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1. Kat (kat@weatherishappening.network)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Feb-2023 10:38:25 JST Kat

   #ChatGPT and its ilk are effectively a large-scale DDoS attack on not only specific tasks (such as teaching, software maintenance and fiction editing) but on human creative inspiration, sense of self and ability to make meaning of the universe.

   notice how they are
   - creating work for us rather than saving us work
   - automating inherently energizing and rewarding tasks such as making art rather than tiring and tedious tasks such as filing taxes
   - flooding social networks with generated content that makes it harder to connect with real humans and build community
   - distracting us with questions like “what if this machine is sentient?” which keep us from noticing and acting to prevent the suffering of actual humans

   that thing where all search engines have become basically unusable because they’re stuffed full of AI garbage? i fear that’s about to happen to everything.

   i don’t believe this is necessarily intentional, but no machine that learns under capitalism can imagine another world.

   • Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • endemicearthling@todon.eu's status on Wednesday, 22-Feb-2023 10:40:29 JST EndemicEarthling

     in reply to

     @kat
     Democratise control of the automatons., i.e. seize the means of (mass re)production.

     Automate tedium, not enjoyment.

     Automate tasks that inflict suffering/harm/risk on workers, not what expedites further centralising of power and social control.

   • Shachihoko (shachihoko@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Feb-2023 10:40:36 JST Shachihoko

     in reply to

     @kat

     I think we still have a chance - right now, while the backlash against ChatGPT and its ilk is rising - to really dig in and push back, to keep the humanities (art, fiction, music, creativity in general) from being automated the way the big-budget techbros are trying to pull off.

     The question is where we can actually apply the leverage it'll take to do so, and if we can push hard enough against the big money that doesn't look past stockholder returns.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Feb-2023 10:45:26 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • Shachihoko

     @Shachihoko @kat I'll keep doing what I'm doing: Endorsing quality audioshows!

     (Though I am noticing that walls are being erected in this space...)

     From my experience as reviewer I'd advise to learn to recognize the difference feats of talent vs feats of budget. I'm always more impressed by feats of talent!

   • Kat (kat@weatherishappening.network)'s status on Thursday, 23-Feb-2023 08:47:36 JST Kat

     in reply to

     still trying to figure out the right way to say this. in recent decades it has become easier and easier to fall into the trap of "i don't need to make this particular art, someone else has made it better than me". to get demoralized by comparing to the work of others.

     art-making AIs extrapolate that feeling to encompass the entire universe of potential art, so you can no longer avoid facing down and overcoming that fear. it's the Library of Babel, no longer the suspicion but the certainty that anything you could say has been said before.

     of course it's always been a lie; you have to make the thing anyway. the thing is particular to you. the thing is *specific*, as each of us is specific.

     we're all Pierre Menard, rewriting Don Quixote. which was Borges' point even then.

   • Kat (kat@weatherishappening.network)'s status on Thursday, 23-Feb-2023 08:47:37 JST Kat

     in reply to

     i hope, though, that this exponential flood of inhuman content will finally make it impossible not to see that we all have inherent value regardless of what we produce or consume.

     care about the world because caring matters. make art because it matters. *you* matter. each of us contains infinities the machines will never understand. don’t let them try to tell you that you can be replaced; you can’t. none of us can.

     always ask yourself who benefits from your apathy, your overwhelm, your exhaustion, your loneliness.

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.