AI Megathread
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@Faraday said in AI Megathread:
@InkGolem said in AI Megathread:
I don’t think there is any harm.
Generative AI is harmful to artists. It’s harmful to the environment. It’s harmful to students. It’s harmful to teachers. It’s harmful to critical thinking.
I understand that most people don’t realize this, so I try not to hold a grudge against the people who use it “for fun”, but it’s really hard when it’s destroying so many good things.
ETA: I’m speaking specifically about the mainstream GenAI implementations. The underlying technology itself could (theoretically) be used for good. It just currently isn’t.
I don’t necessarily disagree…
I just think the same thing can be said for so many other things that exist in the modern world and are used constantly. Cars. Planes. Pharmaceuticals. Food. The list kind of goes on and on. We all still use them (if we can afford them). It just seems very -insert appropriate word here so no one is too offended, but you get my meaning- to drill down on this one thing. (Add drilling and oil to the list if you haven’t already…)
Admittedly, I haven’t looked too far down the rabbit hole but…
I get that one of the big objections it is trained on other people’s work… but isn’t everyone? What school teaches stuff that isn’t based on other peoples’ works? Haven’t artists looked at other people’s works and been influenced? It seems like the actual problem is just that it does it better, wider, and faster than a normal person can.
I’m certainly open to changing my opinion with more info, but the issue that it is just better at learning and reproducing than people… well I’m very ‘meh’ about it. I’m not a big fan of people to begin with and that’s where the problem is. People. Hunger could be easily erased. Diseases could be far more eradicated than they are. Look at COVID and how fast that was addressed when it was deemed necessary. If we did use what we have as a planet for good, things would be so much better in the world. But we don’t. Not to go too much into politics, but people in the US voted and look what is happening and remember that people voted for that - everything happening was campaign promised.
People complain that AI “steals” jobs. But it doesn’t. People do that. They use this tech the way they want, then they keep the profits for themselves. Until AI starts doing things itself without a person directing it to do so, I’m not going to blame it for what’s happening in the world, no more than I blame a car or a plane. The epi pen didn’t jack up its own price a bajillion percent. A person did that. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop using an epi-pen (unless I just can’t afford it). Its just an example, but you get my meaning, I’m sure.
Using AI to make my funtimes more fun, I don’t have a problem with that. I also know its just my opinion and I respect everyone else’s for what they want and believe.
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The common thread I see with people who support and use LLMs casually makes a whole lot of sense - they consistently aren’t willing to put in the work.
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@Warma-Sheen said in AI Megathread:
What school teaches stuff that isn’t based on other peoples’ works? Haven’t artists looked at other people’s works and been influenced?
GenAI isn’t influenced by other peoples’ works. It doesn’t learn in the same way humans do. It’s a statistical model referencing the works it has ingested. It would not exist without those works it has copied. Not referenced, not learned from, not experienced as humans do, copied.
It’s like we teach every schoolkid writing an essay - it’s totally fine to read from various sources, synthesize the info, cite your sources, and add your own thoughts. If all you do is copy from other people and shuffle the words around, that’s plagiarism. GenAI doesn’t have its own thoughts to contribute, and can’t cite its sources properly.
For example, GenAI can never write about a new technology, new celebrity, news event, etc. until some other human has written about it first. Then all it can do is make a virtual collage from their words.
People complain that AI “steals” jobs. But it doesn’t. People do that.
That’s a technicality. The use of GenAI takes jobs away from human creatives, who are already having a hard time making a living.
Cars are not great for the environment, but they are not intrinsically evil. We can regulate their pollution and make better cars that harm the environment less. Car drivers can take steps to mitigate their carbon footprint. We can invest in better public transportation. Cars can be used for the public good, like emergency vehicles.
In contrast, GenAI is an arrow aimed right at the heart of every creative industry, and that is a huge thing to me.
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@InkGolem Do you tell your RP partners you are using AI?
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I’m open about how I use AI. I don’t use it to write my poses for me, but I’ll occasionally ask it for suggestions to punch up a line that isn’t coming out the way I want it to. I’ll also ask it to generate scene ideas, suggestions for background npcs, things like that. It’s been really good for inspiration on those days when I have the time and energy for RP, but I don’t have any ideas popping out at me.
I mostly use it as a filing system so I can cross-reference things to make sure I don’t forget about something that happened in a scene two years ago. It took a while to train it up and make sure it understood game theme, but it really is helpful for my old-person brain.
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@InkGolem Do you share their writing with it as well, for example sharing the scene in progress?
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I never share a scene in progress, and I only share ones that are publicly viewable on the internet.
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@InkGolem I suppose the robots are out there scraping the mines regardless. I’m glad you seem to recognize that as a boundary for people though. I think that would be a particular hot spot for many people in the RP world.
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@InkGolem said in AI Megathread:
I never share a scene in progress, and I only share ones that are publicly viewable on the internet.
Just because something is available to potentially get scraped automatically doesn’t mean you need to help it out by personally spoon-feeding other people’s writing into the GenAI database.
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@Tez Absolutely, and I don’t give it logs that I wasn’t involved in, either. It really has been great for “oh fuck, what was that NPC’s name again”, because it keeps an updated running list of both pc and npcs from my logs, and it automatically updates its analysis of their current relationship with my pc. my memory isn’t what it used to be and it saves me from me forgetting that i had, in fact, interacted with another pc in the past. if i can’t recall, i’ll ask it “have i had a scene with x” and if the answer is yes, i’ll ask it for a brief summary of the interaction.
Like I said, I use it as an extension of my brain, filling in the gaps that my own neurons don’t seem to be able to hold onto as well as they used to. I wouldn’t want to RP with someone who was just using a LLM to write their poses, either. I just was pointing out a utility that I’ve found.
When it punches up lines, it pulls on my own writing for inspiration, and yeah, it sometimes hallucinates, so that’s why I, an actual human being, use my discretion about what to take from its suggestions.
I’ll concede to Roz’s point about ethics. That can be a valid point, and it’s one I’ll think about.
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@Roz There’s also the case where someone might have set up a robots.txt file to reject the robots, but it would still be visible to people. I have done that, for example. You wouldn’t necessarily know if it can be scraped or not.
I’d personally have some real reservations introducing someone else’s writing to the great chatbot in the sky.
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Good points all around. I’m going to think on it and maybe just give summaries and bulletpoints going forward instead of full logs. Never really thought about it this way and I appreciate the feedback and food for thought.
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@InkGolem said in AI Megathread:
I never share a scene in progress, and I only share ones that are publicly viewable on the internet.
Publicly viewable doesn’t mean “use for whatever you want” though. By feeding scenes into the GenAI databanks, you’re allowing the written work of your fellow RPers to be leveraged to generate other AI slop and put other writers out of business. It’s feeding the machine. That’s the harm of which I speak.
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@Faraday Point absolutely taken. This conversation has, in a rare instance that I can’t recall seeing on the internet in many years, changed my understanding and stance on this.
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@InkGolem I appreciate you having an open mind about it.
ETA: Also this is an example where it MIGHT theoretically be possible to find an ethical LLM to do what you need, with a private model so the data never becomes fodder for the LLM in the sky. The mainstream models like ChatGPT are just not that tool.
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@Faraday Absolutely. I am always willing to learn and I am willing to admit when I don’t have the expertise to make a good call and adjust accordingly.
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Whelp, now to add ‘Please don’t feed my scenes into an LLM’ to my +finger, too…
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Notepad doesn’t need Copilot.
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@Hobbie I am glad that it has that “you didn’t save this but we’ve kept it in the buffer for you” when files weirdly decide to open in notepad instead of notepad++. Which isn’t AI, but is neat.
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@Pavel that is a genuine QoL feature I use daily.
But I don’t need to have Copilot/Gemini/whatever advertised to me every time I open something that isn’t a video game.
I don’t even read the AWS roadmaps anymore because it’s endless updates to Q and nothing about bringing their existing functionality out of minimum-viable-product stage.
AI has its effective areas of use, but it is far narrower than what has been marketed and sold.
