Rynling R&D

I am of two minds about this Tumblr post:

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On one hand, I harbor an immense dislike of generative AI, and it fills my heart with joy to see such large numbers of people treating it with absolute disdain. On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of online virtue signaling, and this example is a little silly.

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I should say that I'm not calling out anyone, obviously! I'm taking shots at targets on a straw man here to try to articulate a broader argument, but also. I hope this Tumblr post gets a million notes by the end of the week.

In the past, I’ve gotten frustrated with Gen Z kids for being creepy little fascists on TikTok, but Bluesky is making me annoyed with Millennials for being super fucking lame.

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Still, when I think about how it would be possible to gain hundreds of followers by posting milk-white political opinions generated by an LLM, I’m tempted... but it makes me so tired.

I'm not saying that a Pokémon fan artist who doesn't want to get DMs with creepy commission requests is as bad as Elon Musk. Obviously. Still, I do believe it's significant that both of these groups are directing their political energy into a fantasy.

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This should go without saying, but "protecting children" has nothing to do with conspiracy theories about politicians injecting themselves with adrenochrome harvested from orphans; nor does it have anything to do with the stories people post about magical space wizards on AO3 dot org. People can (and should) believe whatever sort of weird nonsense they want, but problems arise when significant demographic groups become convinced that their political power lies entirely in controlling what they see in the media they consume.

There's more to say, but the headspace is too depressing for me to handle right now.

Why exactly do you dislike generative art so much?
https://were--ralph.tumblr.com/post/737973707149017088/why-exactly-do-you-dislike-generative-art-so-much

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it’s theft, it’s harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it’s invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it’s a plague and there’s no vaccine for it. And all because people don’t want to take a year to learn anatomy.

I finally found this post again. It's good, and I especially appreciate the examples. If you're not already familiar with Were-Ralph on Tumblr dot com, you're in for a treat. I am unironically in love with this man.

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

The crux of my raging hatred is not that I hate LLMs or the generative AI craze. I had my fun with Copilot before I decided that it was making me stupider - it's impressive, but not actually suitable for anything more than churning out boilerplate. Nothing wrong with that, but it did not end up being the crazy productivity booster that I thought it would be.

Same. I had my fun with ChatGPT before deciding it's functionally useless.

An executive at an institution that provides students with important credentials, used to verify suitability for potentially lifesaving work and immigration law, asked me if I could detect students cheating. I was going to say "No, probably not"... but I had a suspicion, so I instead said "I might be able to, but I'd estimate that upwards of 50% of the students are currently cheating which would have some serious impacts on the bottom line as we'd have to suspend them. Should I still investigate?" We haven't spoken about it since.

This is where I'm at right now. I have regressed to assigning handwritten quizzes and live in-class presentations, because well upwards of 50% (and probably close to 80%) of students will automatically default to using ChatGPT even when explicitly warned not to. And there's nothing to stop them, because none of us has the energy or time on this earth to hold them accountable. Most universities are already failing financially, and they're just going to kick students out for cheating? Not happening. It sucks and I hate it.

Perhaps it might be good to clarify that I'm not making fun of "students" as a general category of people. There's all sorts of knowledge in this world, and we all have to start somewhere.

Rather, I'm annoyed by how the system of higher education has facilitated the relative ignorance of the ultrawealthy, who apparently can't find Russia on a map.

I don't actually dislike ultrawealthy college students. Most of them are friendly and well-socialized. Many of them are quite charming, and they have fun stories. I don't find 20yo children attractive, obviously, but it's interesting to observe how they dress and present themselves. As individual people, I like them. It's my job to support them, and I do genuinely want to see them learn and grow and succeed and be happy.

At the same time, it can be frustrating to be confronted with the naked reality of the fact that these kids aren't any smarter or more talented than anyone else, and that their privilege comes entirely from the wealth of their parents.

Echoes of Wisdom opens up a bit after the first dungeon, but the menu tax only gets worse as new objects and enemies are introduced all at once.

Moreover, while I understand the Pokémon battle appeal of being able to choose the exact perfect monster to fight another monster, the AI of all of your summoned monsters continues to be shit. More often than not, the only viable option remains to summon a rock and toss it.

There continues to be an inappropriate density of monsters on the overworld, and my Zelda keeps getting caught in situations where she can't immediately defend herself, takes three hits, and dies. Resources are extremely limited, so you can't just spam potions. I play FromSoft games for fun, so I don't mind dying, but it's somewhat disheartening to see "Zelda is finally a playable character" getting the crap beaten out of her.

Midway through the first dungeon, Zelda unlocks a phantasmal sword fighter form, but it only last for five seconds. The worst thing is that, for those five seconds, the game is actually fun. I resent that this fun is withheld from the player, and also? I resent the implication that it's not actually Zelda wielding the sword, but rather the spirit of Link who's temporarily possessing her body.

I really want to like Echoes of Wisdom, but it's needlessly frustrating and not very enjoyable to play.

Now that it's cool and based to be a Nazi, you will never guess who's winning elections in Germany!

ETA: And Austria!

And if you think "being worried about Nazis" is an anti-Muslim sentiment that makes you a Zionist, I have some fun news about who the Nazis intend to go after this time around.

Meanwhile, it's been great good times to see all the Brazilian artists and writers and game developers and academics I follow being forced to leave Twitter. I'm not saying the problem isn't Nazis; but, if I were diagnosed with a terminal illness, I might seriously consider buying a gun and [redacted] Elon Musk.

Speaking of Twitter, I got to see some interesting posts on the site this week. I remember back in 2018 when Nazis had to be sneaky; like, they would post photos of gorgeous castles and forests to attract followers and then put out a "global capitalists are ruining our natural environment" as a cheeky little dog whistle. Now, in this Year of Our Lord 2024, I get to watch as American and Canadian elected officials talk about ZOGs (shadowy members of an Illuminati-style Zionist Occupied Government) on main. As you can imagine, this has been fantastic for my mental health.

Idk man. I just came out for news about Echoes of Wisdom, and I'm feeling really attacked right now.

Before I start talking about this, it's important to state that my official position on machine-generated writing is that it sucks and I hate it. It's boring, it's annoying, and its environmental impact is not inconsequential.

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In conclusion, AI should stay in its lane of detecting cancer cells and predicting weather patterns and leave me and my writing in peace.

I'm writing an essay about Ender Lilies (my beloved) to pitch to Sidequest, and the point I'm trying to make about the game is that it does something really interesting with fungal horror, which is to suggest that there's no normative way to be human.

This is from the opening section of my essay:

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...I mean, I'm just saying. "Weird" nonbinary people who aren't interested in wearing sharply tailored military uniforms are no less deserving of dignity and respect. And also, as the world changes around us, is it really so horrific to develop radical new relationships with the environment?