Why it matters to oppose AI
Update 01.20.24
author: cmdr_nova
We've all been there. You're trying to figure out what direction to take next in your book, or what stroke to make next on the canvas, and undecided, you put it down for four months. It happens. Whaddya gonna do about it?
I would certainly hope that those feelings of being creatively blank, or blocked, wouldn't lead you down the path of using an algorithm to generate something for you. Especially if you plan on selling it, and especially if you plan to call it something you made on your own.
But that's what's been going on lately. Unscrupulous tech-dudes developed a piece of software that scrounges up whatever it can find on the internet--other people's art and writing--and shoves it into its learning model, without consent. Because how are you going to get engagement and make a billion dollars if you have to ask people for permission to use their work? Oh, woe, the thought of not stealing and learning how to do something on your own. What plebeian would even dare suggest such a thing?
Sarcasm aside, this is a fad that is absolutely sweeping the mainstream. Why? Because, unfortunately, a lot, and I mean a lot of people do not think about what they consume. They just consume. And that is the over-arching problem here, alongside the obviously mega-brainiacs who decided that plagiarism was cool. I see it all of the time. Someone doesn't want to use a screenshot from their favorite show or anime as an avatar on social media. Nor do they want to use their own face, so what do they opt for? Oh, oh we're going to use the theft and plagiarism monolith to make you something passable as a photo, but just barely.
To me, most AI generated photos look like a greasy nightmare scene, even when it tries to make things look normal. You put a photo of something that's supposed to be human in front of me, generated by an AI, and I will know immediately that it's fabricated nonsense scraped from other people's photos (again! without consent!).
It is, without skipping a beat, every single time, always subtly horrifying. Something that will cause you to recoil, and in some cases, you may not even know why, at least not immediately.
But I'm not writing this to endlessly critique the extreme lack of talent that AI prompting zeros do. I'm writing this, because if we want the act of expressing human emotion through genuine means to persevere into the future, and I'm not talking 2077, I'm talking 10 years from now, we have to take a zero tolerance stance with this stuff. Think about how you treat nazis on social media. No tolerance. Fuck 'em. They're gone. Think about how you treat trolls. Get outta here, bruh.
Okay, now apply that to people who are generating the epitome of fear through photos that look like they were ripped out of the back rooms, and let's start keeping them out of our spaces. Let's start banning them. Let's start silencing them, and removing every ounce of voice they might seek to have. Stamp them out until they have nowhere to turn, until they are themselves convinced that ripping people off is not something that constitutes artificial intelligence, and is just, plain and simple, disgusting, deplorable, and lacking in morals, and basic consideration for your fellow man.
Start giving a shit.
