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.)

There's a new guideline that I was about to post in this comm soon that is aiming to help people avoid genai content they might not want to see. I think a good solution is to allow people who don't want to see genai content the flexibility to hide them from the feeds which then allows less excuses from those who still go into such content to troll, argue and downvote.

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.

Does it? I'm kind of thinking if people insist on browsing Lemmy in All mode, and forcing themselves to view everything they they don't want to view, then it's on them to learn how to block communities in their own profile settings. Or if you want to help them somehow, maybe some way to display a quick how-to to show people how to block communities and/or browse in Subscribed mode could be useful. Just not sure how feasible that would be overall if people are browsing All and just reacting to things they don't want to see.

For me browsing Lemmy in Subscribed mode and purposely subscribing to communities I'm interested in works well enough, no need to wade into the for/against AI drama or any other topics I'm not interested in.

Lemmy in general is militantly anti and even posts that don't attack ai enough can be the target. It's not good for discussion and sharing ideas. I think it's best to try to keep calm and not to respond to provocations.

I feel there is a general sentiment to fight each other (online), right now. It is one of the current topics which get people riled up, but not the only one. Not that fighting, trolling and hating on something (or being stupid) is a new thing... All of that has a long tradition on the internet. But I think we need to think hard about what we envision this place to be... Or become. A nice place to talk and maybe have an argument every now and then? Or a place where extreme opinions are very loud and drown out constructive discussions and push people to the side... And I think we need to be super careful once the hate turns not just against things, but people. Most of this is not healthy, neither for the individual users, nor for this online-space. And these storms in a bottle don't create anything and they change nothing about the world. It's just making everyone miserable once it dominates the atmosphere.

(And I don't think we need to discuss the facts, or what AI is and what it does. From my experience, nobody listens to that or is interested in facts. That's not what the confrontation is about... Or at least people have a predetermined stance anyway and arguing facts does nothing to settle this.)

Edit: But the example you gave serves other "controversial" topics as well... I'm not really surprised that it's people with strong oppinions who gather there. And then it's a meme and the entire community advertises with shitposting and being anti-imperialist. So I'd say that one specific post had it coming. And both sides are argumentative and escalate.

This guy fucks