#beltwayshit

TYSM for reading my fic and feedback-ing! <3 I assure you, I didn't use the @canva AI tool because I trust it/trust ai generally -- I stress-test them because I **don’t** trust the direction it's heading. There's a difference between adopting a technology uncritically, versus auditing it for advocacy purposes. Most of my friends, when they left the Trump or Obama administrations, went through the revolving door of Big Tech -- becoming lobbyists or mercenaries for Uber, DoorDash, Chat, Meta, etc etc. I don't judge anyone in this economy for going for the highest paying gig, but the most savvy minds of our generation are sharpening these tools -- it's a fact right now -- because that's where the $ is presently. I decided to stake my post-fed life on striking out on my own and going for the causes that compel me, one of which is ethical Tech. SO--

I sometimes have to stress-test these tools because my work sits at the intersection of tech, law, national security, policy, equity, and human-centered design and ethical/sustainable deployment. I can understand the technical architecture and the legal/policy issues in the abstract, but there is no substitute for actually seeing how the product behaves when a normal person tries to use it. The UX is where a lot of the harm becomes visible: what the tool refuses, what it defaults to, whose bodies it renders easily, whose bodies it distorts or erases, how much friction it creates, what the settings hide, what the terms shift onto the user, and how a supposedly “neutral” tool quietly encodes social bias.

It is a little like a disability-rights advocate assessing a building. Reading the ADA regulations matters, but you still have to approach the entrance, try the ramp, press the elevator button, check whether the door actually opens, and see where the design fails a real human being. With AI, the lived interface is often where the policy problem shows up.

So when I use something like Canva AI sparingly, I am not using it because I think it is ethically clean or because I want it to replace artists. I am using it in the same way someone might inspect a defective system: to understand the failure points precisely enough to criticize them, document them, and advocate for better standards. In this case, the fact that it could readily produce green-skinned people and dog-headed people before it would reliably depict Black and Brown people was exactly the kind of failure that people need to see, because it shows how “bias” is not just a theoretical training-data issue. It becomes an ordinary user’s experience.

I completely share the concern about creators and environmental cost. In fact, I know for a fact these AI systems are scraping from creators in unauthorized ways. Hell, I've saved drafts in Ao3 that I've worked on, only to find the exact sentence/concept in a different fic/elsewhere, and I KNOW from stress-testing things with other tech-savvy gadflies that AI hoovers up so much private data beyond the bounds of what you're using it for. My position is not “AI is fine.” It is closer to: if these tools are already being deployed into creative, legal, educational, government, and public-facing systems, then people who care about equity, environmental sustainability, privacy, and human dignity need to understand them from the inside well enough to fight for better rules, better design, and better accountability. AI has been around for longer than the public imagination has caught on -- but it's at a distinct rubicon crossing now where people who know what they're talking about, who are technically proficient, legally proficient, policy-savvy, etc need to stand up and do something **now**. And no one will take you seriously if you don't know the products you are criticizing! Trust me. You can't succeed in criticizing Tech-Company-A for enthusiastically handing over folks' digital contacts/address book as a de facto kill-list -- if you don't know how the tech involved is used/haven't tested it yourself. You can't walk in criticizing the seat belts of a certain class of cars or a certain class of vehicle and never inspected the vehicles yourself. People who do this are quietly known as dumbasses who need to be ignored, and ethical tech needs all the cachet and respect we can muster on our side -- we need to know what we're talking about -- up to the minute. Hope I gave a fuller picture of why I used Canva that time that I posted about re: inequity and tech. ALSO! *Please* don't feel you need to be anonymous to strike up a discussion or even debate with me! This is a safe space for respectful disagreement, I promise. I know that isn't/doesn't seem to be "Tumblr-typical". LMFAO. Tumblr is a strange sort of echo-chamber for some I guess... so I get why you'd tread carefully <3 BUT NOT HERE! OK? Not on my Tumblr (or TikTok. or Ao3 fics). The people I loved the most in fandom/looked up to were actually lawyers and writers who would go pages on Livejournal debating each other! It was fun as fuck.

Truly, genuinely, please don’t feel like you have to be anonymous to ask me a question, disagree with me, or even debate me a little... I say this so you feel safe and at home commenting on my posts as well. Anonymous comments are completely fine, and I understand why people use them, especially in fandom spaces where the vibe can sometimes feel less like “spirited discussion” and more like “one wrong adjective and the village bell starts ringing.”

But I do want to say clearly: you are allowed to respectfully disagree with me here.

Anon, if you ever venture to continue chatting - I love respectful disagreement. I miss the old-school fandom culture where a lot of people I looked up to as a kid -- the people I loved most in fandom, were lawyers, professional writers, artists, and feral genre people would go twelve pages deep on LiveJournal about a single line reading, debating each other, or parsing a character choice or certain props/lighting, a moral ambiguity, or whether someone was being manipulative, tragic, strategic, romantic, cruel -- or all five before breakfast! It truly was fun as fuck! I'm not that "OG" in my years, so I don't know what the eff happened in certain corners of fandom -- but you're safe here.*** Say it without tiptoeing and without apology, and I'll play verbal tennis with you and it will be fun and insightful and open our minds. ALSO. It's what this world requires of us to advocate for the most important ideals etc that we stand for -- including ethical tech, victim advocacy, ethics, etc.

Thanks again for reading my fics, I'm so happy it resonates with people enough that they reach out. And THANKS for making that comment about AI -- I promise it's a stress-test/audit for ethical ends. <3 ~~~~~~~~~

***Some corners of Tumblr and elsewhere have become strange little echo chambers where people will seek you out, reply to your comment first, then act shocked and wounded when you respond with reasoning. That part still amazes me. If you raise your hand in the discussion, I am going to assume we are having a discussion. I promise I am not chasing anyone around the internet with a red pen and a writ of certiorari. You served the ball by commenting @ me. I returned it. That is not an ambush. That is tennis. XD

I learned this the funny way recently after saying Lex Luthor was being mean-spirited in a particular scene where I saw he was absolutely gaslighting Clark. And listen, I say that as someone who relates to Lex, who thinks like Lex. I understand the rhetorical and substantive levels of what he was doing. I understand the “false choice” maneuver, the “be relieved it wasn’t you” rhetorical trap, the corporate-speak, the elite-family chessboard nonsense, the emotional pressure dressed up as realism, the whole miserable little opera. I know the levels to this because I know the world. I went to school with kids who still don't talk to their dad because THEY had to do the same federal witness shit that Clark does in my "Call Your Next Witness Counselor" fic (not for murder! for white color stuff). I have seen it all; I used to have the same recklessness as Lex and dearth of strategic patience. I have probably done a cousin of that particular Lex trick in Whisper (which he deploys a lot actually), in my more reckless early 20s, which is why I can recognize it in a silk shirt from fifty feet away.

But apparently saying “hmm, my beloved Lex may be behaving badly here” can be treated in some fandom spaces like I kicked open the doors of a monastery and insulted the relics. So having learned that recently about the culture on this site: let me make my actual blog norm very plain: disagreement is welcome here. Debate is welcome here. Good-faith pushback is welcome here. “I read that scene differently” is welcome here. “I think you’re underestimating X” is welcome here. “Have you considered Y?” is welcome here.

You do not have to tiptoe around me as if one contrary opinion will make the floor collapse. (What I do not love is intellectual hit-and-run behavior: entering someone else’s space/replying to their comment, engaging them first, blocking or fleeing when they answer, then narrating elsewhere that the other person was unreasonable for participating in the conversation you started. That is not discourse. That is ringing the doorbell, and then writing a memoir page about being startled by the chime. Disagreement/differing interpretations is not a damn knife fight). XD

So I get why there's an anon button for even great comments like yours given the echo-chamber fragility on this site/how some people act about lukewarm takes like "Lex Luthor was being disingenuous in that scene"/rendering disagreement as danger ... Or treating a reply as an ambush after initiating the exchange. My little corner of the internet isn't like that. It's not that serious, but it is serious in the sense that ideas matter. Ethics matter. Media matters. Tech matters. Representation matters. Victim advocacy matters. The way stories teach us to recognize power, coercion, love, manipulation, moral injury, and courage matters.

And if we cannot practice respectful disagreement about fictional billionaires, alien farmboys, Canva AI, animation industry racism, or one character’s morally rancid little chess move, then I do worry about how we are supposed to advocate for anything genuinely difficult in the actual world.