1077
Am I the only one bothered by this? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 36 points 5 days ago (28 children)

Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation

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  • [–] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (25 children)

    If they generate AI slop, they're supporting the big corporations.

    Edit: damn, that's a lot of AI bros trying to make themselves feel better with "nuance" and "lesser evil" arguments down in the comments. I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    You can get an AI Poster created for negligible amount of money. Maybe even a free trial.

    Unless you've verified somehow that that company uses AI in abundance and not just a few posters, you're just making assumptions.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    If they use AI for a few posters, where's the guarantee that they will actually put effort into their main job? The kind of person that cheaps out by using AI is not the one I want to be paying.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Again, you're just making assumptions.

    They may or may not be accurate assumptions, but if they change your decision making to instead shop at mega-corp instead of local, they're ultimately harmful assumptions imo.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago (10 children)

    Yeah so small business without AI slop is clearly better, it's just that small business with AI slop still supports big business less than you supporting big business directly.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (9 children)

    Does it, though? Small business still has more money to throw to corporations than individual people.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (6 children)

    My reasoning was that when you buy from a big business, then 100% of what you spend goes there, while less than 100% of your spending go to big business if you buy from a small business that supports big businesses itself.

    It doesn't make sense to compare the total amount a small business contributes to a big business with the total amount an individual person contributes, unless you have some further factors you think I have failed to take into account.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (5 children)

    Why wouldn't it make sense? If I want to minimize the amount of support corporate LLMs get, it absolutely makes sense to stop endorsing other businesses that use it.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    The original claim I made was that supporting small business is better than directly supporting big businesses. You are 100% right about minimising the amount corporate LLMs get, it's just that your responding to my comparison of small business vs big business. What you want to do is to support neither of them, so I wouldn't really spend more time analysing what I said since I don't think it's relevant to you.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (3 children)

    Yes, I don't really support this "lesser evil" type argument, since both options in the end proliferate corporate slop. If a business can't exist without using corporate LLMs, it shouldn't exist.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Black and white opinions are fine on the internet but they don't work very well in real life. You have to have nuance and make educated choices.

    If the the small business doesn't use AI, they sure as hell still are using Intuit for bookkeeping or Sysco for supplies or Microsoft for email. You can't get any from indirectly supporting the mega corps. But you can minimize your impact by making smart choices, like picking the lesser evil sometimes.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Yes, I'm minimizing my impact by not supporting said small businesses. You can't rationalize away your subpar decisions by claiming "nuance".

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago

    Sure, you get to pick with you wallet and go with the causes that are meaningful to you.

    Personally I do not buy products that are made by Nestle or Proctor & Gamble. Because of this sometimes the other option for shampoo is then going to be a Unilever product. Great - don't really like them either but don't like them less than I don't like Proctor & Gamble and I still need shampoo.

    Sometimes to support a small business that doesn't use AI posters I might not just have to pay more than I would at Walmart or Target. They might have gotten the supplies for their homemade soap on Amazon and and the only way I can pay is thru their Shopify point of sale system and then they emailed me a special offer via Mailchimp and then followed up with on email set up in Microsoft 365. And then at the start of every year, they used Turbo Tax to file taxes. Did I pick the lesser evil?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (7 children)

    Either you support small business directly and large corporations indirectly or you just support large corporations directly or you walk out in to the middle of the woods, withdraw from society, and homestead. There is not way to participate in today's society without indirectly supporting corporations.

    Sure, feel free to go in to every small shop and argue with them why they should not use AI. But supporting a multiple small shops that use AI for posters is better than giving all your money to Walmart.

    This statement is the correct option.

    Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (6 children)

    Or I find a small shop that doesn't use AI and support them. And if you think they don't exist any more, well, you helped make that happen.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago* (3 children)

    You get to pick the hill that you die on, but what I am saying is even if they don't use AI - they still use bookkeeping software, they still file taxes, they still order supplies, they have an email, website and someplace they store documents.

    So AI can be your hill that is fine, but you are still picking the lesser evil in other ways. As you said, "I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say."

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (2 children)

    Took me a bit to realize multiple of my comments are getting lengthy replies by the same person, and that said person isn't either of the commenters I was replying to.

    You, of course, get to pick whatever criteria you want for supporting or not supporting businesses. But I don't appreciate walls of text trying to shame me into supporting AI slop.

    As I've said before (as you've surely seen since you've seemingly scoured this entire thread to find people who disagree with you), there are businesses that don't support big corporations in their operations. And if you can't find any in your local area (presumably the US?), then you can live with the knowledge that your "lesser evil" slop-normalizing rhetoric helped make that happen.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)

    Why? Isn’t the small business supporting a big AI corporation? So a big corporation is getting supported either way?

    Small businesses aren’t inherently cool and good, many of them would prefer to be large corporations, they just don’t know how to get there.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago*

    Creating an AI Poster might literally just be one month of some $5 AI sub or a free trial. There's no way to verify how much they're actually supporting the AI Company.

    And while your second point is valid, if you really cared about supporting local you'd simply do some research on which local businesses are running with a community-centric approach. Which ones are run by decent people. Etc. That will likely but not definitely exclude businesses that use AI anyway.

    I'd also just rather support a local shithead than a billionaire shithead 🤷

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