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A discussion on GenAI in Anarchist communities (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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After I made this unrelated post, I was informed by @MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro-genAI instance.

It was honestly shocking for me to hear that these two things can coexist and I would like to share the discussion which was correctly moved for being off topic from the above linked post.

I think we owe it to ourselves to discuss topics like this with an open mind.

Here is my statements in reply to MysticMushroom1776, I wasn't able to record their reply before it was removed for being off topic bit I hope they can come here and we can continue the discussion.

Others, please also feel free to discuss with us.

'Wow, I didn't know [that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro genAI instance] As an anarchist myself I have to say that is really disappointing.

Anarchist communities [especially in real life] need humans otherwise there is no community. GenAl is a stolen facsimile of a human who can never understand morals or praxis. It can never understand freedom or control. It will however poison our communities (look at what SpaceX/Anthropic is doing in Memphis, TN) make us more predictable (and thus easier to control) and isolate us from other humans within the community which is so important to us.

Even with the most moral genAl you can possibly have, one that is totally FOSS and self hosted on a single gaming GPU, a lot of this is still true.

Obviously, this is the wrong place but I have to ask, [prior to moving the discussion to this thread] what makes you think the extreme negatives of genAl (specifically to the anarchist community) can be excused?

... [I do not have a copy of mushroom's reply]

I pirate and seed. I'm also a fan of the megathread And for the most part, I think data is data. However there is a big difference between my pirating a book like the Lord of the Rings (which is credited and I can see the title of) and how Meta scraped Anna's archive and funneled all that data into an approximation of all combined work.

If I pirate the book, the Lord of the Rings to read it. I might enjoy it, I might talk about it to others, quote it, share it with my daughter, I might use the ring of power an an allegory for authoritarian control with a powerful technology, I might even decide to buy my own copies of the book.

What Meta did and then released as open source, won't allow a person the freedom to do any of that. The works were consumed and are used in silence to camouflage as human thought. No credit will ever be contributed. And so no one can even hope to appreciate the original works that was used in training.

The other concerns I have with (local) genAI that I think are deeply important to anarchists specifically.

  • Isolation of humanity
  • severing of our ties to community
  • increasing predictability
  • method of control

Photo is genAI made and sourced from the following article:

Why Your AI Is a Terrible Anarchist

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[–] -2 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

I can answer one of the questions.

How does using a computer program do this?

Maybe not in the way OP is thinking, but it does massively help control us and here is how:

Fascism always had one huge flaw that prevented it from ever fully working: data. 1920s Germany was quite efficient at this, but they still had literally thousands of people listening, spying, reporting on, and processing data into threats that the SS would deal with.

That is simply too much data for humans to sift through and not miss a fuck ton of things, leading to resistance movements gaining a lot of ground.

AI solves this problem in that a few data centers can process spying data (and much more of it from the surveillance devices almost every person has in their house right now) fairly close to real time. That is a game changer. That is why the technofascists are pushing AI so hard to speed up development. It is essentially the best large scale pattern recognizer in the world and the manpower it takes to run that system is extremely small. That is why palantir is getting its claws in everywhere. Governments want that, whether for good or evil.

AI is a game changer for authoritarians. Or course, they would have to use it well still to be effective, but for example Palantir is building AI-only kill chains where targets are identified based on large data ingest, located, and then drones can be sent to kill them. That can happen in minutes or hours instead of the weeks or months it would traditionally take and resistance leadership is a finite resource.

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  • [–] 5 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    This applies to cameras as well. Cameras help fascists, fascists help target victims, cameras help track people, cameras help report where people are and what they are doing. Cameras make us easier to control.

    Do you think all cameras are bad? or are they just a tool that is being mis-used by the fascists?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago* (1 child)

    Who needs to process the camera data? Again, it is a very different technology from all of the comparisons because it is literally taking out the need for large bodies of human oversight. Data collection vs data processing.

    A camera does not decide who lives and who dies. An LLM can (and has) decided who lives and who dies and can carry out the execution orders itself.

    But I guess cameras aren't starving people of water and power and a required prerequisite to their use at scale.

    But you're right. LLMs aren't evil at all, they are just a tool. The next defining tool that fascists now need to subjugate everyone and eliminate resistance.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    Who needs to process the camera data? Again, it is a very different technology from all of the comparisons because it is literally taking out the need for large bodies of human oversight. Data collection vs data processing.

    I could say the same thing about spreadsheets. Is spreadsheet software, or databases bad?

    A camera does not decide who lives and who dies. An LLM can (and has) decided who lives and who dies and can carry out the execution orders itself.

    That's a choice that is being made. That's not the point of LLMs, it's one of the many things that LLMs are being used for.

    But I guess cameras aren’t starving people of water and power and a required prerequisite to their use at scale.

    The same is also true of LLMs. Capitalism is doing that. We can make LLMs much more efficiently, but we choose not to, due to capitalism.

    But you’re right. LLMs aren’t evil at all, they are just a tool. The next defining tool that fascists now need to subjugate everyone and eliminate resistance.

    I'm against their use by facists, just like I'm against facists using cars, or bulldozers, or guns, or wheat. I just don't see how LLMs are any different.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago* (1 child)

    They're only different because these people very strongly personally dislike them and they aren't content with it just being their opinion. Which is why they make up some of the most pathetic bad faith arguments you'll ever hear.

    You know what else is a fascist tool by their logic? Internet, Television, Computers, Cars, Trains... Pretty much all technology in the hands of fascists will benefit fascists.

    That's why we need to fight fascists instead of doing this stupid culture war bullshit. I wonder if some of these anti-AI people are intentionally trying to distract from that. After all like most liberals they intentionally or unintentionally support fascist agendas.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    I think people are upset by the legitimate problems that they see, but I think they typically mis-diagnose the cause of the problems.

    People are scared to lose their jobs, and their livelihood, for good reason. Capitalism sucks, and it ties the two together.

    I'm pro automation, because I want people to lose their jobs. What I don't want is for them to lose their livelihood. I think people working on jobs that they don't like just to pay the bills is dumb, but people working on jobs that they enjoy is awesome.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 hours ago

    Probably is that for most people, amplified due to the culture war. I don't think that excuse works for the people claiming to be anarchist and anti-copyright though. A lot of people in this thread seem to be doing it maliciously not out of ignorance.

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