Post B47wRQ0RX3AfWmcwT2 by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B47wRPlYQPGGmbf3GC by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
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       RE: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116206874904164848I always bring up auto-captioning as a (non-LLM) technology that is probably a net-win for accessibility, but that still led to Youtube ending up with *WORSE* closed captioning, because as soon as they got machine transcription, they dropped community transcription options.Adding machine transcription to Youtube led to a local maximum where community options that often resulted in better transcriptions are now unavailable and everything is kind of meh.RT: https://mastodon.social/users/Gargron/statuses/116206874904164848
       
 (DIR) Post #B47wRQ0RX3AfWmcwT2 by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
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       I have also mildly criticized Mastodon over this with its AI alt text features. They're not an LLM, and they're probably good for accessibility, but their existence has hobbled alt text on the platform.We could have better community alt text controls on Mastodon, and I think part of the reason we don't is because of a mentality that accessibility is just like a chore we have to solve.And I think the AI stuff helps reinforce that, a bit.
       
 (DIR) Post #B47wRQCqmv609GQqo4 by Gargron@mastodon.social
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       @foxyoreos Mastodon does not have an AI alt text feature. You may be thinking of some third party apps.
       
 (DIR) Post #B47wRQLMHHtwZePe4G by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
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       I don't want the OCR stuff removed! But I do think that like.. there's a warning here, and it comes up every time we try to automate accessibility.Accessibility is a community effort, and tools that can alleviate the burden are helpful, but are not a substitute for human interaction and effort.And many accessibility spaces are under-developed *because of these tools*. We could have a "boost with alt text" option on Mastodon.
       
 (DIR) Post #B47wdGyOwTGIzIKBpQ by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
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       @Gargron is the OCR stuff not merged into the main platform?Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the feature. And apologies if I'm making it sound like it's the same thing as like "auto describe this image", which is a *much* heavier AI use.
       
 (DIR) Post #B48BoIlc7017353o4e by mkljczk@fediverse.pl
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       @Gargron @foxyoreos if neural network-based OCR is not example of AI, then what does this word even mean?
       
 (DIR) Post #B48BoIvXW5xNXrhjXs by Gargron@mastodon.social
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       @mkljczk @foxyoreos AI is a marketing term and functionally useless. It means whatever big tech wants it to mean. I studied neural networks at university back in 2013, before there was even a whiff of a large language model. OCR was described in books from 2001.
       
 (DIR) Post #B48BoJ7EobJY89B4mO by foxyoreos@mastodon.social
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       @Gargron @mkljczk I do think there's value in distinguishing between OCR, a technology almost as old as I am, and full-on image transcription. I'm used to using the term AI for both, but I don't have any objection to anypony else using a different term and I understand why Gargon would want to distinguish them.