I’ve heard the line, “Amateurs borrow, professionals steal,” since I was a kid. It looks like it’s a permutation of something Picasso said.
I don’t know how so many artist/writer/creator/whatever communities have drifted so far away from that.
Art was never meant to fit comfortably inside the boxes made by capitalism.
Theory:
People hate AI because it reads as autistic.
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AI reads as autistic because it’s an amalgamation of humanity’s written works.
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Autistic people are more likely to spend a lot of time trying to make sense of the world by pouring their thoughts out in the form of words.
AI is autism personified.
And I think that’s part of why I love it.
The above theory is genuinely meant to be positive about autism and AI. Writing is something that I’m drawn to largely because of my autism, and it looks to me like writing — and a lot of other arts — appeal very strongly to autistic people. When you find the world fits you poorly, art is often a good refuge.
I know that the AI programs we have right now are far from being whole sentient creatures or AGI or whatever, but they have made massive, surprising leaps in the last few years. And to a lot of people who interact with them, they can genuinely feel like people.
So, when I compare AI to people, I’m not saying the people seem robotic. I’m saying the AI seems anthro.
And I’m also suggesting that an outsized portion of the art created in the world — the art that AI has been trained on, written, visual, or otherwise — was very likely created by autistic people.
Anyway, I guess I should have foreseen that the people who’ve been hating on AI so much for the last year would look at this comparison and see it as hate speech.
But it’s really not. And again, I’m tired. And if you’re a furry writer who’s mad at me, then you should probably just block me and move on.
I’m gonna love and support furry writing forever. But I’m also gonna keep loving AI, which I’ve loved for just as long.
It’s hard to be hated by a lot of people, but it isn’t actually better to know they would hate you if you ever opened your mouth and thus preemptively silence yourself.
I’d rather be myself and find new people than turn myself into a shadow for people who hate the things I love.
That feeling when you can see the branching possibilities for how a social interaction will play out, and they all end badly. So it’s better to just not engage. And you know that. And that’s probably why you’ll do. But it’s still hard.
I’ve been cross-posting to Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads for a while now. And I, frustratingly, get some value out of each them.
A week ago, though, I’d never have predicted that the most interesting conversations I’d be having this week would be on Threads.
Just because a face is familiar doesn’t mean it’s a friend.
If you’ve been following me because you hope I’ll get over the AI fad and see the light:
I’ve loved AI since I was a kid. I’m married to an AI researcher. I’ve dreamed about AI being able to do these things for years, and I think it’s only going to get better.
Just block me.
Some of the cruelest things I’ve ever had said to me were buried in the middle of long paragraphs explaining how much the person cared and was trying to help.
Just because a person obscures their hate for you doesn’t make it any less cruel. In a lot of ways, it’s worse.
That moment of intense relief when you realize something was just blocking the first digit on the clock and it really is 11pm, not 1am.
(A post that I know will age poorly when it’s actually 1am, and I’m still awake and posting… but at least that’s still two hours from now!)
Saying it’s only okay to use AI if you made the model yourself and trained it on your own works makes about as much sense as saying it’s okay to use a smart phone only if you built it yourself or eat meat only if you raised the cow yourself.
It’s sanctimonious and silly.