the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
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the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
@lucydev indeed, it's "easy" to "democratize" if you just put a cute bow on top of something already built by others then HIDE that they did it.
Also no democratization is possible when one relies on a black box controlled by others, so even if the technology itself was fine (which it's not IMHO) then at least most if not all commercializations of it are huge red flags trying to establish dependency.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
It's also condescending, insulting, to disabled people to suggest that if some of them, IDK, struggle with a paint brush what is needed is for the computer to draw it for them rather than for all of us to look and listen with more care to the work that they create.
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It's also condescending, insulting, to disabled people to suggest that if some of them, IDK, struggle with a paint brush what is needed is for the computer to draw it for them rather than for all of us to look and listen with more care to the work that they create.
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I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
2/
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I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
2/
These AI as equity arguments aren't coming from people who have ever said anything about "equity" before this moment, and they will never say anything about equity after this moment. They don't really care about equity. They just want to have something to say that might pause our criticism.
"What if it really could help people?"
Let that go. If it could help people you'd see people using AI effectively to help people.
They are using it as cover.
3/3
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It democratizes it by making it available for the people who can't / don't want to / don't have the time for learning it.
No, I'm sorry, but it doesn't.
What it "democratises" is being an art director who commissions a machine to generate things derived from the (uncredited, un-compensated) work of others (whose lack of consent was gleefully violated).
Gutenberg democratised learning, with his movable-type press.
Encylopaedias took that a step further, and Wikipedia amped it up again.
Blogs and Youtube democratised the sharing of knowledge and skills.
All these things have enabled people to learn how to do a thing.But if you typed in a description and got a picture in return, you did not create that picture. You commissioned it.
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@lucydev I see putting a prompt into AI and hoping that the generated code is correct as a bad idea, especially in complex apps that have long-term maintainability considerations, or when security / money / lives are at stake.
For throwaway projects (think "secret santa style gift exchange for a local community with a few extra constraints, organized by somebody with 0 CS experience", vibe coding is probably fine.
For professional developers, LLMs can still be pretty useful. Even if you have to review the code manually, push back on stupidity, and give it direction on how to do things, not just what to do (which is honestly what I do for production codebases), it's still a force multiplier.
@miki @lucydev So it's democratizing code by giving many people the ability to do it badly.
There is a real question here - something related to the balance of
- harm to society and individuals of allowing enormous quantities of badly done things to be created, producing circumstances where actual expertise, understanding, and competence are devalued to the point of no longer being viable careers
- benefit to society and individuals of enabling recognition of genius in a few people who would not otherwise have access to a given audience or skill.
I am broadly in favour of enabling experts and competent individuals to earn a living from their expertise and competence. I am also broadly in favour of enabling everyone to develop whatever abilities and interests they have.
But people with ideas for software lack time, skill, and resources, not access. If there's a demand, why is there no business writing throwaway apps for people? Will AI really be cheaper in the long run?
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the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
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I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
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Well diverse as in robots get more representation now.
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These AI as equity arguments aren't coming from people who have ever said anything about "equity" before this moment, and they will never say anything about equity after this moment. They don't really care about equity. They just want to have something to say that might pause our criticism.
"What if it really could help people?"
Let that go. If it could help people you'd see people using AI effectively to help people.
They are using it as cover.
3/3
what a brilliant and eloquent take. this is why i follow you. (this and ant facts)
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@miki yeah once you stop caring about wether or not your code runs optimal, or reliable, or does what it's actually supposed to, or can be maintained properly, you can surely be 20x productive, you'll just regret it afterwards at some point (or someone else who has to fix and maintain this mess will)
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I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
2/
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@lucydev @KatS I have very specifically said "unseen questions."
If memorizing answers was a viable strategy to pass that test, humans would have done so.
If you still believe that there's no possible use for a tool that can get gold on a never-before-used set of math olympiad question given a few hours of access to a reasonably powerful computer, and that the existence of that tool will have no interesting impact on the world... I don't know what to tell you.
@miki
But yes, it is certainly useful for a lot of things involving math olympiad questions. It certainly helps to come up with new ones for example. Just like chess computers are tremendously useful for chess players. Just that the market for all these artificial game-like tasks seems to be very limited compared to the investments & hype.
@lucydev @KatS -
I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
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@futurebird not to mention the AI images would have been trained off of black fantasy artists already drawing those subjects. Having their own work used against them and never getting the compensation or recognition
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I heard a guy say AI could "make art more diverse" and he had all these images of black elves and dwarfs. As if "lacking diversity" were just a surface issue not one built into who gets to participate, who has the time for creative expression.
As if just pasting in a different colored face were the same thing as having an artist who wanted to draw that diversity and whose work would emerge from and be informed by the culture and experiences of the creator.
2/
I'm happy that the Oxford Dictionary of English still defines "art" as
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination"IDK how long that will last because the dictionary definition is based on evaluating common usage and the marketing folks are trying hard to change that. We need that meaning as it is now.
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the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
-
the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
@lucydev Agreed. The idea offensively misunderstands not only human creativity, but also democracy. Democracy doesn't mean that skill and expertise don't matter.
Isaac Asimov has a famous quote: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
I think this same cultural failing is behind the belief that AI "democratizes" creativity.
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the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how.
ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place.
the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace.
like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught.
the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away.
(not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)
@lucydev they say "democratize" when what they really mean is "I (personally) can produce amazing things without having to learn things like a chump"
It was just eating them up inside that they weren't instantly good at something on a level that other people would say yes you are good at this thing, so they decided to make that everyone's problem.
This whole techfeudalism thing is the result of bitter adult babies trying to gain their parents' respect
