Hello.
I intend this thread to be a sincere discussion regarding both the usage of GenAI on db0 and the place of "pro vs anti" discourse in our communities.
There have been heightening tensions between both groups online, especially here on Lemmy and especially here on db0. For a good case study, see this recent thread in the lefty memes comm.
I will preface this with the fact that I am very much in the "pro-AI" camp; stated for the purpose of clarity, transparency, and honesty. I study machine learning academically and am aware of my own biases. I believe much anti-AI discourse fundamentally doesn't understand what they're talking about and mistakenly directs their own anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist sentiments towards a morally/ethically neutral technology that can be used for both great good and great evil. I disdain OpenAI, Anthropic, and others - not really for any reason other than they're massive corporations and it is antithetical to my beliefs what they do and the products they develop. I digress, I'm not here to proselytize.
With that said, I am of the opinion that the "anti-AI" communities in the fediverse and on social media as a whole have a significantly more toxic culture and are quite reactionary in nature. It is a known issue amongst moderation here on db0 that this particular group is known for brigading and being generally hostile.
Regardless of your stance on the matter, I think it is obvious that this issue is getting continually worse and needs some sort of community level solution. The status quo here is untenable and is only going to inflame more tensions in both camps the longer it is allowed to go on.
I don't intend this thread to be a location for proponents of either side of this argument to stand on a soapbox necessarily. This is about figuring out a way to coexist when a handful of individuals seem absolutely set on malicious behavior. How can we lessen animosity between these different parties and sort of "simmer down" the poisonous rhetoric that is generally employed all across the AI debate? You see proponents of both views engaging in egregious argumentative practices at times and it is clear that this situation is continually degrading and needs something to be done about it.
Thoughts?
This feels like another problem with the fact that "AI" doesn't exist. People are promoting a wide variety of technologies under the hype of "AI". These diverse technologies have a wide variety of benefits, externalities, etc. For extreme examples, I think that using "AI" to commit genocide is fairly terrible, while using "AI" to make images of witches is not so bad. More generally I think these are completely different applications and it's absurd that they're lumped together under the phony banner of "AI".
As an example from this instance, I've seen lots of generated art. I think it's important to distinguish generated art from "AI" in general. Generated art has its own issues. Personally I don't care about "IP" issues but I'm somewhat concerned about environmental issues. Fortunately I don't think we need to worry about issues of privacy or violence with the generated art here. But we should acknowledge the real questions about generated art, while distancing generated art from "AI".
Apart from generated art, I haven't noticed this instance being particularly pro-"AI". Are there other areas of conflict?
(edit: As far as recommendations, I like the "genai" tag but I would change it to "genmedia" so it doesn't focus on "AI". I think a FAQ about generated art might useful too for those comms. Summing up the arguments for/against generated art in particular so people don't have to re-argue all the time.)
this is actually a pretty based take imo but I wonder - under what authority does that FAQ get organized? how do we decide what ideas, rhetoric, and points actually get to go in there versus what is so egregious as to be unamicable to one or both sides of this "debate"?
i like the premise, it seems like a promising direction, but am just thinking about the actual implementation of it practically speaking, i suppose.