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> Please don't position it so that if I want to use AI I have to defend myself from accusations of exploiting labor and the environment. You, personally, likel

> Please don't position it so that if I want to use AI I have to defend myself from accusations of exploiting labor and the environment. You, personally, likely are not (apart from electricity use but that's iffy.) But the technology you want to use could not exist, and cannot continue to be improved, without those two things. That's not unclear in the slightest, that's just fact. > I'm open to that conversation and debate, but diatribes like this make it far too black-and-white with "good" people and "bad" people. I get that any person's natural response to feeling attacked to defend oneself. That's as natural as natural gets. But if shit tons of people are drawing the same line in the sand, no matter how ridiculous you might think it is, no matter how attacked you might feel, at some point, surely it's worth at least double checking that they don't actually have a point? If I absolutely steel-man all the pro-AI arguments I have seen, it is, at the very best: - Using shit tons of content as training data, be it written, visual, or audio/video, for a purpose it was not granted for by it's creators - Reliant on labor in the developing world that is paid nearly nothing to categorize and filter reams upon reams of data, some of which is the unprocessed bile of some of the worst corners of the Internet imaginable - Explicitly being created to displace other laborers in the developing and developed world for the financial advantage of people who are already rich That is, at best, a socially corrosive if extremely cool technology. It stands to benefit people who already benefit everywhere, at the direct and measurable cost of people who are already being exploited. I don't think you're a bad person for building whatever AI thing you are, for what it's worth. I think you're a person who probably sees cool new shit and wants to play with it, and who doesn't? That's how most of us got into this space. But as empathetic as I am to that, tons of people alongside you who are also championing this technology know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly who they are screwing over in the process, and they have said, to those people's faces, that they don't give a shit. That they will burn their ability to earn a living to the ground, to make themselves rich. So if you're prepared to stand with them and join them in their quest to do just that, then I don't think anyone is obligated to assuage your feelings about it.

pseudo0 3y ago
Your "steelman" is embarrassingly bad. Why play devil's advocate if you're going to do such a bad job of it? Here's an alternative: - As a form of fair use, models learn styles of art or writing the same way humans do - by seeing lots of examples. It is possible to create outputs that are very similar to existing works, just as a human painter could copy a famous painting. The issue there lies in the output, not the human/model. - Provide comfortable office jobs for people in economically underdeveloped countries, categorizing data to minimize harm for content moderators worldwide. One piece of training data for a model to filter harmful content can prevent hundreds/thousands of people from being exposed to similar harmful content in the future. - Reduces or eliminates unpleasant low-skill jobs in call centers, data entry, etc. - Creates new creative opportunities in music, video games, writing, and multimedia art by lowering the barriers to entry for creative works. For example, an indie video game developer on a shoestring budget could create their own assets, voice actors, etc. - Reduces carbon emissions by replacing hours of human labor with seconds of load on a GPU.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > As a form of fair use, models learn styles of art or writing the same way humans do - by seeing lots of examples. It is possible to create outputs that are very similar to existing works, just as a human painter could copy a famous painting. The issue there lies in the output, not the human/model. I've seen this analogy parroted everywhere and it's garbage. Show me a human being that, in an afternoon, can study the art of Rembrandt and from that experience, paint plausibly Rembrandt style paintings in a few minutes each, and I'll swear by AI for the rest of my life. Absolute bunk. > Provide comfortable office jobs for people in economically underdeveloped countries, categorizing data to minimize harm for content moderators worldwide. ... who do you think the content moderators are? It's the same people being paid pittance wages to expose themselves to images of incredible violence, child abuse, non-consensual pornography, etc. etc. etc. No person should have to look at that to earn a GOOD living, let alone a shit one. > One piece of training data for a model to filter harmful content can prevent hundreds/thousands of people from being exposed to similar harmful content in the future. Yeah this is the exact nonsense that is spouted every time you criticize this shit. "Oh all we need to do is absolutely obliterate entire swathes of humanity first, and theeeeeen..." with absolutely zero accounting for the job that has to be done first. And again, I don't see any AI scientists stepping up to page through 6,000 jpegs, some of which depict unspeakable things being done to children, oh no. They find people to do that for them, because they know exactly how unbelievably horrible it is and don't want themselves being exposed to it. If it's so damn important, why don't YOU do it? If you're going to light someone's humanity on fire to further what you deem to be progress for our species, why not at least have the guts to make it your OWN humanity? > Reduces or eliminates unpleasant low-skill jobs in call centers, data entry, etc. And where are those people going? Who's paying them after this? Or are you going to suggest they attend a weekend Learn-to-Code camp too? And who's paying their wages in the middle of that transition, when the skills they have become unmarketable? Who's paying for their retraining? Or are we just consigning entire professions worth of people to the poorhouses now without so much as a thought? > Creates new creative opportunities in music, video games, writing, and multimedia art by lowering the barriers to entry for creative works. Derivative works. No matter how much you want to hype this up, AI is not creative. It just isn't. It gives you a rounded mean of previous creations that it has been shown, nothing more. AI will never invent something, in a thousand years it will not. This is why people call AI art soulless. > For example, an indie video game developer on a shoestring budget could create their own assets, voice actors, etc. Have you seen those games? They're shit. They're lowest common denominator garbage designed to get hyperactive kids on iPads to badger their parents into spending money. > Reduces carbon emissions by replacing hours of human labor with seconds of load on a GPU. So like, this just straight up means you know damn well people are going to die from this. They will be displaced, their labor made worthless, and they will perish. That's just like... what you just said there, because otherwise, the statement "reduces carbon emissions" makes no sense, because if someone gets fired and gets a new job, their carbon emissions do not necessarily go down, and they certainly aren't eliminated.*
kbelder 3y ago
That's not a steelman. At the very best: - All content was viewed and learned from, which is ethical (even a good) use of all content that has ever been released content to the public. - Gave jobs to 3rd world laborers. - Benefited us, made some of us everymen more productive and able to build and create in ways that we weren't able to before. I suspect you don't agree with all the above, but that's more like what a steelman argument should be.

pseudo0 3y ago

Your "steelman" is embarrassingly bad. Why play devil's advocate if you're going to do such a bad job of it? Here's an alternative: - As a form of fair use, models learn styles of art or writing the same way humans do - by seeing lots of examples. It is possible to create outputs that are very similar to existing works, just as a human painter could copy a famous painting. The issue there lies in the output, not the human/model. - Provide comfortable office jobs for people in economically underdeveloped countries, categorizing data to minimize harm for content moderators worldwide. One piece of training data for a model to filter harmful content can prevent hundreds/thousands of people from being exposed to similar harmful content in the future. - Reduces or eliminates unpleasant low-skill jobs in call centers, data entry, etc. - Creates new creative opportunities in music, video games, writing, and multimedia art by lowering the barriers to entry for creative works. For example, an indie video game developer on a shoestring budget could create their own assets, voice actors, etc. - Reduces carbon emissions by replacing hours of human labor with seconds of load on a GPU.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> As a form of fair use, models learn styles of art or writing the same way humans do - by seeing lots of examples. It is possible to create outputs that are very similar to existing works, just as a human painter could copy a famous painting. The issue there lies in the output, not the human/model. I've seen this analogy parroted everywhere and it's garbage. Show me a human being that, in an afternoon, can study the art of Rembrandt and from that experience, paint plausibly Rembrandt style paintings in a few minutes each, and I'll swear by AI for the rest of my life. Absolute bunk. > Provide comfortable office jobs for people in economically underdeveloped countries, categorizing data to minimize harm for content moderators worldwide. ... who do you think the content moderators are? It's the same people being paid pittance wages to expose themselves to images of incredible violence, child abuse, non-consensual pornography, etc. etc. etc. No person should have to look at that to earn a GOOD living, let alone a shit one. > One piece of training data for a model to filter harmful content can prevent hundreds/thousands of people from being exposed to similar harmful content in the future. Yeah this is the exact nonsense that is spouted every time you criticize this shit. "Oh all we need to do is absolutely obliterate entire swathes of humanity first, and theeeeeen..." with absolutely zero accounting for the job that has to be done first. And again, I don't see any AI scientists stepping up to page through 6,000 jpegs, some of which depict unspeakable things being done to children, oh no. They find people to do that for them, because they know exactly how unbelievably horrible it is and don't want themselves being exposed to it. If it's so damn important, why don't YOU do it? If you're going to light someone's humanity on fire to further what you deem to be progress for our species, why not at least have the guts to make it your OWN humanity? > Reduces or eliminates unpleasant low-skill jobs in call centers, data entry, etc. And where are those people going? Who's paying them after this? Or are you going to suggest they attend a weekend Learn-to-Code camp too? And who's paying their wages in the middle of that transition, when the skills they have become unmarketable? Who's paying for their retraining? Or are we just consigning entire professions worth of people to the poorhouses now without so much as a thought? > Creates new creative opportunities in music, video games, writing, and multimedia art by lowering the barriers to entry for creative works. Derivative works. No matter how much you want to hype this up, AI is not creative. It just isn't. It gives you a rounded mean of previous creations that it has been shown, nothing more. AI will never invent something, in a thousand years it will not. This is why people call AI art soulless. > For example, an indie video game developer on a shoestring budget could create their own assets, voice actors, etc. Have you seen those games? They're shit. They're lowest common denominator garbage designed to get hyperactive kids on iPads to badger their parents into spending money. > Reduces carbon emissions by replacing hours of human labor with seconds of load on a GPU. So like, this just straight up means you know damn well people are going to die from this. They will be displaced, their labor made worthless, and they will perish. That's just like... what you just said there, because otherwise, the statement "reduces carbon emissions" makes no sense, because if someone gets fired and gets a new job, their carbon emissions do not necessarily go down, and they certainly aren't eliminated.*

kbelder 3y ago

That's not a steelman. At the very best: - All content was viewed and learned from, which is ethical (even a good) use of all content that has ever been released content to the public. - Gave jobs to 3rd world laborers. - Benefited us, made some of us everymen more productive and able to build and create in ways that we weren't able to before. I suspect you don't agree with all the above, but that's more like what a steelman argument should be.