Flatworm7591 comments on I can understand the Anti-IP sentiment about AI, but isn't that missing another key thing; we don't currently live in a socialist country.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

fwiw i think slop machines are [borderline] useless and largely culturally harmful but even if they worked well. Like if extruded images were worth looking at and chatbots were reliable for things other than [to] lie and cause psychosis then promoting them at this stage would be harmful.

Technological development isn't intrinsically harmful though, and that includes so-called "AI". It's the ways in which capitalism exploits new (and old) technologies that is harmful, because of the way capitalists use those technologies to drive down labor costs and eliminate jobs.

Capital controls them, it is intrinsic to the approach that massive amounts of hardware and energy are needed to create them, as well as input data and unpleasant human labour. They will be used to crush labour, making revolutionary action harder, and atrophying skills and becoming dependant on them is placing yourself at the mercy of silicon valley freaks.

I'm actually with the Luddites here. They didn't have a problem with the concept of textile mills. What they had a problem with was the fact that rich capitalist owners gave zero consideration to the health and safety of their workers, while paying them a pittance. I have the same attitude towards the "AI" industry as you do. It's being promoted by pyramid scheme AI-bros who are only interested in manipulating markets to get disgustingly rich. Those guys are scum. They have zero consideration for the environmental, social, and psychological harms that their products produce. But folks aren't fighting against them by complaining to us, they are instead directing their energy to fighting with an anarchist instance which is dedicated to fighting against capitalism, including corporate abuses of "AI" tools.

And when you say "capital controls them" that is only true of corporate AI. There are many open source models available. There is no reason why AI needs to use gallons of water to answer a web search, and the results can't be trusted. That's why I don't use AI web searches. There's no reason to build huge datacentres for AI. I can run an AI model on my PC at home, using no more power than it takes to browse the internet for a few minutes. Hobbyists and anarchists can deploy a locally hosted AI to work against capitalism, with none of the downsides. It's perfectly possible to use AI tools ethically and responsibly.

Who the anti-AI crowd should be mad at are the CEOs who are firing workers left and right to be "replaced" with AI tools that are totally incompetent. I'd bet good money it won't be long before the whole ponzi scheme comes crashing down once productivity starts tanking at those companies. And I'll be cheering on the end of the AI bubble as much as the next person. But those same CEOs will have generated a good little stock price bump in the meantime, so they can dump their shares early and depart richer than ever when the shit hits the fan. Again, the problem isn't AI, it's scummy capitalists doing scummy capitalist things.

Now what about our instance? Have we replaced anyone with AI? No. Have we used millions of gallons of water to generate our locally generated AI images? No. Most of them are produced using db0's AI Horde which is an open source, distributed, locally run model. Are we responsible for any of the harms associated with corporate AI? No. And we have never "promoted" AI, at most, we have just defended the way in which we use it, because it isn't harmful in that context. And yet...

We are relentlessly hounded by a bunch of misguided activists and trolls as though we are the font of all evil. The anti-AI crowd has some good points, but they need to target their efforts on the source of the problem, not towards a bunch of techy anarchists who like to self-host stuff. Yet our mods have had to deal with multiple death threats, transphobia and doxxing over our stance on AI, mostly from libs who are obsessed with protecting copyright law. In terms of relative harms, the anti-GenAI crowd on lemmy has done way more actual harm than anyone on this server has by posting an AI image.

Resisting further degration of working conditions and bargaining power through imperfect means is a good tactic. Disney or whatever gets way more power from being able to fire all the writers, animators, and actors than keeping control of some fucking cartoon for another few years.

I'm 100% with you that those things should be resisted. But folks are fighting us instead. And that seems like a waste of time and effort if you ask me.

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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 8 months ago

My arthritis is playing up, if I come across as terse forgive me.

Technological development isn’t intrinsically harmful though, and that includes so-called “AI”. It’s the ways in which capitalism exploits new (and old) technologies that is harmful, because of the way capitalists use those technologies to drive down labor costs and eliminate jobs.

I don't want to argue a strawman position (i.e. that technological development is intrinsically harmful) but I do adopt the position that certain technologies lend themselves more readily to good, and conversely bad, ends. I think this is extremely obvious and won't bother explaining further unless asked.

In the field of so called AI I will admit that the underlying technology, the transformer model, is freaking awesome. Huge step forward, unlocked giant leaps in computer vision among many other things. The chatbots and diffusion algorithims? not so much, genuinely I struggle to think of positive social impacts. Most people give me are based on fundamental misunderstandings of how they are made and what they do, e.g. they are an appalling way to learn a topic or improve your writing (see semantic ablation if you need that last one explained https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/semantic_ablation_ai_writing/).

Mass manufacturing anti-information not only misleads people but also buries real information in a tide of slop. They are fundamentally designed to seem plausible, aka to deceive a user that information/communication/language/art is happening when it is not.

There are many open source models available.

This is a popular refrain and it based on a misunderstanding of what they are. They are open weight models, the source (the information used to make them) is not shipped. They are more like shareware. In theory you could tweak them, like you could go to neuron 65423455 and tweak the weight but as the models are by nature inscrutable this is not a useful exercise. You cannot study what training went in, analyses sources for bias, replicate the creation, or anything else a truly open source model would be, you can simply run the finished product.

Hobbyists and anarchists can deploy a locally hosted AI to work against capitalism, with none of the downsides. It’s perfectly possible to use AI tools ethically and responsibly.

Can you? The technology is fundamentally nondeterministic, impossible to analyse, extremely convincing which makes disinfo/bullshit (in the Frankfurt sense) much more dangerous. Further because of the compute required to train them and the lack of source these models rapidly become outdated and of diminishing use. I think capital is better undermined by building solidarity, sabotaging these machines/their training, and making sure you retain your ability to operate without tools created by them.

But folks aren’t fighting against them by complaining to us, they are instead directing their energy to fighting with an anarchist instance which is dedicated to fighting against capitalism, including corporate abuses of “AI” tools.

I don't think anyone is trying to harm the instance, simply convince people. Are people ddosing you guys? doxing people? If you believe someone is doing something harmful you basically have a moral duty to try and convince people don't you?

Are we responsible for any of the harms associated with corporate AI? No. And we have never “promoted” AI, at most, we have just defended the way in which we use it, because it isn’t harmful in that context. And yet…

The horde is interesting but I do think that it is dependant on capital as outlined above, and that in general using these things devalues language/art/humanity and harms your brain.

In terms of relative harms, the anti-GenAI crowd on lemmy has done way more actual harm than anyone on this server has by posting an AI image.

There are many devoted leftist that are against this stuff, there are many horrible techbro types that love it. It is not reasonable to smear a position based on the worst people that hold it.

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