The one used in this thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12973939
Mind you, I didn’t set out to deceive anyone. It was more of a “why call attention to it” thing. It’s probably the only time I’ve posted anything AI where I didn’t explicitly call attention to it as AI. But I’ve learned in the times I did do that here that some person or other would be upset, pretty much no matter what the content was of what I posted.
I figured, one of the primary complaints about AI generated images, is essentially that they look like they’re trying to look professional but make basic errors. Which I think is a fair criticism. So I thought, what if I use stick figures. That’s closer to meme level of illustration and expectations are lower for it, so if some basic mistakes exist, that’s par for the course.
I did write the text itself as rhetoric and fictional conversation, but I didn’t draw any of the image, nor did I place the text in the image. It was received extremely well for a lemmygrad post. I’m sure it is easily the most upvoted post I’ve ever made. I don’t know what made it work so well, maybe the commonness of issues with landlords, but I can only guess as the responses didn’t tell me much about the why.
One person did say “Ai stickfigures?” which surprised me a bit. I didn’t think it looked overtly AI genned. But I asked them “why do you ask?” because I wanted to be sure whether it was confrontational or sincere interest in where it came from. They never responded, so I’m not sure.
But anyway, the fact that it was AI somehow didn’t prevent it from seemingly resonating with people. I never would have drawn any such image on my own. I could make an attempt, but it would probably look like a child’s fridge drawing and I would have especially struggled with the vividness of the facial expressions, which was where I sought to do the contrast between the feigned victimhood followed by literal mustache twirling villain. Caricature, but gets the point across.
Given how I’ve seen some react on here, I can’t help but think it would have been a shitshow if I’d called attention to it being AI generated or if it had been drawn in such a way that it looked stereotypically “AI”. Instead, as of posting this, it totaled at 111 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
It’s always hard to tell the impact things have in a virtual forum, but with the limited metrics I have to go by, it went really well. And I didn’t draw a pixel of it. This paints a picture for me that the issue with AI generated content in these spaces is not when it’s AI generated but when people believe that it is. But people can believe something is even when it isn’t. Or in this case, likely assume it isn’t when it is. Maybe I’m wrong and the 100+ people who upvoted thought “AI” and upvoted anyway, but given how things usually go here, I doubt it.
I hope no one takes this as trickery or something. Having seen more recent angst on here relating to AI, I thought calling attention to this is an opportunity to make a point. When I went to make that image, it was mainly about seeing what kind of effective agitprop I could make with AI. Maybe knowing this explicitly will inspire some people to think more about how they can use it too, beyond the hated stereotypes, with thoughtfulness of design put into it. I am still determined to aid in strategic thought and practice, no matter how much mud is slung. Liberation demands it of me.
You’re right to be mad about a lot of things. Help me help you be mad at the right people in a way that will change the world for the better.
or if it had been drawn in such a way that it looked stereotypically “AI”
Well that’s half the problem, isn’t it? If something “looks” AI that’s actually just another way to say it looks like shit.
Personally, I don’t care if people generate AI images for forum slop. But if it looks like shit, it looks like shit.
Look, people hate AI. No matter how you spin it, they hate it, and it won’t stop anytime soon, no matter what you use it for. I don’t particularly personally care if you use AI to make a couple stick figures but I can tell you that the average worker does. I haven’t met a single proletarian yet who hasn’t despised AI and AI companies. Everyone I’ve met who’s had positive views on it has been labor aristocracy. This is for a very good reason. LLMs are actively being used to ruin proletarians’ lives by causing their wages to decrease, by building datacenters near them and affecting their health and well-being, in many cases even by affecting their livelihood in some other way through collateral damage, and in any number of other ways.
Of course, the post being AI isn’t preventing it from resonating if people don’t know it’s AI, but you’re missing the point entirely. The thing that makes people upset isn’t the output not being perfect, it’s the very fact that you used and supported a tool that’s being used to ruin workers’ lives in order to agitate about something else that ruins workers’ lives. It’s not that it doesn’t resonate, it’s that by using and supporting AI, such as by normalizing the use of AI, you directly betray the working class. That’s why you see such a violently negative response to your use of AI.
I personally know many people who have left this very community for the sole reason that there’s too much use of AI and too many people here are pro-AI. You are actively driving workers away. You are not helping.
Using AI for agitprop defeats the entire purpose. Sure, in this case, most people can’t tell, but if and when the workers you’re trying to reach find out what you’ve made is AI, either because someone can tell (and it is possible to tell) or because someone ran it through a signature detector, they will no longer trust you, and your AI-generated agitprop will at best lose effectiveness and at worst have the opposite effect.
Especially in a case like this with stick figures, I have to ask why? What’s the point of using AI here when stick figures like this don’t take much effort to create in a program like GIMP? Why jeopardize the potential trust workers might have in you in order to save at most a couple hours?
Why jeopardize the potential trust workers might have in you in order to save at most a couple hours?
I mean, first of all, I don’t believe that the working class as a whole is going to be put off from commies because of AI use. Your anecdotal evidence does not sync up with mine. In my real life, whenever AI comes up, opinions tend to be mixed at worse and I recall one educator who was even fascinated to learn from me about the basics of how LLMs work.
But regarding the people who are put off, as many people have pointed out rather well over the years in relation to other issues, ceding to the reaction in order to get their trust does not further a communist revolutionary movement. This is fairly obvious to people when we’re talking about a thing like racism, but apparently when it’s AI, it’s harder to grasp. The job of commies is not to go along with whatever is popular or unpopular and cede to its energy and level of education. That’s how you become a reformist who is part of the system in the best case scenario, if not chasing the coattails of fascists. For example, with racism, we aren’t gonna worry because a racist will be put off by us saying no racism. But we’re also going to emphasize they’re blaming the wrong people when they are told to be racist; that them being exploited as a worker is real, that living cost problems are real, but that XYZ group is being scapegoated.
Similarly, our task with AI is to acknowledge, and help with, the real exploitation coming from automation and its “AI” forms, but within this, it will not make us anything closer to a vanguard to simply go along with however people feel about AI and whoever they blame.
This is an argument I’d agree with if I didn’t see AI as nothing more than a mere convenience that not only isn’t required for anything, but actually sometimes makes things more difficult.
Essentially, from my point of view, its benefits are not remotely close to outweighing its downsides.
I’m not saying I’d otherwise use AI but people hate it so I won’t. I’m saying AI is not beneficial to anything overall, and at most it’ll save me a couple hours, so why would I ever use it, especially when it drives people away?
I just feel flabbergasted reading this kind of thing. Do people swear off using GPS too? Youtube because it uses algorithms to recommend videos? What is so different about generative AI that invalidates it to the point of disregarding it as having any possible benefit? Because some silicon valley billionaires swear by it?
I mean, the evidence is undeniable that AI has benefits, including generative AI.
Furthermore, framing it as “mere convenience” vs. “requirement” is an argument that I sincerely doubt would hold up for you, or most people who hate AI, if applied to other things. You would essentially be having to live a monk’s life, where you reject the material in favor of the spiritual, for it to have any consistency rejecting something because it is “mere convenience” instead of required.
That it sometimes makes things more difficult is not without parallel to other types of automation. There are times I’ve used GPS where the timing of the instructions and the delivery of them were so poor that I got more frustrated and confused than I probably would have if I’d just tried to read some directions beforehand and pay attention to road signs. At the same time, it has been enormously useful when I’m in a wholly unfamiliar area and have no idea where to go. If I were to say GPS sucks and throw it out because it doesn’t always go in my favor, that’d be absurd.
That silicon valley hucksters promise the world with AI does not mean that when it fails to deliver the world, it’s total shit. It means they’re full of shit for saying any piece of technology is a panacea. It doesn’t invalidate what the technology actually is capable of underneath that.
AI does have benefits, especially in things like protein folding and the like. I have no problem with it being used for that. LLMs and generative AI have benefits too, just not ones significant enough to outweigh their drawbacks. I do hate how much AI is now used to specifically mean generative AI and I’m sorry for making that mistake myself.
Of course I use GPS, because GPS has drawbacks, but they’re negligible compared to the benefits. Generative AI provides barely any benefit (though not zero) while carrying immense drawbacks that I refuse to dismiss, and those drawbacks are not nearly worth the benefits for me. If your calculation yields a different result, feel free to use it, but don’t complain when you publicize the output and get backlash.
If a use case is found where generative AI genuinely has a lot of benefit and few drawbacks (or at least benefits that outweigh the drawbacks), I would have no problem with it being used for that, but I would continue to have a problem with it being used for other things.
it’s the very fact that you used and supported a tool that’s being used to ruin workers’ lives in order to agitate about something else that ruins workers’ lives.
The internet is used every day in service of ruining workers’ lives, yet we’re still on it. This is just the basic “it’s tainted” purist argument that makes no sense in actual practice.
^
I was on lemmy.ml mostly and came here for a change. I was shocked to see the state of AI output acceptance. I struggle to find how it is remotely compatible with Marxist analysis of labor at all. As you say, using it for this sort of stuff defeats the whole purpose in my eyes.
I guess the reason people didn’t notice is because the idea of AI generating a stickman comic instead of just drawing it is so comical it wasn’t worth considering
I genuinely laughed out loud when I followed the link and it was stick figures, at least one person still noticing anyway and saying something is the cherry on top.
I have no idea what AI tool you used, but some AI tools will watermark images, which brings the potential risk of deanonymizing whoever wrote the prompt by state level actors.
Fair point to bring up, if that’s how some services are doing it now. The one I used does not do any kind of watermarking that could be linked back to an individual though; not unless the user were to actively put identifying information in the prompt itself and then leave the metadata intact (which would be frighteningly bad opsec).
this is very important for peeps.
Its pretty obviously AI. But I’m an artist for a living so I don’t know how much my expertise plays into that. But I saw it and didn’t care to start beef about it. I didn’t send it to anyone.
In my experience people who are still pro AI at this point are pretty difficult to have a conversation with about it. Both Comrades and non comrades. I usually compare AI to microwave food because yeah…its food but its not great and people usually prefer handmade. Even if we take it as a tool for the proletariat, the problem is that AI as it exists is in the hands of the bourgeois, as such its used to their advantage and not ours. We ultimately can’t create LLM’s to the same extent without a massive amount of organizing that is going to require a government structure. For now, AI is mostly used as a tool by bourgeois to obfuscate truth and reality which are enemies to Marxists. Even if I can tell images that are AI, I wouldn’t be able to tell other uses, and it’d be foolish to assume nobody would believe such images to be reality. Even without knowledge of programming I can see the applications, mods, and games I’ve tried that have AI are extremely buggy.
I see AI as more of an enemy of the Marxist movement than a tool. The working class loathes AI because of its low quality and attempts to use it to destabilize their lives. Both in mass producing evidence for lies and in replacing their jobs and livelihoods. Even If AI is not able to do so, bourgeois are stuck in idealism. Not to mention a good chunk of the infrastructure for AI is for surveilling against resistance to the state.
In any case, the point is. Most people aren’t going to interface with your AI content in the first place. Much like people who see an AI restaurant sign and identify it aren’t going inside in the first place, let alone informing of the creator/user of the AI content. I’m sure you could make agitation propaganda with it that will sell people unaffected by or unable to spot AI. But many people have a negative association with AI and associate it with bourgeois violence. I saw the image, and I did not share it for its low quality and clear AI content. It actually swayed me, a Marxist, to not share the propaganda.
I promise you, the worst most shitty drawn stick figure image will be better, on account of effecting both parties. Those who are fine with AI and those who are not. Most people actually really like poorly created material. It’s somehow both ironic and genuine.
I bolded messages for ease of reading.
This is all well and good except for the fact that it did really well as an upvoted image. That goes for bobs_guns response too. It seems to me that you were mistaken to not try sharing it given how well it did. This stubborn insistence that AI can’t be helpful because it’s being used for bad a lot in the face of a data point that it can work well just boggles my mind, frankly. Guns are a perfect example of something that is “associated with bourgeois violence”. Very viscerally. Not in the abstract, not by having to explain how exactly they get used in a way that can be called violent. Guns are made to kill, no vaguery about it. Yet even then. Even then successful revolutionaries in history have not gone “guns are evil and tainted and we must be pacifist and work to get guns banned to solve the problems of the world.”
If something being associated with the oppressor means we can’t use it, then liberation is impossible. Or we can decide that how something gets used is more important than what it is and stop pretending liberation is about being a pure soul in a fallen world.
There is still a lot of room for survivorship bias in this singular statistical analysis. You’d need to know how many people even saw it, and compare to many other cases to find a trend. I think u are jumping the gun, so to speak.
Guns can be owned and all processes to maintain it either through theft in systems without gun ownership or by capitalists selling it in systems with gun ownership. They actually are a pretty good example of a tool, but you don’t show up to a housing Union day 1 with an assault rifle. You’d scare people away, unwilling to even engage with you. The whole point is driving engagement and conversation in this case rather than utilizing the gun. It’s not the proper use for the tool.
Using AI you don’t actually own the means to produce it, it requires immense infrastructure to be constructed or taken and held which isn’t super useful for guerilla movements. Not to mention the large amount of resources. I’m sure it would have some use, but art is not it. Art is already fairly easy to make, I’d argue at this time especially. Many people not only value homemade, but poor quality memes. It’s like the whole point behind soyjacks is that they look bad. There is a negative association with AI with a lot of people and those who are able to identify it especially will not engage. Especially artists who you would want…for making higher quality propaganda. Like using AI is all well and good but with proper artists making propaganda its inevitably going to end up more enticing and effective.
I gave my anecdotal experience as an example that others like me exist and probably acted similarly. Hell there’s a ton of trending memes right now about “If your event has AI assets I’m not going to it” trending in liberal spaces. If we tried to advertise a communist event with language that would normally appeal to them but replace it with AI vs art made by a proper artist we would immediately see a difference just from this.
To properly run the experiment you should have had a control and ran several trails over several websites. Instead you assumed the outcome and performed the experiment expecting the outcome and haven’t ran a very convincing argument. Yeah I’m sure AI can be effective at stuff, but as an artist, who works with customers, hobbyists and professionals in a variety of creative activities (DnD, Furries, Anime, books, craftsmen, Fan content, etc. ) AI is not viewed positively in creative spaces. Many communities even have a ban on posting anything AI and if its found out it must be removed from the space. It’s not going to let your meme get very far that way. In creative communities its heavily associated with scamming. It’s much like how you wouldn’t send mass emails to get people to donate to your campaign. Sure you’ll get some people donating, but most people will associate it with spam/scams.
I’m not sure the amount of upvotes it got, I was pretty sure it only got 60 which is about average on this site but it seems to be at 112 and so I’m not sure if I’m misremembering. However another meme which is here; https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12780428 It’s drawn very poorly, it lacks any nuance and just has direct information on the shirts of individuals to convey the message, there’s barely any interesting element to it. Yet it has over 120 upvotes. Because people like it at least to a comparable degree. Not because It’s the best art in the world or particularly revolutionary. From this comparison alone you can find that simply making low quality images, which doesn’t have a chance of alienating the target audience, is already comparable.
None of this stops you, make the AI art if you like. Make as much of it as you are willing. Arguing about quality or effectiveness in reaching an audience is a different burden all together. One I’d argue is not met. I’m not WRONG for disliking it. I’m not incorrect for failing to share it despite others doing such. Its just poor quality in my eyes and I preferred sharing better quality memes with those I know. Especially considering those I know and advertise do, do not like AI. While I’m sure dislike for AI has gained ground among reactionary voices. My dislike, nor any other, isn’t inherently reactionary. I don’t like many designs and tools for being poor quality.
AI isn’t inherently violent in the first place; the way in which it impacts relations to the means of production, creates alienation, and so on, has a violent character, but this does not mean AI is the cause itself, any more than a printing press is. If it was the cause, the worldview takeaway would not be marxism-leninism, but something more like trying
Guns aren’t actually the same as AI. I made the comparison to say that even in the extreme case of guns as something that are fundamentally violent, it’s still not something to say is icky because “it is associated with bourgeois violence”, which was an argument you were making about AI. Digging into time and place of when is appropriate to use something and when is not is a whole different conversation. AI isn’t inherently violent in the first place; the way in which it impacts relations to the means of production, creates alienation, and so on, has a violent character, but this does not mean AI is the cause itself, any more than a printing press is. If it was the cause, the worldview takeaway would not be marxism-leninism, but something more like trying to turn back the clock on industrial development.
This is the crux of how marxist arguments about AI tend to go. Yes, there are valid things to dislike about it. No, you don’t have to use it in organizing or propaganda, much less in your daily life (unless the capitalists are making you). But also, most of what you dislike about it goes back to systemic issues, not the technology itself. However, if we can look at how organized capital uses it and see that it’s doing something impactful (even if negative) that should tell us something about the potential of the technology. From there, it’s a question of whether we can also use it, without using it in a way that has a barbaric, reactionary character. If we look at the hatred of it and say “well it’s not viable because people hate it”, we’re ceding to reaction. We could as well say the same about communism itself. It is widely hated, in part because of virulent anti-communist campaigns. Does this mean we should abandon attempts to educate people in communism?
If we tried to advertise a communist event with language that would normally appeal to them but replace it with AI vs art made by a proper artist we would immediately see a difference just from this.
Already people are witchhunting about things that are supposedly made with AI, regardless of whether there is evidence that they actually are. This is an unsustainable and reactionary place for things to be in. Again, ceding to this gets us nowhere. Part of our job is, and has always been, education. We’re not better than the masses or something, but we also aren’t there to just go along to get along with whatever the common position of the moment is.
To properly run the experiment you should have had a control and ran several trails over several websites. Instead you assumed the outcome and performed the experiment expecting the outcome and haven’t ran a very convincing argument.
You’re putting much more weight on it than I ever tried to do. It wasn’t much of an experiment in the first place. It is a single data point that I am pointing at as one after the fact and I even emphasized in my own original post “It’s always hard to tell the impact things have in a virtual forum”. I find it odd that scientific rigor is being expected of what boils down to me saying that AI may be helpful sometimes and here’s a data point supporting that. Basically to encourage marxists who are skeptical or hateful toward AI to consider if it can have use cases beyond their existing views on it. When I said to you, “It seems to me that you were mistaken to not try sharing it given how well it did.” That was in direct response to you saying, “I saw the image, and I did not share it for its low quality and clear AI content.”
Not only did you not know for sure that it was AI at that point, calling it low quality when memes often would be considered low quality is interesting. As is claiming low quality when the evidence shows that it did well in spite of said alleged low quality. That’s why I put it so strongly as a reversal of your statement. I’m not saying you should use AI all the time. I’m saying that your arguments against this particular image and its posting make no sense in the face of the evidence. The burden of proof is not on me to thoroughly test AI images across a variety of websites to refute your claims that it sucks because “it’s low quality” (an attribute that could easily be applied to most memes).
I’m trying to encourage people to try things, instead of assuming they won’t work.
I never argued AI was violent. Most of what I’ve been talking about has been anecdotal information to give a viewpoint as to why one would not share it. I still share marxist memes of course. The existence of AI memes did not detract from the propaganda I share and make. I simply did not share the AI work. Much like a professional cook doesn’t serve scraps or freeze “easy make” dishes.
I’m a professional artist, I make art for people I make propaganda. I state this again because this influences many of the relations I have. Sharing other creators content as well. AI, no matter how one wishes it to be, carries a vibe of low-quality and association with capitalists. When attempting to revolutionize the proletariat through art one considers such things in the act of creating it. You don’t make a poster of workers wearing fascist like uniforms to encourage them to rise up against capitalists. You manipulate the medium and context to your advantage.
I still argue that AI is a honeypot for the proletariat. Its ultimately controlled by the bourgeois and we cannot comparably replicate it without already having succeeded at our revolution. It’s not effective for education, agitation, or organizing.
It presents false information, its loathed by the public, and frequently makes errors. It can be used as a tool, but not as a replacement for a proper one in my opinion. While yes you do want to educate the masses, you must be able to reach them to start. Ultimately art is a very superficial and unimportant thing to demand we use AI or lose the revolution. If anything I’d prefer we use the reaction towards AI to further workers protections against capitalists, as most AI movements seem to do. We are only failing to use this to a wider movement rather than just creators who mainly exist outside the relationship between the proletariat and capitalist.
I might be biased, but it’s not that difficult to use premade assets or create your own to make effective propaganda. In any case, use what you will. In the end we both make propaganda for agitation and reach different audiences with it anyway.
I never argued AI was violent
Well you did say this:
But many people have a negative association with AI and associate it with bourgeois violence.
So yes, that is not the same as saying it is violent, but it is implying that it has associations with violence that need to be ceded to, when said as a reason not to use it in agitprop.
Most of what I’ve been talking about has been anecdotal information to give a viewpoint as to why one would not share it. I still share marxist memes of course. The existence of AI memes did not detract from the propaganda I share and make. I simply did not share the AI work. Much like a professional cook doesn’t serve scraps or freeze “easy make” dishes.
I’m a professional artist, I make art for people I make propaganda. I state this again because this influences many of the relations I have. Sharing other creators content as well.
I don’t deny you that experience. I would like to emphasize, though, that I’m not a professional artist and can’t call on you any time I have an idea for messaging (and why would you want to make ideas I have in the first place, unless you have an established relationship with me in organizing where we work together on art and messaging).
Based on how you describe the circles you run in, it sounds like memes wouldn’t go over well either. That’s fine. Being aware of who your audience is and what’s effective with them is important. That said, in my observation, the broader western internet landscape is one in which professional looking imagery is not that important. The meme culture shows that.
I would also emphasize that for professional illustrators, there are some out there (though they may be reluctant to admit it for fear of getting publicly crucified) who have figured out ways to use image gen as a part of their workflow, making them faster and more effective at what they make, without actually doing all the work for them.
You don’t make a poster of workers wearing fascist like uniforms to encourage them to rise up against capitalists. You manipulate the medium and context to your advantage.
I’m not really sure where this line is coming from. Especially when I emphasized, “From there, it’s a question of whether we can also use it, without using it in a way that has a barbaric, reactionary character.” Given there is nothing stopping us from using the tech to help with messaging that has a revolutionary character, I don’t see how this translates into encouraging fascism.
I still argue that AI is a honeypot for the proletariat. Its ultimately controlled by the bourgeois and we cannot comparably replicate it without already having succeeded at our revolution. It’s not effective for education, agitation, or organizing.
In capitalist states, the internet is largely controlled by the bourgeoisie as a class. But we still try to use it, in spite of knowing they have the advantage and that they can screw around with the most influential platforms at the drop of a hat. I don’t see how honeypot is an appropriate word here at all. It seems clear to me that the capitalists are deeply serious about trying to use AI to replace and further control people. Their implementation of it gravitates toward that goal. The threat is real, but it didn’t begin with AI. If we go with a narrative that AI is uniquely bad, we are, in effect, denying the history of automation that has led to what gets called “AI”. I don’t see how it can be good for the education and class consciousness of the working class if we go along with that as the narrative.
I would argue it’s an opportunity to tune people into the history of automation as a whole and how it ties into marxist concepts on labor relations and production. Joining in with hatred of AI does not in itself make anyone more conscious of where their exploitation stems from and why.
So yes, that is not the same as saying it is violent, but it is implying that it has associations with violence that need to be ceded to, when said as a reason not to use it in agitprop. Unfortunately art content and creation directly relate to its relationship and engagement with other people. So in this instance I would argue its relation to agitprop is limited by this relationship. I gave an example here: You don’t make a poster of workers wearing fascist like uniforms to encourage them to rise up against capitalists. You manipulate the medium and context to your advantage. I’m trying to say how a medium and its content is related to these relationships, conveys specific messages. There are many who accept that Pepe is part of an alt right movement. Of course not everyone will know this, but those that do will see its use in memes and associate it with alt right. regardless of the attempted portrayal of it. Art exists as a relationship with other art. AI exists, not in a vacuum, but in a relation to the tools that bourgeois use to oppress the working class. Things like; replacement of jobs, surveillance, state propaganda, misinformation, disruptions in education, scamming, etc. Play a distinct role in how AI is perceived. When you are trying to infiltrate a system that is made up of these relations they need to be taken into account for the intended message to be communicated.
I’d argue theres a lot of things that distinguish AI from typical advancements. One of which being the Data centers are incredibly intrusive and nobody wants to be near them. Driving up cost of living, polluting local environment, providing little to no benefit to the region. This is perfect territory to agitate people into disenchantment with Capitalism and it actually has succeed as such in my local area as well as other contacts I have. You’d do far better to agitate on these lines than most AI generated images anyway. While it’s hard to quantify, I believe proper practice like that also agitates more people than paper propaganda.
I call it a honeypot because its much like the large democratic socialist groups in america like DSA being a honey pot for revolutionary movement to fizzle out into reformism, AI ultimately is divisive, impractical for most applications, and actually effects many peoples livelihoods in a variety of ways. Yet there’s a weird insistence among some that if you dislike AI you’re a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.
AI does paint class lines very clearly, the ones forcing its adoption upon the working class, the heavy investments, the fear over a “investment bubble”, the interfering with local government to push its creation, its use for data collection for surveillance, etc. Hell even conservatives and liberals are taking arms against flock cameras. It’s not like most of us can create surveillance networks that connect with the histories of people that interface with it. I do not argue AI is uniquely “bad” as a tool. But its showing contradictions very acutely and we’d be foolish to not act on this line, just for the sake of using text instead of a pen for making a meme.
The rampant data centers are a good example of capital building out a bubble as part of consistent boom and bust cycles, instead of only doing what is needed to increase quality of life. That’s the kind of thing I keep trying to bring it back to.
Yet there’s a weird insistence among some that if you dislike AI you’re a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.
I’m wondering if you read the article somebody else gave you to read (granted, it is kinda long) because the history of Luddites has nothing to do with being bourgeoisie collaborators and the article does briefly touch on the history of them (I think near the end IIRC). Luddites are commonly misunderstood as anti-industrial or anti-technology, when they were something more like militant resistance to misuse of automation.
So it would be a pretty confused criticism to say someone is a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.
If I have given that impression, then I only have to scratch my head as to how. Perhaps you are thinking of the analysis that certain of artists as artisans resist AI because of it “proletarianizing” them more so. Personally, I don’t think that analysis is wrong, but it’d also be fair to say that it’s only a sliver of what’s going on overall. People who hate flock cameras, for example, are obviously having issues that go beyond “AI art”.
I call it a honeypot because its much like the large democratic socialist groups in america like DSA being a honey pot for revolutionary movement to fizzle out into reformism, AI ultimately is divisive, impractical for most applications, and actually effects many peoples livelihoods in a variety of ways.
From this standpoint, I’d argue that if anything counts as a honeypot, it’s the copyright-related anti-AI movement (which I’m pretty sure has had big business ties going on in it). I would say we need to distinguish the anti-AI movement that is organizing against data centers or breaking flock cameras as something distinct from the other one, even if there may be some overlap, since one is more related to artists as artisans and the other is more about people seeing direct infrastructural intrusion in their communities. Though even then, if neither one translates into class conscious organization, then what would it head to other than reforms?
This is perfect territory to agitate people into disenchantment with Capitalism and it actually has succeed as such in my local area as well as other contacts I have. You’d do far better to agitate on these lines than most AI generated images anyway. While it’s hard to quantify, I believe proper practice like that also agitates more people than paper propaganda.
I don’t really disagree, but this seems like it’s moving the goalposts a bit. My argument has never been that AI is better than in-person organizing. It’s more just a barebones call for people to not dismiss it out of hand and hate it on sight regardless of the form it takes. Hating flock cameras and polluting, water-hogging data centers as part of a capital-driven bubble is valid. Witchhunting images or text posted on the internet is not. Recognizing the current implementation of AI by capitalists as largely bad is valid. Translating that to resisting giving it a chance as a tool that can aid the working class in its struggle is not.
If one is already doing really well in organizing without it and doesn’t see the point in putting energy into trying it, I don’t even object to that. But if they’re struggling, as many are, why wouldn’t they give it a chance? Because it can be taken away? So can most things under the dictatorship of capital. Because its origins are tainted? So are most tools under the dictatorship of capital. Because it has jank? No tool is without a learning curve to get better results out of it than just picking it up and doing whatever.
I’m an artist for a living
I implore you to read what I said.
This is irrelevant except that I’m an artist. I’m not arguing for the “Soul” of human made work. I’m not arguing for copyright I actually despise most forms of copyright law. I’m not arguing that AI “erodes” Artists market share.
Although an argument could be made on my suggestion that the working class has a negative attitude due to the destabilization of their lives as a result of AI. I was referring to audience perception. I’m not arguing for the “Morality” of AI. I’m describing reasons as to why it has a negative reception among working class people. And that the state can make far more effective use of it than any proletarian movement. Once the dictatorship of the proletariat is in place, it’ll be just as useful I’m sure.
The idea that artists are incapable of being revolutionary and are subsumed by the bourgeois in the essay is laughable. Artists, being artisans, do not exploit others for their labor value. While I agree with a fair bit of this article it itself is forming odd ideas over artists that I think will be found to be a mistake. but it goes beyond the discussion here.
It’s not laughable at all. Artisanal artists own their own means of production, they are not proletarian, but petit bourgeois.
It’s why memes came to be in the first place. Memes are more relatable than any other form of media, and it’s because they are being made by fellow proletarians, who cannot afford to put days of labor into a funny picture.
If artists were proletarian, there would have been no need for memes.
Artists are petty bourgeois. Amusingly once one knows the basics of dialectical materialism its pretty easy to parse and I did so in my studies when I was learning of how proletariatization comes to artisans. It actually drove me to find a career in this to be in control of my means of production. This was even prior to AI’s large popularity boom. When I use the term artists I think I’m being far more liberal than most. I think a distinction should be made.
“Professional artists” more adequately fill this position. However, because anyone can create inherently and its a form of expression. I’ve been interpreting and using “artist” to mean anyone who makes anything, including memes. A “creative” probably defines better what I was referring to and I wont interpret these such a way again.
Ultimately however petty bourgeois is a subcategory that explains certain groups tendency to capitalist idealism over working class consciousness, despite they themselves not taking part in wage exploitation(or of course smaller business owners but this isn’t the focus here.).
I mention the part implying artists are bourgeois collaborators as being laughable because I’m heavily involved in punk culture. Nearly all artists I know are Anarchist, Marxist, or at minimum hate capitalism. So while I agree with artisans filling this petty bourgeois label, I believe they are able to be pulled into either bourgeois idealism or proletariat materialist struggle. We often see rich and famous artisans, but that is only because they have the money to constantly advertise their work and are in close relation to other bourgeois. Yet most of those who create art are primarily getting their income from the sale of wage-labour.
This is primarily why I thought it was laughable to assume they are incapable of becoming revolutionary. I’m an professional artist and a Marxist-Leninist. I create propaganda and organize for a revolution. I already prove that it is possible to be aligned with proletariat liberation thus the absolute is immediately disproven, let alone any anecdotal evidence of the people I personally know.
The essay is not discussing me for the terms I listed before. I do not fall into the categories of critique it is listed for. I don’t support copyright laws. I’m not arguing against AI for the sake of artists market share. I do not argue that human art has a “soul” only that AI has a reputation, and interpretation that will influence its spread.
I’d argue there’s some reactionary sentiment to anyone who is not 100% backing AI in every place it is implemented in. I’m discussing the reasons I believe it will fall short of expectations and why I think most of AI functions is a honeypot. The linking of an essay as to why artists are bourgeois collaborators despite the reasons I submitted being unrelated I think falls in line with this “Pro AI reactionary” behavior. It’s not a perfect technology. Much like using a hammer to put in a screw isn’t effective even if it works. Which is the initial discussion.
However, it’s actually a really good essay and thank you for giving it to me. While it wasn’t related to my discussion it did help me hone and develop why I disliked those arguments being used before. It also helps with understanding class relations of artists in general of course.
I am so mad that you used the image generation machine to generate an image and didn’t tell me. I am sorry but the rules of Butlarian Jihad are clear on this and you must go to the gulag. Do not pass go do not collect $200.
Okay, but I want to a chance to hit Free Parking first with the optional rules where income tax and such has gone into it over time, so that I can get some extra money from it first.
In general, I think it’s better to just use one of those template meme generators that are out there for free. Besides, you can kinda tell that the meme looks somewhat different here from other memes for some reason.
Memes can absolutely be useful at communicating. I don’t think that is in question. The question here, in terms of agitprop, is whether AI generated imagery can also be useful and the image I posted a couple of weeks ago demonstrates that it can be, provided people are not reacting to it negatively out of belief that it’s AI. I don’t see how it looking different from other memes is a negative if the evidence leans toward it having resonated well with people. Agitprop can range from memes to tens of hours spent drawing with years of formal artistic training behind it, as effort goes. However, if there’s one thing a lot of people have a lack of under capitalism, it’s time. Memes are one way to save time, but they are also highly limited to pre-existing templates. You kinda have to know the templates well in order to use them effectively and if you want to communicate something outside the templates, you’re stuck.
Basically, there are strengths and weaknesses to different approaches and I don’t think we should be neglecting uncommon ones as a possible help just because they are uncommon. A media team in Iran used AI lego videos to try to influence people. If you’re a small group of people with limited time and resources, working outside the norm, looking for any way you can to make gains in saving time and cost without qualitative loss of quality, may be the only way you’ve got to give your influence a needed boost.
Figuring out how to reach a goal under highly restricted conditions is a fundamental challenge of communists, historically. Entire AES states under siege who couldn’t wait around for their development to catch up to western powers and had to make do as they were. Likewise, we cannot wait for conditions that provide us with the best tools for liberation, but instead have to make do with what is there.
The problem is capitalism, not the tool. I’ll just keep repeating it as long as it takes.
And I thank you for doing it.
Good job!
I use AI a lot in my work so I know how good it can be when properly utilized, and how bad it can be when not properly babysitted. If you just ask an AI to do something for you it will just fill in a lot of the gaps in the request, but if you ask properly you can get a good quality work in much, much less time than doing it by hand, which leaves more time to improving things…
Learning that something is AI, esp something rooted in creativity, takes the wind out of its sails, so to speak. Simply less impressive, lazier, a shortcut. ML/LLMs for tedious, mundane tasks like data entry or as a “better” ctrl+F? Personally, besides the environmental problems and harm to surrounding residences of data centers, I don’t have (as) much issue with the principle of that kind of usage.
I think we have started to lose the plot of what the hell even is a meme. My understanding was that a particular template/catchphrase becomes popular, and people make unique iterations of that, sometimes making a categorically new meme out of it. The whole fun of it to me was that people were anonymously making, typically shitty but occasionally hilarious, works of genuine art. Everyone has ideas, anyone can start conceptualizing. But if the actual realization of that concept is being materially done by a clanker, I’m admiring a megacorp’s work of art, not the lazy prompter. How much credit should we give the Bible for Da Vinci’s Last Supper? Point is, I’d prefer to admire a human’s shitty piece of work, discuss/critique/improve upon that, than whatever a cold model spits out.
Ig u could argue a comic is a kind of meme, but I doubt that is what actually pops in someone’s head when u ask them to picture a modern meme. I wouldn’t call a singular well performing post on Lemmy as a usable data point, esp to argue on the subjective validity of AI generated work. How can u account for people who decide not to engage at all with AI posts?
Might I rec the series “sieze the memes” available on meansTV?
Learning that something is AI, esp something rooted in creativity, takes the wind out of its sails, so to speak. Simply less impressive, lazier, a shortcut.
But why does that take the wind out of its sails? Why is the impression of it as having involved “hard work” the important part? Is that not fetishizing individual hard work to one degree or another?
Or to put it another way, what purpose is hard work for? When people in China can use a robust network of high speed trains to get from one place to another, is that somehow less impressive because they aren’t walking?
I think we have started to lose the plot of what the hell even is a meme. My understanding was that a particular template/catchphrase becomes popular, and people make unique iterations of that, sometimes making a categorically new meme out of it. The whole fun of it to me was that people were anonymously making, typically shitty but occasionally hilarious, works of genuine art.
I don’t see how. I looked through the OP, I only mentioned memes in passing to say that stick figures are closer to meme level of illustration and expectations, which is more or less true. People don’t expect professional works of art out of a meme. That’s all I can find where I brought up memes.
When people in China can use a robust network of high speed trains to get from one place to another, is that somehow less impressive because they aren’t walking?
if someone attempted to claim they walked from Beijing to Shanghai in only 4 hours, it would be less impressive if it were revealed later that they used high speed rail.
But I never claimed the image in question was drawn by me, so this comparison doesn’t track. The relevant point here is that someone is projecting onto something this idea that it must have had a certain amount of admirable personal human effort put into it and when finding out that it didn’t, this somehow undermines their view of its value.
in this specific, uncommon, AI generated stick drawing scenario (not the common anti-AI art scenario most people are talking about), it’s more like you took the highspeed rail to get taco bell from the city 300 miles away because you were too lazy to walk 5 minutes to the nearby tacobell.
Why do people start arguing like liberals when it comes to AI? This has nothing to do with what I did or said. How is it laziness if I literally do not possess the skill to draw the image myself? Why would laziness even be relevant? Are we just straight up capitalists now, telling people they are lazy for not doing a thing?
you paid $30 to take a high speed rail just to go to the so called “good tacobell” and you’re not even going to eat it now?
Honestly, what are you even talking about at this point.
fetishizing individual hard work? my friend, there is no shame in doing hard work, it is the alienation of the proletariat from the product of our labor, the division of labor and exchange that turns workers into commodities, by which yes, the worker-commodity is fetishized. AI generated marxist agitprop is just such an oxymoron i cannot ignore!
marx’s point is that work is not merely instrumental, but how we realize ourselves as humans.
"For labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means of satisfying a need – the need to maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, is contained in the character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species-character. Life itself appears only as a means to life.
…
In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty."
the fact that people resonated with the post with AI influence being omitted, leads one to assume human authorship. the reader assumes the human judgement, time, and labor that was put into it. prompting a bot externalizes all of these activities onto a model. sure, the bot can produce “fine” output, but the personal activity is lacking, it is thin. art, even internet memes, is not just the output. hard work is not the problem. work that is not yours is.
you posted the comic on c/memes.
I’m not sure how your takeaway is that I’m saying there’s “shame in hard work.” What I’m referring to when I talk about fetishizing hard work is the implication that putting a lot of work into something inherently means it’s more valuable. By this reasoning, if I as an amateur artist labor for 300 hours drawing a picture and an expert artist labors for 3 hours drawing a picture, mine is worth more somehow. Even though theirs would probably be identified as better by many different metrics/standards of artistic quality. You could try to tack onto those 3 hours the thousands of hours they spent learning to be an expert, but we’re still saying, within that, that it’s the hours put into the skill, not the expertise itself, that produces value. Which doesn’t make much sense.
Another example of what it implies would be that someone of the same skill level who finds a way to complete a project more efficiently than their counterpart has produced a less valuable project because it took them less work to do it. As far as I can tell, this kind of thing is typically celebrated in human history, not looked down upon, provided that it is not used in service of further exploitation (that’s where the friction lies) and is instead used as a means of making people’s lives overall better. Such as through giving them more free time, better convenience, etc. It follows from this sensibly that views on AI are much more positive in Socialist China compared to the Capitalist US, since China’s implementation tends to be more controlled and pro-social.
So what I am questioning is putting effort on a pedestal. This is not the same as saying that effort is bad.
i had this exact same point brought against me when discussing LTV and socially necessary labor time with a liberal. yes indeed, 300 hours of shit labor is of course socially less valuable than 3 hours of skilled, quality labor. some workers learn skills faster than others, too. the value of an object of labor is determined in a social context at exchange, where the prices of objects find an equilibrium. (also, how can you so easily brush aside the thousands of hours of crystallized past labor that is needed for one to become someone with expertise? is all that time not the requirement to gain those skills, maybe except for the rare child genius?) but i am not discussing the exchange value of the AI agitprop vs human made agitprop. i am saying that the very use value of AI agitprop is hollowed out. those hours of crystallized labor are in the skilled laborer. that crystallized labor, of personal activity, is not present in an LLM prompt. that personal activity, by which humans exert our expression on the material world, has been stripped. all activity is externalized almost completely. that is the narrower point i am trying to convey. as you say, AI is a technology, capable of being used as a tool of surplus value extraction or of surplus “time injection.” yes, i am actually pro-using AI to reduce the socially necessary time it takes to do tasks no one really wants to do (within environmental and social constraints, ofc). i do not think memes and comics, as much as you may disagree, fall in that category. (also to note, is the early template based meme virality not evidence of “efficiency” in action, but still allowing for genuine creativity to flourish? to make it easier for folks with less computer skills but plenty of imagination to make art? was there ever really a need for AI here?) where is the shared human expression, the life activity, that i see in human-made memes but not in AI memes? i don’t think i can lay it out any better. bye.
I hope no one takes this as trickery or something.
I mean, it is a trick you pulled. You apparently usually say when AI is used in your posts, actively decided not to for that post to see if you would get more support, and then when that worked you made this follow up as somehow a point for AI generated content. Generally, I think people’s disdain for AI will go away when it stops threatening countless jobs to little benefit for most people while being peddled by all of the worst psychopaths the tech industry has ever created. The whole ‘you can never fully trust anything you ever see online ever again’ side effect of it is also probably a big sore spot, too.
This paints a picture for me that the issue with AI generated content in these spaces is not when it’s AI generated but when people believe that it is.
If that was the hypothesis you were testing, would it not have made more sense to hand draw these four stick figures and then say that is AI generated to see what people say? As it stands, you did what most people find obnoxious of AI fans - you tried to trick people with undisclosed AI generated content and then said “See, this is why you guys should be ok with AI generated content!”
It’s reasons like these why I can’t stand blind anti-AI hate. In spite of everything I said, you’re like “no, actually you were out to deceive people! Look at how dishonest you are!”
Let me revisit the history to debunk your dishonest and well-poisoning narrative:
I first sought to see what kind of effective agitprop I could make with AI. Upon going to post it, I saw no point in drawing attention to it being AI given how things usually go on here with regards to AI. Why distract from the content of it if it’s going to turn into a shitshow back and forth that has nothing to do with the content of the image? Two weeks later, after having seen a recent thread where people witchhunted someone for posting some text that they were convinced was AI (with no proof for it), I spontaneously decided to call attention to the image in question being AI to make a point. I did not plan out some deception. Stop accusing people of things you have no evidence for! This is a common tactic of anti-AI vitriol.
The only reason I posted this thread at all is because of seeing people turn into reactionaries over some text suspected of being AI and even then, I only went through with it because I care enough to put aside my own discomfort in knowing a thread like this might bring hate on me. Do you think I’m sitting here in smug satisfaction? It exhausts me that on an already niche board, where people come here from spaces where they are treated like a pariah for their worldviews, they then get shat on by their own supposed “comrades” for having the audacity to use a tool that is not always used for good by everyone who uses it; or worse still, just for being suspected of doing it, without even evidence for it.
All I know is what you shared in this post:
- You usually disclose your AI usage in your previous posts
- You did not like getting negative feedback over that
- You then decided to omit the same disclosure you normally do after getting repeat negative feedback
- When you didn’t get that same feedback, you saw that as proof that the negative feedback you get otherwise is unwarranted
I’m not saying you’re some mustache twirling villain laughing manically behind the computer, I’m explaining why some people would reasonably feel tricked by this very intentional lie by omission. So you didn’t disclose that you used AI to draw stick figures - big deal, it’s not the end of the world and no one is out to get you.
I hope you try that experiment I mentioned in the future, would be great to compare/contrast.
It’s only a lie by omission if someone has the belief that one must disclose AI use when posting something on the internet or else they are being dishonest. Which would be nonsense. I never tried to pass it off as my own; that would be dishonest if it isn’t, in fact, my own. You are misusing what “lie by omission” means to serve what you already believe about me. This is a pattern I see with anti-AI hate on the internet. Once a person is placed in the “they used AI” box (sometimes without even proof of them having used it in the first place) they are then treated like a criminal whose every word is further proof of their criminality.
If questioning the things we see online is “reactionary,” by that vein so would the Luddites. I think they actually had a pretty fuckin good point.
the luddites were reactionary. Just because they had some good points does not mean they were not reactionary. Reactionary is a technical term not just a slur for “people who don’t agree with the communist line.”
Immigration bad because it keeps the global south underdeveloped and lowers wages in the global north but that doesn’t mean the people who are against immigration because they are racist and believe in “Great replacement” theory, are not reactionary.
Yes, they were in the strict sense. the luddites were trying to preserve a pre-industrial way of life. I didn’t mean to use it as a slur. They were understandably and justifiably bitter at their jobs being replaced by dead labor and wages being cut, at becoming more and more the instruments of the machine. They were lacking in a methodology to contextualize their struggles within the social relations of capitalist production and only revolted against the instruments of capital.
the luddites were not “reactionary” in the sense of siding with the ruling class, clearly.
Idk why you are bringing up immigration here, that is clearly not the kind of reactionary tendency that is being discussed.
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Who’s “they” and what did they take away?
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oh, you were referring to the original meme.
apologies
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Jesus fucking christ, not everything is about AI.
I could also be referring to creativity co-opters taking away OP’s willingness to draw stick figures for the fear of being criticized over the quality of the artwork.
It’s not fear of being criticized for the quality of the artwork, it’s that I literally wouldn’t know how to draw what I wanted to draw to do the image that I did.
IMO such fear followed by excuses of “I didn’t have time” represent a disingenuous attempt at wanting to always feel right about one’s actions.
No, it represents not having the time. I also don’t have the time to walk everywhere instead of using a vehicle that uses gasoline and thereby contributes to polluting the environment. The logistics of it are unsound where I live.
The original pushback was one single comment asking if AI was used
It wasn’t even clear if it was pushback. I never got clarification on what the person’s intentions were.
OP being too ashamed to even admit outright that they didn’t have the interest in disclosing that information because they needed to feel a certain level of justified in their rationale for producing a comic using a tool that plans on sacrificing the working class at the altar towards ultimate convenience where human interaction has been fully automated out of every necessary interaction with a system that the emotionally illiterate of the earth are poised to inherit
You should put this energy into writing fiction stories instead of making shit up about real people.
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