No matter what it is, no matter how rude, egregious, or illegal, there is always going to be some creature crouched at the periphery ready to materialize downthread to prostrate themselves before arbitrary corporate dominion.
I'm always reticent to fully engage in "The Dialogue," regardless of its momentary configuration. It's a smoothie made from shibboleths; you have to be able to detect them at only a few parts per million because once these things metastasize, they stop being about whatever they were about and instead become increasingly loud recitations of various catechisms and loyalty oaths. The term "centrist" had to become profane because such people won't wade into this arena to be sorted easily into friend or foe, so "enemy" by default will have to do. Politically, I'm an absolutely wackadoodle leftist. I just don't think those conversations materially constitute politics or activism. They barely constitute a conversation. I went to an old school tent revival once. That's what they feel like.
Eventually in these AI conversations you get into the midboss, Regional Manager-type smarty pants who says something like "they didn't steal from artists or writers, they merely trained the system on that data." Something this job has taught me - something I have had to learn - is when to let a statement like that pass over me and through me. Engaging with a cognitive bioweapon like this requires special equipment. The safest scenario is that I'd never seen it all. But now we're here.
If my interlocutor isn't prepared to make any distinctions between a human being and a machine designed to mimic one, I think that I can't meaningfully discuss this with them. I hate that this is the case; it must be seen as a personal failing. I can't do it, though. These models aren't people. They don't know anything. They don't want anything. They don't need anything. I won't privilege it over a person. And I certainly won't privilege its master.
Set aside any consideration for who might have made that machine, or who might have control over it, or why, exactly, our corporate lords are salivating so freely at the prospects, mouths open, their shirts wet with spit. Set aside that in any discussion of training models or "data," which is to say the art I have made with my friends for decades, we and so many others would clearly be the aggrieved party - webcomics artists make up a fascinating number of names on that list. This is presumably because their unlicensed and until recently unrecognized "training data" - that is to say, their protected works - were just laying around, accessible online, not doing anything. Thank God someone made a demon to devour all of those useless human hopes and desires.
(CW)TB out.
