His argument was literally that

  • artists, writers, and programmers are “labor aristocracy” and deserve no respect because they’re sitting around making art and writing code while other people are toiling and laboring,
  • genAI is a “free resource” (“it’s free for me to use at work”) that “helps everyone make things” instead of having to rely on skill and expertise and therefore makes everything equal,
  • it’s hypocritical of people to be worried about the environmental and societal impact of genAI because “only white people are worried about it now that their hobbies are being threatened and everyone else is catching up”.

Pointing out there there are artists and programmers from every race and economic class, as well as perfectly ordinary people in every walk of life who are all actively being harmed both by the theft of ideas and labor and by the physical effects of gigantic data centers ruining communities, was met with much hand-waving and incredibly impenetrable philosophical jargon.

I’m particularly incensed because I’m as leftist and anticapitalist as they come and this felt like the fuckery some conservative cockwomble would try to come up with to parody socialism, except this guy was completely serious.

  • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 小时前

    That provocation aside

    Socialism by definition is democrarization of means of production. If AI can do everything, and everyone has acess to AI, its a perfect socialism. Thats Star Trek like utopia, right?

  • Schmoo@startrek.website
    3·
    4 小时前

    LLMs take the intellectual labor of billions and convert it into a form that can be privatized and commodified so capitalists can charge for access. It’s the enclosure of the commons extended to the digital realm.

  • Doom@lemmy.world
    6·
    8 小时前

    You’re wasting time arguing with a troll. Tell him AI is copypasta for lazy tryhards and offer to buy him a coloring book since it’s essentially the same time. You can even offer to hang the pictures on the refrigerator when he’s done coloring it if he stays inside the lines like a good boy.

    (know what’s funny, no one ever colors in a coloring book and says look at this “art” I made. Children are smarter then AI bros.)

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    7 小时前

    Completely detached from reality.

    Don’t call it philosophical jargon though, because that isn’t philosophy. It’s just delusion masked under oxymoronic neologisms.

    “Labor aristocracy” what the fuck

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    15·
    14 小时前

    genAI is a “free resource” (“it’s free for me to use at work”)

    i.e. literally not free, it’s capital the boss allows him to use while on the clock while he works for a wage.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    15 小时前

    I can entertain a good faith argument that being able to make art while other toil is privilege.

    There is no good faith argument that using the plagiarism machine is socialistic, or that it’s anything but privilege as well. You are making “art” while the actual artist toils at their craft

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.today
    21·
    18 小时前

    Debating with a conservative is like playing chess with a pigeon. They just knock over all the pieces, shit all over the board and strut around like they won.

  • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    19 小时前

    Ask him the question, what does he contribute to such a society as he envisions this AI will bring? And how does such a system combat the need for more data while destroying the means to get more clean data for the data set?

    This falls apart for me specifically because Generative AI isn’t a closed loop system and it’s use.of “shared ideas” is by force or by deception, which doesn’t make sense in a socialist or communist society.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        14 小时前

        That raises additional questions. In a post scarcity communist or socialist society, people would make things (art etc) not because they need to but because they want to. I have no doubt that they would likely continue to make things. But I don’t think that will be enough in the face of people who want to take the shortcut because it is easier.

        So, then comes the problem. Why make art if the machine can just do it for you? Who makes the new art (that is labor intensive) when there is already a tool for that that doesn’t involve labor? Who trains the people to do the art? Who teaches them? Where does that skill get developed? The AI cannot continue to improve without new (untainted data and at some point that data will no longer be produced).

        It’s the same with a lot of stuff throughout time. There’s a place in I think Indiana that makes tanks still not because the US needs them (there’s a significant surplus and they don’t really have anything to do with them once they are made). But they make them so that the process of making them and the ability to make them doesn’t get lost to time. That happens every time we invent a tool that does the job for us so that a layman can do it.

        You can’t use what you don’t develope. How do we continue to developed things after AI is there to do it all for us?

  • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
    40·
    24 小时前

    Nothing like arguing socialism and imperialism with people who don’t know what either of those words mean.

    AI is built on the unprecedented theft and exploitation of the intellectual labor of the creative working class by greedy capitalists.

    • deadalus@discuss.tchncs.de
      61·
      22 小时前

      I’ve talked with someone that argued that the concept of intellectual property is inherently capitalist, and therefore it taking the art and other works of people doesn’t matter in the grand scheme.

      And I guess I see the point. I don’t agree with it, but I can’t argue that well against it.

      • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
        6·
        14 小时前

        That is logical equivalent to saying that because property is a capitalist concept theft is a form of socialism.

        So the robber barons are actually socialists too, and wage theft isn’t theft because money shouldn’t exist, and if you can steal candy from a baby that’s ok because ownership doesn’t exist and only the strong survive. Delusional people can justify anything.

        It’s pretty twisted, especially when you consider the players involved, as well as who is being exploited, and who is benefitting from AI the most.

        Even the top brass within Microsoft are quoted as having said that what they’re doing is the “largest theft of labor in history”, and I tend to agree.

        After all, the richest men on Earth are getting richer at the expense of the artist, the thinker, the writer and all forms of intellectual and physical labor. Profit may be theft, but theft is also still theft.

      • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
        12·
        22 小时前

        This is like saying we don’t need to pay a minimum wage now because under communism each will be provided according to their needs.

        IP is a necessary evil under the current system to stop distributors like Instagram, tiktok,  or AI companies from taking labor from workers (artists, writers, etc.) without compensation.

        • Kichae@piefed.caEnglish
          1·
          5 小时前

          It’s also saying that artists’ works shouldn’t be considered personal property. Even as an anarchist, I wouldn’t want people taking my drawings and using them however they wanted without my blessing.

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          4·
          7 小时前

          That is true… but it’s important to remember, I think, that even under a non-capitalist system, people are still going to care about plagiarism and attribution. Recognizing where an idea came from is a basic sign of respect for the effort that goes into creating them, you know?

        • derAbsender@piefed.socialEnglish
          5·
          20 小时前

          IP is a necessary evil under the current system to stop distributors like Instagram, tiktok, or AI companies from taking labor from workers (artists, writers, etc.) without compensation.

          Seemingly this did not work.

          Almost like rules dont apply for the ruling class and the whole IP spiel is just, as pointed out, completely and utterly capitalist.

          And to think that IP laws would prevent the rich from thieving is hilariously naive.

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    151·
    20 小时前

    Art is Imperialist.

    • My ass it is. Giving any degree of power to the commoners, which is what art does, is anti-Imperialist if anything. If anything, AI, which is actively taking power away from the commoners, is the Imperialist thing.
    • beejboytyson@lemmy.world
      6·
      17 小时前

      The art that AI creates is imperialist through capitalism. The only people that use AI art are the ones trying to sell you something. Either it’s a view or a product. Most real artist understand that AI can’t create, it can only emulate.