this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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"subreddit rules. Speak pro-ai thoughts freely."

DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod "Trippy-Worlds," who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are "spiritually jewish." So we're off to a great start.

the first thing that drew my eye was this post from a would be employer:

My hobby is making games. Every artist have spoken to regarding my current project has rejected currency in exchange for referencing Al-made images.

not really clear what the title means, but this person seems to have had a string of encounters with the most based artists of all time.

Has anyone experienced this? They see Al work and lose their mind, some even have the nads to expect to get a pay multiplier to 'compensate" for the "theft" like my surname is fucking Altman. Like, bro, I can barely afford your highly- accomplished and talented ass and would be doing it for myself if had your skillset, yet you reject my money with prejudice because pushed my shitty programmer art a bit further with a piece of software which can't even use to a fraction of its full potential? That's a greeeeeeeeaaa way to convince me to keep your artstation username out of my prompts to public models, even if believe that particular spirit of behavior should be illegal

also claims to have been called "racial and gender slurs" for using ai art and that he was "kicked out of 20 groups" and some other things. idk what to tell this guy, it legitimately does suck that wealthy people have the money to pay for lots of art and the rest of us don't

Could we Ban the "No Al" Symbol? Someone proposed an idea to me: why not gather evidence and present it to the authorities who prohibited the display of the Swastika and other hate symbols? I was impressed by this suggestion. After researching, I found out that there are organizations that can categorize it as illegal if we can show evidence of the harm it has caused. I believe we can unite people, including artists who have suffered due to false accusations by anti-Al rioters, to support this cause. If we all sign a petition, we can ban the symbol, which would prevent its misuse on platforms like DeviantArt and stop the spread of misinformation. Would you support this initiative? Would you sign to end ignorance and compel them to advocate for fair regulations for Al, ensuring that nobody has to encounter this symbol and that those who use it for malicious purposes find no refuge?Or is it just not possible? Let's discuss.

I really enjoyed browsing around this subreddit, and a big part of that was seeing how much the stigma around AI gets to people who want to use it. pouring contempt on this stuff is good for the world

the above guy would like to know what combination of buttons to press to counter the "that just sounds like stealing from artists" attack. a commenter leaps in to help and immediately impales himself:

'just block and move on' 'these are my real life friends' 'oh...'

you hate to see it. another commenter points out that well ... maybe these people just aren't your friends

'antis will always just stab you in the back'

to close out, an example of fearmongering:

So I made a post on a sub with a rule against Alart and the Auto-mod does this...I'm assuming its fearmongering right? automod: Your comments and posts are being sold by Reddit to Google to train Al. You cannot opt out.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I think the main issue at hand is them trying to pass themselves off as artists for typing in a couple words into a text box and letting the AI create an image for them by stitching together pieces of art that it scraped off of the internet, usually without the consent of the artists. It's like commissioning an artist to draw something for you and then claiming that you are the artist who made it, but the artist being commissioned turned out to be someone who just takes other people's art and traces over parts of them.

On some websites, such as Art Fight, AI generated images aren't allowed because it falls under the rule prohibiting art theft. AI generated images also cannot be copyrighted.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Fascinating to see that the politics of the old crypto hype train have carried over to the new hype train.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

thanks for your input, PenisDuckCuck9001

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

lol i just read his other comment

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

I don’t think they took a look around when they posted that, and after they did we got the generic shitpost edit

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Oh god, this is a coincidence:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1ecljvl/a_stepbystep_response_of_the_often_referenced_and/lf1oaz4/

Kerbal Space Program 2 has been going through some drama as developers are speaking out about what went wrong during the project. This person wrote a long thread arguing against them. I'm not familiar with professional game dev so I can't really weigh in on if this is a good take or not.

But I have the author tagged as a tankie (no idea if that's accurate), but someone pointed out they also moderate /r/DefendingAIArt. This guy has been absolutely awful in the past so I'm not that surprised, but still a little surprised with the overlap.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Calls it a "hostile takeover" even though he literally explains why it wasn't a hostile takeover: Developers were way behind schedule and not making progress, Star Theory leadership tried to hold T2 hostage with the project and T2 called their bluff and cancelled the contract. They then offered developers to transfer to new studio. Some developers wanted a pay raise or didn't transfer for other reason.

This seems like bad faith rules lawyering. The publisher didn't literally buy out the studio, they just withheld funding, made a new studio they owned and forced everyone over. They took over, it was hostile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A pro-AI tankie? Now I’ve seen one more thing on my long journey to see everything

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Invasion as a Service proponents

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

I want fully-automated luxury gay space communism, but not like this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This is hilarious, thank you for digging this up. I love how they're just co-opting completely wrong words (wow, why does that sound familiar?) like "anti" and "fundamentalist orthodox" to describe the people they don't like

There's another one called "ArtistHate", but I was surprised it's actually a pro-artist subreddit.


If you want another fun read, check out Adobe's 'Stock Contributors' AI artist forum. I found it by accident, and it's full of people struggling so, so hard to understand why their puppy photos with missing limbs or physically impossible landscapes aren't accepted. Any time someone "asks for clarification" on the submission rules I swear you can tell what the issue is at a glance but they're stumped over it.

Like, what is this person even trying to do??? Why do people feel the need to regurgitate responses from ChatGPT for no reason. Why are they even submitting AI art to Adobe Stock at all. Are they even getting paid? These are the same people who like those photos of snowboarding babies and have to reply "thank you" to every post on their Facebook feed because they think it was personally sent to them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

These are people I know in person, not online

Okay, yeah, that sucks then :/

I haven't had such an earnest, full-belly laugh in a while, thank you for this. 10/10, I wouldn't have written a better sketch if I tried.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

i couldn't resist

Reddit post titled "The Anti-Al crowd is so toxic and ridiculous that it's actually pushed me FURTHER into Al art"

at least when this rhetoric popped up around crypto and GameStop stocks, there was a get-rich-quick scheme attached to it. these fuckers are doing it for free

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

> "(Redditors always glom on to the absolute worst things)"

> is a redditor describing how he glommed on to a thing

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

“(Redditors always glom on to the absolute worst things)”

is a redditor on a sub in support of a bubble technology that runs on plagiarism, exploitation of highly vulnerable workers, and infrastructure that causes climate change, and also the sub is a Nazi bar

the aristocrats!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

is a redditor on a sub in support of a bubble technology that runs on plagiarism, exploitation of highly vulnerable workers, and infrastructure that causes climate change, and also the sub is a Nazi bar

the aristocrats!

this is what Curtis Yarvin actually believes

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

'thank you for pushing people further right' is one of those really obvious 4chan attempts at psyops. I always get a bit amused when I see people pull that shit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Full disclosure: I am one of the most prolific posters on /r/aiwars because arguing on the internet is my vice and it is an infinite source of people to argue with. The guy who posted your example of nazi shit has apparently blocked me, but I have absolutely seen it there in the past, albeit in a thread full of people shitting on the mod for not blocking the dude.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Trippy, their username counts, Trippy. They are posting their username to your sub. Even if you ignore (don't!) that usernames are links to their other Nazi posts, they are posting Nazi phrases, to your sub. "outside of the sub"? Trippy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

This person has been on Reddit for two years, and Reddit hasn’t taken them down. If you feel they are a Nazi or violating laws or rules, report them to Reddit. Otherwise what you are now asking the Mods to do is be the Reddit police. That won’t happen.

If users, no matter what their Reddit profile, repeatedly break rules of this Sub, they will be banned. If they don’t, they won’t.

What users post outside of this sub is not our concern.

holy fuck, there’s so much wrong

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod “Trippy-Worlds,” who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are “spiritually jewish.”. So we’re off to a great start.

loves generative AI, encourages debate, fine with having nazis around the place. it’s like someone saw our instance and wanted to make the exact opposite of it, and the predictable disaster that resulted from that decision only really succeeds at making the AI fans look even worse

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The guy going full abuser logic after being refused to buy some art of somebody. Jesus. (And like the artist doesn't know you already tried to use their name, and are only coming for them with money afterwards).

E: looking at the post on reddit, turns out they already did something like this "Yesterday I got told to off myself after someone saw filenames over a screen share while I was working out a job for UI assets.". Typical. (Still, death threats are not cool, even if he really should look for a different hobby (Which I assume they are lying about anyway, coder art is no problem if it is just a hobby, and there are a large amount of free imagesets out there, famously like kenney who has free art sets because of community donations).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

These guys are simultaneously hanging out with literal Nazis and also, "are symbols against AI as hateful and bigoted as swastikas? Certainly they are. In this essay I will,"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

That place is an absolute fucking cesspool.

May I suggest /r/artisthate which is Sneer Club for artists sneering at exactly this type of content, and it’s hilarious sometimes (albeit quite large at this point, so your fair share of doomsday rats have sneaked in trying to co-opt the movement and the moderation is quite lenient).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Some good posts up in that sub.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

fair share of doomsday rats have sneaked in trying to co-opt the movement

There's a group called "Pause AI" that is exactly this, EA funded (iirc) org trying to astroturf artists against AIart.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yep, exactly the ones I was thinking about. They lobbied over there a while back with “prominent supporters” like Yud and Hinton. Luckily the general consensus was that they were full of shit, so the mod shut it down.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What does "doomsday rats" mean ? I'm new around here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

"rat"/"rats" is short for "rationalists", which is not to be confused for the english meaning of the word but instead is a reference to the capital-R Rationalists: a de facto cult that follow the teachings originated from their ~~sage~~ ~~creep-in-lead~~ Thinking-Really-Hard non-messiah eliezer yudkowsky, centered around his blog-and-forum LessWrong (a place named in remarkable antithesis to how frequently you can find wrong things there)

one of the key things believed/feared/waffled-on-voluminously by the rationalist community is us mere mortals tampering with computers is going to lead to creating a machine superintelligence and that if we're not super duper nice to it in advance of it existing then the big bad AI is going to kill us all (because it can make chips out of us, or whatever). for not having been nice enough to it. (they call this "alignment", as in "it should be aligned with human values")

you can check the sidebar in the sister community (sneerclub) for some more references, and do some reading up around the TESCREAL bundle (as named by Timnit Gebru)

advance warning: these people are real fuckin' dumb, and you will learn some very depressing shit

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

you can check the sidebar in the sister community

Will do, thanks for the detailed answer.

Just from the top of my head since you mention rationalist, does it have something to do with community like star slate codex?

I stumbled upon them many moons ago because someone linked an article posted there about the nuances of neuter-ing feral cats which were written by actual vet iirc, but the rest of what written there horrifies me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

that (SSC) is one of the thonkleader outputs in the space, yes

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Sounds like they'd be right at home on awful (barring the rats, of course :P)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That was a trip! Is there a YouTube channel or podcast that takes these kinds of dives? Could be fantastic comedy gold for when all my library books are on hold! @sc_griffith

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

haha I've asked dgerard what I should do about my habit of digging up stuff like this. before I left twitter it was almost a full time hobby. definitely have thought about starting a podcast

I don't know of any podcasts or YT channels that focus on doing this kind of thing, but I think a lot of episodes of the QAA podcast fit this mold

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

lol i was thinking this post was 100% my bag