[vouaobrasil]

Nice. Let's all contribute to this...ideally, web-hosts should provide this sort of thing by default so we can starve AI companies from training data and combine it with other strategies to put them out of business for good.

[andybak]

How about AI from non-companies? Or genuinely non-profit or open projects?

Also - out of curiosity - do you use any AI yourself?

[vouaobrasil]

> How about AI from non-companies? Or genuinely non-profit or open projects?

AI from any project will allow AI to be used commercially, and thus I oppose it. Moreover, I oppose AI on various other princincples even independent of this: it further isolates people and can be used to develop other technologies that are too powerful for us to handle. In short, I believe human beings en mass are too stupid to use AI.

> Also - out of curiosity - do you use any AI yourself?

I do not, or at least I try my best not too. In fact, I hate AI with a passion. Obviously, there may be products here and there that have used AI that I in turn use. What can you do? But I attempt to minimize any contact I have with AI: I don't use Grammarly, any form of auto-suggest, I use an ancient phone (and I RARELY use it, I hate smartphones), I don't use AI features in software such as AI-noise reduction, I turn off all automatic features in software that may have some AI behind it.

If I find out a website uses AI for content generation, I ban it and never visit again.

The other day I downloaded a text editor that looked cool but I deleted it because I realized it has an AI-console (even though I never used it).

I also work for a business and I convinced them not to use AI. We're an online magazine and it turns out the vast majority of our readers supported that decision.

In short, I am against AI because I believe it provides virtually no benefits to humanity, only detriments.

[nerdjon]

I think this is an interesting situation where “AI” has become just a general term that it has lost so much meaning thanks to things like chatgpt.

Video game AI is obviously in a different league than ChatGPT but uses the same label.

Some AI is machine learning and some isn’t.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I think there are valid use cases of AI (before chatgpt) that is actually a benefit.

You don’t use a smart phone, but auto correct is a genuinely great addition. It doesn’t remove anything the human does and improves the usability.

On its own autocorrect isn’t going to write a story. Even the suggestions that have been added in recent years are more for human usability than anything else.

Handwriting reading models, fall detection models, etc.

I do think we need to separate generative AI that replaces humans from traditional AI that offers assistance.

I know someone is going to argue, well chatgpt is augmenting me by checking my code, emails, etc. and that may be true right now but we are kidding ourselves if that will be the situation long term.

[mrkramer]

>I think this is an interesting situation where “AI” has become just a general term that it has lost so much meaning thanks to things like chatgpt.

AI is just a branding buzzword by Big Tech companies....before AI, there were "machine learning" and "deep learning" buzzwords widely used. "Blockchain" and "SaaS" are also some of the most infamous buzzwords.

[nerdjon]

I get what you are saying, but AI isn't a new term. Even when ML was a commonly used term AI was still thrown around.

For as long as I can remember AI has been the term used for video games.

But that is the problem when talking about "AI". Because Video Game AI isn't even Machine learning, but we also call ChatGPT AI.

So I just caution against saying "No AI" when that could get rid of things that are nowhere near what we are currently talking about for AI.

[rideontime]

Likewise, I've unsubscribed from multiple paid Patreons and Substacks as soon as they started using AI to generate content. I'd rather see an amateur MSPaint scribble than some dall-e monstrosity at the head of a newsletter.

[vouaobrasil]

Exactly! Even if a person isn't that great at drawing or painting, it's so much more interesting to view their attempts because they reflect something about the person. The AI-generated fluff might look nice (even I'll admit some look interesting), but it's devoid of human soul. And there's really not much point in art if it has no communicative value that originates from living beings.

[rideontime]

Yeah, I should be clear that I don't use the word "monstrosity" to suggest that all AI-generated images are ugly, but rather that they're inherently, viscerally disgusting regardless of their visual appeal. No amount of progress in the visual quality of their output will change how I feel about it.

[andybak]

OK - that's fine then. I might disagree but I can't accuse you of inconsistency.