retrogradejupiter

Got into a discussion today (actually a discussion, we were both very reasonable and calm even through I felt like committing violence) with a tech-bro-coded lady who claimed that people use AI in coding all the time so she didn't see why it mattered if people used AI in art.

Obviously I repressed the surge of violence because that would accomplish nothing. Plus, this lady is very articulate, the type who makes claims and you sit there thinking no that's wrong it must be but she said it so well you're kind of just waffling going but, no, wait-- so I knew I had to get this right if I was gonna come out of this unscathed.

The usual arguments about it being about the soul of it and creation fell flat, in fact she was adamant that anyone who believed that was in fact looking down at coding as an art form as she insisted it is. Which, sure, you can totally express yourself through coding. There's a lot more nuance as to the differences but clearly I was not going to win this one.

The other people I was with (literally 8 people anti-ai against her, but you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to listen and she just kept accusing us of devaluing coding as an art) took over for I kid you not 15 minutes while I tried desperately to come up with a clear and articulate way to explain the difference to her. They tried so many reasonable arguments, coding being for a function ("what, art doesn't serve a function?") coding being many discrete building blocks that you put together differently, and the AI simply provides the blocks and you put it together yourself ("isn't that what prompt building is") that it's bad for the environment ("but not if it's used for capitalism, hm?" "Yeah literally that's how capitalism works it doesn't care about the environment" she didn't like that response)

But I finally got it.

And the answer is: It's not about what you do, it's about what you claim to be.

Imagine that someone asks an AI to write a code and, by some miracle, it works perfectly without them having to tweak it---which is great because they couldn't tell you what a single solitary thing in that code means.

Now imagine this person, with their code that they don't know how it works, goes and applies to be a coder somewhere, presenting this AI code as proof that they're qualified.

Should they be hired?

She was horrified, of course. Of course they shouldn't be. They're not qualified. They can't actually code, and even if by some miracle they did have an AI successfully write a flawless code for every issue they came across that wouldn't be their code, you could hire any shmuck on the street to do that, no reason to pay someone like they're creating something.

When actual engineers use AI what they do is get some kind of base, which they then go though and check for problems and then if they find any they fix them, and add on to the base code with their own knowledge instead of just trying different prompt after prompt until they randomly come across one that works.

People who generate code like this don't usually call themselves engineers. They're people who needed a bit of code and didn't have the knowledge to generate it, and so used a resource.

And there you go. There are people who have none of the skills of artists, they don't practice, they don't create for themselves. When they feed the prompt to the AI they then don't just use the resulting image as a reference point for their own personal masterpiece, and if they don't like it they don't have the skills to change it---they simply try another prompt, and do that until they get something they like.

These people are calling themselves artists.

Not only that, these people are bringing the AI generated thing to interviews, and they are getting hired, leaving people who slave over their craft out of the job.

This is how I picture @st-alastors-confessional . You can't tell me otherwise.

Oki so I drew this sexy nun cosplay I saw on Instagram by @sweetiesoju (on insta) and had to draw it, but I also kinda think it fits St. Alastor perfectly. (Except for the missing flower crown :/ )

I'm thinking specifically about how I have some phobias of bugs, and I specifically have to hide that from men because once they find out they purposely show me the bugs I'm afraid of to torment me because they think it's funny and cute to torment and upset a woman. Like when one of my male co-workers at my old job found out I was arachnophobic after that he made a point of if he found a spider in the store he'd purposely try to shove it in my face because he thought it was funny and cute to scare me and make me upset. I've had multiple instances of grown male co-workers behaving like this but never a grown female co-worker. Sure, I'm sure there's at least a few grown women in the world out there like that, but for the most part this behavior is only seen in small girls but quickly corrected and beat out of her while men are still tormenting women for fun as grown adults.

Or my mother has a pretty bad phobia of frogs, and she told me a story about how when she was a little girl some boys found out, and they specifically made it a point to collect frogs from outside to throw at her. One time they cornered her in the bathroom and threw buckets of frogs at her, she was sobbing and shaking and having a full blown panic attack while they were laughing. It was for no other reason than they thought it was funny to make a girl upset and scared.

And this ties in with how often if a girl or woman asks a boy or man to stop doing something that bothers her or annoys her they double down and start doing the behavior even more just because they want to upset girls and women. Like schoolgirls asking the boy next to her to stop drumming with his pencils because it's distracting her from being able to pay attention to class, how likely is it he'll actually stop vs just doing it even more loudly and frequently just to bother her? If this is a lifelong pattern for girls this makes girls back off and less likely to stand up to boys and men.

If a girl has for years had a pattern of every time she asks the boys in her class to stop drumming with their pencils while she's trying to pay attention or stop saying gross sexual jokes that make her uncomfortable to her during class or stop poking her and every time they just double down and start doing it even more and even louder or harder just to upset her, is she going to keep asking boys to stop doing things that bother her? Is she going to feel comfortable and safe standing up for herself and asserting her boundaries? Or is she going to get quiet and stop speaking up and hope for the love of god they don't notice the annoyance on her face because if they do that's enough just to make them double down and start doing it more to bother her?