In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.

AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.

All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!

  • db0
    2•6 months ago

    The concentration of power part is not true unless people keep trying to use copyrights and the legal system to protect themselves from genai, at which point it will be true. Currently there’s plenty of self hosted solutions like stable diffusion and services like the ai horde to help even people without gpu for free

    • pawEnglish
      11•6 months ago

      You are still reliant on the models trained by these companies. This training is very expensive. And yes there are ioen source models exist (thank god) but there are also closed source models that are very successfully advertised.

      And self hosting requires money and skill. This means there is a lot of people who lack both and may then use closed source models.

      • db0
        2•6 months ago

        And self hosting requires money and skill. This means there is a lot of people who lack both and may then use closed source models.

        This is what we’ve mostly to solved with the AI Horde, where we allow people to rely on self-hosted open models.

        • pawEnglish
          6•6 months ago

          This is good news indeed.

          But I see the same problems as with email, chat etc. You can selfhost almost everything. But too few people are doing it. You can use Linux as your Desktop and at least 4% are doing it. Still too few if you ask me.

          And if most of the people keep using the commercial and closed source options over the self hosted one, then I see this concentration of power. Additionally, there is the risk of regulatory capture, where big companies may try to at least hinder self hosting due to (what I consider) made up risks.

          However, its good that there are currently such good open source option. I hope they will grow and become the defacto standard.

          • BeyondWakanda
            4•6 months ago

            @paw @db0
            Exactly, this is just a diversionist argument pretending that just because a theoretical possibility exists the problem can be considered solved in practice - it’s like the decrepti old capitalist argument that “everyone can start their own company” if they don’t like how they’re treated as an employee. No they can’t, not in the real world out there. That only works on paper, i.e. if you ignore the current distribution of resources and privileges in the existing society and economy.

            • db0
              0•6 months ago

              This is not theoretical. It already is in place and is already serving people. The only reason it’s not growing more is because we don’t have any marketing and we don’t participate in the capitalist rot economy.

                • db0
                  1•6 months ago

                  Me: “The system works exactly as advertised for thousands of people”

                  You, a wise person: “The system doesn’t work as advertised because not everyone in the world is using it.”

                  You’re a very unserious person, so I won’t engage further with this nonsense.

          • db0
            4•6 months ago

            But I see the same problems as with email, chat etc. You can selfhost almost everything. But too few people are doing it. You can use Linux as your Desktop and at least 4% are doing it. Still too few if you ask me.

            The system is explicitly setup so that normal people don’t need to set up anything. Experts and enthusiasts are the one doing the complex work, while normies just use a simply client like this and power users can also use more advanced clients.

            And if most of the people keep using the commercial and closed source options over the self hosted one, then I see this concentration of power.

            That’s up to all of us to counter by promoting the good solutions instead, not of just despairing and begging politicians to fix this (they won’t, they’ll promote monopolies instead)

            • pawEnglish
              3•6 months ago

              That’s up to all of us to counter by promoting the good solutions instead, not of just despairing and begging politicians to fix this (they won’t, they’ll promote monopolies instead)

              That was always the case. Having said that, I’ll appreciate your enthusiasm and that you share this work.

    • @[email protected]
      1•6 months ago

      So your gonna solder your own video cards?

      In theory sure, but in practice it’s just gonna give more control to MS and NVidia since they are the ones most people would use.