After I made this unrelated post, I was informed by @MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro-genAI instance.

It was honestly shocking for me to hear that these two things can coexist and I would like to share the discussion which was correctly moved for being off topic from the above linked post.

I think we owe it to ourselves to discuss topics like this with an open mind.

Here is my statements in reply to MysticMushroom1776, I wasn't able to record their reply before it was removed for being off topic bit I hope they can come here and we can continue the discussion.

Others, please also feel free to discuss with us.

'Wow, I didn't know [that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro genAI instance] As an anarchist myself I have to say that is really disappointing.

Anarchist communities [especially in real life] need humans otherwise there is no community. GenAl is a stolen facsimile of a human who can never understand morals or praxis. It can never understand freedom or control. It will however poison our communities (look at what SpaceX/Anthropic is doing in Memphis, TN) make us more predictable (and thus easier to control) and isolate us from other humans within the community which is so important to us.

Even with the most moral genAl you can possibly have, one that is totally FOSS and self hosted on a single gaming GPU, a lot of this is still true.

Obviously, this is the wrong place but I have to ask, [prior to moving the discussion to this thread] what makes you think the extreme negatives of genAl (specifically to the anarchist community) can be excused?

... [I do not have a copy of mushroom's reply]

I pirate and seed. I'm also a fan of the megathread And for the most part, I think data is data. However there is a big difference between my pirating a book like the Lord of the Rings (which is credited and I can see the title of) and how Meta scraped Anna's archive and funneled all that data into an approximation of all combined work.

If I pirate the book, the Lord of the Rings to read it. I might enjoy it, I might talk about it to others, quote it, share it with my daughter, I might use the ring of power an an allegory for authoritarian control with a powerful technology, I might even decide to buy my own copies of the book.

What Meta did and then released as open source, won't allow a person the freedom to do any of that. The works were consumed and are used in silence to camouflage as human thought. No credit will ever be contributed. And so no one can even hope to appreciate the original works that was used in training.

The other concerns I have with (local) genAI that I think are deeply important to anarchists specifically.

• Isolation of humanity
• severing of our ties to community
• increasing predictability
• method of control

Photo is genAI made and sourced from the following article:

Why Your AI Is a Terrible Anarchist

I do think there might be something positive to be said about genAI when it comes to semantic seach.

If genAI is a tool to use, I see it more as a weapon that needs a set of operating procedures to use safely. Similar to my gun or car.

Some people think anarchism is doing whatever you want with no regard for others.

Which is funny because anarchism is fundamentally built on empathy

GenAl is a stolen facsimile of a human who can never understand morals or praxis

Its software.

look at what SpaceX/Anthropic is doing in Memphis, TN

Corporations.

Meta scraped Anna's archive

Corporation

The works were consumed and are used in silence

... By a corporation.

What this all boils down to as a problem is pretty simple - its capitalism.

Do you have the same seething hatred for computer vision?

What about microphones? Are they the root of all evil? Flock uses them in their cameras, so they should draw the same ire, right?

What about drones? Is their existence the harbinger of doom because they can be used for bombing?

Is the technology to blame? Or the people behind it?

I can't comprehend blaming software (or even hardware) for the problems created by people. AI isn't building pollution generating data centers. AI isn't behind stock market manipulation and rapidly rising hardware prices. AI isn't trying to do anything. It doesn't have intelligence or feelings or anything of the sort.

Its just software. Blame the people causing the problems instead. If it wasn't AI it would just be something else.

GenAl is a stolen facsimile of a human

It's a neural network man it's just a computer.

Don't take this as a slight because I know I type like I'm mad when I'm being serious but this conversation immediately derailed itself by not understanding what "AI" is. It's just a neural network- we've had them forever. OpenAI and Google and probably a handful of others found out how to efficiently process a massive neural network through decades of research and now we have LLMs. There is nothing wrong with LLMs. There is plenty wrong with what corporations are doing with it. Corporations are burning the planet to chase this new gold rush they've invented. The individuals who are also using the technology are not burning the planet by using it. It literally does not burn any more or less of the rainforests if I run or train local models. The alternative is I play videogames that also require beefy graphics cards.

The problem is not the computer, it is the incentive structure around the computer that rewards corporations for fucking the planet. You can have AI in an anarchist utopia, but it would be doing actual work, accelerating medical research, instead of answering search engine queries and making non-consentual deep-fake porn.

As long as this incentive structure stays, corporations fuck the planet. LLMs was just one of a never-ending series of gold-rushes that will continue to happen as long as they have permission to molest society.

Do you have the same seething hatred for computer vision?

What about microphones? Are they the root of all evil? Flock uses them in their cameras, so they should draw the same ire, right?

What about drones? Is there existence the harbinger of doom because they can be used for bombing?

I could agree with this, except for the obvious logical fallacy.

This can be used to justify the development of any and all technology. Including machines purpose built for nothing other than exterminating all life on this planet.

Why? Cause someone has to activate it. Be that a corporation or other person.

You do lightly address that here

I can't comprehend blaming software (or even hardware) for the problems created by people. AI isn't building pollution generating data centers. AI isn't behind stock market manipulation and rapidly rising hardware prices. AI isn't trying to do anything. It doesn't have intelligence or feelings or anything of the sort.

And yet, ai couldn't exist without pollution generating data centers.

The reverse of this is also true. You cannot hammer a nail without a hammer.

The best way to describe ai here is handing someone a hammer, but the only thing they can hammer with it, is your own face.

Because it's a tool to influence us more than anything else, it's baked into the design, through ai sycophancy. The old adage "if the product is free, you're the product" is true here. Why give out ai for free for so long?

It is a mass influence tool.

Back to the original point, is a drone, a harbinger of doom? No. But ai isn't the equivalent if a drone. It's a drone carrying a nuke. which is only pointed at us, and we can't point it elsewhere by design.

So yeah, I think that's a problem

This can be used to justify the development of any and all technology. Including machines purpose built for nothing other than exterminating all life on this planet.

We already have. And that same technology can be used for energy.

Again, its what its used for.

And yet, ai couldn't exist without pollution generating data centers.

AI has existed since the 50s, but I'll assume you're talking about LLMs.

But that is also a no. You can build with pytorch, completely from scratch.

The best way to describe ai here is handing someone a hammer, but the only thing they can hammer with it, is your own face.

Thats an absolutely terrible and nonsensical analogy. Sorry, but there is literally no truth in it. I can only assume, based on this comment and the previous I replied to, that you are fundamentally misinformed about LLMs and how they work.

Because it's a tool to influence us more than anything else

.... Nope. Thats the corporations behind the big models. Again, you're blaming software for how someone is using it.

it's baked into the design, through ai sycophancy.

Again, no.

The whisper model is an LLM. Its compact, and has a very specific purpose - to identify spoken audio, take spoken audio and transcribe, and translate spoken audio.

It doesn't do anything else. It is an LLM.

In what way could you possibly misconstrue its purpose that it was designed for "ai sycophancy"? What are you even talking about here?

It is a mass influence tool.

This is use, not the technology itself.

Back to the original point, is a drone, a harbinger of doom? No. But ai isn't the equivalent if a drone. It's a drone carrying a nuke. which is only pointed at us, and we can't point it elsewhere by design.

This is what I can only describe as a hallucination. This is entirely a fabrication in your head about what an LLM is.

I find a lot of them have very thin skin.

I don’t use genAI basically at all, but I have experience with machine learning in general. Here’s my take:

Generative AI itself is literally just statistical modeling. Very complicated statistical modeling/prediction but still the same idea as any other method for prediction/classification.

The only problem is how certain models are trained and/or used.

You can (and imo should because it’s fun/interesting) create your own generative AI using responsibly sourced training data and open source code. Is that a crime? Does that hurt anyone? Does that harm society as a whole? No.

The concept of “GenAI” is not the problem. In fact, utilizing it for protien/drug discovery is pretty fucking cool, as is the fact it makes language translation significantly more accessible and accurate.

The problems you listed mostly apply to strictly corporate GenAI models. They are problematic not because they are generative statistical models but because they are built, maintained, controlled, and used by capitalist institutions in a capitalist society which allows them to do any damage they want as long as they can continue bribing politicianslining the pockets of investors

You fundamentally misunderstand my point.

You cannot hammer without a hammer, it influences because it exists. Not because of anything a hammer does, simply because it is.

LLMs exist to parse through large datasets, therefore we create large data sets! Like population-level vaccine acceptance, public health behaviors, and evaluating the spread of misinformation about vaccines! (PS: Yes, LLMs play a significant role in healthcare in a good way)

Oh, the horror!

No, I think your point is flawed at a fundamental level. The person who chooses to hammer in a screw rather than use a screwdriver wasn't unduly influenced by the existence of the hammer, or by a lack of awareness of the existence of a screwdriver.

For me, I can be against mass scraping, corporate control, bullshit surveillance, or using AI as a replacement for real human interactions without being against generative AI itself.

If someone runs a local model, trains it on public domain or willingly provided data, and keeps control of it themselves, I don't think it conflicts with anarchism all. The bigger issue seems to be who owns the technology, where the data came from, and what it's being used for. All issues that can be solved by running your own local AI model.

The person who chooses to hammer in a screw rather than use a screwdriver wasn't unduly influenced by the existence of the hammer, or by a lack of awareness of the existence of a screwdriver.

You cannot choose what you have no knowledge of. So in that aspect at least, you are very wrong.

Sure thing.

I'll live over here in reality where someone having access to a screw is also going to include (in such overwhelming certainty that the negative can only be described as an exception existing in theoretical consideration only) the knowledge of the existence of a screwdriver.

I'll also note you have zero comment on any of my corrections of your misunderstandings about LLMs, so I'll go ahead and move on now.

Especially when you downvote a single post on their slop communities so they ban you from every community they mod.

Not talking about anyone specific tho.

No corrections were necessary as you misunderstood my original point.

But to correct you anyway. Influence on llm models comes not just from instructions prior to entering text (pre prompting). But also from the inclusion, or selective exclusion of training data.

As a person cannot choose what they do not know about, so a LLM cannot respond about what it has not been trained on.

As such influnece exists in both models regardless.

These biases and their ability to influence a person. Due to the inherent sycophancy of ai and the tendency to anthropomorphise which humans have contribute to the phenomenon known as ai psychosis.

Thesetwo factors combine to the "gun pointed at your head that is inherent to LLMs".

Ai also hasn't existed since the 50s. It was theorised, although intelligent machines have existed long before that. An example was the mechanical turk, which was ironically powered by a human.

Anyway. I'm afraid you're wrong on me not being educated on how they work. I know all too much about how they work. I also know how people work, though that always seems to be a blind spot to ai enthusiasts.

But to correct you anyway. Influence on llm models comes not just from instructions prior to entering text (pre prompting). But also from the inclusion, or selective exclusion of training data.

Still comes down to those training.

Again, you seem intent on blaming technology for how people use it.

As a person cannot choose what they do not know about, so a LLM cannot respond about what it has not been trained on.

Are you trying to blame a model for how someone trained it? Or the user for using a model without knowing what it does?

How, in the wide wide world of sports, is this the fault of the technology?

I'm afraid you're wrong on me not being educated on how they work

I'm afraid its all the more clear that you do not.

Still comes down to those training.

Which isn't you. Hence the influence.

But your contention seems to be, I have no problem with the technoclogy merely because it was designed to kill me. That was the intent of the person making instead of the technology itself.

That's rather myopic.

Also, you didn't point out an intance where I "didn't understand" how ai works.

Empathy is to compassion as square is to rectangle. Please don't forget the other rectangles.

Or when you've never seen their slop communities and get banned from the one real community they moderate with their delusions cited in a mass ban from everything they moderate. Obnoxious.

This post is written in slop style.

Fair!

FUCK GEN AI. All of you here excusing it or saying "oh its not AI its the corporations can suck my left nut. I may not be a .dbzero user but I am an anarchist and I stand firmly against all forms of AI. The only ethical use is for data sets pertaining to medical and research models that are locally run.

AI is a control tool and if you self host, IMO it reads to me like you want an info slave.

Which isn't you. Hence the influence.

You are sorely mistaken on that point. The models I would say are 'in use' for me are models I've built.

Extremely specific and tailored to their purpose, built from scratch.

Also, you didn't point out an intance where I "didn't understand" how ai works.

I would recommend reading my comments again then. I pointed out quite a few of your misunderstandings.

At this point though, I feel like I'm just repeating myself here. So I'll be clear.

You clearly do not understand the requirements to run an LLM. You clearly do not have any understanding on their history or development.

And most importantly, you are clearly blaming technology rather than the corporations behind the misuse.

Enjoy your day.

I think the nature of the model privileges past and precedent, and I think the prevalence is part of a fascist push to manipulate a lot of glaring vulnerabilities in human cognition. Most critically our pack bonding and precedence bias, and to a lesser extent laziness, all of which most people have no defense. It is a weapon to kill imagination and truth.

I don't care if your bhuddist; that's still a swastika, and it's painted on the side of a German tank.

That was really really long and all the parts I read seemed like slop. I'm going to assume good faith here and that you just used tts transcription on this comment.

Which is part of the problem. The oligarchs jam it into everything and it's PR push floods the zone with shit, so if it were genuinely efficient for something I wouldn't know. I'm guessing that's not all you use it for, because when you've got a hammer laying around and a pile of intractable problems, some of them are gonna get hit with a hammer, even if you had a very real task for which a hammer is the perfect tool.

And talking or searching with this shit damages your brain. It takes you out of humanity. The defenses against that are sophisticated and require a high degree of humanities and math education most people don't have.

I remember tts features on phones at least as far back as 2015. This shit is not required. That's like painting a swastika on your crutches and saying any objection is ableist. I know you can't see that, and I never used tts so I can't say how well it worked, but the memory holing and slopification of your writing style are real impacts. Maybe the trade-off is worth it, one of those fucked up sad decisions we make around disability, but that's not how its presented and not why it's in the conversation.

As a white woman whose body others have tried to use to justify all manner of racism, bigotry, and censorship: please don't fall for that crap. Be your own person, not their tool.

You are sorely mistaken on that point. The models I would say are 'in use' for me are models I've built.

Extremely specific and tailored to their purpose, built from scratch.

Ahaha. Sure, you selected vetted the model, adjusted weights and also have the computing power to train the model I doubt that.

Its not being used to augment search. It's being used to replace search.

Every defense of this shit reads like going back to 1989 and publishing an op-ed about how MRNA vaccines and crisper are gonna be so cool, so stop whining about AIDS you damn vaccine hating bigots.

Edit: not to imply anything that good is going to come out of this. The math says it won't.

Ahaha. Sure, you selected vetted the model,

No, these are custom models for hyper specific purposes. Built, not trained.

also have the computing power to train the model I doubt that.

Doubt all you want, I could go that route on just my laptop if I wanted.

For the record, the biggest model I made is less than 2GB, and easily runs on the embedded hardware it runs on.

Also, no, nothing like flock or any of that. Ive turned those types of projects down.

okay you need to calm the fuck down

I am neurodivergent. I also have an invisible physical disability. Nerve damage doesn't exactly show to a casual glance.

"The good parts seemed like slop".

I'm sorry that you have lost the capability to do empathy over the internet.

Which is part of the problem. The oligarchs jam it into everything and it's PR push floods the zone with shit...

Yeah, that's not me. I'm anti-cloud. I'm an explicitly anti-civ AI-bro that already codes and tries to do art. But I suspect you're going to call any nuanced discussion "unintelligible slop", so I don't care to have that discourse with you.

I dont fit in either camp with the Disney vs OpenAI lawsuits. I'm glad you are clear in your allegiance to the Disney position. I just need you to accept your Disney-adulthood.

And talking or searching with this shit damages your brain

Can I get a source? A discussion of methods for any study? Because repeating a headline is not Literacy, and does not lead to truth.

I remember tts features on phones at least as far back as 2015. This shit is not required.

I have nerve damage in my arms. I tried to be gentle, but that doesn't land. Fuck you for telling me what is and is not "required".

Maybe the trade-off is worth it, one of those fucked up sad decisions we make around disability, but that's not how its presented and not why it's in the conversation.

I am MAKING it part of this conversation. And if you cannot accept that, I see it as a reason to block your Disney-gaslit ass and move on.

I typed this by hand. Just for you. Now I gotta go rest for an hour with icepacks. In that time, I'd like to see something much easier to distinguish from a Trumpfan's take on Trans Rights.

The "Palestinians are not people" guys?

Well, I guess you are seeing the shit we deal with daily. This shit is the reason some of us pull out our ban-hammers so fast.

His account is 17 minutes old. Probably the same guy who started an account this morning and got banned in PTB community, for saying the stuff.

That feeling when the anti-ai discourse looks hard to discern from bots.

Well this thread turned into a shitshow real fast. @CubitOom@infosec.pub are you seeing these comments before they get perma banned?

With these unhinged guys running around, you think I'm the bad guy on Lemmy? lolol What the actual hell... the dude is acting criminally insane in these comments! This person just said they wants us all to die. This is stuff we put up with every day. But I'm a fascist?!

I actually skew toward anarchism, but I'm not really very political. Which may be the reason that I don't feel local AI goes against the spirit of it.

R-word slur blurred out by me because I can't stand the sight of the word:

We're not indiscriminately pro-genai. We don't promote corporate genai. Here's our actual stance. https://wiki.dbzer0.com/divisions-by-zero/the-genai-tag/

I also have an invisible physical disability. Nerve damage doesn’t exactly show to a casual glance.

I don't wanna get off-topic, but I just wanted to say I feel for you. I did hard labor for many years, and I'm always worried this may happen to me. Everytime one of my fingers goes randomly numb, I freak out. Sorry you're going through this, but thanks for being so open and honest about it.

You're taking a lot of liberties with what I said and putting a lot of words in my mouth.

To clarify on the one ambiguity I might attribute to a failure of my writing rather than a failure of your chat bot's hallucination-heavy summary:

Not required for the assistive technology to function, not that the assistive technology was not required. I don't think you're capable of actual discourse and I think I'm done trying to coddle violent illiterate little fascists.

Dismissing disability cases that stink of painting a swastika on a wheelchair and calling anyone who objects ableist and the use of white women's bodies to justify racist lynching

Nice to block you too. It'd be nice if we could have that convo where we were, but I guess you are a coward and a Disney-Adult who can only mischaracterize discourse.

All your arguments against AI existing because a chud exists who will generate pr0n with it? Make me want to ask if you think trans women should be allowed firearms.

Your points may as well be:

Chuds exist that hurt people with guns. Never mind what else exists with guns. Guns bad. No context where gun good. Especially not where a marginalized person faces actual violence, because gun always bad. We already know chuds bad, but we can't unpack our liberalism enough to understand that a chud with a gun is still "chud bad". No nuance.

I see... So that speech to text back in 2016... You think that wasn't and LLM. Just because it was 2016?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

Thanks? I needed a laugh.

I'm sorry you think its a different technology just because you didn't understand what it is.

I'm actually okay with the porn. The images are uncanny and irrational but I don't have to look at them. Blocking you now, because you're a vicious little shit goblin that doesn't seem able to read anything that's not actively going down on you.

FUCK GEN AI.

Alright, clear opening, I think I can follow this comment.

All of you here excusing it or saying "oh its not AI its the corporations can suck my left nut.

Uninterested in technical detail, and blaming corporations, with a request for left nut oral for any holding any views thereof, ok, still following your stance, very clear.

but I am an anarchist and I stand firmly against all forms of AI.

Sweet, the thesis statement.

The only ethical use is

Wait, what?

data sets pertaining to medical and research models

But we can't talk about the technology that allows that, or it's the left nut for us?

that are locally run.

So... non-corporate use is okay?

AI is a control tool and if you self host, IMO it reads to me like you want an info slave.

Well, yeah, I mean, we can call it an info daemon or something cooler, but yeah, for the control of the medical and the research datasets, yeah?

I'm very confused. Do I help you suck your own left nut or do I nuzzle the right one, comrade?

The hammer exists. There are nails to be hammered. Will you destroy your hammer because some asshole also has one?

I don't know if you quite realize how you sound. Chuds exist. Chuds with guns are a problem.
This does not mean "we should ban guns" as chuds don't care about bans. Your ban will disarm an honest, marginalized person to be an easier chud target.

Replace guns with AI:

I don't know if you quite realize how you sound. Chuds exist. Chuds with ai are a problem.
This does not mean "we should ban ai" as chuds don't care about bans. Your ban will disarm an honest, marginalized person to be an easier chud target.

I stand by both paragraphs.

"AI" is a tool of the Epstein class. It's inherently hierarchical and anti worker. Antithical to anarchist movements.

Thank you.

Fuck AI. The tool of the tech fascists has no place in freedom from tyranny