podcast friday
Jul. 7th, 2023 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyOh shit did I almost forget to do this again?
Okay, so I have Opinions about AI and I know they are not 100% shared by all of my friends and AI controversies caused drama in at least one Discord I'm in, so I'm going to put this under a cut and you can read/engage with it if this is a thing that's interesting to you, or not. It also deals a little bit with bad things happening to kids in a weird, hard-to-define way that makes me uncomfortable and may make you uncomfortable as well.
"AI Is Coming For Your Children" (Part 1 | Part 2) is Behind the Bastards two-parter about a particularly strange grift in the world of publishing. Basically, people generate children's stories using ChatGPT and illustrate them using Midjourney and then put them up on Amazon and let the money roll in.
This grift relies on a bunch of things to work. For one, there would have to be money in publishing. I can assure you that there is no money in publishing. The only money to be made in publishing is to convince other people that if you give them money, they will teach you how to make money in publishing. But grifting off people who are stupid enough to think that publishing children's books will get them rich isn't generally enough to warrant a Bastards ep, because these are silly and greedy people being grifted and taking their money is a moral good.
Unfortunately, there is genuine harm being done here. The reason being goes to some of the deep-rooted issues with AI. For one thing, ChatGPT and Midjourney are not AI. They are just tools for combining other people's words and images in an order that makes sense some of the time. In a lot of cases, it's intelligent but not artificial—there's a ton of work being done by underpaid people in the Global South that's being labelled as AI. This is why writers aren't actually going to be replaced by ChatGPT. What happens instead is that ChatGPT will "write" a script and a writer will be hired to "edit" it for less money than the writer would get for actually writing it. It's grifts all the way down. Also no one wants to pay actual money to watch or read this kind of content when you can just get it for free. The tech itself isn't actually the problem; it's just capitalists in the Global North who are upset because they don't get to personally own slaves anymore. So AI will not replace authors and screenwriters any time soon.
But children's books are a different story, because children have developing brains. Robert and Ben talk a little about Elsagate, one of my bizarre special interests. This was a situation where a tired parent would plunk a little toddler in front of Peppa Pig on YouTube and stop watching because who wants to watch that?? YouTube would autoplay the next video, and eventually you would get some weird shit where Elsa from Frozen is pregnant and being injected with needles and no one knew where this content was coming from. Was it AI generated? Pervert generated? About 10,000 viewers, many of them little kids, saw this content, and it was hella disturbing and not the kind of thing that kids should watch.
When you have a ChatGPT-generated story, it's not a narrative as such. And Midjourney images have well-documented issues, such as hands, or character consistency across poses. The "books" being produced here are some uncanny valley shit, and they will be purchased mainly by parents and organizations that are low on cash. Robert suggests a world where wealthy kids have real books written and illustrated by real people, and poor kids learn that dinosaurs have creepy little people-hands. And since the illustrations don't quite match up with the story, they lose a vital step in reading development called "pre-reading," where the images help kids learn what language is and how it works. Not to mention what's happening when kids think that ChatGPT stories are how narratives work, and then you have a generation that grows up to expect and even produce contentless narratives.
There are some cool uses for this tech, like creating your own non-commercial art and memes, or making it write epic rap battles between Zizek and Peterson, but like any new tech, it's being seized upon by the worst actors who don't think about the consequences. And there are quite likely to be consequences here.
If you'd prefer to read it, you can do so here.
Okay, so I have Opinions about AI and I know they are not 100% shared by all of my friends and AI controversies caused drama in at least one Discord I'm in, so I'm going to put this under a cut and you can read/engage with it if this is a thing that's interesting to you, or not. It also deals a little bit with bad things happening to kids in a weird, hard-to-define way that makes me uncomfortable and may make you uncomfortable as well.
"AI Is Coming For Your Children" (Part 1 | Part 2) is Behind the Bastards two-parter about a particularly strange grift in the world of publishing. Basically, people generate children's stories using ChatGPT and illustrate them using Midjourney and then put them up on Amazon and let the money roll in.
This grift relies on a bunch of things to work. For one, there would have to be money in publishing. I can assure you that there is no money in publishing. The only money to be made in publishing is to convince other people that if you give them money, they will teach you how to make money in publishing. But grifting off people who are stupid enough to think that publishing children's books will get them rich isn't generally enough to warrant a Bastards ep, because these are silly and greedy people being grifted and taking their money is a moral good.
Unfortunately, there is genuine harm being done here. The reason being goes to some of the deep-rooted issues with AI. For one thing, ChatGPT and Midjourney are not AI. They are just tools for combining other people's words and images in an order that makes sense some of the time. In a lot of cases, it's intelligent but not artificial—there's a ton of work being done by underpaid people in the Global South that's being labelled as AI. This is why writers aren't actually going to be replaced by ChatGPT. What happens instead is that ChatGPT will "write" a script and a writer will be hired to "edit" it for less money than the writer would get for actually writing it. It's grifts all the way down. Also no one wants to pay actual money to watch or read this kind of content when you can just get it for free. The tech itself isn't actually the problem; it's just capitalists in the Global North who are upset because they don't get to personally own slaves anymore. So AI will not replace authors and screenwriters any time soon.
But children's books are a different story, because children have developing brains. Robert and Ben talk a little about Elsagate, one of my bizarre special interests. This was a situation where a tired parent would plunk a little toddler in front of Peppa Pig on YouTube and stop watching because who wants to watch that?? YouTube would autoplay the next video, and eventually you would get some weird shit where Elsa from Frozen is pregnant and being injected with needles and no one knew where this content was coming from. Was it AI generated? Pervert generated? About 10,000 viewers, many of them little kids, saw this content, and it was hella disturbing and not the kind of thing that kids should watch.
When you have a ChatGPT-generated story, it's not a narrative as such. And Midjourney images have well-documented issues, such as hands, or character consistency across poses. The "books" being produced here are some uncanny valley shit, and they will be purchased mainly by parents and organizations that are low on cash. Robert suggests a world where wealthy kids have real books written and illustrated by real people, and poor kids learn that dinosaurs have creepy little people-hands. And since the illustrations don't quite match up with the story, they lose a vital step in reading development called "pre-reading," where the images help kids learn what language is and how it works. Not to mention what's happening when kids think that ChatGPT stories are how narratives work, and then you have a generation that grows up to expect and even produce contentless narratives.
There are some cool uses for this tech, like creating your own non-commercial art and memes, or making it write epic rap battles between Zizek and Peterson, but like any new tech, it's being seized upon by the worst actors who don't think about the consequences. And there are quite likely to be consequences here.
If you'd prefer to read it, you can do so here.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 02:36 pm (UTC)I ended up watching the video with my kids (who were about 10 and 14 at the time) so they could recognize if they saw this happening to their friends and be more aware of when it’s done to them. I don’t know your nephew’s age, but it could be useful for him to see if it’s age-appropriate.
https://youtu.be/pnmRYRRDbuw
no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 02:49 pm (UTC)I will flag this, but my sister is useless