Everyone here is either on the side of hating big AI companies or hating IP law. I proudly hate both.

I have a question about if I’m allowed to be here. Here’s my stance:

• As a CS person, I find the algorithms that run AI intellectually interesting.
• The way AI is being used as a society, to put people out of work and replace human-made work with slop, is very very bad. (I support the sag-aftra strikers.)
• I think it’s especially bad that artists are being put out of work, and that big companies think that copyright should protect mickey mouse and not starving artists. This is where most of my “fuck AI” drive comes from.
• I think AI could in the future be made to not be slop, with some future new algorithms, but we’re not there yet. It’s not theoretically impossible or anything though. Doomer opinion: if AI actually becomes as powerful as the boosters say it will be, then it could be an x-risk for humanity. I’m not saying that to make AI sound really impressive, I just think we need to be cautious about it.
• Currently, LLMs are sometimes useful, but only in the right context and when used properly. For instance, AI is pretty good at NLP. It’s also useful for explaining opaque C++ error messages. It’s not useful for ghiblification or summarizing search results or whatever it is Altman is trying to peddle. It might be able to help with protein folding and other pharmaceutical research.
• The biggest reason that AI is bad is because capitalism is bad. Without capitalism, we could focus on the actually good uses of AI.