Lvl ?? Creative Type

I keep seeing people use free AI detection websites as evidence in AI witch hunts.

These websites are often scams. They use AI to detect AI. They rarely disclose their methods. They are typically only reliable on obvious material and are no better than a coin flip on content that is more challenging (which is usually when AI detection is needed most).

You'll even note that these websites do not give you a strict yes or no. They give you a percentage of confidence. Yes, it is true that human forensic analysis often has a confidence rating instead of an absolute certainty. But in this case, this gives these websites cover for when they create false positives. They don't tell you their actual success rate of detecting AI, so if you get a bad result, they can just say the tool was only 80% confident.

Even laboratory-grade forensic tools struggle to get above 70-80% accuracy, and staying ahead of AI improvements to maintain that accuracy is a constant struggle.

The best forensic analysis of AI media always has a human component. They use detection software in combination with human experts. There is no reliable, fully automated process. Especially now that people are combining AI with traditional techniques. They might generate an AI image and then use Photoshop to add noise, resize it, change the color and contrast. 5 minutes of work can remove the classic signs of AI that many of these detectors look for.

If you are suspicious of something and you want to use one of these tools as an initial indicator that you should seek out more evidence, I feel that is their only real use case. Like, it should be step one of a multistep process of investigation and it should not be your only evidence. In fact, you should not include it as evidence when making an accusation.

Look for creation dates. Look for provenance. Look at the artist's other work. Look for process videos.

But if you use the result of an AI detector to confidently say something is AI, you could very well hurt an artist using a dubious tool that consistently spits out false positives.

I'm feeling a bit psychic now.

I'm guessing Google has one of the most advanced AI detection tools in the world. But this process cannot be 100% automated or else it will continue to hurt artists.

Google has long refused to hire actual humans to assist their automated processes. If a small YouTube channel needs help, they can rarely reach an actual human being. You need millions of subscribers for the privilege of not dealing with some sort of bot.

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

These are all so good!!! please look at them

I think my favorite is this one

Image description: screenshot of two paragraphs that read, "Afterward I found a chat room thread among Cambridge computer scientists, one of whom had also been told that unless he could pin down the moment of the theft no one would look at the footage. He said he tried to explain sorting algorithms to police - he was a computer scientist, after all.

But people get touchy and reactive about that conversation, because of how many bigots are doing the "omg trans people are FORCING their DIRTY HORMONES on our CHILDREN!" narrative.

I never want to accidentally contribute to that moral panic. But at the same time, as a nonbinary intersex person, some trans people really fucking do pull the "oh my god you have to get HRT and surgery in order to be VALID and REAL like ME!" shit.

The authors haven't done anything shitty in telling their stories. These stories are important to share. But it's hard not to notice that I've yet to see a story like mine, where the journey of self-love comes through learning that body parts have no gender, that my body does not determine my identity, and that I don't have to alter it in order to fit binarist, truscum, intersexist ideas of what I should look like. My body can just exist without intervention. I don't need to do anything to it unless I want to, and the fact that I don't want to does not make me any less trans, nonbinary, or intersex.

It just gets kind of exhausting and alienating to see endless "trans empowerment is through SURGERY and HORMONES!!!!" stories, without much variation.

?????????

It usually feels really bad. Because this is the point it becomes real craft. It's so, so difficult to really be able to identify if it's truly not going to be anything or you're just in the hardest part of the process, and really the only way to know is to... write through it. Write it badly. Or, if you really can't, put it in a drawer and come back to it after a few months of breathing space. Remember, you can fix so much in the edit, but you can't fix nothing!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/writing-advice-1-82451675

Viggo Mortensen is absolutely a handsome man, but his character in Eastern Promises doesn't have most of the global population ripping their hair out foaming at the mouth screaming crying throwing up horny.

It's something about the combination of long hair, stubble, a mysterious past, quiet confidence, and looking like you've just been riding a horse for 2 weeks, that drives people crazy.

We will call this phenomenon The Aragorn Effect. My theory is that if all those same elements are combined with the correct proportions, any actor may be able to experience The Aragon Effect.

And THIS is Sam Elliott in road house, for literally no reason at all:

@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:

Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive

The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.

Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!

I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.

Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.

The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.

Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!

And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"

(They were very divided)

Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":

Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.

The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.

Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):

We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.

In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:

To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life

Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.

Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about

Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡