I’ve really been going through it lately. The internet has got me all sorts of fucked up on the inside. Like completely disembowelled clutching my intestines as an apex predator catches a wiff, type of fucked up on the inside.
It kills me to watch what’s happening to the internet. The internet been there for since I was coding my first lines of CSS on Myspace, passive aggressively kicking friends out of my top 8. The internet honestly saved my relationship as we moved into non-monogamy (Thank you Dan Savage and Ester Perel). The internet has allowed me to keep up a connection with life long best friends I would die for who may have, very likely, faded into the history of my life without it.
I have been betrayed by the internet. Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served cold, slow, and over time. Served so slow I could barely feel the the knife until I was scrambling to stuff my guts back behind my rib cage and notice I was suffering from blood loss.
That’s all pretty melodramatic, but fuck. This aren’t so good out here in internet land anymore. I mean we * just * kept crypto at bay and deflated web3, now AI is here to tell us whatever we want to hear.
Look, AI is kinda cool, I get that. Like super cool and super powerful, but that’s kinda the problem. It’s super powerful and at the same time super dumb. If a teenager asks it to create n00dz of their classmate, it’s too fucking stupid to say “That’s a terrible idea and I will not be creating child pornography”, it just does it (I know, I know, there are “safe guards”, but when those “safe guards” are creating nazi POCs, I am gonna say we don’t have em).
Also, if those safe guards are not universally followed, all it takes a little extra effort to get the same result. So major points against AI. This is seriously pandora’s pornography box, we can’t close it now. We just have to deal with the mess. Porn has been at the cutting edge of tech, but these are uncharted territories.
* Note: I am not anti-porn, but i am very much anti-child-porn and anti-non-consensual-porn in any form. “Real” or otherwise.
Walk around your city, go to any area that has small businesses and look carefully at the art. The rise of AI is here and it’s already taking work from artists.
I know what your thinking, weren’t those who are using AI just going to use shitty stock photos anyway? Well maybe, but at least a photographer or illustrator somewhere down the line would have gotten SOMETHING for their work.
Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about artists. Honestly art is super fucking inefficient. Artists have to translate emails like “I think we need more of a boho VIBE” and “can you make it POP more” (The classic) into clear and real changes. AI can do that in seconds. And it’s only getting better at it.
Right now AI has a sparkle to it. A shine. It’s a little too clean. A little too soft. It has far too many fingers. You can tell, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to tell the difference for much longer. Look at where AI was a year ago, two years ago and think now with the insane amount of wealth being pumped into it, where it will be in 5 more.
5 years is not that long in the grand scheme of things.
The thing is. This could be a monumental moment in history. We have all the tech needed to feed and house everyone. We have all the tech needed to stop/slow climate change. AI could be used to create solutions for food distribution and transit improvements.
We just have to have the guts to do it.
As people are no longer needed in the labour force and it shrinks, we could be reducing the requirement of labour needed for a (real) living wage. We could redistribute the wealth. Instead we are making a few people literally unfathomable amounts of money in a single life time.
So the internet’s got me fucked up.
Or rather capitalists got me fucked up and they are fucking up my internet in the process.
Honestly just think about it. We have the means, the money, and tech to solve real problems and we are choosing not too.
So as Google, Reddit, and Microsoft begin to change their privacy policies to use your personal data in their products. Hide yo shit. Pack up. Go elsewhere. Take refuge and don’t get tied to any platform you don’t control. Be ready to leave at a moments notice.
If those building the tech require our data, our lives, and they refuse to pass on the wealth that is gained from that back to us (or to our governments through taxation), then refuse to give it to them. AI ain’t shit without it. Garbage in, garbage out.
Or least give less of it. When you can.
Small changes count too. Don’t use apps controlled by companies with unethical practices as much to start. Weight your options. Remember your time, attention and data is what they are after. At the very least don’t make it too easy for them to get it.
That fact that AI is being used and trained on data in ways that users never originally consented to is massive rug pull, and the first step is slowing the hose of information we give to them constantly.
fuck.