Dear Fedi friends,

[justin@social.younger.wtf]

@hikingdude @_elena smoking a cigarette feels good but it's still bad and we should talk about it being bad all the time and never say good things about it

[hwll@sunny.garden]

@onepict @_elena @WeirdWriter well I'm fucking crying. Really damn good story, the first one. (Would read the second but I have to dry my cheeks and go to work, whew!)

[dzwiedziu@mastodon.social]

@_elena (I've allowed myself to cut the CC)
I'd add Ed Zitron (no known mastodon, IDK if his BS is bridged), yet his style is very… “raw”, yet to the point.

@aftermath.site and @404mediaco, but you probably already know (about) the individual creators.

IDK about Cory Doctorow with his late LLM usage confession with a preemptive rhetorical strike.

[csepp@merveilles.town]

@_elena There is of course @algernon of Iocaine fame.

(re: CW, Mastodon has editing now, you could easily edit your post to add a CW if you forgot to)

[ki@chaos.social]

@_elena

good idea, added a respective hashtag to my bio

[paulatothepeople@climatejustice.social]

@_elena @timnitGebru @emilymbender @alexhanna @DAIR @cwebber @jaredwhite @tante

Shameless self-plug: You can add @PaulaToThePeople to the list. She hates AI with a passion, posts a lot under the hashtag #LLMMeAlone and moderates the only Fediverse instance I know of, where posting AI stuff is forbidden.

[mensrea@freeradical.zone]

@_elena looks like @parismarx is missing

[cwebber@social.coop]

@_elena @timnitGebru @emilymbender @alexhanna @DAIR @jaredwhite @tante I would clarify also that I am not quite #NoAI in terms of AI tech, but I am definitely opposed to the *AI industry* and this hype wave. There may be various useful things from this tech, but the net version of things with it being forced upon society right now in this hype wave is that everything is getting much worse, and sickeningly so.

Several more pieces need to be added to the puzzle to make "AI" tech more useful, and I'm also simply opposed to a direction in society that dismisses and devalues creative endeavors, which a lot of this hype is putting at the center of itself. Creativity is what makes life largely worthwhile. I'm not willing to give that up.

I have no problem with OpenImageDenoiser in Blender, which speeds up renders through machine learning, and in no way devalues creativity. But something which made it so I just typed a few words into Blender and it did all my artwork for me, I would oppose.

[trezzer@social.linux.pizza]

@punissuer @_elena Yeah, this is getting up there. It is seriously bad for the mental state of many people with the constant bombardment from pro and con. The problem with blocking is the blanket wipe it would cause of science related to AI (not LLM) and mentions of AI as it has historically been understood (algorithms, machine learning, actual theoretical GAI). You basically can't escape the pro/con-LLM bullshit because people call it the wrong thing.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@_elena @timnitGebru @emilymbender @alexhanna @DAIR @jaredwhite @tante I also just add a little assertion that one other thing I hate about this moment of "AI" is that the field of "AI" has had many interesting branches in it, and now we only talk about one (machine learning models) and I am deeply bitter about that.

[gbargoud@masto.nyc]

@_elena @trezzer

The #NoAI tag is common enough that it's a good candidate for setting up a filter to turn any post with that tag into a CW post.

I'm a fan of standard tags instead of CWs for things that are not violent or sexual but a decent sized group would want to hide since they give people the power to control their own timelines more effectively.

[alex@social.alexhyett.com]

@cwebber I definitely have this like/hate relationship with AI. I feel like there are so many genuinely useful things that could be done with AI and machine learning. Things like early cancer diagnosis and accessibility tools. I must admit AI has helped me with coding when I have got stuck too. It is just a shame all the focus is on replacing human creativity. I am sure 90% of the useful use cases could also be done with small on device models that don’t wreck the environment.

[mensrea@freeradical.zone]

@cwebber @_elena @timnitGebru @emilymbender @alexhanna @DAIR @jaredwhite @tante i've found myself moving back to using data science, ml, and algorithmic because ai functionally means llm-as-a-service at this point

[pascaline@mastodon.nl]

@gbargoud

Same!
I also use content warnings when I answer to a 'puzzle' to not give away the answer

And then: as a teacher of Adobe software, I usually start the first classes with 'We won't be using AI, what's more: I will show you how to hide all their AI options. You can make them visible again once you have enough skills and knowledge to evaluate their results. You need to learn how to do it first, before you let AI do this automatically."

Teaching people skills:

@_elena @trezzer

[pascaline@mastodon.nl]

@_elena

Yes, @anildash belongs on the list

@Standard_Phil @jaredwhite

[gonzalo@neopaquita.es]

@gbargoud @_elena @trezzer I agree with organizing the conversation around a hashtag, such as #NoAI or #AISlop. This can be more natural than hiding it behind a CW. For many instances CW is for violence and sexual topics, not for defending our rights.

[gonzalo@neopaquita.es]

@_elena some great accounts(mainly in Spanish) are @tunubesecamirio @criticalswitch @arteesetica @ana_valdi

[nenon@masto.euroburners.eu]

@susankayequinn

[craigduncan@mastodon.au]

@_elena

There are many non celebrities (i.e ordinary folk without podcasts or books to promote) contributing to this discussion, probably disproportionately on Mastodon.

I started a #trojan_ai tag to locate examples of duplicitous AI promotion you can review as part of your enquiries.

[josh0@babka.social]

@jwildeboer @_elena @jan Hackers 2: Hack the Planet Again