "Give me 20 prompts" that can help a writer get started - but we all can tell AI generated content pretty quickly, and it gets dull.

So that's what makes me say it'll be useful in the second area, which is AI slop. Meta and them have discovered that there are a ton of gullible people out there who will happily consume AI slop left and right, roll right up to the trough and eat it down. It can't make a full feature length movie, but it can make a blog post on some half baked subject. We'll see a lot more of that.

I'll fight tooth and nail against it replacing jobs, or having full works from just AI out there. If you want to use it personally, go right ahead. I guess what I'm saying is that my moral compass around it is:

• Generate whatever you like for personal use, who cares
• For public consumption, AI should be used only to generate the "outline" of the content. If you call it done after that phase, it's slop, and it's immoral to publish it. If you want to take the outline and put your spin on it, and use it to build something new, then absolutely go for it.

It's a perfect commodity, which means it's going to be worth the least out of anything out there.

AI content is low-quality slop. That said, sometimes low-quality slop is the best option for what you want, and in that case, it can make sense to use. That slop can also make a useful ingredient for other, better works, so long as its just a small peice used appropriately.

filters and reduce a lot of creativity

If it is for personal usage, I don’t mind and I don’t care. If it is just for putting on like an AI fan site.Where somebody created an image of a dragon sitting on top of a castle with knights running around, I don’t care I have no problem.

But if it’s used in movies and it is taking jobs away from people that I care. If it’s used in music and it is jobs away from people that I care. If it’s used in art or anything else, and it is taking jobs away from people then I care.

I don’t want to see computer created stuff. I wanna see what humans come up with. It’s also why in movies I prefer practical effects over special effects.

Companies will always go for the cheapest way to do something, but at some point, we’re not gonna have enough jobs. The company won’t care they’re still making money off of somebody.

When we went from horse and buggy a car, the people who made the horse and buggy could take their skills to go build a car because some of the ideas transferred over.

If we keep giving the jobs to AI , where people going to go for jobs?

I want to see what people created with their own hands. Not have a person just type some keywords into a computer and have the computer just generate something.

Obvious trash

Thoughts on AI-Generated Content

AI-generated content is a fascinating and rapidly evolving area that raises important questions about quality, creativity, and the role of technology in our lives. Here are some key points to consider regarding AI-generated content, particularly in the context of consumption:

Quality and Acceptance

1. Current Capabilities: As you noted, AI has made significant strides in generating content that can sometimes match human quality, especially in areas like audiobooks, music, and graphics. While the technology is improving, there are still limitations, particularly in producing nuanced or deeply creative works.

2. Consumer Acceptance: People often accept AI-generated content in contexts where the artistic value is less critical—like stock photos or simple graphics. This acceptance suggests that as long as the output meets a certain standard of utility or aesthetic appeal, consumers are willing to overlook the lack of human touch.

Creativity and Insight

1. Limitations of AI: While AI can generate text, music, and visuals based on patterns learned from existing data, it struggles with true creativity and insight. Genuine creativity often involves emotional depth, personal experience, and cultural context—elements that AI currently cannot replicate.

2. The Filter of Quality: As you mentioned, the internet has conditioned us to filter through a lot of low-quality content. This experience has heightened our ability to discern quality, making us more critical of automated outputs. The challenge for AI-generated content is to rise above this noise and provide something genuinely valuable.

Future Potential

1. Collaborative Creation: One promising avenue for AI-generated content is its potential as a tool for human creators rather than a replacement. For instance, writers might use AI to brainstorm ideas or overcome writer's block, while musicians could use it to generate backing tracks or explore new styles.

2. Evolving Standards: As technology progresses, our standards for AI-generated content may evolve as well. What seems inadequate today might be seen as acceptable or even impressive in the future as both creators and consumers adapt to new capabilities.

Conclusion

In summary, while there are valid concerns about the limitations of AI-generated content—especially regarding creativity and insight—there's also potential for it to enhance human creativity and fill specific niches effectively. As technology continues to advance, it will be interesting to see how our perceptions shift and how we integrate these tools into our creative processes. The key will be maintaining a balance between leveraging AI's capabilities while valuing the unique contributions that human creators bring to the table.

I think it's pretty cool. A lot of the things people are doing with open weights models are incredible and free for everyone to use.

it STINKS

I like it as an idea flow starter. I've used it to generate stuff like site profile logos (like my little ghost in baseball cap here) and screen savers. I've used it for minor tasks like coding Excel macros and such.

But would I say it's a major life impactor? I'd have to say that even though it saves a little time here or there... no.