Weekly round-up: Feb 1
I haven't done one of these since last year - I skipped a few weeks and then got laid off, which changed the way I Used The Computer in a really fundamental way that's made it harder for me to blog in general. As I move back into daily development on some personal projects, I'm trying to start it up again.
It's rude to show AI output to people - Alex Martsinovich
I completely agree with the headline of this article.
Luckily for us, AI only talks in response. Unlike Earth, AI does not emit comedy sketches into outer space on its own. To get AI slop, somebody needs to ask for it. To send it further, someone needs to retransmit it. Our problem is other humans, really.
I do think however that if you are using AI privately to generate text and images, you are harming society also, via the mechanism of harm to yourself - but that's another blog post.
I grew up with Alex Pretti
This article was written about Alex Pretti by his childhood best friend. Hit me pretty hard - I was also a girl with a childhood best friend who was a kind-hearted boy who has since passed away. Oof.
One thing this article also brings to mind is that many right-wing men engaged in the Production of Discourse clearly don't seem to believe that other men genuinely want to be seen as kind, welcoming, warm, and good. They think this kind of behavior is false and tricksome and performed falsely, to deceive, or whatever. But there are genuinely people like this all over the place! I've known many! There are so many people who want to be good.
I just passed my driving theory test!
If you are from the US, I recommend reading this post from v buckenham about what driving theory tests are like in the UK. They involve an interactive hazard-identification activity I can't recall having ever seen over here. It's possible that some places in the US do this now, but I haven't heard of it. I found the example videos fascinating.
They Got Me At Last. I Became A Cyclist
Daniel Lavery writes about the mental shift of "becoming" a "cyclist". I've seen a lot of writing in the past about the human category of "cyclist" and the way it operates in our culture, and this is some of the funniest.
I’ve never wanted to be a cyclist. At heart I’m a walking man. There remains in me the soul of the pedestrian even when mounted and wheeled, and it pains me to cycle past people going about on foot who don’t recognize me as one of their own. “I’m just like you,” I want to say, instead of “On your left.” This isn’t who I am, not really. It’s not the wheels, but the feet that matter.
Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit
This has already been all over the news but I was glad to finally see an interview with the kid who ate the art. His attempts to articualte an anti-AI-art ideology are kept short, but the sensory details are pretty great.
I swallowed some of it. I had really been spitting it out near the end. I didn’t want to make too much of a mess, but I also didn’t want to have to spit it out in the back of a police car.