[QuickTidal]

Weird that you have the in on what “most men” find fulfilling…seems spurious as a statement…

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 13 December 2025 - 12:51 PM, said:

Weird that you have the in on what "most men" find fulfilling…seems spurious as a statement…

As the "iirc" and the reference to "factory labor" indicate, I was still referring to the basic underlying premise of Vonnegut's Player Piano. I'm skeptical of the extent to which that is actually true---perhaps not most men, even back in the United States of the 50's (when it was written)?---but it probably has some validity for many men even in present-day US culture. Perhaps Canadian men are more enlightened?...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 December 2025 - 01:53 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Tsundoku, on 12 December 2025 - 08:37 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 12 December 2025 - 08:07 AM, said:

The general public are a terrible metric for what should or shouldn't be in the charts. See: Queen, Bieber, etc.

You dare mention Queen in the same breath as that little wankstain Bieber?

both make me want to claw my ears out with a rusty vibrator, so yes

[Tsundoku]

Maark Abbott, on 14 December 2025 - 11:06 AM, said:

Tsundoku, on 12 December 2025 - 08:37 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 12 December 2025 - 08:07 AM, said:

The general public are a terrible metric for what should or shouldn't be in the charts. See: Queen, Bieber, etc.

You dare mention Queen in the same breath as that little wankstain Bieber?

both make me want to claw my ears out with a rusty vibrator, so yes

Also, pondering how a vibrator gets rusty? Maybe some corrosion on the battery contacts?

[Macros]

The salty sand in Maarks vagina?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Well Queen is in the list of Warner Music artists that the new Suno (after its agreement with Warner to phase out its old service and replace it with a new one trained only with legal consent and compensation) may be allowed to train on so Maark's in luck...

Can't wait to have a variation on a cross between Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, and Frank Sinatra singing "raindrops keep pooping out my head" while a variation on a cross between Jimi Hendrix, Slash, the Pixies, and Gojira plays guitar.

For vocals I think I'm most interested in the following Warner artists:

Bjork
Chappell Roan
Charlie XCX
Janelle Monae
Jill Scott
Joni Mitchell
Kacey Musgraves
Tori Amos

For keyboards I hope they get Dream Theater (virtuoso keyboardist Jordan Rudess) to consent.

For those of you who are into metal, Warner Music notables include:

Avenged Sevenfold

Gojira
Iron Maiden
Korn
Lamb of God
Life of Agony
Pantera
Slayer
Slipknot

List of Warner Music Group artists - Wikipedia

No doubt some people will throw a fit if they include dead people (who won't be complaining... unless someone resurrects them as AI avatars to emulate outrage). Might just give people who hate AI because it's AI---and they're afraid of not having jobs---another rationalization.

[Maark Abbott]

Macros, on 14 December 2025 - 02:30 PM, said:

The salty sand in Maarks vagina?

rather have a beach up my clunge than support theft engines so in this case I'll take that coarse grainy exfoliation.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

 QuickTidal, on 12 December 2025 - 04:18 PM, said:

Who do you work for? Seriously. There's no way you fight so hard for this theft and aren't out here working for an AI company.

This is rude and not the first time you have attacked Azath. It's not like he's espousing killing all humans and replacing them with AI, like some of the transhumanist /e/acc people out there. And it's nof like he's attacking you or your opinions. Azath is generally pro-AI, though I do very often read skepticism, tongue-in-cheekness, and just general idle musing in their remarks. Just because they are optimistic about AI, that doesn't make them a shill.

I use AI every day at work to make my work easier. I use it to do things I couldn't do otherwise, and definitely could not do to the quality or in the timeframes needed. It also helps me overcome issues with ADHD that I have worked hard on for over 10 years — banging my head against the wall every time. It turns out having a machine in my pocket that helps me can actually be...helpful!

Am I an unalloyed AI optimist? Heck no! I think there are some very negative externalities around and caused by AI. Do I fear the privatization of thought? Heck yes! Do I fear the meaninglessness of the flood of AI-created media? Heck yes! Do I fear opinion and worldview capture by increasingly persuasive models that tap into the "human and friend" pattern recognition parts of our subconscious and shape people to match the anodyne, consumerist views of these unaccountable corporations (in partnership with our increasingly powerless government, of course)? Heck yes. Do I fear my job being made obsolete? Eh, less so. Do I fear X and Y and Z? Yes yes, and yes.

But, I talk with it, I problem solve with it, and by and large, I feel better for having access to it.

Just because you disagree, that doesn't mean you should be rude about it.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: Yesterday, 09:19 AM

[QuickTidal]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 15 December 2025 - 09:11 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 12 December 2025 - 04:18 PM, said:

Who do you work for? Seriously. There's no way you fight so hard for this theft and aren't out here working for an AI company.

This is rude and not the first time you have attacked Azath.

Believe me, it was ruder before I edited it.

And I'm not sure what conversation you're seeing, but Azath has consistently come at all of us like we are dumb, and they are smart, and in many instances in mocking on tone. Some of that aimed at me, and my country and how Trump is going to stomp us...so you'll have to excuse me if I'm not going to take that laying down.

So yeah, I came at them. I''m not ashamed of asking them this question. It's valid with how every single rebuttal not just from me, but from others is met with "You just don't understand"

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 15 December 2025 - 09:11 AM, said:

And it's nof like he's attacking you or your opinions.

Oh no?

Quote

By sharing disinformation, you may be killing people.

Quote

I'm sorry if you took that flippancy as implying that the books are trash

<----I'm sorry you took me wrong...

Quote

No, what you're saying is analogous to claiming that it should be illegal to analyze and learn from copyrighted material on public television without explicit permission.

<-----presumption of what I "meant" VS what I said.

Quote

you're saying that analyzing and learning from public broadcast television to create your own TV show that's different enough from any of the preexisting TV shows to not legally infringe on copyright should still be illegal

<-----same here, saying I said anything about illegal.

Quote

But of course you're fine with the illegal use of IP in fan art and fan fic

<-----False equivalences.

Quote

I'd find it pretty amusing if Maark tried to give me intentionally terrible advice on how to make Suno metal drums sound more realistic. Seriously though Maark, in the future you should consider training an AI version of yourself. You'll hate that suggestion now but within the next few decades I bet you'll have changed your mind---and you'll wish you had preserved your drumming technique from when you were younger.

<---attacking Maark for his replies on this from an creative POV

And that's not even stepping into the USA Politics thread...

I don't think any of this is happening in some bubble where Azath is blameless on how the conversation has gone. And as much as it might seem "educational" to them posting constant "This article from some random editorial says THIS" gotcha paragraphs, it's not and comes across as condescending as if none of the rest of our opinions on AI are valid because they know more apparently?

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 15 December 2025 - 09:11 AM, said:

Am I an unalloyed AI optimist? Heck no! I think there are some very negative externalities around and caused by AI. Do I fear the privatization of thought? Heck yes! Do I fear the meaninglessness of the flood of AI-created media? Heck yes! Do I fear opinion and worldview capture by increasingly persuasive models that tap into the "human and friend" pattern recognition parts of our subconscious and shape people to match the anodyne, consumerist views of these unaccountable corporations (in partnership with our increasingly powerless government, of course)? Heck yes. Do I fear my job being made obsolete? Eh, less so. Do I fear X and Y and Z? Yes yes, and yes.

But, I talk with it, I problem solve with it, and by and large, I feel better for having access to it.

And you're not here on a crusade about it like Azath is, not just in this thread but in a lot of other threads as well. So your opinion is fine and valid and no one (least of all me) would take issue with it...it's when they come at us as if we are all stupid and their knowledge of AI is so superior that we simply "don't know what we are talking about" that got my back up, coupled with their flippancy about the sovereignty of my country.

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 15 December 2025 - 09:11 AM, said:

Just because you disagree, that doesn't mean you should be rude about it.

I feel like I know I was rude, but that I dialled it back enough to post...because I was really asking...I have never come across anyone hardcore enough about AI to fight on more than one front (sometimes completely unprompted) about it to this level.

Like my brother in law is HARDCORE about Bitcoin and blockchains...I think he's silly about it...but we have only ever spoken of it once and he understood that I'm not into it, and that he is, and we left it at that.

EDIT: I will add that I'm cognizant of the fact that when it comes to film or TV my opinion often veers into that same condescending territory with others (though I've tried to curb this in recent years), so perhaps I should cut them more slack...

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: Yesterday, 01:16 PM

[Abyss]

MODGOD NOTICE OF i didn't think that the exchange was particularly aggressive, and both Azath and QT have demonstrated they can keep it within the reasonable bounds of civility on a fairly divisive subject. We are in the discussion sub which was dropped in here for this form of exchange, so while i'm watching (mwahahahahaha), i think everyone is generally behaving themselves. Whisperz i appreciate you raising the concern, i think we're ok here for now. If anyone feels differently you're welcome to msg me.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QT I was saying that Canada should go much further in developing its military---as deterrence against Trump, future MAGA fascists, and eventual pressure from climate change induced mass migration (granted, there is still a lot of unoccupied land in the northern United States, and Canada's wildfires have demonstrated that it may not be as much of a global warming refuge as I thought, at least in the near to intermediate term). I'm sorry that my attempts to lighten the bleakness of that (possibility of future invasion) by making jokes about Canada's defenses consisting of mountees on moose-back offended you. You were right that I knew relatively little about Canada's military aside from some cursory reading on the web, and I still don't know much about it; I appreciate the insider information you bring from your family members in the Canadian military. Ukraine's ability to resist Russian invasion demonstrates that Canada may be able to resist a US invasion---but I don't think Canada's military is anywhere near as prepared as Ukraine was. In deference to your sensitivity on this issue and the emotional distress the possibility of a future US invasion has been causing you I have stopped making jokes about it.

To be clear, I was not at all "gloating" about the US having a superior military. I am genuinely anti-Trump and opposed to invading Canada or using military or economic threats to demand tribute or no-bid contracts for US companies. (And I thought I'd made it clear over many years that I'm not at all patriotic or jingoistic. So my visceral reaction to QT's responses---which seem to assume that I am---has been quizzical perplexity. But QT did mention before that they were having trouble telling when I was joking or being serious, and I've been trying to make it more obvious since then, as well as specifically using terms I mentioned as indicators, like following a joke with "in all seriousness".)

QT if you'd like to discuss the tone or style of my posts further you can PM me, or respond to individual posts that seem ambiguous to you by asking for clarification. And if you want to discuss the serious content further of course we can do so in the appropriate designated threads.


On AI: I was particularly objecting to a repeated claim that is factually wrong: that generative AI works by chopping up existing works and rearranging the pieces. That's not a matter of opinion. It's an objectively false claim that has been repeatedly debunked, so I found it a bit exasperating when people here kept repeating it. And if that were really all that AI were doing then the argument that it should be considered "stealing" would be much stronger, so it was reasonable of me to initially think that that factual error was contributing to the claim that AI is "stealing". Some here have since clarified that it's AI learning from copyrighted material without permission, and in order to create something similar (while still substantially different enough not to infringe on copyright)---or something that might compete with the examples the AI was learning from---that they consider "stealing".

I do acknowledge that whether you consider artificial neural networks learning from publicly available material without explicit permission to be "stealing" is ultimately an opinion. To me (as to the judge in the case I cited), it seems obvious that learning should not be considered stealing, but it's also true that artificial neural networks are not people and are not biological brains, so they don't learn in exactly the same way. (You could even argue that the word "learning" should only ever apply to biological brains---that's ultimately a matter of opinion.) And if they're not set up or monitored carefully, it's also an objective fact that they *can* end up learning to create something so similar to copyrighted examples from the training data that the outputs are infringing, and in those cases it is effectively stealing IP; for example, there was a recent German court case in which OpenAI, when asked for song lyrics, provided them almost verbatim, which seems like a clear violation of copyright, and the judge in that case ruled that that is a copyright violation.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Yesterday, 04:06 PM

[QuickTidal]

Azath Vitr (D, on 15 December 2025 - 04:01 PM, said:

QT I was saying that Canada should go much further in developing its military---as deterrence against Trump, future MAGA fascists, and eventual pressure from climate change induced mass migration (granted, there is still a lot of unoccupied land in the northern United States, and Canada's wildfires have demonstrated that it may not be as much of a global warming refuge as I thought, at least in the near to intermediate term). I'm sorry that my attempts to lighten the bleakness of that (possibility of future invasion) by making jokes about Canada's defenses consisting of mountees on moose-back offended you. You were right that I knew relatively little about Canada's military aside from some cursory reading on the web, and I still don't know much about it; I appreciate the insider information you bring from your family members in the Canadian military. Ukraine's ability to resist Russian invasion demonstrates that Canada may be able to resist a US invasion---but I don't think Canada's military is anywhere near as prepared as Ukraine was. In deference to your sensitivity on this issue and the emotional distress the possibility of a future US invasion has been causing you I have stopped making jokes about it.

To be clear, I was not at all "gloating" about the US having a superior military. I am genuinely anti-Trump and opposed to invading Canada or using military or economic threats to demand tribute or no-bid contracts for US companies. (And I thought I'd made it clear over many years that I'm not at all patriotic or jingoistic. So my visceral reaction to QT's responses---which seem to assume that I am---has been quizzical perplexity. But QT did mention before that they were having trouble telling when I was joking or being serious, and I've been trying to make it more obvious since then, as well as specifically using terms I mentioned as indicators, like following a joke with "in all seriousness".)

[size="2"]QT if you'd like to discuss the tone or style of my posts further you can PM me, or respond to individual posts that seem ambiguous to you by asking for clarification. And if you want to discuss the serious content further of course we can do so in the appropriate designated threads.

Noted, and appreciate the clarification. We shall move past it.

[Grief]

I've always found this quote from Douglas Hofstadter very pertinent when it comes to AI-generated music (and other creative endeavours).

Quote

Ever since I was a child, music has thrilled me and moved me to the very core. And every piece that I love feels like it’s a direct message from the emotional heart of the human being who composed it. It feels like it is giving me access to their innermost soul. And it feels like there is nothing more human in the world than that expression of music. Nothing. The idea that pattern manipulation of the most superficial sort can yield things that sound as if they are coming from a human being’s heart is very, very troubling.

I was terrified by EMI. Terrified. I hated it, and was extremely threatened by it. It was threatening to destroy what I most cherished about humanity. I think EMI was the most quintessential example of the fears that I have about artificial intelligence.

The fact that clever statistics can produce compelling creative pieces does not make me personally value the machines more, and I worry that it takes something away from the human pieces somehow. I already think that we kid ourselves about how advanced a species we really are vis-a-vis other animals, in the first place.

And it is closer to clever statistics than theft from what I know on the technical side, I would agree with Azath there (even if it can depend what exactly you do with the model).

The economic bubble will burst at some point but the scientific advances being made in machine learning are here to stay. I don't believe that all technology is neutral and morality is only a question of what humans do with it. But there seems to be an especially bad gap between the business models being built for AI and the actual potential of the technology. AI is not a neutral technology but it is not a gun either. It says something bleak about the state of our existing societies that we find ourselves talking about business cases like AI-companions, competing for attention on streaming services, and a wide range of dodgy and illegal behaviour ranging from cheating on homework to impersonation fraud.

A lot of discussion here looks like it has revolved around LLMs and copyright, but the technology has loads of uses and doesn't always need to be trained on human inputs so I expect the world will move past that phase of the debate soon enough. There are a huge number of jobs at risk whether that is blue-collar jobs like transport or white-collar jobs like marketing, as well as the moral and military implications of robotic warfare.

I'd argue that copyright and intellectual property were already creaking legal fields in the modern age, so AI is just one more nail for that particular coffin. But considering that politicians and regulators are struggling to even address topics like fake imagery and copyright then I have serious doubts whether we are equipped for the harder questions coming up.

[Maark Abbott]

You know, I didn't even see the comment about 'training an AI on my drumming technique' but holy SHIT that is straight up insulting.

Like, telling a musician they should train a computer to imitate them?????? No. Trash opinion. To the bin with it. That's a stab directly at the creative soul. What can a computer express? Nothing except data. Gross. Kimoi. Boke.