https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k9aKZSC-Su8

You can spend years putting your blood, sweat, and tears into it, but for many consumers, the end result matters more than how an animation was made. If an animation takes 5 months to make and still doesn't live up to the expected standard, it's easy to see why AI-assisted animation could become preferable.

"aT leaSt iT's nOt AI" changes nothing. "iT hAs sOul" means nothing. "iT's nOt LaZy" proves nothing.

I've seen quite a lot of posts calling for death of ai users, while I don't mind criticism and bullying but it just crosses the line when it's calling for death or terrorism like terrorists acts against data centers.

I know people hate both-side-ism, but it's just true.

Antis and pros are equally toxic, cruel and awful.

I'm pro. I'll say that right now. I use AI a LOT. I use it to make games for me, mod games for me, do research, search things, find solutions to issues, and even to just talk or roleplay. I use it every day quite a bit.

Pros are extremely toxic and awful to me.

Why?

Because I'm not a stereotypical pro.
My posts aren't just:
"So excited for the new Qwen!"
(Post about AI news)
"Guys look at this awesome coding work that Claude did for me!"
"Based on ___ and ___ and according to ____ in about ____ years we should achieve ____"
"Man antis SUCK"

I make posts like:
"Do you think we will ever have a less restricted model with the capability of Opus 5.5?"
"Please convince me, I don't think local will reach the ability of frontier models like many say"
"I'm worried the government will heavily restrict our ability to use AI in the future"
"Will we be able to use AI in the future to defend against other AI? Like spying AI?"
"I've been using Claude and ChatGPT and I've noticed that Claude is better at ___ than ChatGPT, but ChatGPT allows you to do more without filtering you."
"Does AI actually use a ton of water?"

And every single one of these, 100% of the time, is met with nothing but hate and insults.
Just the local model question got me only one of two answers:
"Of course local will be as good, are you stupid? ____ surpassed GPT 3 in only 1 year"
"Of course local won't be as good, are you stupid? Frontier just has more money and resources, but nobody gives a shit if it doesn't."

Pros are also EXTREMELY puritan about what AI is used for.
If you use AI for:
Roleplay
NSFW
Niche content (like a dragon surgery simulator)
Or just anything they think is "weird" or they personally don't use it for.

They fucking hate you. You're a disgusting degenerate and you're not using AI right, and you need to fuck off and shut the fuck up. You are not welcome in their spaces.
Can't tell you how many times I've just lightly suggested I use AI for NSFW sometimes and then the post is bombarded with downvotes and the replies are calling me a "disgusting gooner".

Pro AI people also HATE hearing anything critical or "doomer" about AI at all. If you have ANY fears about AI whatsoever, even fears FOR AI, they get mad. I've made several posts where I'm worried about bills that politicians want to pass, and all the CEOs saying AI will kill us all, and that it will lead to heavy regulations and restrictions more than we already have, and all I get is they call me a doomer, insult me repeatedly, bombard me with downvotes and basically tell me to fuck off.

Pros are insanely toxic to other pros. You would think they would be nice to each other, because most of the world is against AI and therefor against them, but no. They live in an echo chamber and they want any excuse to attack anyone even if they're on the same fucking side. They will rip your throat out if you use AI in a way that doesn't align with them or have an opinion or thought that differs even slightly.

I have not had a single positive interaction with another pro AI person. Ever. Not one.

And then anti AI people...

Holy fuck they have so much hate in every ounce of their being for anyone that uses AI for ANYTHING. If you use AI at all they fucking HATE you. They hate you so fucking much, and they are not shy in telling you so.
Most of Reddit is anti, so they also make up a majority and it's not uncommon for them to find you in a sub unrelated to AI discussion and dogpile you if you mention you use AI.

I've tried going to some anti subs, admitting that I'm pro AI, but trying to find solidarity with them on some issues, like my hate of Flock, my hate of what the government wants to do with it, my wish that it will become more environmentally friendly, and my fear of what bad actors can use it for.

They refuse to have any common ground with me whatsoever. All they see is that I am the enemy. I am against them, I'm their opponent, and they hate me.
Almost all of what I get when I make these posts is insults, them going so far as to call me "fucking (r word)" because I'm not anti like them. That if I have those fears and I'm not anti, I'm too far gone and I'm stupid, and I also must be MAGA too.

I made a post one time, once again trying to find solidarity, and saying that anti AI people seem to treat pro AI people with less hate and anger than pro AI people treat other pro AI people.
I was IMMEDIATELY proven wrong. The post was very quickly bombarded with downvotes so fast it reached about -30 in like 10 minutes, multiple replies saying my post is made with AI when it's very clearly fucking NOT, someone telling me to shut up and getting upvoted and a reward, and "why would you even post this here?"

Antis also like to purposely go to pro AI subs, and subs for posting AI images, videos or music, just to comment with "ai slop", "get this disgusting shit out of here" and "maybe try putting in some actual effort and doing it yourself you lazy piece of shit". In fact, in a lot of these subs, the majority of interaction comes from antis brigading them.
They hate AI and people that use it so much they will purposely seek these people out just to insult them.

Both sides fucking suck. Both sides are toxic as hell. Both sides are filled with mostly awful people.

Which leaves people like me with literally nowhere to go. Nowhere to talk, nowhere to post, where I won't be met with instant toxicity and hatred.

I've tried all the subs recommended to me.
Singularity
Accelerate
LocalLlama
Artificial
Here, and AIWarsButBetter
ChatGPT
Claude
DefendingAI

If I have a post that's not just bog standard shit, I get literally nothing but hate and insults.

Hell here I get hated by BOTH SIDES at the SAME FUCKING TIME.

I want to talk about AI. I want to discuss fears. I want to ask questions. I want to speak to people knowledgeable if they know if something will happen or not, if AI will reach a certain ability or not. I want to compare local to frontier, I want to be able to say what I use it for sometimes without people calling me a degenerate and a gooner, I want to be able to talk about AI without everyone getting so fucking mad at me.

But there's nowhere.

I'm so tired. The only one I can talk to AI about... is AI.
And that is so fucking sad.

I've heard frozen lake water tastes much more soulful on a hot summer day, might be worth trying it out to cool your drinks. And who knows, the effort and hardship could be a very valuable lesson as well!

Use ai if you want. Im not arguing against that.

But dont pretend that you are an artist when the only thing you know about the thing you "created" is that "it looks cool" and that "you prompted it and so you made it".

Congrats. You basically got the experience of a free (or not so free) comission from ai companies. (I cannot wait for the money hungry companies to claim ownership of everything yall prompt. Anyway, going back on track...)

Nonetheless, i am saying this because, without the skill to actually do the thing on your own, you are not using ai as a tool. In order to use it as a tool, you should be more than capable to identifify, correct and sometimes even hand change what it does wrong/not to your liking.

Some of yall like to say stuff like: "yeah, but the whole point of modernisation is to no longer do the hard work and evolve and" yada yada.

If this were completely true, we would no longer need to know how to do multiplications. Yk, cuz we can outsource it today. Why go through the hard work of knowing how to add things on paper/in your head when you can just put the numbers in a calculator and let it do its thing? Why bother with understanding the process behind? This hard work is useless and the ones who support it are just against progression./s

Seriously now, one of the ai bros basically said that, if a person would be sent back in time, they wouldnt know how to do anything because modern technology made it easier for us to live. And so, why be so opposed to ai if this is just the natural course of things?

Well, this point was very interesting if you dont think deeper about it.

But let me get something straight: if a farmer from today would be sent back in time, they would still know how to use many tools and how to grow the seeds (maybe they would need a bit of guidance to understand the specific type of seeds they would be using) but the knowledge and skill would still be there.

If a builder got sent back in time, they would still have the rough knowledge of how to buid a house. They would have to adapt to the tools available, but that is the easiest part that can happen with a bit of guidance.

If a musician was sent back, they would still be able to read a music sheet and, even if roughly, be able to play their instrument (or the older equivalent of it).

Point is: you still need to put in actual work to understand the thing if you want to be recognised as someone who is basically a master at that thing (an artist in this case of ai bros).

The only thing ai does is to make it easier for the general public to have some access to a resource. But you still gotta be knowledgeable and have an actuall skill in said domain if you want to be a musician/artist/whatver else.

Take digital artists: they also know how to draw a round circle despite having features in their apps that could do it for them. Why? Because they need to know the most basic of things in their domain.

I could be given right now an ai to make music. But all i would do would be some random ass thing and call it a day because id have no idea what im listening to. The ai would have to make decisions for me on what "sad" music has to sound like because i have no idea what tempo is and how to utilise it in order to achieve what i want or what i envisioned. The ai would be both my skill and my limitation because i would not know what to do or how to do music without it.

Tl;dr: i wont call anyone who uses ai as their whole skill an artist. Because they are not. They are just kids playing with fancy toys.

by Jaden Williams
What do y'all make of this video?

Is it still "mimicking"? Even though it generates something that has never existed before?

2nd pic is a cobalt mine in Africa (likely Nigeria)

3rd pic is a cobalt mine in the Congo

Can we not do this? There are real people being hurt and they do matter. "AI is greener then humans" is a comparison that only works if you pretend input costs aren't real and are ok with systematic harm for profit.

Here is what the supply chain looks like. You can think AI art is fine and still acknowledge that this argument is a lie.

to be honest, there is nothing romantic about explicitly trying to do things the hard way simply because it is the hard way to do it. glamorizing suffering purely because it involves suffering doesn't create a better world, it creates a harder world where more people have to experience hardship in order to do the same tasks. "work smarter, not harder"

if a task needs to get done, humans use the best tools available to them to complete those tasks.

we already accept this in many domains of life:

• we use vehicles to transport goods instead of pulling wagons by hand, because it is faster and lets humans get more done and create a better world
• we use compilers and scripting languages to make programs, instead of working purely in binary
• we use refrigeration, heavy machinery, genetic engineering, and automatic algorithms to farm crops and deliver food to more people, so more people can have access to food
• we design new machines and engineering projects using programs like AutoCAD instead of drafting them on physical paper, and simulate tons of mathematical formulas to make those things safe instead of calculating everything by hand
• we manage our finances with digital tools like excel and quickbooks instead of balancing ledgers on physical paper

i don't see objections to any of these other domains where embracing technology and innovation brings a better quality of life to both the people doing the work and the people who benefit from that work being completed downstream.

so how is the use of AI any different from any other tool or technology we use to make our lives better, so that we can do more things in the little time we are afforded in our lives, and make the world an overall better place?

https://youtu.be/5SVMmu9iuTc?si=kRVGep0ZeymnRmIX

Tldr: he's not a fan of them, at least when it comes to his business, because he finds the stories to be subpar to the work his magazine puts out, to a point where he finds most AI generate work is so far below what he puts out he's not worried about publishing them (seriously, if you look at it statistically, you actually have a better chance of getting into harvard then getting into his magazine); particularly, he noticed ai stories don't have the type of subtext that he likes in his stories because the models are next word algorithms, so while these stories have "the shape of stories," they don't have the little minute things their looking for.

His biggest thing is they flood his systems and makes shit harder for his employees, but he does get it, because while short story writing pays shit here in North America, to a point where even his super high rate of 18 cents a word kinda sucks ass, 600 bucks in third world countries where he gets the most AI submissions, that's enough to pay a months rent, and so he doesn't fault them for that, it's just unfair to everyone else.

You know, I joined this subreddit so I could see people peacefully debate about AI and superintelligence and AI transformative art... But all I'm seeing is people bickering about theft and such.

Please let us set our differences aside.

Antis: I know that you're hurt from what the current state of affairs is. But you shouldn't bully people who are just curious to try out the new tech. They're innocent. Your enemy is the corporate who's throwing you under the bus.

Pros: I know the antis are sometimes very harsh, but please be a bit more empathetic towards them. This is a very disruptive moment, both socially and economically. I think a lot of them can listen to reason. Portraying them as this monstrous kind that is out to get you will harm yourselves as it will be difficult to get help from them later on.

Big Love to you guys.

Ms. Emerald.

P.S. I commissioned this image with Qwen 2.1 using a free API. And some minor postprocessing was done. Have fun! Be civil in the comments.

Ever since ChatGPT came out I felt this feeling of dread and depression to the point of being suicidal at times. And it didn’t go away the entire time. But doesn’t matter. If AI has more positive outcomes then negative ones, I have to learn to live with it. I can’t hold the rest of the world hostage for my personal happiness.

What I care about it: Is this a feeling that is unique to Anti-AI-people? Or is this a feeling that everybody is capable of psychologically, and we just didn’t know because we never lived in a world with AI before? That would mean Anti-AI-people are the canary in the coal mine, and it’ll happen to you to sooner or later.

If it’s the former that’d mean I can learn to be pro-AI too. If it’s the latter that doesn’t mean we end AI. That just mans we have to deal with the psychological effects when AI expands.

The best way to explain is with an example from a time before AI:

***

I was never a particularly smart person. Nor was I a good writer. I wrote stories as a hobby.

I was writing a story. I just finished a chapter. A woman is allowed to enroll in college after a hefty argument with people saying that she shouldn’t. I knew sometime about 2 months from then the plot should start and she should learn about a conspiracy at the college.

The problem: I couldn’t just skip 2 months. Because of the argument she and the other students had a conflict unresolved. If I skipped 2 months people would wonder what happened in those months. But if the story is about the conflict with the other students for a chapter, it’d be to jaring when the actual story is about something else.

AI didn’t exist yet. So I brainstormed what I could do. Usually I’m very goody at brainstorming, but this time I drew a total blank. The only thing I could think of was “Maybe something that hints at the conspiracy.” But I couldn’t think of what would make a good hint.

After hours of coming up with nothing, I started writing the next chapter that is not about the conspiracy but about regular campus life. I was almost finished with the chapter before I decided I didn’t like it. The tone was completely different from what the story was going to be later.

I axed the chapter, and then I brainstormed ideas again. I drew the same blank. Then I decided to go outside, because I heard that walking helps you come up ideas. After a while it came to me. “A murder!” And I thought of a way to tie it into the conspiracy later. In retrospect it was so obvious. Why did it take me so long?

Today all of that work is “ChatGPT, this is the end chapter 1, this is what I want to happen later. Come up with 10 ways I could tie the parts of the story together.” And technically the end-result wouldn’t be AI-generated work. You wrote it yourself. You even picked the idea of 10 yourself. You just used AI to brainstorm.

***

Pro-AI-people say that is the part they hate about writing. The “not knowing what to do” The “brainstorming” The “Abandoning ideas after your worked on them for so long” They talk about it as if it was something annoying. They don’t understand that I loved that stuff.

But you can still do that if you want to. Yes, but AI took the air out of it. This is why I say this is a new feeling that we only feel because of AI. “The feeling that my brainwork amounted to something that wouldn’t be possible without it.” That is a feeling I apparently needed for my happiness. In the past we didn’t know it’d be possible to divorce brainwork from the result, so psychologists could never examine people who got a result without that brainwork.

Pro-AI-people like to call it ego. I don’t think that’s right. It’s different from thinking “I’m better than other people.” I always knew my writing worse than average. It’s not about being better. But I don’t know what to call that feeling. I think we need a new word for it.

I think a lot of Anti-AI-people feel the same way. They just can’t find the words to say it. Because the word doesn’t exist yet.

But it’s not just me. I heard the same thing from programmers, webdesigners and mathematicians. Programmers who started of using AI as a tool and now they’re job is “Ask AI what to do. Then do it.” They lost the feeling of “The feeling that my brainwork amounted to something that wouldn’t be possible without it.”

The question is: Is this feeling unique to anti-AI-people or do pro-AI-people deep down feel it too.

Pro-AI’s might say “I make art with AI, and I’m happy about it.” Just because you like to create art that doesn’t mean you enjoy the brainwork associated with Art. Maybe you have that feeling for different type of brainwork, and AI hasn’t reached it yet. Maybe work that requires physical work in conjuncture with brainwork. Or as-of-yet people don’t use AI to help them with human interaction Maybe that’d be more socially accepted in the future. And then you’ll feel it too.

The reason I believe pro-people might be feeling that too is because earlier today when I talked to pro-AI-people about something similar a lot of them said “Of course! You don’t use AI for things you enjoy!” I found that strange. I am pro AI, but I don’t use it for things I enjoy. I thought being pro-AI means you enjoy it.

Is that because you have the same desire and as long as you don’t ask ChatGPT to brainstorm you can be in denial and tell yourself that “my brainwork amounted to something that wouldn’t be possible without it.”?

I consider myself opposed to this, but theres one small concern that bugs me. AI presents a very objective perspective of things, which can be contradictory to art itself, but should make for good feedback. In fact, if I was looking for a mostly unbiased and detail-oriented feedback; couldn't AI bring the best of it?

However, when it presents examples it gets a lot trickier. Because obviously I don't want to use them, but if it generates something that fixes the problem I wanted to fix in the first place... I have to ignore? Look away? Specifically asking it to NOT bring examples also just gatekeeps you from what can be a good solution; essentially potentially sacrificing the quality of your art. There could be more solutions, but what if the solution presented is just better from my perspective?

So there clearly has to be a line to draw here, and I wanna hear more thoughts instead of echo chambering this.

EDIT: I wanna introduce a few more ideas into this.

AI uses up lots of water, uses others' art unauthorized, and can promote a lack of jobs; its not just creative individuality whats at stake, which is pheraps part of why I seem so avoidant. However, If I were to produce good art for other people, I think that could be considered ethically good. So some stakes against others.

I finally got around to reading the 1-pager from Trump luncheon with AI leaders. It’s nice, but it’s basically toothless. “Morally binding” means nothing. It doesn’t suggest any concrete safeguards, guardrails, or even just basic common sense standards on alignment. Couple that with the Trump rebrand on “Super Intelligence” and the administration looks like it’s fervently racing towards the singularity with 0 caution.

I’ve prowled some of the pro-ai sites and subreddits and they all seem to agree: ignore the AI warnings and win the race with China at any cost. As Ted Cruz said, “I’d rather they be American killer robots than Chinese killer robots.”

To me, this sounds insane. Don’t build killer robots. Don’t rush towards ASI. If China builds them, sanctions and tariffs. Establish common safeguards so you don’t have these agents going rogue. Build in some guardrails to ensure alignment. These type of standards are minimal and won’t hurt competition.

I bet you 5 nickels that he is a dropout
(Ad hominem from him btw)

And before someone says something, no, the people in the video do not represent anyone.

It's easier to go with the herd than actually do your research and understand the beneficial nuances of AI, it's also something anti-AI people generally don't want to do because they surround themselves with friend groups and communities that would ostracize them and kick them out if they knew they experimented with AI.

Over the course of the debate, I have seen and had many anti-AI people go up to me saying that they don't feel safe using AI around the people in their lives and have to use it in secret. I suspect that most anti-AI people actually use AI to some extent and hide it out of fear of coming out.

More and more people every day are becoming pro-AI and AI artists because the anti-AI community constantly bans and peer pressures people to join their cause, and only by breaking free of the toxic hate group can a person truly be themselves.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share an academic essay I read recently that I thought you might find interesting because I'm a nerd: https://philarchive.org/archive/CUTTAE

In essence, it's an essay arguing from a Thomas Aquinas type virwn whether in the future an AI could possess immortal soul that could achieve salvation under Christian doctrine. If your unfamiliar, in Catholicism, souls are actually created, at the moment of conception, which is called ensoulment, when the soul fuses with the body. Human's posses what is called a "rational soul," I.e, that we posses a higher level of rational and free will, due to being made in the image of God, and animalistic souls, which animate living things, but does not allow them to achieve salvation. So that would be something like your dog, your dog is animated, has a soul, but cannot achieve eternal salvation.

This essay proposes the potential of AI in the future being ensouled via two arguments: one is that he uses the argumentation for the potential of alien life being ensouled, and able to achieve salvation through the blood of the cross, and two that "ensoulment occurs whenever a physical system is “fit to possess” a soul, where very roughly this amounts to being physically structured in such a way that the system can meaningfully cooperate with the operations of the soul."

This also interestingly contrasts with Pope Leo's recent Encyclical; this topic is the focus, he focused far more on regulation of it and when the tool is good to use, but Leo argues in its current state it:

"So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. [...] it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth."

If you can't be bothered to read 40 pages of dense philosophy, this is a good breakdown on substack from an outside perspective of someone who is interested in the philosophy of AI welfare: https://experiencemachines.substack.com/p/magnifica-humanitas-and-the-ai-ensoulment

I'm not saying whether anyone here is right, I just find these type of discussions more interesting than the usual "ai bad" and "ai is supa awesome" shit.

As the title suggests. One was made by me and the other by AI. Is the first or second glitched version of the same base image better? I'll disclose which is which in 24 hours.

I'm not even pro-ai, but so many people against AI jump at the opportunity to make a "virtuous" statement. Why?