witch of hope⁷

Hello.....as you might've seen me post in the past days my country is going through one of the biggest tragedies it has ever experienced right now, having endured two consecutive earthquakes very recently and not being equipped to deal with the damage, my people need all the help possible.

So i made a little strawpage compiling helpful links that i've seen around in one place, they're a lot so have fun choosing. If you've ever liked anything i've made, please consider helping in any way you can whether economically or by sharing. I am unharmed but so many people are currently suffering and so many have lost everything and i don't like seeing people having to endure so much.

if you are non-american then it can be dangerous to hold beliefs about your rights that are only applicable in the US.

i am australian and i have seen young australians have completely us-american perceptions on the rights they hold (or do not hold) in regards to protest, police officers, self-defense, medical care, higher education, debt, and legal proceedings. i am not talking about "boooo americans" i am talking about the genuine danger it might present to have us-centric assumptions in high-stakes situations

Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.

And so on.

The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.

But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.

If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.

But they wouldn't understand any of it.

That's ChatGPT.

And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.

But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.

Now I didn't share his name in that original post, but I'm going to share it now.

Anathra, in a stream shortly following Pyro's boundaries announcement, was talking about his feelings surrounding the whole situation, as well as his thoughts on fanwork in general, especially where shipping is involved.

These thoughts included, but were not limited to:

Comparing fans to 'karens' and other people who mistreat food and retail workers, saying that "they treat people with contempt and as inhuman"

Saying that fans don't respect creators when they make fan works

Fans creating fanart and fanfic of characters they play is "weird and unhealthy behavior", regardless if it's posted publically or privately between a group of friends or in a private server.

"You have to try to make people understand that even if they're doing it in private it's weird and wrong"

Comparing fanart and fanfic to AI generated work

In response to a comment asking "Is it not a bit disingenuous to compare fan work to a climate killing water guzzling art stealing machine?" doubling down on his comparison and saying "It's not necessarily the climate side of things, its the same morality being used. If you take the climate thing into account, AI is worse. Using just the 'creative' side of AI, is what I'm talking about."

In regards to his fans "The most you can do is get most people to listen, there's always going to be weirdos out there we all know that."

Now why am I posting this now? It has come to my attention that the clips I got of these quotes from Anathra's VOD have been taken down, along with the original VOD as well. As such, I have no concrete evidence of these quotes, however below is the proof that the clip and VOD links once existed and no longer do.

Why did you remove these clips and VOD from your channel Anathra? Did you realize that these were awful things to be saying about your fans, people who support you and love your characters, SO MUCH SO that they dedicate time and effort to create wonderful works of art inspired by your stories and characters? I have to imagine you do realize, or else you wouldn't have taken these clips down at all.

Why are you trying to hide? If you were so brave as to say these things on stream, doubling down even, then own them. If you regret speaking your mind in a stressful situation, then take accountability for your harmful words. You don't get to just say these things and ignore the consequences. I'm sick and tired of creators thinking of fans and fan*work* as something they *deserve* and can control to their own liking. Fans create these things selflessly out of a love for your storytelling, only to be told that they're "weird" and "wrong" for it? That the hours they spend working on a beautiful piece of art or incredibly complex prose and fiction is equivalent to instantly generated ai slop? AI Slop that learned FROM FAN WORK? It's incredibly demoralizing for fans who are creating these things FOR FUN with no personal gain to be hearing that the creators they look up to see them so low.

Stop hiding. Your fans deserve better than a creator who will insult them behind their backs.

Limited life Scott drawing that I’ll never finish.

Married the love of my life at 50.

Got my Class A CDL at 59.

You've got time.