Post AV0fruajraqHq925JI by tb@tldr.nettime.org
 (DIR) More posts by tb@tldr.nettime.org
 (DIR) Post #AUyb8NxxWsEdUR0fuS by CyberneticForests@assemblag.es
       2023-04-24T03:06:55Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       A common defense of AI art is that humans also look at a sea of images and make new images out of them — so how is a machine any different?
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fruajraqHq925JI by tb@tldr.nettime.org
       2023-04-24T12:15:06Z
       
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       @CyberneticForests Is that really a common argument? I've never seen anyone make it. Trying to decide if it's more reasonable than most or just the equivalent of "OH YEAH WELL YOU ARE TOO." Maybe both.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fry5KsI6EfuN3uy by CyberneticForests@assemblag.es
       2023-04-24T12:20:08Z
       
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       @tb It’s a common argument on Twitter everytime I post a thread about AI art with even a hint of nuance to it. A lot of people in computer related fields are literally experts in translating human behavior into automated systems or programs, so this reductive logic — that everything can be reduced (and losslessly, to boot!) — is everywhere.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fs3yoxQSAxRMwb2 by festal@tldr.nettime.org
       2023-04-25T09:47:35Z
       
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       @CyberneticForests @tb This is a fantastic thread. I think is really important to flesh out the differences between ML and human mental processes. It might increase our appreciation of both.  Lots of the AI crowd tries to negate this difference, exactly as you say, by reducing the human to the machine in the sense that "people are stochastic parrots as well." I think this is politically disastrous and artistically boring.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fs4cAb7vevTmMvg by CyberneticForests@assemblag.es
       2023-04-25T11:40:51Z
       
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       @festal @tb Thanks, and yes — starting from a premise that “humans are just machines too” is one of the worst chunks in the soup of politics associated with AI zealotry. It’s sometimes bandied about the chatrooms and reddit spaces as a kind of “NPC logic” — they percieve themselves as complex emotional beings but nobody else.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fs5RZW12tUtpQ36 by tb@tldr.nettime.org
       2023-04-25T11:48:30Z
       
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       @CyberneticForests @festal The flipside, which is really grabbing my attention rn, is how the last few decades really *have* mass-trained people to behave like / understand themselves as robots. Looking back, I think we’ll see how the introduction of these LLMs/etc is less the beginning of something new than the middle a process that’s been going on for quite a while.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fs6yDq6l0ES70a0 by festal@tldr.nettime.org
       2023-04-25T12:03:27Z
       
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       @tb @CyberneticForests historically speaking, automation always started with making people behave like machines, restructuring processes around that, and then, and only then, replacing people by actual machines. The Luddites understood that very clearly. I think there is a parallel to what's happening to mental labor and social interaction more generally. Neoliberal ideology has, quite successfully, implanted the idea that people are nothing more than resource maximizing bots, and that empathy and solidarity are just strategic ruses. Only the elite is granted an inner life, looked after by personalized 'boutique' health care practitioners. I think as a political program, that's doomed to fail. But it will do a lot of damage.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0fsBBUAjk9IkLeoC by tante@tldr.nettime.org
       2023-04-25T12:06:42Z
       
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       @festal @tb @CyberneticForests "Only the elite is granted an inner life,"That's the quote that ties the automation discourse, the "you are all stochastic parrots/NPCs" and capitalism together.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV0gDXm7NJk9Rlfbiy by emenel@post.lurk.org
       2023-04-25T12:10:45Z
       
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       @tante @festal @tb @CyberneticForests this has become a bit of a cliche reference, excuse me if it seems obvious :) … Byung-Chul Han’s Psychopolitics does a good job of pulling together a number of threads from critical theory and saying basically this… as does Jane Bennett’s The Enchantment of Modern Life. Both books I reference a lot when thinking/writing/talking about so-called ‘ai’