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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • It is accurate to call it a parrot in the context of it essentially being used as ambiguated plagiarism machines to avoid paying workers.

    Yes it is capable of that. Yes that word means something else in the actual field. But you need to understand people are talking about this technology as it’s political relationships with power, and pretending prioritizing that form of analysis is well thats just people being uninformed about the REAL side and that’s their fault is yourself missing the point. This isn’t about pride and hurt feelings that a robot is doing something human do. It’s about the fact it’s a tool to undermine the entire value of the creative sector. And these big companies aren’t calling it AI because it’s an accurate descriptor. It could also be called a generative language model. They are calling it that because the common misunderstanding of the term is valuable to hype culture and VC investment. Like it or not, the average understanding of the term carries different weight than it does inside the field. And it turns the conversation into a pretty stupid one about sentience and humanity, as well as legitimizing the practice by trying to argue this is fundamentally unenforceable from the regulations we have on plagiarism, which it really isn’t.

    People who are trying to rebrand it aren’t doing it because they misunderstand the technical usage of the word AI. They are arguing the terminology is playing into the goals of our (hopefully shared) political enemies, who are trying to bulldoze a technology that they think should get special privileges: by implying the technology is something it isn’t. This is about optics and social power, and the term “AI” is contributing to further public misunderstand how it actually works, which is something we should oppose.








  • I think it’s fine what they are doing.

    Look, some people are not switching. But if they aren’t going to switch, more negative PR for Reddit is the most they can accomplish. We can speculate all we want about the abstract value of negative PR vs engagement, but at the very least I support this over them being there and silent about disliking it.

    The members of a site openly despising the site itself encourages migration too. Keep the attention on how lothesome things are and people are more likely to drift away slowly over time.












  • For the homophobic insult thing, just want to point out we still do it.

    Stuff like saying “Trump is Putin’s bitch” or using pictures of them kissing to gross people out for instance. The insult purpose is to alternate you from Trump not from gay people, but it can also do that, and it taps into a knee jerk revulsion to effect those with that specific disgust response.

    This isn’t about personally susceptiblity to bigotry. It’s about what the words are doing and achieving socially. There are different things that effect everyone on this level. The aggragate impact is what is relavent.


  • It sounds like you already have values that align you against him, which makes you not the target of the rhetoric. When people characterize others using ad hominem it’s usually with a subtext of alienating then from empathy.

    Calling Musk a Boomer Karen buffoon for example, is much more effective than calling him a hateful fascist to people who aren’t politically opposed to him. Same with posting ugly pictures of him at the beach or calling him super divorced. All of these things are participating in stigmatizing things that should be fine. But they click with people brains and turn society against people sometimes more than accurate descriptors like calling him a fascist.

    This same principle applies to the association with reptiles which is stigmatizing neurodivergence.

    That doesn’t make all of them the same of course, because people have different priorities and make different judgements on what stigmatizing is too far in different situations. So your assessment of the language accepting a degree of stigma is accurate. Just also want to be clear its a messy layered decision that can’t be reduced to black and white in all context for all stigmatizing, without a lot of tradeoffs.

    You’re also right that using rhetoric that throws certain groups under the bus also alienates those groups, and comes with downsides. It can even plant seeds that can evolve into actual bigotry in movements (a lot of the “boomer” talk for example has basically evolved into general ageism against the elderly, and Karen has transformed into something you can call any women who annoys you or is complaining about something).

    So there’s a lot of good reason to push back on this stuff. But it can also be effective, particularly with fascists who loath feeling humiliated and form cult of personalities around being charismatic. But also in just turning neutral people into psudo allies. Sometimes. It’s complicated, is all I’m saying.