kibiz0r
@kibiz0r@lemmy.world
- Comment on Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content 10 months ago:
Where do we draw the line
It’s ever-changing. We’re social animals, not math equations, so it’s all according to the kind of society we want.
how do we do that without limiting free speech?
All freedoms are in tension between “freedom to” and “freedom from”. I can have the freedom to fire my gun in the air. I can have the freedom from my neighbor’s randomly-falling bullets. I can’t have both of those codified in law (unless I’m granted some special status over my neighbors).
I think that, many times, what we run into is a mismatch between a group thinking in terms of “freedom to” and a group thinking in terms of “freedom from”.
The “freedom to” folks feel like any restriction on their ability to act is a breach of liberty, because they aren’t worried about “freedom from”. If, for example, I live in the middle of nowhere and have no neighbors, what falling bullets do I have to fear except my own?
The “freedom from” folks feel like having to endure the effects of others’ actions is a breach of liberty, because they aren’t worried about “freedom from”. If I spend my life dodging falling bullets, I’m not likely to fire more into the sky.
And the days of believing everything you see are over but most don’t know it yet.
We said the same thing about the printing press. And it plunged us into a long period of epistemic chaos, with rampant plagiarism and reverse-plagiarism (attributing words to someone who never spoke them). The fallout of this led the crown to seize presses and allocate exclusive printing rights to a chartered monopoly (with some censorship just for funsies).
We can either complain it’s too hard and do nothing, eventually leading to an overreaction to a policy that is obviously not sustainable… Or we can learn from history, get our heads in the game, and start imagining a framework that embraces the transformative power of large-scale computing while respecting the humanity of our comrades.
C2PA is a good start, but it’s probably DOA in the hacker zeitgeist. We tend to view even an opt-in standard for proof of authenticity as a gateway to universal requirements for proof of authenticity and a locked-down tyrannical internet forever and ever. Possibly because a substantial portion of us are terminally online selfish assholes who never have to spend a second worrying about deepfakes of ourselves. And also fancy ourselves utilitarian techno-solutionists willing to sacrifice the squishy unquantifiable touchy-feely human emotions that just get in the way of objective rational progress towards a transhuman future. It’s a noble sacrifice, we say, while profiting disproportionately and suffering none of the fallout.
- Comment on Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content 10 months ago:
A sketch would probably not convince anyone that the subject consensually participated in sex acts that never occurred.
- Comment on Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content 10 months ago:
What does the method matter? If the result is an artifact that is convincing enough for the average person to believe that the subject knowingly posed for sex acts that never occurred, the personal experience and social stigma is traumatizing no matter how it was made.
As the sociologist Brooke Harrington puts it, if there was an E = mc^2^ of social science, it would be SD > PD, “social death is more frightening than physical death.”
- Comment on Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content 10 months ago:
People said the same thing when, after the printing press, there was rampant plagiarism and reverse-plagiarism (attributing words to someone who never said them).
After a period of epistemic chaos, the result was several decades of chartered monopoly and government censorship to get it under control.
I hope we won’t need heavy-handed regulation this time around. But that will only happen if we learn from history. We need to get this under control now, while we have the chance to start a framework for protecting our fellow human beings from harm. Complaining that it’s hard is not an excuse for doing nothing.
- Comment on Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content 10 months ago:
Might as well not make any laws then.
- Comment on I would have disowned him too. 10 months ago:
“You may sit at the family table, but we do not grant you the rank of family member.”
- Comment on Supreme Court declines to hear Apple-Epic antitrust case, meaning developers can point customers to the web 10 months ago:
At least we got alternative payment portals out of it.
But damn, the EU is 10 years ahead of the US on tech antitrust. And they are, themselves, 5-10 years behind the industry.
- Comment on Meta admits using pirated books to train AI, but won't pay for it 10 months ago:
The main reason they were able to prosecute TPB admins was the claim they were making money.
I think in the Darknet Diaries episode about TPB, the guy said they never even made enough off of ads to pay for the server costs.
- Comment on Meta admits using pirated books to train AI, but won't pay for it 10 months ago:
It’s not the same issue at all.
Piracy distributes power. It allows disenfranchised or marginalized people to access information and participate in culture, no matter where they live or how much money they have. It subverts a top-down read-only culture by enabling read-write access for anyone.
Large-scale computing services like these so-called AIs consolidate power. They displace access to the original information and the headwaters of culture. They are for-profit services, tuned to the interests of specific American companies. They suppress read-write channels between author and audience.
One gives power to the people. One gives power to 5 massive corporations.
- Comment on Microsoft Overtakes Apple as World's Most Valuable Company 10 months ago:
Over the past year, Microsoft’s support for artificial intelligence tools by backing OpenAI has helped boost its value
…which I’m sure is not just hype and grift obscuring a heap of pending lawsuits.
- Comment on "Did you realize that we live in a reality where SciHub is illegal, and OpenAI is not?" 10 months ago:
The artists (and the people who want to see them continue to have a livelihood, a distinct voice, and a healthy engaged fanbase) live in that society.
The platforms where the images are posted will be selling and brokering
Isn’t this exactly the problem though?
From books to radio to TV, movies, and the internet, there’s always:
- One group of people who create valuable works
- Another group of people who monopolize distribution of those works
The distributors hijack ownership (or de facto ownership) of the work, through one means or another (either logistical superiority, financing requirements, or IP law fuckery) and exploit their position to make themselves the only channel for creators to reach their audience and vice-versa.
That’s the precise pattern that OpenAI is following, and they’re doing it at a massive scale.
It’s not new. Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, MySpace, all of these companies started with a public pitch about democratizing access to content. But a private pitch emerged, of becoming the main way that people access content. When it became feasible for them to turn against their users and liquidate them, they did.
The difference is that they all had to wait for users to add the content over time. Imagine if Google knew they could’ve just seeded Google Video with every movie, episode, and clip ever aired or uploaded anywhere. Just say, “Mon Dieu! It’s impossible for us to run our service without including copyrighted materials! Woe is us!” and all is forgiven.
But honestly, whichever way the courts decide, the legality of it doesn’t matter to me. It’s clearly a “Whose Line Is It?” situation where the rules are made up and ownership doesn’t matter. So I’m looking at “Does this consolidate power, or distribute it?” And OpenAI is pulling perhaps the biggest power grab that we’ve seen.
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Unrelated: I love that there’s a very distinct echo of something we saw with the previous era of tech grift, crypto. The grifters would always say, after they were confronted, “Well, there’s no way to undo it now! It’s on the blockchain!” There’s always this back-up argument of “it’s inevitable so you might as well let me do it”.
- Comment on "Did you realize that we live in a reality where SciHub is illegal, and OpenAI is not?" 10 months ago:
We have a mechanism for people to make their work publically visible while reserving certain rights for themselves.
Are you saying that creators cannot (or ought not be able to) reserve the right to ML training for themselves? What if they want to selectively permit that right to FOSS or non-profits?
- Comment on Apple Vision Pro available in the U.S. on February 2 10 months ago:
Because the price is always the main topic, I’m gonna drop a link to an AR/VR expert contextualizing the Vision Pro price within the current (well, 7 months ago) market:
Apple Just Beat the “BEST VR Headset In the WORLD”… and did it cheaper.
- Comment on Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994 10 months ago:
Same. TouchBar Macs inadvertently forced me to move to a more comfy layout.
- Comment on Fellow landchads of Lemmy. Don't you hate when this happens? 10 months ago:
Look, I’m just setting my rent according to an analysis of the current market rate for similar properties.
Yes, that analysis is provided by the same company that does estimates for the other properties.
No, I’ve never heard of “price fixing”. Look, your avocado toast is super expensive and it’s cuz the government gave you $600 three years ago so PAY MY MORTGAGE ALREADY YOU EASILY REPLACEABLE COW IN A PEN.
- Comment on Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine 10 months ago:
Kind of a bummer that they’re talking about the phrase “do your own research” and misinformation, but didn’t include the paper specifically about the phrase “do your own research”.
- Comment on YSK that chiropractors are not medical doctors and "Systematic reviews... have found no evidence that chiropractic manipulation is effective" 11 months ago:
- Comment on YSK that chiropractors are not medical doctors and "Systematic reviews... have found no evidence that chiropractic manipulation is effective" 11 months ago:
loose an afternoon
That’s alright. A chiropractor can tighten up that afternoon for ya.
- Comment on I Designed a 3D Printable Balisong Knife 11 months ago:
If you’re gonna print a weapon, a balisong is the right choice. You were gonna hurt yourself with it anyway!
- Comment on Port Forwarding Alternative? 11 months ago:
How does your ISP have anything to do with port forwarding, or wired vs. wifi?
- Comment on Plex update raises concerns over potential sharing of porn viewing habits | Be careful what you watch 11 months ago:
That’s fucking hilarious.
- Comment on Is that being too kind? 11 months ago:
Say what you will about the tenets of Zorg Enterprises. At least he has an ethos.
- Comment on Parents Sue Gaming Companies Over ‘Video Game Addiction’, Because That’s Easier Than Parenting 11 months ago:
One of my first tasks in my game development career was to change the data type used for the main currency in [Famously Addictive Farm Simulator Game], because a user had exceeded the maximum value.
I eventually found out approximately how much IRL money this person had spent on this game…
6 figures. And not barely 6 figures.
People don’t spend that much because they’re just having fun.
There is absolutely something different about these kinds of games. It’s abusive and dangerous, and we should consider it a health hazard.
- Comment on Cereal is glorified food pellets. 11 months ago:
Futurama called it “Bachelor Chow”.
- Comment on Introducing Numbat: A programming language with physical units as types 1 year ago:
F# has a feature kinda like this: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/…/units-of-measure
- Comment on The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software is Unsustainable 1 year ago:
Yep. Same problem we have with AI use of free-to-view literature and art. The author’s intent is often to invite others to participate in a collective effort, and start an ongoing conversation where works can be shared back and forth and everyone improves as a result.
Corpo use of FOSS — and especially ML training on free-to-view works — often takes the fruits of the collective effort and then sprints directly away from the community, refusing to participate and sometimes even wrapping a thin for-profit layer around the free underlying tools.
In the case of AI, this for-profit wrapper is so comprehensive and so thoroughly obscures any reference to the source material that not only can it replace the original communities very effectively, but it denies any ability to navigate through to the original communities even if you wanted to.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 year ago:
If your clothes stay behind, then what else does?
Dirt, dust, dead skin? Oils? Gut bacteria? Dental fillings? Food you just ate? Oxygen in your lungs? Oxygen in your blood? Implants for sure, right? What about hair, or nails?
I can imagine a scenario where someone tries this ability for the first time only to wind up naked, perfectly clean-shaven, bleeding profusely from every orifice and extremity, breathless and doubled over in pain, convulsing on a pile of shit, hair and other gross, getting their back sliced open by disembodied toenails.
- Comment on YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users 1 year ago:
Most creators that have in-video sponsors also have Patreons with sponsor-free feeds.
- Comment on Gen Z and millennials are more into gig work than ever, BofA says — but it’s not coming close to making ends meet 1 year ago:
Saying Gen Z and Millennials are “more into gig work” is kinda like saying black people are “more into incarceration”. I assure you, it is not indicative of a preference.
- Comment on Enjoy. (I promise he's actually there somewhere) 1 year ago:
Same on Voyager