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Raise your expectations

A.I. used to make art cheaper and to avoid paying artists is abhorrent. Used to write speeches and summarize books reduces the practice and makes the accomplishment meaningless. It cheapens the process and provides no value. The way it’s being advertised is nothing short of disgusting. Google aired an ad where a father uses A.I. to help his daughter write a letter to her favorite athlete. Why are you shortcutting time spent with your daughter, teaching her how to put emotion into words, helping her work through something challenging? It’s soulless dreck. I’m tired of hearing about it, talking about it and thinking about all the ways it can ruin society. Since corporations and industry insist on shoving it down our throat, I think it’s (as always) our responsibility to demand better. The linked essay made me reconsider the use of it as a tool to expand, as you put it, as long as it’s not used to enable laziness and shortcuts.

@Shadowbeni

Jan 14, 2025

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ai happened suddenly, was pitched as an unequivocal positive, people started using it without knowing it, Everywhere, Lightspeed

When the smartphone revolution began about 20 years ago you knew when you were using a smartphone or not. You knew when you were sitting down at a computer or not, when you were opening up a social media app or not, etc. I think the big difference here is that AI is everywhere and in everything, almost without user consent. No industry is safe. Education isn't safe. Childhood isn't safe. Religious communities aren't safe. Text exchanges with family members aren't safe. For months now I've recognized the need to establish a set of personal values and safeguards around AI. These apply primarily to me and in my domains of oversight. But also they will shape who and what I engage with and consume from. In many ways I think this will be the issue of our time. What does it mean to be a human? Is there value in creating or only in the completed product? What do we gain from the struggle of the creative process? Also I see opportunity everywhere. As generative AI overtakes and as we realize that we can't trust anything that comes through a screen, even, soon, the person on the other side of a Zoom video chat (it could be their AI avatar authorized to speak on their behalf), then real life and real world interactions become so much more poignant and beautiful. Right now I lead a community writing workshop on weekly basis. IT IS REAL. No one is using AI. We write together with pens in notebooks. We read our work aloud together. This will remain a safe space. I can see other safe spaces springing up too. For instance: we gather and paint or make art, together and in realtime. Then we walk next door and hang our art immediately in a gallery and have a show. It's real. It's human. And we can trust it. Also I see communities forming of people who choose to opt out of the generative AI devolution. There's a lot of thoughtful writing about this out there already.

@mattshawsome

May 15, 2025

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Thinking about The purpose of AI

Apologies if this is strongly worded, but I'm pretty passionate about this. In addition to the functions public-facing AI tools have, we have to consider what the goal of AI is for corporations. This is an old cliché, but it's a useful one: follow the money. When we see some of the biggest tech companies in the world going all-in on this stuff, alarm bells should be going off. We're seeing a complete buy in by Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and even Meta suddenly pivoted to AI and seems to be quietly abandoning their beloved Metaverse. For decades, the goal of all these companies has always been infinite growth, taking a bigger share of the market, and making a bigger profit. When these are the main motivators, the workforce that carries out the labor supporting an industry is what inevitably suffers. People are told to do more with less, and cuts are made where C-suite executives see fit at the detriment of everyone down the hierarchy. Where AI is unique to other tangible products is that it is an efficiency beast in so many different ways. I have personally seen it affect my job as part of a larger cost-cutting measure. Microsoft's latest IT solutions are designed to automate as much as possible in favor of having actual people carry out typically client-facing tasks. Copy writers/editors inevitably won't be hired if people could instead type a prompt into ChatGPT to spit out a product description. Already, there are so many publications and Substacks that use AI image generators to create attention-grabbing header and link images - before this, an artist could have been paid to create something that might afford them food for the week. All this is to say that we will see a widening discrepancy between the ultra-wealthy and the working class, and the socio-economic structure we're in actively encourages consolidation of power. There are other moral implications with it that I could go on about, but they're kind of subjective. In relation to art, dedicating oneself to a craft often lends itself to fostering a community for support in one's journey, and if we collectively lean on AI more instead of other people, we risk isolating ourselves further in an environment that is already designed to do that. In my opinion, we shouldn't try to co-exist with something that is made to make our physical and emotional work obsolete.

@theclack

Mar 24, 2024

Top Recs from @nanabo

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Noticing a dialogue between two recs on pi

One of the things I like the most about Pi.fyi and the current scale of users is that it's still noticeable when a rec was inspired by another. Sometimes the rec directly mentions the other, but other times you can kinda assume that reading an especific thing here triggered a memory or an ideia. It's very cute and interesting to notice the small influences interacting with other humans online can have.

@nanabo

Feb 11, 2025

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DON'T GO TO SLEEP WITH DISHES IN THE SINK

I know there are days when you are so tired, or maybe you made a big meal for friends and family or you spent the afternoon meal prepping and now you have to clean like five pots and a tray, but be brave!!! (my inner monologue) Don't force your future self to wake up to a bunch of dirty dishes. It will keep your mind full because you will be constantly reminding yourself to clean that up.

@nanabo

May 23, 2025

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My go to places to be online

UbuWeb - archive for video, text and sound, all avant gard art Marxists.org - archive for marxist texts CrimethInc - archive for anarchist publications and news Aeon - magazine on philosophy and science Eye on Design - magazine on design news Failed Architecture - magazine on critical architecture and urbanism LitHub - literary magazine Anna's Archive - love of my life ♥️ A terra é redonda - magazine of art and politics Passa palavra - news and articles on Brazillian politics Digilabour - news and articles about gig economy and surveillance capitalism

@nanabo

Jan 3, 2025