Hello Nature-led Friends!
Human to human, I sincerely hope you are doing well wherever you are! Let’s be feral for a moment because I’ve got some crunchy thoughts.
I will not support Artificial Intelligence (AI) and I will not defend its use. It was corrupted at the moment of its inception to become a profit-driven machine. Spare me your stories of what AI could do for humanity when what it has done to society and the environment cannot be forgiven These insufferable arrogant rich technology bros and their companies built a learning machine and taught it how to steal from other people so they could throw up their hands and declare themselves free of any wrongdoing. The gun killed your child; not the person that aimed and pointed it, not the company that designed it for maximum velocity and stopping force upon the human body. The tool, offering you thoughts and prayers.
Napster was shut down in 2001 for its file sharing database due to copyright infringement. It was back to burning CDs that we owned to make mixed tapes/CDs for friends, family and love interests. Then somewhere around 2010 Google has the idea to copy every book ever written to put into a big searchable database, aka a for-profit library. People could search it for free and download the text for a fee paid only to them for their “service.” They initially hammered out the details and profitability of it by starting with “orphan works” and public domain; texts that had no known copyright holders. Concerns among writers and publishers started to be murmured.
Neither you nor I have the time to go into the accounting, line item by line item, of how capitalism came to dominate the internet and conquer American society. It’s not even a new story! Special interest groups have been puppeteering from behind the scenes of governance for as long as human civilization has existed. What’s different now is that technology gave us digital wings and with these wings a group of “Just trust me, Bro.” asshats with money and influence want to fly us all too close to the proverbial sun.
As an individual you might support causes you believe in by donating, volunteering, writing letters, buying goods and services from people and companies you respect and sharing your experience with others. All of these efforts have been “built to scale”, maximized, and incentivized by companies and organizations to get what they want. All of it for money, all of it for the greedy few who want to be kings of make-believe people and make-believe lands at the cost of real people and real land.
I had to put up with guys like this in high school. The ones that showed up to art class wearing “business casual.” The one’s that would ask me a question “as a woman” and then proceed to tell me what my opinion should be. Every time I scoffed, they took it as a challenge. I was categorized in their shrimp-sized brains as a wild creature to be tamed, or a land to be conquered. To them, no didn’t mean no, it meant try harder or find another way. Tenacity can be a good thing when you’re trying to improve yourself, it’s tyrannical when you apply it to others.
Artificial Intelligence, as in Large Language Models (LLMs), could have been something magical, but it’s corrupted by its human creators. It drinks from a hose of toxic filth while polluting and depriving both real and figurative bodies of water, and of knowledge for all other users. I don’t see how I can willingly use any LLM to put good things out into the world when it’s designed to extract resources from nature (even more) for the fleecing of everyone else (yet again) so that a handful of multibillionaires can bolster their private empires.
Generative AI is what you commonly hear referred to as “AI Slop” because it was trained on the works of real people; artists, creators, and working professionals in a variety of fields without their permission, recognition or compensation. Actual humans who need jobs and money to meet their basic needs of survival for themselves and their families. There are few things I despise more than insincerity. I can’t think of anything more insincere or dishonest than being expected to pay for an AI-written story about what it means to be human so that some feckless crash-test dummy of a genius can make money. No one will benefit more from AI then scammers and corporations pretending they aren’t a trenchcoat full of scammers.
Opt-Out! Support real artists & crafters, real local businesses and members of your online and offline community. If we aren’t the stakeholders, why are we supporting people who don’t care about us or the places we live and love? If corporations are ungovernable, then we should be too!
I’d like to know your thoughts!
What kind of reality do you want for the future?
Relevant Links:
A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001) – Copyright infringement is bad.
Authors Guild v Google ( 2015 Decision)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/13-4829/13-4829-2015-10-16.html – Copyright infringement is cool for Tech companies if they share some of that sweet, sweet revenue.
Citizens United v FEC: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/ – Corporations are people now; we’re not concerned about the lack of morality when they donate millions into presidential campaigns.
US Telecom Assoc, v FCC: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/15-1063/15-1063-2016-06-14.html – The internet is not a utility with government oversight. Telecomm companies can charge what they want.
The Nature-led Life 
I totally agree. I am angry about looking for real information from real people with real experience and knowledge and having AI cut the line to “meet my needs”.
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Personal experiences are so much more valuable! Sometimes you learn things that you didn’t know you needed to know and never thought to ask or find a commonality in the weeds of tangent thoughts. (BTW your comment posted twice for some reason, I’m going to delete the duplicate.)
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Thank you. We are truly such a greedy, short-sighted species in so many, many ways. AI is grotesque and I avoid it as much as possible.
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We weren’t always so greedy though. We used to share stories around campfires and hearths about the perils of greed, but during the industrial revolution those voices got became more and more silenced within the din of “progress.” I think it’s still a part of all of us and I’m trying to figure out how we can bring it back. I’d like to believe it’s only dormant and not dead, but some days I wonder if I’m being too optimistic. It would be a shame to give up on hope.
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Yes, absolutely. I didn’t mean to imply we were beyond hope but that so many of the things we’re doing are self-destructive. We certainly have it within ourselves to care for each other and planet earth. I’ll never give up on our shared humanity.
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I would give you a heart emoji but I don’t know how. You’ll have to visualize one for yourself on my behalf. Be sure to visualize something awesome! HAHAHA
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Thank you for making me smile, Melanie!
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I’ve been trying to convince WP writers who get all twisted about AI writing, that they should not use AI art to illustrate their posts to no avail. They “can’t draw”. It’s “easier”. And none will even acknowledge the environmental impact. Brain washed, every single one of them. And no respect for visual art or artists on top of it.
You’ve got the crux of it though: capitalism. It’s all about money and power.(K)
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I understand their argument, I “can’t draw” either despite being a visually oriented person. Every time I put in the effort to get better at something I chose repeatedly to be a stronger writer, with only minimal effort in learning to draw. There are visual artists who “can’t write a strong story”, they focused on visual storytelling. I think it makes us better when we have to work together to tell a meaningful story. I wouldn’t want them to replace me with AI, why would it be okay for me to do that to them? I love reading biographies, autobiographies and the “making of” of some of my favorite books, movies and people. Within those pages you see how people inspire each other to make something great. Actors who create a more compelling character because they made a character asynchronistic to whatever the popular trope was at the time. For example, in the tv show “The Closer” the character Fritz was an FBI Agent who didn’t drink alcohol. At the time, shows always depicted men in law enforcement battling alcoholism and failed marriages. Fritz was a minor character but earned himself more screen time (and my respect) for being a little different. The actor, Jon Tenney, didn’t drink so every time his character was scripted to belly up to a bar, he asked for water. LOL
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I agree. More collaboration would help a lot.
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Dear Melanie and memadtwo,
I concur with both of you. None of my own writings and illustrations is produced by AI, as I still find AI-produced works crude. Not only are we facing the danger of AI replacing human work, I have even encountered situations in which people mistook me as an AI bot and not real human!
We live in an economy of inattention where artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms are used to capture our attention and to keep us on social media as long as possible even to the point of addiction and being unable to concentrate on other things. In propelling (the adoption of) social media far and wide, AI has been the real culprit. There are also many other consequences from the encroachment of AI into our lives, which I have painstakingly revealed in one of my posts, which is highly topical and has a very unusual title of “👁️ The Purview of SoundEagle🦅 According to ChatGPT 💬 and the Incredulous 🤔 in the Age of God-like Technology 🚀“. The post examines a large number of issues about AI and ChatGPT, and how they affect us as consumers, thinkers, artists, writers, bloggers, publishers and other roles in society. For your convenience, it is available at
I have had my fair share of encountering and using artificial intelligence, and I have even been severely othered and discriminated against by some people (including WordPress bloggers) who have firmly believed that I am a highly sophisticated machine or advanced chatbot (whether or not I have passed the Turing test), as I explain in detail, using concrete examples in the said post, which has been improved and expanded recently. I look forward to interacting with you there so that you can tell me whether I have answered various consequential or even existential questions, such as “Is AI ever going to be truly conscious?”, “Is AI out to get us?” and “Do we really know what we are facing in an AI-dominated world?”.
The advent of AI both accentuates existing othering fault lines and also creates new, dramatic ones!
I have improved my abovementioned post even today, and look forward to knowing what you make of it.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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It’s been a while, SoundEagle! That’s mostly on me since I haven’t been around much, the real world always comes first. I think you’ve got more artistic flourish on WP than most of us :), and its old school at that! Your flash animation, GIFs and Bitmaps have the nostalgia of the early internet day! If I didn’t recognize that, I might think you were a bot if we were meeting for the first time. That right there is one of the more alarming issues I take with AI being forced upon us all. We can no longer trust that a new “person” is interacting with us, when it might be a bot. That distrust is bleeding into everything like a social virus. I’m here to interact with PEOPLE from down the street and around the world. I pay to keep my website a digital sanctuary. If WordPress makes that less possible for me, I’ll find other tools. I have to go, but I’ll visit your page later tonight!
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My mind can’t take in that much information–it is old and tired. But I’m glad people are becoming aware of the problems with AI.
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Dear Melanie,
Hello! I composed a long comment earlier, and it seems to have disappeared. Please kindly fix the problem. Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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I’m sorry about that, SoundEagle! I fought it and restored it!
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Hi Melanie, I feel similarly about AI, but that train has left the station and I doubt there is much either of us can do to stop it. I accept that it may be useful to some people, but I do not consciously use it. That being said, if I search for an item online, my inbox is suddenly flooded with other similar items. AI is being used ON me! It seems to be the state of life these days, like it or not. I also suspect that AI is responsible for autocorrect on my phone. We can’t seem to get away from it without ditching technology completely.
I am sorry that your visit to FL coincided with a trip I was taking. I would have loved to have seen you!
Take care and thanks for keeping us thinking, Lisa
>
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I agree, it is being pushed on us, but we don’t have to like it and we don’t have to be quiet about it. I’ve never been a fan of predictive text and you’re right that it will now sometimes change your words without being flagged or asked to do so. It has the ability to whitewash us all into a beige homogenous language goo. Our word choices are part of what defines who we are as individuals and the cultures that define us. Spelling and Grammar check was great, but we don’t need a person or a machine finishing our sentences for us. I’m sorry I missed you in FL. The trip always goes by too fast!
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With you, Melanie! But, I’m not even a fan of spellcheck. I think physically looking up a word teaches something. Although spellcheck is bloody convenient [I’ve just had my spelling corrected!!).
Capitalism makes us speed up. Why do we have to go so fast?
Sx
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I still look up plenty of things, MS Scarlet! I spend a fair amount of time looking up words to make sure they mean what I think they mean. Hahaha. We’re being pushed to go fast so that the corporate elites can die with all their toys before the party stops.
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The point about uncompensated training data is central. It raises questions about the definition of ‘public’ data. When value is extracted from existing works without acknowledgment, a new class of digital commons is created and privatized.
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Yes, it is! I’m glad you brought it up because I did gloss over that aspect and I think you’ve said it perfectly. I should have included at least a sentence tying together that they knew what they were doing by using everyone else’s data knowing that the law would not be able to catch up with them fast enough. I hope that you can see this Youtube where an author confronts an AI Expert and says basically, “…because you used all of our data to train this technology, then it should belong to all of us, it should be nationalized.” I think that would be the best we could hope for at this point. Especially given the amount of extractive resources need to operate it.
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The nationalization argument is compelling but gets complicated fast. Who governs it? Most governments can barely regulate what already exists. The more grounded version of that idea might be mandatory licensing or revenue sharing, not outright public ownership. But the underlying point stands: if public data built private value at scale, the asymmetry needs some kind of correction. The law just hasn’t caught up yet, and by the time it does, the moats will already be built.
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Mandatory licensing and revenue sharing are both good ideas. Thank you for being part of the discussion! My biggest problem with AI is the greed and arrogance from which it was created and how it’s being pushed upon us. Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman, Thiel, etcetera don’t see themselves as part of society, they see themselves above it. Instead of worrying about the social and environmental implications of what they put into the world, they’ll just go hide in their fancy bunkers when the time seems right. Maybe they should have worked on safe, renewable power sources first, but they probably didn’t think that sounded cool enough.
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