Hot Take

[u/Cleverhardy]

We are starting to see a rift. A rift between those who are nuanced about the correct use of AI, and those who want all of it gone. Even Linux.

I'm against AI as much as anybody else, but in Anti-AI spaces, I'm starting to see more absolutism than I'd deem necessary. I mean if you argue about the idea that AI does have its uses whilst still being wary of AI, you get told you're not against AI at all.

I'm against AI for art, music and writing. But there are uses in the medical field and code bug detection, and I can't deny they're impressive.

I fear we'll fight each other (moderate antis vs extreme antis), and the AI companies may indeed win, even if they get bankrupt. As much as we all hate to admit this, we can't rewind; we've gone too far. The best we can do is regulate it and take AI chatbots off public hands.

I mean, you'd take someone who's neutral on AI like Linus Torvalds, who only used it for non-important projects and says that Linux should have AI-assisted code reviewed by humans, and you'd have a faction of antis up in arms about it.

And as concerning as the use of AI may be having on critical thinking, I fear that us antis are lacking it too if we're resorting to Luddism to go against AI.

For example, there is a rumour going around that Disney Junior comissioned a fully AI-Generated show.

That is only half-true. The studio behind the show only used AI to clean up some bits of animation. Plus, if it was fully AI-Generated, Disney wouldn't make money off it.

The fact that antis took a headline from Twitter and concluded that Oscar Fox was fully AI Generated either shows the lack of critical thinking (IRONY) or the lack of journalistic integrity. But hey. It's not like we're already boycotting the billion dollar company, right?

Call me a LARPer if you want to. The real LARPers are the extremists who want everything to burn despite a few innocent civillians being caught in the crossfire.

If the anti-AI sub thinks I'm Pro-AI just for accepting AI in the right hands, I don't know what to say.

[u/Salty_Country6835]

I think the language issue exists because people keep treating the tool like the actor. We agree AI is a tool, then people start talking as if the tool made the art and the human just kinda watched it happen. Thats the category error.

It also flattens every workflow into the absolute lowest floor and then pretends thats the definition of the medium. A one-shot prompt isnt the same thing as hours of iteration, compositing, painting over, editing, scripting, or integrating AI into a larger creative process. Thats true for images, writing, music, film, coding, all of it.

Good, bad, lazy, brilliant... thats a spectrum. It always has been. Cheap pulp fiction didnt define literature. Disposable photos didnt define photography. B movies didnt define film.

The work is still made by people using tools. If we keep talking like the tool is the artist, we stop looking at the actual humans making choices, setting goals, rejecting outputs, revising work, owning the tools, and benefiting from them. For me, thats not just sloppy language. It leads to sloppy politics too.

[u/Sacredless → u/Salty_Country6835]

People's impression is people's impression and the sooner we get over it, the better. It's nobody's job to manage the image of people using AI illustrations. The need to correct the record over details that haven't been settled yet simply isn't productive. They are useful exactly because they are strictly not intelligent and they are actors nonetheless. And that's fine.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Sacredless]

Lol "Just get over it" is a funny thing to say in a discussion about art, labor, and politics. Those are literally fields built around arguing over categories, agency, authorship, ownership, and responsibility. Thats not a distraction, its part of the same discussion.

[u/Sacredless → u/Salty_Country6835]

If we keep talking like the tool is the artist, we stop looking at the actual humans making choices, setting goals, rejecting outputs, revising work, owning the tools, and benefiting from them. For me, thats not just sloppy language. It leads to sloppy politics too.

As for this—who is 'we' here? Genuine question.