This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
To which tribe shall the gift of AI fall?
In a not particularly surprising move, FurAffinity has banned AI content from their website. Ostensible justification is the presence of copied artist signatures in AI artpieces, indicating a lack of authenticity. Ilforte has skinned the «soul-of-the-artist» argument enough and I do not wish to dwell on it.
What's more important, in my view, is what this rejection means for the political future of AI. Previous discussions on TheMotte have demonstrated the polarizing effects of AI generated content — some are deathly afraid of it, others are practically AI-supremacists. Extrapolating outwards from this admittedly-selective community, I expect the use of AI-tools to become a hotly debated culture war topic within the next 5 years.
If you agree on this much, then I have one question: which party ends up as the Party of AI?
My kneejerk answer to this was, "The Left, of course." Left-wingers dominate the technological sector. AI development is getting pushed forward by a mix of grey/blue tribers, and the null hypothesis is that things keep going this way. But the artists and the musicians and the writers and so on are all vaguely left-aligned as well, and they are currently the main reactionary force against AI.
The Grey Tribe.
Even though I don't think the groups who will "control the AI" are best split along the dimensions of colored tribes.
The Red Tribe (RT, Scott's definition) is already hostile to automation in various forms unless it directly makes their work easier or makes them richer. After all they are the tribe that beats the ""they took our jerbs"" drum. I don't think much needs to be said about the RT given they definitely are not in positions to control or influence anything and whatever happens to them will happen. But ultimately I don't see them seetheing about it, they might be the most open minded towards various use cases even though they probably won't be producing any of them.
The Blue Tribe (BT) is in an interesting position because many of the people making the AI are BT but also the people most vehemently opposed to its growth barring Yudhowski et al. are also from the BT. The BT will also inevitably fall into perpetual bickering about the "ethics" of certain implementations and will probably legislate the entire AI tech stack to a point where it is borderline unfeasible to make anything. A lot of failure modes. There is a chance AI gets heavily demonized like Nuclear power by the BT, especially if an application ever slights a protected group in any way shape or form. Also the BT are the ones to lose most status at the helm of AI (look at all those artists shitting and pissing themselves on twitter), so the ground is fertile for AI to become their next biggest enemy.
The relatively cool headed/ emotionless GT and non western nations (China, Israel, Russia) are those most likely to inherent the benefits./ assume control. The GT for obvious reasons and non western nations are not particularly concerned about "bias" in training data. Although they might be prone to other failure modes.
The grey tribe has very little actual power, though. Even if they're the ones pushing the development, the rewards will be reaped by the blue tribe. Just look at how grey tribe preferences got effortlessly pushed aside the moment the blue tribe took an interest in tech
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link