(They/Them) I like TTRPGs, history, (audio and written) horror and the history of occultism.
It's complicated. The current state of the internet is dominated by corporate interests towards maximal profit, and that's driving the way websites and services are structured towards very toxic and addictive patterns. This is bigger than just "social media."
However, as a queer person, I will say that if I didn't have the ability to access the Internet and talk to other queer people without my parents knowing, I would be dead. There are lots of abused kids who lack any other outlets to seek help, talk to people and realize their problems, or otherwise find relief for the crushing weight of familial abuse.
Navigating this issue will require grace, awareness and a willingness to actually address core problems and not just symptoms. It doesn't help that there is an increasing uptick of purity culture and "for the children" legislation that will curtail people's privacy, ability to use the internet and be used to push queer people and their art or narratives off of the stage.
Requiring age verification reduces anonymity and makes it certain that some people will be unable to use the internet safely. Yes, it's important in some cases, but it's also a cost to that.
There's also the fact that western society has systemically ruined all third spaces and other places for children to exist in that isn't their home or school. It used to be that it was possible for kids and teens to spend time at malls, or just wandering around a neighborhood. There were lots of places where they were implicitly allowed to be- but those are overwhelmingly being closed, commericalized or subject to the rising tide of moral panic and paranoia that drives people to call the cops on any group of unknown children they see on their street.
Police violence and severity of response has also heightened, so things that used to be minor, almost expected misdemeanors for children wandering around now carry the literal risk of death.
So children are increasingly isolated, locked down in a context where they cannot explore the world or their own sense of self outside the hovering presence of authority- so they turn to the internet. Cutting that off will have repercussions. Social media wouldn't be so addictive for kids if they had other venues to engage with other people their age that weren't subject to the constant scrutiny of adults.
Without those spaces, they have to turn to the only remaining outlet. This article is woefully inadequate to answer the fundamental, core problems that produce the symptoms we are seeing; and, it's implementation will not rectify the actual problem. It will only add additional stress to the system and produce a greater need to seek out even less safe locations for the people it ostensibly wishes to protect.
The classic conflict of automation. Due to the structure of our economic system, the benefits of reducing labor are not that we all have more time to pursue art, philosophy, joy or love- instead talented, interesting people are forced out of jobs they can do well (and enjoy) and into financial stress and confusion.
I wonder which sci-fi novels it's mimicking here.
I'm thinking about doing some personal writing about my feelings on the Internet of my youth and how I need to let go of it. So, somber?
Thank you, I am trying to be less abrasive online, especially about LLM/GEN-AI stuff. I have come to terms with the fact that my desire for accuracy and truthfulness in things skews way past the median to the point that it's almost pathological, which is why I ended up studying history in college, probably. To me, the idea of using a LLM to get information seems like a bad use of my time- I would methodically check everything it says, and the total time spent would vastly exceed any amount saved, but that's because I'm weird.
Like, it's probably fine for anything you'd rely on a skimming a wikipedia article for. I wouldn't use them for recipes or cooking, because that could give you food poisoning if something goes wrong, but if you're just like, "Hey, what's Ice-IV?" then the answer it gives is probably equivalent in 98% of cases to checking a few websites. People should invest their energy where they need it, or where they have to, and it's less effort for me to not use the technology, but I know there are people who can benefit from it and have a good use-case situation to use it.
My main point of caution for people reading this is that you shouldn't rely on an LLM for important information- whatever that means to you, because if you want to be absolutely sure about something, then you shouldn't risk an AI hallucination, even if it's unlikely.
I'm not a frequent user of LLM, but this was pretty intuitive to me after using them for a few hours. However, I recognize that I'm a weirdo and so will pick up on the idea that the prompt leads the style.
It's not like the LLM actually understands that you are asking questions, it's just that it's generating a procedural response to the last statement given.
Saying please and thank you isn't the important part.
Just preface your use with, like,
"You are a helpful and enthusiastic with excellent communication skills. You are polite, informative and concise. A summary of follows in the style of your voice, explained in clearly and without technical jargon."
And you'll probably get promising results, depending on the exact model. You may have to massage it a bit before you get consistent good results, but experimentation will show you the most reliable way to get the desired results.
Now, I only trust LLM as a tool for amusing yourself by asking it to talk in the style of you favorite fictional characters about bizarre hypotheticals, but at this point I accept there's nothing I can do to discourage people from putting their trust in them.
Getting annoyed that Meta brought so much attention to shadow libraries that make a lot of otherwise inaccessible academic information available to the general public.
I took a two week break from social media because I wasn't engaging with the political crisis situation in a responsible way. Now I'm just going to try to engage in more productive and meaningful discussion.
Thanks for responding, I appreciate it. What you're saying makes sense.
When you say that about her being mentally ill with no empathy, what exactly do you mean? I'm asking because it's easy to draw a lot of different conclusions from that statement, and I'm trying to make fewer assumptions when I don't know people well.
Part of the problem is that sufficient wealth seems to destroy people's understanding of consequence. They don't experience them very often, and so reach a point where they can simply pursue whatever their feelings tell them to do and the world magically restructures itself to allow them to do so.
Combine this with how the incentives of the social system result in the people who are most likely to pursue a selfish course being the most financially successful- you get a recipe for short-sighted, ignorant and self-important nonsense.
Hey, thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. You presented me a really challenging thought and I have appreciated grappling with it for a few days. I think you've really shifted some bits of my perspective, and I think I understand now.
I think there's an ambiguity in my initial post here, and I wanted to check which of the following is the thing you read from it:
- Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, even in the hands of skilled artists or those with technical expertise with it; or,
- Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, because it will be ultimately used by souless executives who don't respect or understand art.
Little high, little low. I'm adjusting to online discussions after not being part of them for quite a while. Had some fun conversations with my partner and I am writing again, which is great. Job hunting is such a drag though. Simply inhuman.
I'm not sure I understand your overall point here. It sounds like you're saying that the perceived emotional connections in art are simply the result of the viewer projecting emotions onto the piece, is that correct?
You make a compelling and very interesting point here. I'm still l considering it, because it's provoked a lot of thought for me. Once I feel like I can definitely make an argument against or in favor of your point, I'll get back to you.
Well done, I love intelligent discussions like this so much, I really missed them when my online communities started decaying. The pursuit of truth is so much fun!
The university I went to had an unusually large art department for the state it was in, most likely because due to a ridiculous chain of events and it's unique history, it didn't have any sports teams at all.
I spent a lot of time there, because I had (and made) a lot of friends with the art students and enjoyed the company of weird, creative people. It was fun and beautiful and had a profound effect on how I look at art, craft and the people who make it.
I mention this because I totally disagree with you on the subject of photography. It's incredibly intentional in an entirely distinct but fundamentally related way, since you lack control over so many aspects of it- the things you can choose become all the more significant, personal and meaningful. I remember people comparing generative art and photography and it's really... Aggravating, honestly.
The photography student I knew did a whole project as part of her final year that was a display of nude figures that did a lot of work with background, lighting, dramatic shadow and use of color, angle and deeply considered compositions. It's a lot of work!
I don't mean here to imply you're disparaging photography in any way, or that you don't know enough about it. I can't know that, so I'm just sharing my feelings about the subject and art form.
A lot of generative art has very similar lighting and positioning because it's drawing on stock photographs which have a very standardized format. I think there's a lot of different between that and the work someone who does photography as an art has to consider. Many of the people using generative art as tools lack the background skills that would allow them to use them properly as tools. Without that, it's hard to identify what makes a piece of visual art not work, or what needs to be changed to convey a mood or idea.
In an ideal world, there would be no concern for loss of employment because no one would have to work to live. In that world, these tools would be a wonderful addition to the panoply of artistic implements modern artists enjoy.
Of course! I didn't mean to suggest you are arguing about the soul thing. I'm sorry if that's the impression I created, since you've been very clearly arguing on a very different tract that I firmly agree with.
I did close my post by saying capitalism is responsible for the problems, so I think we're on the same page about why it's unethical to engage with AI art.
I am interested in engaging in a discourse not about that (I am very firmly against the proliferation of AI because of the many and varied bad social implications), but I am interested in working on building better arguments against it.
I have seen multiple people across the web making the argument that AI art is bad not just because of the fact that it will put artists out of work, but because the product is, itself, lacking in some vital and unnameable human spark or soul. Which is a bad argument, since it means the argument becomes about esoteric philosophy and not the practical argument that if we do nothing art stops being professionally viable, killing many people and also crushing something beautiful and wonderful about life forever.
Rich people ruin everything, is what I want the argument to be.
So I'm really glad you're making that argument! Thanks, honestly, it's great to see it!
Feeling moody and irritable right now. Trying to distract myself with pokemon roguelike.