In the past year, my thinking on the Morality of generative AI has shifted, and I'm no longer comfortable with uses i once thought were kosher. This Does Not mean that the No-AI people were correct in their arguments or understanding.

Arguments against AI which compare using AI to theft, are still fatally flawed because they rely on a Maximalist concept of Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property was and is a pure creation of the Capitalist Economic System, that has with almost no exceptions, been used to transfer wealth from artists to an idle owner class. Every expansion of IP laws in the last 200 years, has only benefited this Property Owning class at the expense of damn near everyone else. New Copyright laws will not benefit creative/knowledge workers. Those who argue otherwise better pick up Larry Lessig's book on the subject or go read some elfing Corry Doctorow.

I understand that most visual artists see owning the intellectual property as the only sort of leverage they have against the AI companies, and in a more European style intellectual property regime that could be a valid argument. But US copyright law, with few exceptions has always been for sale to the highest bidder. Any reform is likely to be bad for us, and good for AI companies.

As for the other type of typical anti AI argument the one that is largely based on rhetoric about "natural talent"/"skill". Well it flirts with ableism and i ain't got time to educate on why that's dangerous.

Suffice it to say i was once kicked out of a community i helped start by a women who compared my use of AI to fueling my wheelchair with the corpses of dead babies. So let's just say that the disabled community has taken a lot of bovine excerment to the face on this issue, and most of us are extremely reactive on the subject.

So Why?

The argument that convinced me was that AI is doing real harm now, in the real world, because it is teaching people how not to think.

When i was 11 or so, my Mom or Teacher signed me up for this course for kids on "How to use the Library".. Google was still 18months away at that point. We had just switched from card catalog to digital so it was a bit easier, then my older brother and his friends had it. But every step of the Big-6 process forced you to get real down into the earth, with your purpose, and the information you were seeking.

There is none of that with AI, it's just push button, get bacon, for most people. This is likely to produce am even bigger problem with Technological alienation, then we already have. Not to mention increase the speed at which, the deep thinking skills of nearly everyone atrophy.

My second reason is that AI is likely to aid the Capitalists in yet more transfer of wealth upward, and as an anarchist I can't abide that.

Some of my beta readers on this post suggested I should go more deeply into the ecological argument against AI. While i am aware of it, and agree that it should be taken up by someone. I don't have the spoons to research/write about it at the moment.

What now?

Now that the evidence, i consider sufficant to make a moral judgement has arrived. I move forward with my new understanding.

This site will still contain some AI images, i will replace them as time and resources permit. New posts will have creative commons images via Unsplash and a few other sources.

That 88x31 button will appear on all posts which were either ai free to begin with or on which the cleanup process has been completed.

Greetz

Thanks as always go to the tilde.town irc chat. Particularly Elly, and Xe Iaso's Patron Discord shout out to Layl