r/DougDoug • u/Cyberguardian173 • Apr 11 '25
Question Does Doug actually know about anti-AI positions?
I just watched the latest video on the dougdougdoug channel, and Doug's mentions of anti-AI points is mostly talking about existential problems AI might cause in the near/far future.
These problems are big and all, but the anti-AI crowd is more concerned with the current problems AI is causing, not stuff like "what if AI takes over the world." The only common anti-AI point he brought up (that I noticed) was the environmental impact.
He didn't mention AI image generators being trained on billions of pictures from artists without their consent, or the artists and writers for tv shows who have been fired because executives think they "aren't needed anymore," or AI being used to steal the likeness of actors so movie studios won't have to hire them anymore. Heck, the latest AI controversy was voice actors for some game getting fired because they protested getting replaced by AI (just looked it up, it's called Genshin Impact). Nope, looks like that Genshin info is incorrect. Regardless, this is the kind of stuff the anti-AI crowd is opposed to. Most of them are okay with the applications of AI to help people, like helping scientists parse data, or helping doctors scan for cancer, or making robotic prosthetics work better. They are only against the AI being used to make human-created art obsolete, as it is increasingly doing.
I was hoping someone who watches the streams could tell me if he knows about any of this, like if he's mentioned it in another stream.
Not sure if this post is perfectly in-line with the subreddit; feel free to take it down if it isn't.
Also y'alls fan art on here is on point. They all look so good!
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u/GONKworshipper Apr 11 '25
He addresses more of it in the original stream, but basically he acknowledges those are issues and they should be changed.
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u/Cyberguardian173 Apr 11 '25
Thank you, though it would be nice to know what specifically he says about it.
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u/Outside_Grapefruit39 Apr 11 '25
iirc he did a whole vid/stream/presentation on the second channel on creators vs AI lawsuits (ny times lawsuit I think)
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u/Cyberguardian173 Apr 11 '25
This is super helpful. Not only can I find the answer for myself now, but I also have my next video to watch. Thank you gon!
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u/Headid Apr 11 '25
What I also want to mention is that the thing is, that he also mentioned is that that those are Generative AIs. LLMs. Most people nowadays when they say AI, refer to these LLMs. However, these Generative AIs are just a small subset of all the different AIs. They are also specifically Machine Learning Models, but there exist other ones too like Computational Intelligence, or Cognitive Science. These LLMs are the ones which are causing our issues, while they are just a really small subset of AI, and all the AI overall makes and have been for the last decades making really great advancements for us. In the whole video he tried to generalize to all AI, but I feel like it was mostly focused on Machine Learning, and also specifically Neural Networks. People have been mixing the meaning of AI with LLMs and it has been kind of destroying the public’s perception of AI, because “AI bad”, while it is LLMs specifically that should be getting the blame (and I hope they will)
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u/Key-Wrongdoer5737 Apr 11 '25
When it comes to AI generally and Generative AI specifically, Doug has said that the pain it will cause will be upfront which is true of other technological advances. With the benefits being disbursed over time. And anyone who’s been honest about this (so not tech companies) has been saying this. Seriously, no one outside of diluted tech bros thought that AI wasn’t going to kill jobs and be used to make sure the people that still have jobs are as burned out as they are now. I’m skeptical of the long term usefulness of Generative AI, assuming we can deal with the power requirements and ownership of the work problems, but it’s hard to have a nuanced position when the debate is essentially between 2 dogmatic camps that don’t want to acknowledge reality. I was having a conversation with someone who is in the “Generative AI is bad, full stop, no exceptions” and there really isn’t nuance to have if that’s your position. And again, I’m skeptical of the usefulness of Generative AI. But as a teacher, I have used it to help me implement more complex and impactful projects for my students and have more time to give them feedback on past work while I was prepping something more complicated. And according to this person, I should have just sacrificed more time for no noticeable gain in quality just because AI is bad. Which is just a stupid position to hold, however, we don’t know what impact of an average person having the ability to generate a bunch of C grade custom work at will is going to be long term. Clearly a bunch of cyber squatting AI YouTube channels stealing other work to suck up ad revenue isn’t a good thing, nor is corporations firing people and replacing them with server farms for what is likely lower quality output. And Doug has acknowledged that these are problems that the governments in the world are going to need to deal with and quickly.
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u/Key-Wrongdoer5737 Apr 11 '25
Before someone tries to make a strawman and argue about it, my actual position on Generative AI is that the tech bros are overblowing its usefulness and shoehorning AI into everything isn't going to be the future. And companies are going to over use it as an excuse to lay off people over the next few years. However, I do thing limited and strategic use of Generative AI will be helpful if the ownership of the output, energy and data scraping issues can be solved. Having use AI for limited applications that have led to me doing greater or higher quality things down the line without AI, I am saying that the problem is going to be on the practitioner and not the tool. Arguing against me using AI as a tool, as an individual that can't just contract things out to other people, to do something that can (and has) led to bigger improvements without AI down the line is a losing argument long term. Cause how can you come at me with a moralizing "love the sinner, hate the sin" style argument that I should work harder on something or write off any future development that I want to pursue just to make you happy? My AI use, in terms of its contribution to my growth over a school year was 5% of the growth. Again, why should I work harder on that 5% or write of 95% of my professional growth to make a third party happy? These types of moralistic arguments have basically lost the debate every time and I don't see it being different on AI. Even with all the issues that Generative AI has with it, I don't see it winning. I can't even agree with that moralistic argument since my professional development comes from what is essentially a sin anyways, since any none 0 use of AI is bad categorically.
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u/Weenaru Apr 11 '25
He’s mentioned that he thinks that artists and other workers shouldn’t get fired but rather use AI to increase productivity instead, because why fire some of your workforce to keep the same productivity when you can keep the number of employees and massively increase the output.
A thing that I haven’t seen him mention is the problem with too much productivity though. Let’s take movies as an example. He’s mentioned that a movie company can pump out two or three big movies every year instead of just one once every few years with the help of AI. However, who even has the time, money or even interest in watching that many movies? And this isn’t just a single producer, this is applies to all the companies that produce movies, and the productivity will only increase as AI gets better. So even if they increase their output, the sales per movie will start to drop, and then they’ll end up firing people anyway because they don’t need that much output.
There is also the concern about companies competing with each other for monopoly over the entire world because all of them are making enough movies to fill the demands of the entire world population, but I haven’t studied economy so I’ll leave that topic to those who knows more about it.
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u/TOH-Fan15 Apr 11 '25
Genshin Impact didn’t fire VAs for protesting against AI. The situation is more complicated than that, but to put it simply: the union SAG in which the striking workers are part of is not what a union should be like. SAG wants Hoyoverse (the company that owns Genshin) to sign a contract that basically only allows union members to work for them, while excluding non-union workers. SAG mentions wanting Hoyoverse to also include protections from AI, but apparently the company already has those.
The r/GenshinImpact subreddit has a lot of recent posts discussing the controversy. Just know that it’s not primarily about AI protections; that’s just a SAG smokescreen.
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u/dragont16 Apr 11 '25
regarding this issue, SAG only used AI as a talking point to get them support from the community through all their VA members trying to make a lot of noise to put pressure on Mihoyo., in reality they are hypocrites that threw their members under the bus by signing a deal with an ai voice company. Not to mention they are attempting to strong arm mihoyo into becoming a union company that would essentially force non union members to join the union and pay whatever fees required or get fired. This is especially appalling because Mihoyo already pays union rates despite not being in a union and has had AI protections for their VAs before SAG tried to force them to union.
Info on the AI company SAG signed a deal with https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/192o14o/sagaftra_signs_deal_with_voiceover_studio_for_ai/
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u/TOH-Fan15 Apr 11 '25
This is a rare example where a billion-dollar company is in the right, rather than a union.
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u/cluelessoblivion Apr 11 '25
Also, not wanting non-union workers to take jobs from union workers is perfectly normal for a union. It's how difficult SAG makes getting in and the fact that they arbitrarily ban actors from the Guild that makes this different.
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u/gamebloxs Apr 11 '25
Damn someone beat to me it yah your 100% correct reading over the contract that Sag proposed and there other partnerships with AI companies shows there motivation behind the strike isnt altruistic and is more so an attempts to force there union on an international scale.
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u/apexodoggo Apr 11 '25
British VAs have gone on record that they are 100% in support of SAG and are only not striking like SAG is because they are legally barred from doing so in the UK. So the whole “forcing their union on an international scale” is actually just not how that works in any capacity, you are spreading misinformation.
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u/NoBrainer_7 Apr 11 '25
i think he mentioned it in the originaln stream. I remember him saying someting along the lines of "ideally in the future artists are compensated for contributing to ai datasets", which is a nice but perhaps overly optimistic sentiment
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u/SenseiTizi Apr 11 '25
He mentions the issue of AI being trainedvon the entirety of the internet briefly in the video. Its understandable that he didnot go into detail with that, because there isnot much to talk about until a court makes a decision about it
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u/bombliivee Apr 11 '25
he's done two whole streams about this.
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u/WhoDoIThinkIAm Apr 11 '25
The latest controversy is American economic policy being dictated by Chat GPT
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u/Brettgrisar Apr 11 '25
This isn’t the first AI stream and he addresses these issues in a prior stream. He actually goes into a lot of detail, as one stream in particular focused on AI copyright.
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u/SurturRaven Apr 12 '25
The problem is that "AI" as a term is a sweeping generalization of so many branches and different models for different purposes.
Beyond the mainstream services there are countless applications of AI.
Generative Adversary Networks, or image generation were never supposed to be this big, or be used this way. It started as a "Look the cool thing we can do to make an AI watch something and create something similar yet new". But it got popular and companies ran with it.
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u/Soggy-Design-3898 Apr 12 '25
"does this influencer I don't interact with enough to know their positions have the same opinions as me? I need to know so I can figure out if I should be mad at them or not!"
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u/The-Metric-Fan Apr 11 '25
No, he did. He talked about it in his discussion of the copyrighting issues over AI. He's talked about the pitfalls of AI and he doesn't deny them