Migrated from rainynight65@feddit.de, which now appears to be dead. Sadly lost my comment history in the process. Let’s start fresh.

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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2024

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  • Sure, training data selection impacts the output. If you feed an AI nothing but anime, the images it produces will look like anime. If all it knows is K-pop, then the music it puts out will sound like K-pop. Tweaking a computational process through selective input is not the same as a human being actively absorbing stimuli and forming their own, unique response.

    AI doesn’t have an innate taste or feeling for what it likes. It won’t walk into a second hand CD store, browse the boxes, find something that’s intriguing and check it out. It won’t go for a walk and think “I want to take a photo of that tree there in the open field”. It won’t see or hear a piece of art and think “I’d like to be learn how to paint/write/play an instrument like that”. And it will never make art for the sake of making art, for the pure enjoyment that is the process of creating something, irrespective of who wants to see or hear the result. All it is designed to do is regurgitate an intersection of what it knows that best suits the parameters of a given request (aka prompt). Actively learning, experimenting, practicing techniques, trying to emulate specific techniques of someone else - making art for the sake of making art - is a key component to humans learning from others and being influenced by others.

    So the process of human learning and influencing, and the selective feeding of data to an AI to ‘tune’ its output are entirely different things that cannot and should not be compared.


  • Generative AI is not ‘influenced’ by other people’s work the way humans are. A human musician might spend years covering songs they like and copying or emulating the style, until they find their own style, which may or may not be a blend of their influences, but crucially, they will usually add something. AI does not do that. The idea that AI functions the same as human artists, by absorbing influences and producing their own result, is not only fundamentally false, it is dangerously misleading. To portray it as ‘not unethical’ is even more misleading.



  • These people never walk back their bullshit. When called out on it, they will double down. When proven wrong, they will change the topic. But they need to be seen as strong, and right. Admitting that you’re wrong or even apologising is neither - it’s weak, and it can create doubt. If they were wrong about this, then what else are they wrong about?

    They radicalise their followers with lies and falsehoods, and they can only keep that up if they are not seen as being wrong about what they say. They spread their lies with confidence and zeal, and if reality disagrees, then reality is wrong.






  • But do you have to?

    For me, knowing that the artist is a terrible person ruins the art for me, or at least compromises it to the point where I don’t feel comfortable in my skin continuing to peruse it. And that even if I wouldn’t be buying anything new or otherwise be giving the artist money.

    Take as an example Jon Schaffer, head of metal bad Iced Earth, which I liked quite a bit in the past. Later it became clear that he is at least problematic, and once he was identified as having participated in the January 6 riots, that was the end of it. I still own older Iced Earth CDs, but I can’t listen to them any more.

    Or Joss Whedon, whose work I used to love, and I own a lot of DVDs of his stuff. But watching it now knowing what he’s done particularly to many women he worked with just seriously hinders my enjoyment of what I once really liked.



  • I always say: if I’m ever in a situation where I need a job and can only get one with a former employer - do I want them to say “hell yeah” or “hell no”?

    I’ve worked with people who, if they had to ask me for a reference, I would decline to give one. By the same token, I would reject their application for a job in my company or team. And I have worked with the opposite - people who will always under any circumstances get help from me if they’re looking for a job. All the competence in the world doesn’t help if someone is miserable to be around.

    Having contacts, people who are willing to give references and similar always helps. Sure, you can do job hunting hard mode, but why make things unnecessarily difficult?


  • Most of the studies you linked are focused on men. The evidence regarding women is more tenuous.

    Testosterone levels are generally linked to muscle size and strength, as well as higher haemoglobin concentration and thus better oxygen uptake. It has also been associated with more competitiveness in men. In terms of competitiveness, testosterone influences men’s tendency to take more risks, both within and beyond sports.

    There is limited research on how testosterone affects women (or how oestrogen affects men). Men and women generally do not have overlapping ranges of testosterone. In her book Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women, Maggie Mertens writes that averages can mask the great diversity of hormone ranges.

    There isn’t a clear linear relationship between testosterone levels and performance, says Mertens, a journalist focusing on sports and gender. “In fact, a lot of very elite male athletes have pretty low testosterone levels overall on average.” One endocrinology study found low testosterone concentrations in one-quarter of men competing in 12 of the 15 Olympic sports analysed. And Mertens says even women with hyperandrogenism, who can have testosterone levels that reach typical male ranges, don’t have the same level of performance as men.

    Emphases mine.

    https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men


  • You could also argue that historically ( in the west at the very least ) it was partially to stop “women” from competing in “men’s” competitions, not because of a difference in physicality but because of a difference in societal expectations.

    Or sometimes it was just done to stop women from beating men.

    In the 1992 Olympics, a woman won gold in the mixed sex skeet shooting category, beating male competitors.

    In 1996 women were barred from the erstwhile mixed event, but did not get a separate category either. Only from the 2000 Olympics a separate women’s skeet shooting event was established.