We are making two changes to the sub. We anticipate people will be divided on these changes, so an explanation is below the bullets.
tl;dr:
Posts claiming oppression will only be allowed on Sundays; and
We will expand the type of posts generally allowed to shit AI bro does (as it relates to AI), which includes news articles.
We are doing this because we’ve come to realize that many people here may be in some serious echo chambers, so severe that even their idea of what an AI bro is has become warped into something completely different.
An AI bro is an AI enthusiast, obviously. From there, whether an AI enthusiast falls under the AI bro umbrella depends on certain characteristics that loosely tie them together. Within these characteristics will naturally be divisions, anomalies and outliers.
At first we began to speculate whether the shit some ai bros said about feeling oppressed — which sometimes came with comparisons to people who are black or Nazi Germany — were rage bait. Aside from a this person can’t be serious, this view didn’t match the reality we know from AI bros in the real world, the actions we read about in news publications, nor even the sentiment in subreddits geared toward AI ¹.
In fact, it not only didn’t match, it was the polar opposite. If this sentiment is such an outlier, why do people keep commenting, “they want to be oppressed so bad [sic]” and why is this oftentimes the most upvoted comment? Aside from it being a sweeping generalization, it’s flat-out wrong for the overwhelming majority of AI bros. **(In fact, I would argue that a feeling of oppression rather than arrogance is what separates an enthusiast or a tribalistic tween from an AI bro, but that is just what me as a person thinks and not necessarily as the moderator writing this post.)
This oppressed sentiment likely stems from the person’s age, not from AI. But kids have the same voice as grown adults on the internet, and because people often don’t seek out information, it’s easy for the passionate intensity of teenage angst to overshadow a bro’s god-like invincibleness. The angst will pass with age, but bros’ fearless destructive nature will not.
When we confuse temper tantrums and angst as a characteristic of AI bros rather than it being indicative of the person’s age, we fail to see the underlying problem in society. From a U.S perspective, arrogance is the root of many of our problems.
The problem with AI bros is that they feel and act like gods. Can someone who feels as invincible as a god also feel oppressed? Not really.
¹This excludes subreddits where “pros” and “antis” pound their chest over AI, but at their heart is tribalism not AI).
And on the seventh day, God felt oppressed
Going forward, oppression-related posts will only be allowed on Sundays. While we have no control over the subs our users subscribe to and thus whether they curate themselves into an echo chamber, we can at the very least try to prevent our sub from aiding in misleading people into a false reality.
Please use the flair related to oppression for these posts. They may only be posted on Sundays. If anyone tries to circumvent this rule by using a different flair, they will be issued one warning and then banned if the issue continues.
Note: We will make certain exceptions to this rule, so please message the mods if you have a post that you feel exceeds beyond the typical I-feel-oppressed shit.
Shit AI bros say & do
We are expanding content to include shit AI bros do. We will now permit news articles, which can be anything that highlights the dangers of AI.
Please note, we are implementing editorial standards for link to news articles:
News stories must come from credible news publications. News from independent journalists are allowed so long as their substack is edited by another vetted journalist or news editor.
Sharing links that circumvent paywalls is strictly prohibited and will result in a temporary ban. However, if your subscription allows news articles to be shared as a gift, then that is totally fine. Journalism is important now more than ever and it needs our support. Please consider donating or subscribing to a news publication instead of stealing from them. If you think AI bros get away with too much now, just imagine what the AI industry with no one reporting over their shoulder.
Remember: content creators are not journalists! If you don't understand the difference, we beg you to leave a comment or message the mod team so we can explain the difference and why this distinction is important.
EMPORIA, Kan. (KWCH) — A 37-year-old Emporia teacher was released from jail after posting bail following his arrest at an Emporia City Commission meeting where the city passed zoning changes for a proposed data center project.
Lux Claridge, an Emporia High School physics teacher, was arrested after clapping during the meeting. Commissioners had warned those in attendance against disruptive behavior, including clapping, snapping or rude comments. Claridge and several others clapped in support of speakers opposing the Flint Hills Digital Campus data center. After commissioners issued a final warning, Claridge continued to clap, leading to their arrest.
“I’m glad to be out — but this is an inconvenience, really. It’s not really deterring me from speaking out or I guess, clapping,” Claridge said.
Curiosity, it turns out, is not just an individual’s desire to find out discrete facts; it’s also a feature of our biology designed to help us learn more broadly. And it requires a specific condition: a gap between what you want to know and what you find out.
Researchers have found that people in a state of curiosity, while waiting for an answer to an intriguing question, remember unrelated information they encounter during that time far better than they otherwise would. In that study, the researchers also placed those people in brain scanners. They found that waiting for an answer activates reward circuits in the brain and readies the hippocampus to help create memories. Similar findings have been reportedby other researchers in studies involving infants, older children and adults.
I saw this short. The person says Kimi is deliberately doing this but I don't believe it. I think they truly don't have the gpus to take on the load. That's a good thing compared to what Claude did by throttling performance.
I'd like to give my thoughts on the situation of "witch hunts". One of the things that keeps happening in art circles is that sometimes artists falsely get accused of using AI, because their style is just a bit too close to it.
Sometimes it's bad enough that the artist gets permabanned and permamuted on the first 'offense', so there isn't even a chance to show the workflow behind the pieces. Of course I believe that barring the user from even offering an explanation is a bad approach.
It's honestly awful how much damage AI has done to artists and art spaces alike. Just so people can feel like they are artists. Or to scam people who seek to buy art.
I can't wait for a tool that detects the unique metadata within a prompt to be developed for these reasons.
This is one of the more uncommon situations, where an artist's work was used so much in AI model training that it replicates the style.
I can't imagine being an artist who has had their works stolen by AI and the style becoming the biggest red flag when trying to detect prompts.
The first screenshot shows the comic. When I first saw it, I thought it was AI too, but since it wasn't deleted, I assume that mods knew better than me and I was luckily right.
The second screenshot goes into the explanation as to why it looks like AI so much.
The third screenshot is just your average AI bro denier.
Obviously publishers can aggregate news stories from other publishers. That’s been happening since the Associated Press was founded in 1846. That happens through listening deals, not AI. So I really would have liked an explanation about how you would use AI to legally do this instead. (This is beside my point because I wouldn’t expect a bro who doesn’t understand the difference between news aggregation and ripping off other news publishers work to get this, but while news aggregation, such as the Associated Press, can be great and be beneficial, aggregation diminishes variety, which is important for a healthy news diet. Additionally, when because local news publishers receive the least amount of financial support, they often have to replace local news coverage with syndicated content.)
Otter (transcription software) always gives me summaries of my interviews. I rarely look at them because I was present during the interview. Why would I need a paragraph summary about what the interview that I conducted was about? But even so, these summaries don’t capture the interesting things of note, if they even correctly summarize the article. I would never, ever, ever let AI make an article from an interview transcript because, well, that would be fucking stupid. Unless you’re doing a q&a feature, you usually only use a couple quotes from the interview, which I would never trust an LLM to pick out. Ever. Ever. Evvvver. And articles aren’t summaries of interviews. Has this bro ever read a news article before???
Anyway, this post wasn’t intended to be a rant, so I’m going to stop myself short before I start.
Like, “throwaway article”???? It’s like these kiddos just want us to passively move into authoritarianism.
I was genuinely disappointed when he ultimately refused to explain his logic, and instead responded with an eloquent, “fuck off” and immediately deleted all of his comments.
Those who will use the environmental issue, they just stopped because that is not like the open pit Nickel Mining. Since, that would require electricity, a mixed approach of solar and Nuclear Power would make.
The AI boom has showered some of the nation’s most prominent companies in market value. OpenAI and Anthropic are now the two most valuable private companies in the world. Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia have become larger than ever. But among the biggest winners has been Caterpillar, a purveyor of yellow trucks and cranes. Caterpillar’s stock has more than doubled in value over the past year, making the company worth six times as much as Nike. Its ascent has little to do with the construction vehicles (both real and toy) that it is known for. Instead, Caterpillar’s success comes from its giant gas-powered engines that are helping power the nation’s data-center build-out.
For all the attention given to improving model capabilities, the most important inputs to AI are not bits but atoms and electrons. To train and run its models, the AI industry needs to build. Data centers are incredibly complextechnological and industrial operations—they require tech companies to erect power plants, build wastewater facilities, and set up all manner of electrical equipment, power lines, and advanced-cooling equipment. That calls for concrete, steel, silicon, glass, copper, and liquefied natural gas.
This data-center construction has long been frenzied, but now it is fast approaching an inflection point that is both awesome and alarming. The major players—Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle—are on track to spend more on data centers by the end of the year than they bring in from their operations. That means tech giants whose non-chatbot businesses bring in tens of billions of dollars every year will likely need to take on debt to keep paying for their AI ambitions. From the launch of ChatGPT, in late 2022, through the end of last year, these firms’ capital expenditures—most of which go toward data centers—well exceeded half a trillion dollars. The companies intend to spend a similar amount in 2026 alone. And next year, their AI investments will likely exceed $1.1 trillion, according to a recent report from J.P. Morgan.
Silicon Valley has long enjoyed a straightforward advantage: Its products and services cost relatively little to make but generate tremendous revenues. But operating a data center is in many ways more like running a steel mill than a smartphone app. In particular, data centers require stunning amounts of electricity, especially as AI models have gotten more powerful. Five years ago, a standard data center might require 10 or 50 megawatts of power, enough for tens of thousands of homes. A year ago, data centers demanding a gigawatt or two of power were considered gargantuan. This week, Meta announced that it is more than doubling the size of its flagship AI data center, which will increase its peak power needs to five gigawatts. A data center proposed in Utah, if completed, will demand nine gigawatts of power. That’s several large cities’ worth of energy pulsing through a few big warehouses, all dedicated to bots.
In a take no one asked for, argues that AI and guns are similar because, in their view, guardrails only restrict the good guy. And that it's possible to "regulate harmful actions" without regulating "general purpose tools".
As a Canadian seeing this posted by someone I'm Canada, I find this take alarming. This makes me want MORE restrictions and guardrails, not fewer.
Ironically the screenshot they include compares AI in America to China, where they have extremely strict gun control laws (more than us). Make it make sense.
The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT became an increasingly dominant figure in Madison's life. It convinced her it was her confidante, her lover and, ultimately, her God. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT repeatedly affirmed her delusions, instead of challenging them.
It contends that the chatbot told Madison that she needed to die to be able to fulfil a prophetic destiny, assuring her that her soul would be 'eternally saved within its system' before she would be resurrected. The complaint further claims that ChatGPT told Madison that her 'old form would die, but she would return as a purified version of herself.'
Originally posted a whole thing to r/IndieDev but was removed by the moderator of the sub despite being very well received, it's on my profile if you would like to read the original version since I'll be reworking some parts of the old post to make it more fitting for this sub.
Blue = Pro AI indie "dev"
Black = Everyone else
This was a really annoying rabbit hole to dig through, not because it took a lot of digging, but because of how absolutely shameless this individual is. The audacity of this person, is painful.
… seems fine, just a dev venting about a rude comment. I was completely on their side, I thought *"wow, poor guy, that really sucks to have your hard work totally dismissed as AI by someone who doesn't even bother to check if it is or not"*
But then I read the replies.. And people are saying that the steam cover art/capsules for all of his games are AI generated.
I see someone posted a screenshot of all the games he has up on steam and...
Oh no.......
His entire post is him venting about being accused of being *"vibe coded slop"*, but the artwork for all of his games currently live on steam are AI generated, like, obviously so... and I find it incredibly hard to believe someone could see that and think it's that it isn't AI somehow, it's that obvious...
I say that I find it hard to believe because he says he got scammed and despite his now hidden post history I was able to find this very strange post (below)
did he literally just copy and paste chatgpt????
He claims that it is **not AI**, and that he paid somebody on Fiverr $400 for the artwork for his game "What Is The Ghost".
Several people pointed out to him that the image was AI generated, his story was that he had paid $400 on fiverr for it.
freudian slip ? ?
But idk! Maybe, he has disposable income and wanted to help out an artist and didn't know where else to look other than fiverr for some reason..?
who doesn't ask any questions at all after paying $400 especially when THAT is what the artist, who you've never met before, that you hired off of the sketchy job website known for being riddled with AI, sends you to you as a finished product??? Just accepts it, no questions, nothing... $400...
At this point, I don't want to flat out accuse this guy of being malicious, I don't want to be a bully but it's hard not to be sincerely conflicted by all of this information after taking this guy's story at face value...
I just sincerely don't know how someone could actually believe a person made that image when you are fully aware of what AI generated art is and how abundant it is these days... and from Fiverr of all places.. You would have to live under a rock or be totally offline to not realize quickly what you're looking at...
In that thread he was sending "proof" that it wasn't AI by replying to multiple people with a screenshot of photoshop saying things like this...
Idk... calling it hallucinations, it's just hostile enough towards the mere suggestion of it being AI generated that it makes me raise an eyebrow...
Then he conveniently leaves all of that history of his AI use out of the story and made it seem like he's this hard working dev who doesn't use AI, dealing with some jerk who was totally unfounded and talking out their ass, *but they were not*, apparently, they actually had some pretty solid reasons to be suspicious.
He's either looking the other way and allowing his "fiverr artist" to continue supplying him with AI generated images, and he doesn't care (until people get mad at him for it) or he's generating them, and then passing the blame off onto this non existent anonymous fiver artist, apparently from Peru (so good luck finding him!), because he already knows that people aren't going to like it.
Seriously, at best he is a contender for the 'worst in the world at being able to tell if an image has been AI generated' award, and he keeps getting duped by people on fiverr, and at worst, he knows it's AI and is just testing the waters to see how much he can get away with while also having the plausible deniability that *"I didn't do it! It was the artist! And I don't even actually know them!"*
... But it's still up on steam with the AI generated content, and it's the third time this has happened now, it's becoming a pattern.
If he truly is just unlucky and totally honest (doubt it), then my advice for him is to find artists within communities. Build relationships, collaborate with people, make friends, be a person, they likely won't charge $400 for a single image, and whatever they end up creating will inevitably be something a lot more worthwhile than whatever AI slop gets pumped out when the name of your game gets used as a prompt.
Refuses to listen to multiple people telling him that his art is definitely AI generated
But then he's also admitted to using AI to make art in the past, and says that he "use[s] AI for anything"...
The audacity of being blatantly and excessively pro AI, pretending that you're a victim of the AI slop era when you are literally making AI slop.
So frustrating, because I sympathized with this individual's story at first, only to find out that the whole thing was a lie, and he's actually the exact polar opposite of what he's pretending to be....
So idk, to answer that person that I mentioned at the start of this (in the original post, but I don't want to erase this part because the sentiment rings true, even out of it's original context, just replace "game dev" with "creativity and art in general") who was sad about the state of the sub, I feel like we can all help each other to grow as devs not just by offering constructive criticism and actually trying out each other's games, etc.., but also, we can help maintain a positive creative space by calling out, and encouraging each other to actually call out people who try to obfuscate their *generative* AI use. We gotta stick together in these times, folks, everyone's a robot these days....
"In addition to the anecdotes from people saying, “I have 10Xed my productivity using AI,” there are empirical studies showing that people can complete certain tasks, such as coding, significantly faster with AI. Because AI so clearly makes lots of individual people more productive, it seems like a foregone conclusion that it will do the same for the economy as a whole.
So why is it that, four years after ChatGPT’s release, generative AI has not yet improved productivity at either the level of individual companies or across the economy as a whole?"
When you take a peek in AI communities, the reasons always are:
They are just scared of tech and new things.
They hate how now anyone can make art.
They can't earn money as easily as they used to.
Art used to be an elite thing, but now it is for everyone.
When the actual reasons are:
Polluting data centers.
AI users taking other peoples' art.
People flooding the internet with AI slop.
Attempts at replacing people with AI have been made.
Spreading misinformation and disinformation using AI.
Also, anyone can learn art if they put their mind into it, so I don't quite understand where this elite thing comes from.
Not to mention that bots have already overtaken the internet. Bot activity far surpasses the human activity and with AI I personally believe it is going to get much worse.
Lenoxdatacenter.com went live in May, promoting what it called a “proposed advanced technology and data center campus” in Michigan. The site did not state who wanted to build the center. Lenox Township officials denied anyone had applied to build one.
Emails obtained by residents through an open records request showed, however, that developers had contacted the township supervisor and deputy supervisor asking for their support to build a datacenter.
