MysticMushroom1776

Source

Before we get into the article I want to say that I do not mean to imply that anyone's personal opinions are not valid. People are entitled to their own opinions. It only becomes problematic when they attempt to frame their opinion as objective fact. As opposed to their own subjective beliefs. Also this article is written from an anarchist leftist perspective. For people who aren't leftists or anarchists this might seem jarring, however this is a leftist anarchist space. So be mindful of that before engaging. Anyway with that preamble out of the way let's get into the article

One thing that is very common among people who disdain AI is the emotional attachment to this point of view. An emotional attachment that is resistant to facts, logic, or explanation. In fact, when attempting to present evidence and reasoning to these them, they will usually attack you. They will dismiss anything you say, and if you get them very close to exhausting their arguments, they'll just accuse you of using AI yourself, a classic ad-hominem attack. This is not the rhetoric of somebody who is thinking logically or critically, it comes from emotional attachment. Such responses are indicative of an appeal to emotion, suggesting that their primary, and likely only, real issue with AI is inherently emotional and opinionated. In other words, they just don't like it.

Due to the fact that the internet is a place where emotions dominate discourse and where bad-faith tactics earn perceived credibility among people. These perspectives can gain popularity. At which point people will listen to them simply because the idea is popular and because challenging the popular rhetoric is risky. That combined with people being less willing to hear opinions considered unpopular creates an environment where opinionated but popular ideas flourish. This problem is not exclusive to AI discourse, it is a problem on the internet as a whole.

Of course, many people do recognize that opinions are not facts, they are subjective and able to be challenged. So naturally, they will gravitate towards whatever arguments they think they can use to support their arguments objectively, and make it seem like more than just their own opinion.

The first argument that people who are against AI use to support their opinionated position is to appeal to the capitalist artificial construct of copyright and intellectual property. As well as appealing to the capitalistic nature of society and the way that things are right now. There is specifically the claim that using images obtained without consent is stealing from artists and violating their intellectual property. This is a discussion that many people, choose to engage in and put effort into defending or into refuting. This effort will not be put forward in this article because copyright, intellectual property, and capitalism as a whole are not valid. It is a system of oppression put forth by the wealthy elites.

It does not deserve more attention than this paragraph. And the people who apologize for this while claiming to be anarchists are engaging in classic doublethink by supporting capitalist models that run counter to anarchist-leftist ideology.

The second argument that many people primarily use is to bring up real science around environmental harms related to AI industries. And the discussion about AI companies and the harm that they do to the world is one that we anarchists and leftists as a whole should definitely be having. However, when it's talked about in most online discourse and the hate around AI, it is not being given the attention and care that it needs. It's being used as a justification to back up these individuals' personal opinions without consideration for what it is actually about. This is made ever more clear by the fact that people who hate AI attempt to use this as an argument against all AI. Not simply corporate AI companies or capitalism as a whole, but AI as a concept, including FOSS AI running on your own machines. Since FOSS AI models are lower power, designed for consumer hardware they don't use anywhere near the amount of energy datacenter AI models use, and due to being open source they can be tuned to their best use-case by individual users. Such AI models do not have the environmental challenges associated with datacenters. However that often all gets ignored in these discussions, because it is not a subject of actual consideration, and instead is merely an attempt at using facts to bolster their own opinion without actually caring about the facts, then they would recognize that free and open source AI models that can be self-hosted are in fact the solution to this problem. These distinctions rarely get discussed though, because as stated. This was only about justifying personal dislike as AI.

The third argument, which is brought up to support their opinionated position, is to talk about AI psychosis. Which I should note for the purpose of this article, is not a medical term, is not a diagnosis, and is not officially recognized by the DSM or by mental clinicians in any way. In fact, the way that it is discussed and described online in these contexts is often as an insult or as an ad-hominem attack. This isn't to say that study in this area is not worth while. It is, actual scientific studies in the department of mental health are important and need to happen. However discussions about this subject are mainly used as a convenient way to insult or demean people for the use of AI. It is essentially a roundabout way of winning an argument by just yelling at the person that they are crazy. It's not something that's worth listening to without more evidence. And even with evidence, clinical and mental diagnoses are sensitive subjects. It needs to be approached in a sensitive way. It is not respectable to approach it by using mental conditions as ad-hominem attacks or methods to win an argument online. In fact, these sorts of things actually discredit scientific ideas. They turn them politically charged, and they make scientists take more indirect approaches or even not actually want to study them at all. In addition, most of it isn't even really psychosis. It's more like religion. Now, AI religion is its own topic, and I think it does need to be seriously discussed. It's not going to be discussed in these online arguments with any amount of respect, because, as I stated at the beginning, they don't actually care. They're just looking for stuff to bolster their own perceived credibility. If you are interested in a video covering the topic of AI religion check out Drew's video on the topic.

The final most common one that I have seen online is not one of politics. It's not one of the sciences. It is, in and of itself, ironically, an appeal to emotion. It is the appeal to nostalgia, the idea that the existence of generative AI is harming our world and poisoning my culture. Now this argument is ultimately just as opinionated as saying you don't like it, but because it gives details, it seems more credible. In some ways, it's right, and in some ways, I agree with it. But also, it hinges on the idea that the world could be put back exactly the way that you remember it in the past. What you considered the good old days. A world that actually has never existed. The world of your childhood was just as messy and chaotic as this one is. The fact that you remember it with fond reminiscence, as a simpler time when things were just better, is a testament to how much you were sheltered back then. Someone may consider the existence of AI-generated images to be a direct harm to our world, to be poisoning our culture. Although people may also consider television, radio, and those horseless carriages to be poisoning our world. These have varying degrees of truth. Identifying which of these aspects is actually bad and why is important. And talking about these aspects, like, for example, cars. Cars are really bad. Cars and combustion engines cause a lot of problems. They are a valid subject to discuss. But saying that they're bad because in the good old days, people didn't have cars as cars is not really a real argument. It's just an appeal to nostalgia. Ultimately appeal to nostalgia is not a real argument for why AI is bad. In fact, it's just another way of saying, "AI is bad because I don't like it."

In conclusion, the vast majority of anti-AI arguments you will hear on the internet, including on Lemmy, are a waste of time. They are either directly rehashing the person's own personal opinions or attempting to piggyback off of other, more important subjects to justify themselves as more than just a personal opinion. While they do bring up good points and arguments that are worth discussing in and of themselves, they are doing these subjects a disservice, because ultimately, their purpose is to justify the person's own personal opinion and preferences. It is not to actually have a real and serious discussion about the topics. If they were, they would not react as aggressively as they do when their positions are challenged. They would be open to hearing additional information, such as discussions about FOSS AI, instead of dishing out ad-hominem attacks and insults.

Before we get into the article I want to say that I do not mean to imply that anyone's personal opinions are not valid. People are entitled to their own opinions. It only becomes problematic when they attempt to frame their opinion as objective fact. As opposed to their own subjective beliefs. Also this article is written from an anarchist leftist perspective. For people who aren't leftists or anarchists this might seem jarring, however this is a leftist anarchist space. So be mindful of that before engaging. Anyway with that preamble out of the way let's get into the article

One thing that is very common among people who disdain AI is the emotional attachment to this point of view. An emotional attachment that is resistant to facts, logic, or explanation. In fact, when attempting to present evidence and reasoning to these them, they will usually attack you. They will dismiss anything you say, and if you get them very close to exhausting their arguments, they'll just accuse you of using AI yourself, a classic ad-hominem attack. This is not the rhetoric of somebody who is thinking logically or critically, it comes from emotional attachment. Such responses are indicative of an appeal to emotion, suggesting that their primary, and likely only, real issue with AI is inherently emotional and opinionated. In other words, they just don't like it.

Due to the fact that the internet is a place where emotions dominate discourse and where bad-faith tactics earn perceived credibility among people. These perspectives can gain popularity. At which point people will listen to them simply because the idea is popular and because challenging the popular rhetoric is risky. That combined with people being less willing to hear opinions considered unpopular creates an environment where opinionated but popular ideas flourish. This problem is not exclusive to AI discourse, it is a problem on the internet as a whole.

Of course, many people do recognize that opinions are not facts, they are subjective and able to be challenged. So naturally, they will gravitate towards whatever arguments they think they can use to support their arguments objectively, and make it seem like more than just their own opinion.

The first argument that people who are against AI use to support their opinionated position is to appeal to the capitalist artificial construct of copyright and intellectual property. As well as appealing to the capitalistic nature of society and the way that things are right now. There is specifically the claim that using images obtained without consent is stealing from artists and violating their intellectual property. This is a discussion that many people, choose to engage in and put effort into defending or into refuting. This effort will not be put forward in this article because copyright, intellectual property, and capitalism as a whole are not valid. It is a system of oppression put forth by the wealthy elites.

It does not deserve more attention than this paragraph. And the people who apologize for this while claiming to be anarchists are engaging in classic doublethink by supporting capitalist models that run counter to anarchist-leftist ideology.

The second argument that many people primarily use is to bring up real science around environmental harms related to AI industries. And the discussion about AI companies and the harm that they do to the world is one that we anarchists and leftists as a whole should definitely be having. However, when it's talked about in most online discourse and the hate around AI, it is not being given the attention and care that it needs. It's being used as a justification to back up these individuals' personal opinions without consideration for what it is actually about. This is made ever more clear by the fact that people who hate AI attempt to use this as an argument against all AI. Not simply corporate AI companies or capitalism as a whole, but AI as a concept, including FOSS AI running on your own machines. Since FOSS AI models are lower power, designed for consumer hardware they don't use anywhere near the amount of energy datacenter AI models use, and due to being open source they can be tuned to their best use-case by individual users. Such AI models do not have the environmental challenges associated with datacenters. However that often all gets ignored in these discussions, because it is not a subject of actual consideration, and instead is merely an attempt at using facts to bolster their own opinion without actually caring about the facts, then they would recognize that free and open source AI models that can be self-hosted are in fact the solution to this problem. These distinctions rarely get discussed though, because as stated. This was only about justifying personal dislike as AI.

The third argument, which is brought up to support their opinionated position, is to talk about AI psychosis. Which I should note for the purpose of this article, is not a medical term, is not a diagnosis, and is not officially recognized by the DSM or by mental clinicians in any way. In fact, the way that it is discussed and described online in these contexts is often as an insult or as an ad-hominem attack. This isn't to say that study in this area is not worth while. It is, actual scientific studies in the department of mental health are important and need to happen. However discussions about this subject are mainly used as a convenient way to insult or demean people for the use of AI. It is essentially a roundabout way of winning an argument by just yelling at the person that they are crazy. It's not something that's worth listening to without more evidence. And even with evidence, clinical and mental diagnoses are sensitive subjects. It needs to be approached in a sensitive way. It is not respectable to approach it by using mental conditions as ad-hominem attacks or methods to win an argument online. In fact, these sorts of things actually discredit scientific ideas. They turn them politically charged, and they make scientists take more indirect approaches or even not actually want to study them at all. In addition, most of it isn't even really psychosis. It's more like religion. Now, AI religion is its own topic, and I think it does need to be seriously discussed. It's not going to be discussed in these online arguments with any amount of respect, because, as I stated at the beginning, they don't actually care. They're just looking for stuff to bolster their own perceived credibility. If you are interested in a video covering the topic of AI religion check out Drew's video on the topic.

The final most common one that I have seen online is not one of politics. It's not one of the sciences. It is, in and of itself, ironically, an appeal to emotion. It is the appeal to nostalgia, the idea that the existence of generative AI is harming our world and poisoning my culture. Now this argument is ultimately just as opinionated as saying you don't like it, but because it gives details, it seems more credible. In some ways, it's right, and in some ways, I agree with it. But also, it hinges on the idea that the world could be put back exactly the way that you remember it in the past. What you considered the good old days. A world that actually has never existed. The world of your childhood was just as messy and chaotic as this one is. The fact that you remember it with fond reminiscence, as a simpler time when things were just better, is a testament to how much you were sheltered back then. Someone may consider the existence of AI-generated images to be a direct harm to our world, to be poisoning our culture. Although people may also consider television, radio, and those horseless carriages to be poisoning our world. These have varying degrees of truth. Identifying which of these aspects is actually bad and why is important. And talking about these aspects, like, for example, cars. Cars are really bad. Cars and combustion engines cause a lot of problems. They are a valid subject to discuss. But saying that they're bad because in the good old days, people didn't have cars as cars is not really a real argument. It's just an appeal to nostalgia. Ultimately appeal to nostalgia is not a real argument for why AI is bad. In fact, it's just another way of saying, "AI is bad because I don't like it."

In conclusion, the vast majority of anti-AI arguments you will hear on the internet, including on Lemmy, are a waste of time. They are either directly rehashing the person's own personal opinions or attempting to piggyback off of other, more important subjects to justify themselves as more than just a personal opinion. While they do bring up good points and arguments that are worth discussing in and of themselves, they are doing these subjects a disservice, because ultimately, their purpose is to justify the person's own personal opinion and preferences. It is not to actually have a real and serious discussion about the topics. If they were, they would not react as aggressively as they do when their positions are challenged. They would be open to hearing additional information, such as discussions about FOSS AI, instead of dishing out ad-hominem attacks and insults.

Makes me think we should be the ones defederating them. At the very least I won't miss them if they choose to defederate.

Below is the entirety of a comment posted by @Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com in the update thread by the Lemmy.world admins. Posted here for visibility and in case the LW admins decide to remove it in attempt to suppress information and control the narrative:

Hey there, Kaplan.

So, this is quite clearly now just a witch hunt by you.

For anyone else who is curious, this is what happened.

A user by the name of Luminous was an admin on Anarchist.nexus. They banned MrKaplan from a community for posting zionist apologia. Luminous also had 'Kill all Zionists' as their display name. MrKaplan took this as a personal death threat. Instead of speaking with any other admin from Anarchist.nexus and reporting the behavior, MrKaplan instantly defederated from Anarchist.nexus.

In the next couple of days, Kaplan messaged other users/admins of Lemmy about the defederation and suggested defederation to others as well.

It was then posted about in the Piefed matrix channel. This led to PugJesus, someone who I abhor, actually saying something I agree with.

The conversation moves elsewhere. One bit of input that stands out is this. It will become important in a second.

In basically every situation, Kaplan is told that they're wrong or overreacting but Kaplan cannot see past the 'death threat' to their own mistake.

So, I messaged Kaplan. Conversation goes on and one thing is made clear

Kaplan never spoke with anyone and ran all of this off of an assumption. There was inconsistencies in how the different people felt because they were different people and not one organism. What was individuality instead came off as obliviousness and Kaplan took it personaly. See what I mean by it became important? Kaplan is talking about a 'lack of moderation' over something that Kaplan literally never reported or talked to anyone about and instead just made assumptions over.

@Ruud@lemmy.world, this is what you're backing. You went out of your way to make an instance that wasn't going to be reddit and you went ahead and re-created Spez, an admin who personally takes out their own feelings on anyone that they don't like and is trying to control the narrative of the entirety of the fediverse.

Friendly reminder to everyone. Check back a couple of months ago on this community and look at the post about JordanLund. A moderator who was openly lying to the admins in public but the admins took weeks to decide to do literally nothing. But a single user on another instance meant that MrKaplan was able to defederate it all.

This behavior from Kaplan is, quite literally, the reason that I left lemmy.world.

Don't believe me? Here's the last message I sent Kaplan during the Jordan garbage.

Funny. Jordan requires a ton of deliberation, reasons in the TOS, and you're all 'working on it' but a single user says something you don't like so instant defederation?

Edit: Quick note but every other post on this community has been featured. This one isn't. So you're making an announcement but you're not really announcing it. Any response to this, Kaplan?

Edit 2: Kaplan is just blatantly lying. As demonstrated above, Kaplan has literally zero evidence of this claim other than things "feeling odd".

Edit 3: Serinus joined the thread 15 minutes ago and now a number of my comments are being removed for 'misinformation' despite the comment above proving them to be categorically true.

Ultimately this will probably blow over and dbzer0 will forgive LW and not do any kind of defederation because they're large. Ultimately reinforcing the idea that large instances can do what they want. I really hope that doesn't happen but with LW refederating with AN it might be what happens.

I really hope it doesn't. We as a community need to stand against Zionist servers, big or small.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/32806014

https://lemmy.world/post/36621226

https://lemmy.world/post/35918814

https://lemmy.world/post/12468746/7942028

https://lemmy.world/post/41560809/21534428

https://lemmy.world/post/14235015/9346725

https://lemmy.world/post/6550602/4346950

https://lemmy.world/post/26565059/15562842

https://lemmy.world/post/43799556/22449214

https://lemmy.world/post/41560809/21534428

https://lemmy.world/post/6550602/4346950

https://lemmy.world/post/41307441/21430091 Calling for wars on other countries

https://lemmy.world/comment/19773128 - you literally claiming to not know about "from river to the sea"

https://lemmy.world/post/18857058

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/48096338

Making light of Israel pager terrorist attacks and implying more need do be killed https://lemmy.world/post/19923025/12436044

Calling Russians orcs and describing how to kill them https://lemmy.world/post/26007806/15299902

Oh and another zionist mod doing questionable things in defense of Israel: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49553295

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45247124

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/36047491

Source comment

cross-posted from: https://anarchist.nexus/c/yepowertrippinbastards/p/598026/lw-banned-me-and-defederated-an-over-murder-all-zionists-in-my-display-name

after the recent disgraceful behavior in YPTB where @deceptichum@quokk.au was banned by @MrKaplan@lemmy.world for being a "troll", I banned MrKaplan preemptively from !anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus, as I do anyone who displays zionist tendencies. the ban reason was for "zionism, genocide apologia". calling someone pointing out the FHF's long history of zionism and protecting zionist users a "troll" and saying they are acting in "bad faith" is absolutely zionism, and zionism is genocide apologia. at the same time, I also banned @recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca for also banning @deceptichum@quokk.au, with a suspiciously similar ban message. > > this aggravated @MrKaplan@lemmy.world, who then started asking around about me to find out more information. they quickly found my profile, which as anyone who has been around AN or dbzer0 might know, has always been rather spicy when it comes to the US and Israel. > >

“scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” > > queer armed militant anarchist. death to the United States, and death to Israel! the only good zionist is a dead zionist. > > my display name at the time was also Luminous5481 "Murder all zionists" [they/them]. this wasn't aimed at MrKaplan, but rather zionism as an ideology in general. it has long been my very vocal opinion that there is no appreciable difference between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany, nor between zionism and nazism. both nations are guilty of having engaged in genocide over the span of years, something determined by the ICC, if not the eyes and ears of anyone who has seen the shocking scenes of Israeli terrorism coming from Gaza these past years. > > however, this rightfully calling for the death of a ideology that is incompatible with anarchism, and the rest of humanity in general, was enough for MrKaplan to not only instance ban me, but entirely defederate the instances under the control of the FHF cabal from Anarchist Nexus. > > but that wasn't enough. they also contacted other admins of popular instances, and encouraged them to defederate from AN and dbzer0, claiming that the other admins of the flotilla had refused to do anything about it, despite MrKaplan immediately defederating as soon as he raised his concerns with our team. this obviously is a blatant lie, likely to cover for the fact that he most likely did not bother reaching a consensus with the other LW admins over his actions before he took them. but idk about that, it's only my speculation. I only know what he and other admins have said behind closed doors to our team. > > > > > > the fact of the matter is that wishing death to zionists is a popular opinion among leftists. it's one that I've held for years, and it didn't suddenly go away when Israel accelerated their genocide in 2023. nor did it go away when the German government, and certain German instances and users threw their support behind a genocidal regime intent on wiping out a race and religion they see as subhuman. did I say it more often or more plainly than plenty of other leftists? sure! but do not assume that the opinion is not shared by many who oppose an ideology that, like the nazis, is the enemy of all mankind. > > for now, I have graciously offered to step down as admin, in the hopes that the FHF will stop throwing their weight around to bully smaller instances and suppress the free speech of the people. it's one thing to ban a user for a viewpoint you don't like. it's another thing to defederate from an instance, and then threaten other instances to get them to defederate as well. it's another thing to go around telling everyone they should defederate simply because you are offended at an opinion that should be shared by all who love humanity. of course, some might say that this is entirely because I accused the "FHF team members of being zionists while simultaneously calling for zionists to be murdered". but if that were true, then why has MrKaplan not also defederated from lemmy.ml, despite many of their users being just as vocal as I am ? there's a big difference between AN and ML, and that difference is user count. MrKaplan feels he can get away with throwing his weight around and demanding other instances censor themselves according to his views when it's an instance that's smaller than LW. and I'm not asking to be unbanned. I really do not care about "missing out" on LW. but at the very least? MrKaplan should not be censoring other instances and maliciously attacking them behind their back by seeking defederation from other admins. and he certainly should not be doing it in the dark, where nobody can see or comment. > > UPDATE: @rimu@piefed.social also banned me for "death threats", something which doesn't show up in the modlog because I've never used that instance for anything.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46148698

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46148690

Over the past few days, @MrKaplan@lemmy.world/@MrKaplan@piefed.world has banned multiple users, blocked entire comms, and now defederated from Anarchist.Nexus over their anti-Zionist stance.

This extreme overreaction and general power trippin' bastard behavior stems from Lemmy.world's history of pro-Zionist views. And now MrKaplan is seeking out the flimsiest pretext to to enact his own personal vendetta.

Free Palestine, Death to Israel, Death to Zionism.

Lemmy.world is a ZioNazi instance. Avoid it like the plague.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45437770

What do people here think about local AI based solutions for generating Alt-Text? Could a tool be developed to use the AI horde to help generate Alt Text? I think having ways to do it in an automated fashion would be useful to the community, and could help increase adoption and usage of Alt Text.

Sorry if this isn't the right community for this kind of discussion.

It might lead to us being able to get AI datacenter level GPUs to run our own models on for relatively cheaply as ewaste. Wouldn't that be cool?