Machines in the hands of the working class can thrive in a way that benefits everyone equally, and is available to everyone. But as soon as capitalists get it, the whole idea becomes corrupted because the sole purpose is profit at all costs. AI is not profitable yet, which is why these companies will pull out all the stops (including downloading content from illegal sources that they otherwise scold everyone else for using).

Oh there’s definitely no going back. This will continue to erode the art scene and continue to steal artwork from humans that spent hours making it. No government or entity can or should go into homes and take these things away, but it’s not really about that. Companies are vacuuming up artwork, books, etc and paying nobody for them, while telling us some nonsense like it’s a positive for society. No compensation for the thing they are now going to make money off of, but they’d sue you into oblivion in a second if you stole something from them. That simple fact is why this is all shit.

I love the idea of AI and I’ve built things using ChatGPT’s API (miserable), but these capitalists have gone about it all wrong per usual. It could’ve been a public resource that people willingly contribute to, but the capitalists took it upon themselves to break the rules again, while hiding behind a shield of excuses for why they should pay nobody.

Oh I am a terrible navigator haha. I lean on tools a ton, so it’s not faulting you. I just worry about AI because of how complex and enticing it is.

I find that if you diversify the models you use, you can find what works best for what you’re asking. I use Copilot daily at work and I have to coach it sometimes. I’ll go off on the web to check its work and correct it as needed. Sometimes it works, other times it gets into a loop of unhelpful answers.

Shoving your beliefs in people’s faces and filling in the circle next to daddy Trump on a ballot does sound like such grueling work. Fake Christians are tough because they’re incapable of identifying when they’re on the wrong side because they just write it off as some warrior’s trial against us poor lost souls.

Oh wow, that’s awesome. I’m gonna have to try that model out. I have an old XFX 7950 I can try burning out lmao.

Privacy issues aside, don’t allow yourself to become too comfortable with leaning on AI for so much. Aside from the obvious things like AI info being flat out wrong sometimes and hallucinations, it’s going to train you into some bad habit holes during a vulnerable time. Look at how quickly we reach to map software for travel. It causes us to get mentally lazy.

If you are focused on using it and worried about privacy, you can host your own model like someone else mentioned, but you need a pretty beefy computer for it, and you could potentially host a model on the cloud (I know that breaks privacy and self-hosting rules a bit), but that can get expensive.

Edit: You could give Jan a try.

I’m a programmer and I’ve had to discipline myself with how I use Copilot. I try to lean on it for troubleshooting code I’ve written, and for doing tedious tasks that I know how to do but want to save time on.

The problem at its core is definitely capitalism. That said, AI itself is nothing more than a massive plagiarism machine that is extremely cost-prohibitive to run, which means the only ones that control it and have a say are the ones with the most money. There’s a space for ethical AI that isn’t trained haphazardly on copyrighted works, but what we have today in the mainstream is not that.

As much as I personally hate building anything with AI (programmer that has had to build tools that use it), I don’t hate the concept of AI itself. I hate the fact that the people with the most money to innovate with it are churning out the most boring products so they can go to market faster, while also burning the planet down in the process.

Yeah the current admin, at least in the US, ain’t enforcing that lol. They’re all in on AI’ifying everything in sight. AI is a hellscape in the hands of capitalists.

pay people to go enjoy their lives.

The problem is that this isn’t happening. Instead it’s greedy board members trying to find ways to exclude every creative artist so that they can hoard all of the wealth for themselves.

Marx predicted that automation would allow the worker to live a more leisurely life when they were maintaining the machines, vs doing the work manually. This is a nice premise, but it turned out to be wrong. Instead, the workers get replaced entirely and third parties come in to occasionally fix and maintain those machines. Automation is not a bad thing by any stretch, but the point of creative work is to retain humanity and emotion. Using AI voices and artwork is counter to that. At that point it’s no longer artwork and is simply a husk to drive revenue and nothing else. If we replace humans with AI, where does it stop? Why not throw all the creatives out and have AI write the script, storyboard, edit, etc? Mindless entertainment on autopilot sounds miserable.

It’s not a hard one to dodge. I’ll be fine.

You’re welcome to play video games with shitty fake AI voices, but myself and tons of other folks definitely won’t be.

This feels like someone took their banned content list and inverted it so that it was suddenly all approved. Regardless, leaving Instagram and Facebook was one of the best decisions I’ve made this year. Can’t and won’t deal with platforms that pump feeds full of ads and fascist hate-filled toxic bullshit.

Zuck is an ass kisser with no friends. Fuck him. Get off his platforms if you haven’t already.

Ahh a fellow Xiaohongshu user!

It’s been a nice window into their culture and daily lives, and they’ve been extremely welcoming. As an American that is pretty much burnt out on my country’s bullshit and inability to be respectful and friendly, that is a breath of fresh air.

I’ve been on Rednote for a while now and learning and chatting with Chinese folks has made me less anxious, more mindful, and generally more positive. It’s teaching me Taoism, QiGong, and given me tea and food recipes.

I’ve since deleted every Meta account because western social media has given me nothing but meaningless, empty scrolling, anxiety, and bombarded me with ads—a lot of which were extremely questionable.

Another major shift has come in online shopping, where Americans are flocking to digital Chinese marketplaces such as Temu and Shein in search of ultra-low prices on clothes, home goods, and other items.

I don’t shop at these places but this is what happens when you make absolutely everything in America way too expensive while paying people shit. They find cheaper alternatives.

Western social media will use all of your data to spy on you on a daily basis. If we’re going to criticize Chinese social media, the spotlight needs to be turned on America also. Meta is predatory, and has helped fuel genocide, and TikTok is now a compromised mess.

Thanks! Never thought I’d own a domain with “yachts” in the name 😂

True. Always good to unpack it. It’s therapeutic lol.

The right side is just liberalism. This is what happens when the left and liberal are melded together in everyday western society/language and the water is muddied. It’s intended. It confuses people, overwhelms them, and leads them to use the apparatus that the ruling class has placed in front of us to circumvent true working class interests and movements. It’s why liberals scoff at potential allies (leftists), instead of seeing the truth: a unified working class.

https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/