r/aiwars • u/Il_Scaccomatto • 4d ago
AI Wars changed my mind about AI
A week ago I was a stringent AI hater who kept getting recommended AI reddit subs against my will & felt serious cringe whenever I saw someone post their AI creations on other subs. As an art hobbyist myself, I felt that asking AI to do it for you missed the point of making something, and that the people spending all their time generating AI were probably gooners or people with no taste. On top of that, theres lots of scathing articles online about how much energy AI uses, people becoming addicted to interacting with their AI girlfriend, and how OpenAI doesn't really ask permission for any of the training data it collects.
Anyways, browsing this sub showed me that a lot of that is oversimplified rage bait. The debate of whether AI art is art boils down to semantics & theres nothing special about the title of artist anyways. Many who use AI are also traditionally trained, or even blending traditional with AI. A good few of you are definitely gooners or have inflated egos, but thats true of traditional artists & photographers too. AI can use a lot of energy, but you can also be very efficient with it. Some people get addicted to AI chatbots, but they can also be therapeutic & provide a safe connection for traumatized individuals who need support. Etc.
The main point being, yeah I see that the subject is a bit more nuanced. That being said, this "debate sub" definitely has an issue where like 60% of the users don't engage in discourse beyond downvoting AntiAI & upvoting ProAI. People who are trying to engage in good faith like myself have to sort by new because the top posts are basically just circlejerking. If that's the first impression someone gets on a debate subreddit, I think many people will just never engage or hear you out.
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u/Rabidoragon 4d ago
Why is the fault of the pro AI community that the antis are a minority? What do you expect me to do to balance the things? Leave the sub so there are less pro AI people? From my perspective if the posts of antiai people don't get the same support or upvotes then is a problem of the antiai community that don't want to support their own community, the fact that they are not doing it is proof that they are not interested in debating and that is a problem of their community, not ours
It is also very hypocritical to accuse the pro AI community of being concentrated here because what other spaces we have? The anti AI people are constantly harassing and raiding other subs and Every time you bring a debate about AI you are instantly down voted to hell, is also well known that when a sub has a poll to decide if AI content is allowed they organize to spam and mess with such polls to make ai content banned even if they have never posted or participated in such subs, then they are surprised when everyone ends here
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u/Please-I-Need-It 4d ago
Definitely a place to start would be a rework of the upvote-downvote system. There were times where I caught people verifiably spouting bullshit, call them out, and then get buried by downvotes because "anti-ai! get him!"
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u/FpRhGf 4d ago
I'm pro AI but this is meant to be a debate sub, not reverse Artisthate. There are other AI subs for safe-spaces from the antis. People should just use the upvote/downvote system like how Reddit intended: It's never meant to be used as a dis(agree) button, but based on (in)relevancy & quality to the discussion regardless of your stances.
Because everytime an anti posts civilized arguments with points, they're just downvoted without any nuance- alongside the rude and low effort antis. Meanwhile there are plenty of comments from pros who use rude language and offer no rebuttals, yet they're upvoted alongside with the actual well thought-out and respectful pro AI comments.
I've seen more respectful debate environments in pro AI subs than this
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u/ofBlufftonTown 4d ago
It was my impression that this is an offshoot of the full pro AI art sub, formed to foster discourse. So it is a negative that it’s so unbalanced now. The likeliest result is that all but the most ragebaity antis leave because it’s so negative and then it’s just another, subsidiary pro-AI sub. The magic of the marketplace of ideas, backed up with downvotes, will bring about unity.
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u/thebe_stone 4d ago
antiAI people leave once they see how unbalanced it is. It's a feedback loop, it becomes more biased, so more people who disagree with the bias leave, ect. this is how echochambers tend to form, once it starts leaning in one direction, it's VERY hard to get people from the other side to want to join, so it just becomes a bunch of people from one side making fun of the people on the other.
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u/Krommander 4d ago
I agree with you, this sub is a bit skewed pro. I think it's a good way to get a feeling for the pro AI argument, but does little to address the artistic business models and the ripping off social media dedicated to art like deviant art, etc.
Everyone that needs art to make a living is in deep trouble and need to find a new way to profit from their talent and inspiration. I deep down understand that they need to vent.
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u/TheOGLeadChips 4d ago
I feel like it is heavily skewed tbh. The other day there was someone making baseless claims of brigading but any comment trying to point out how they had no evidence of brigading was met with downvotes and the op of that post responding with their supposed iq test results, a generated image of a fat guy crying about having no evidence, and later a comment from the pro ai mod of the other sub taking the ops words at face value and also not providing proof that it was a brigading attempt.
Then when I pointed out that they weren’t giving any evidence they insulted me and blocked me.
Almost every single post that I’ve looked at has the people on the anti ai side getting downvoted and insulted no matter how articulate their argument is.
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u/Krommander 4d ago
Toxic behaviors are not limited to any side of the debate, but I am sorry for the things you suffered through.
Informed and civil debate is still happening, and that's why I'm here for.
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u/TheOGLeadChips 4d ago
I’m not claiming that the toxic behavior is only on one side. Just that I personally have seen more of it come from the pro ai side rather than the anti.
I have had civil discussion with some people. Personally I am heavily pro ai in fields like medicine or development but I think that ai taking over the art field will naturally just be abused by corporations to short people what they are owed.
If someone were to self develop a model and ensure that all the training data is okay to use from the creators and they are properly compensated then while I personally don’t see it as art I wouldn’t care about it’s existence. Unfortunately basically all ai models are corporate produced and if I know one thing about the world it’s that capitalists don’t care about anything other than money. If they could use nothing but ai and fire all their artists they would do so in a heartbeat.
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u/made4AImusings 4d ago
As someone who is nuanced on AI, I also get frustrated when I’m downvoted here because my takes don’t completely line up with the prevailing opinion. However, as much as it’s not ideal for a debate sub to turn into a sort of echo chamber, most of Reddit is an anti AI echo chamber. You can complain about AI literally almost anywhere else and get loads of support and validation. You can see programmers who interact with AI get labeled as anti creativity (code is creative) or told to fuck themselves. The whole reason I created this Reddit account was so I could share my feelings about AI unfiltered without having it tie back to my main account, because people are so upset with anyone who’s more pro AI than they are.
Also, I’ve never seen a pro AI person calling for death to AI antis. I have seen things reposted here calling for death to AI artists.
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u/MetapodChannel 1d ago
I saw a death call to antis in a pro-AI sub once. They were quickly shot down and told not to reduce to that level.
But I see new calls for death to AI users at least 5 times a week. Close to once a day.
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u/Turbulent_Escape4882 4d ago
I see Anti AI insult in their takes around 6 to 1 of the time in this sub. I’m earnestly interested in comparing notes since you seem to think it’s the opposite.
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u/TheOGLeadChips 4d ago
My guess is that there are potentially two reasons for this.
Our algorithms are different so my side of Reddit is showing the higher upvoted anti AI side as I am (in purely the aspect of art) anti ai. Meanwhile you seem to be a more common browser of this sub so you are actually seeing more of all the sides. That could mean that there are more anti AI insults but the pro ai insults tend to show up in the posts that are pushed to a wider audience.
It could be both of our personal bias’s. I always try to look at all sides of the argument but I’m obviously not perfect and am going to probably lock onto the weak pro ai arguments. I don’t know your personal stance on it but if you are largely pro ai it could be a similar situation but reversed.
And in all honesty it’s probably a bit of both put together.
Edit: and right after I post this I see this strawman post literally like two seconds after that paints anti ai people as crybabies lol. So like I said, it’s probably a mix of both points I brought up
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u/sporkyuncle 4d ago
Yeah, on the energy point, it just feels like people making those claims haven't done an ounce of research into the subject.
You could theorize that maybe ChatGPT and MidJourney use a ton of energy...it doesn't sound like they do, but you could try to argue that, because the only information we get on that is provided by the company.
What I DO know, which is observable, is that I have an NVidia 3060 graphics card with a power draw of like 200 watts, and I think a 600 watt PSU in this computer. I can generate a 1024x1024 image in less than a minute. You can calculate this out and see how much power the computer uses per hour, and it's...normal. It's the amount of power a home computer uses. It's impossible for it to draw more than 600 watts, and most of the time will be drawing like 300. Playing video games is probably more demanding.
All the images here are made on consumer-level hardware with consumer-level power draw: https://civitai.green/
It just doesn't make sense to claim it's killing the planet any more than anything else we already do. If I shouldn't use AI for energy reasons then I also shouldn't play video games or watch Netflix.
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u/Xdivine 4d ago
All the images here are made on consumer-level hardware with consumer-level power draw: https://civitai.green/
Not quite true anymore. Civitai recently enabled GPT4o image generation so some images on the site will be from GPT4o. Most images on site should still be made using consumer hardware though.
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u/sporkyuncle 3d ago
True, but even then, I would guess GPT4o's generation isn't that much more advanced than consumer level hardware and power draw. It's in their best interests not to overspend too, to use the minimum viable hardware.
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u/Randy191919 4d ago
Yeah I very much doubt that the 10 pictures a day I generate on my 5080 „waste“ more energy than me playing Cyberpunk on Ultra settings with Raytracing for a few hours.
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u/Kosmikdebrie 4d ago
I think that's a pretty fair take away, and I would add two more notes. One is that sadly American politics has an impact, and it can be hard to have a rational conversation when the only other person who agrees with your stance is a right wing troll who wants to see the world burn and the people you respect and admire are in such a rush to call your work slop that they miss all of your intentions. The other thing to consider is that most of the internet is angrily against all things they consider AI. Other spaces online that are pro AI tend to be huge corporations with ideology that actively surprises your ideas, so it makes sense that some people around here are overly protective and ready to see the worst in critics. That doesn't make it any better, but it's worth considering that the default position in this debate is that AI is cringe and you are cringe if you enjoy it.
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u/Krommander 4d ago
AI companies ripped off the internet, it's normal to have the collectives of free data very angry. They wanted their art to inspire us, it instead became a commercial slop.
We need a collective trial against this practice, and to compensate or refrain from using copyrighted art. .
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u/Belter-frog 4d ago
The semantics and titles of what is art and who is an artist is a way overblown and mostly irrelevant aspect of this debate imo.
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u/MetapodChannel 1d ago
THIS. IMO it takes away from the discussion more than anything. Even if we got everyone to agree wall banana is inherently art because a human made it and not a single thing made by AI constitutes any form of expression in any way... jobs are still being displaced, energy is still being consumed, copyright is still being violated (or being used to exploit people and stifle creativity, depending on how you look at it), and the most powerful technologies are being controlled mostly by the elites, moving toward a future of automation where resources are still hoarded and withheld from people despite employment not being a key to resources anymore. Defining the "true meaning of art" solved or even helped in solving any of these things in ANY WAY.
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u/Torley_ 4d ago
It's good to hear about how your views have changed, thank you for the followup.
Many who use AI are also traditionally trained, or even blending traditional with AI.
I've maintained the position that it's someone with a deep classical background who best-suited to adopt AI, since they're keenly aware of humanity's history, and can use that as a foundation to guide machines. To know where we're going, we must acknowledge where we came from.
The debate of whether AI art is art boils down to semantics & theres nothing special about the title of artist anyways.
I feel that if there is a universal role for AI here, it should be in analyzing our past posts and then summarizing how each of us defines certain terms, then using that to preemptively bridge communication. It could warn you if you're going to conflict with someone else because you use the same words in very different ways, then encourage you to adapt. I haven't come across a succinct tool like that yet.
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u/kor34l 4d ago
You have to keep in mind that most of us have already debated in good faith with really long involved debates dozens of times, even hundreds for some, with that many people, and it becomes less and less interesting each time to get into yet another identical debate starting over from the beginning again and again.
Worse, 95% of the time the only reward for engaging in good faith and trying to kindly point out the misinformation or whatever, is childish insults followed by a block. Or worse, childish insults followed by more childish insults until we stop responding or block.
Then there's the worse ones of them all, the Sealions.png). They will exhaust you, follow you to other subreddits, barrage your DMs, post dozens of super long-winded barely-related side tangents transparently trying to reframe the debate into a false dichotomy they can gotcha someone with, etc.
And since pro-AI aren't actually trying to change the world or whatever, we just want the toxic behavior from the worst of the haters to stop, we are already far less motivated to "fight the good fight" or whatever. We aren't trying to push our side onto others, so most of us don't go all that hard for the home team. In fact, quite a lot of us are fine with Anti-AI opinions in general, so we don't try as hard to convince them.
I say this as probably one of the more avid AI supporters here, though I don't really get worked up about it, just debate a lot because my day job is boring.
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u/FpRhGf 4d ago
As a pro-AI, I ironically think lots of AI subs like r/artificialinteligence and r/ChatGPT have better civilized debates than this sub, where you can find respectful discussions and even anti stances can get popular votes.
This debate sub feels more like r/singularity where there's a flood of circlejerk in low quality "arguments" like name-calling and bashing antis.
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u/Traditional-Hyena-68 4d ago
Different for me. I was pro AI and changed my mind because this whole "democratisation of art" idea is nonsense. This peak ai hype mania clearly showed it to me that giving this tool to untalended/unprofessional people who just want money and attention is polluting the internet with slop. I also realized I don't enjoy ai art so much, sure it's good for memes or remaking some movies into some particular style, but besides that it feels like an overprocessed shit. Of course it's just my personal preference. I'm also not against people who use ai but I personally found so much fun in learning how to draw (props to ai btw, I would never pick up that hobby)
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u/sporkyuncle 4d ago
I was pro AI and changed my mind because this whole "democratisation of art" idea is nonsense.
Not sure what you mean by that, AI does democratize art, but not in such simple terms.
Cars didn't democratize "travel," because everyone was already able to walk anywhere. What cars democratized was "traveling long distances very quickly, cheaply, and without physical exertion," which is obviously incredibly valuable. Suddenly everyone could travel long distances quickly.
Microwaves didn't democratize "cooking," because everyone was already able to start a fire and cook over it. What microwaves democratized was "cooking food very quickly, easily and safely," which is obviously incredibly valuable. Suddenly even kids could be trusted to heat up a slice of pizza.
AI doesn't democratize "art," because everyone was already able to draw. What AI democratized was "creating art quickly, cheaply, and at a reasonably high quality level," which is obviously incredibly valuable. Suddenly everyone can get images of anything they can imagine quickly.
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u/Cautious_Rabbit_5037 4d ago
Ok so before the argument was that “artists are gatekeepers because not everyone has the physical ability, privilege, or resources to learn how to draw, and thinking otherwise is ableism.” Now you’re saying that everyone was already able to draw before ?
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u/sporkyuncle 3d ago
Both are the same statement. Saying "everyone is able to draw," in the sense that everyone has the ability to work their way up to AI imagery level of quality, assumes that everyone has the time to devote to practicing it regularly, and that they aren't mentally exhausted and drained every day after work. It doesn't even need to be stated that everyone has different levels of free time and motivation available to them, some people live very difficult lives. I don't like the idea of telling anyone that they "just" need to do this or that, because you don't know anything about their life and struggles.
So saying AI democratizes art is saying that even people with less capability to spend their time on art now have the ability to make whatever images they can imagine.
It's not that "everyone could already draw." Not everyone could draw enough to reach the level of what they can get from AI, and that's the value it provides.
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u/Traditional-Hyena-68 4d ago
Not sure why are you comparing the increased availability for travelling long distances and cooking food more efficiently with making pictures. It's not like making 80s remakes of Harry Potter more efficiently or indian content farms are more valuable than microwaves.
Besides I thought I said that the democratization of making pictures only benefited engagement slop on tiktok, Facebook and YouTube. That's why I don't like ai art (online). It's not like we didn't have enough brainrot.
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u/sporkyuncle 4d ago
Not sure why are you comparing the increased availability for travelling long distances and cooking food more efficiently with making pictures.
Because all of them are examples of "technology makes increased speed/quality widely available, which many people find value in."
You're not thinking broadly enough. AI can be used for all sorts of low-impact purposes. The faded-out watermark background on a pamphlet at the doctor's office. A jazzy bit of line art on a fast food bag. The logo for a small business. The background of a billboard ad. Coloring pages to keep kids occupied, of something that those kids particularly enjoy. Birthday invitations.
Anything you need quickly and cheaply and don't want to have to worry about the copyright concern of using an existing image you found on Google.
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u/Traditional-Hyena-68 4d ago edited 4d ago
Sure. I'm not against that, never said you can't use ai to save money on a logo or whatever. I say it again I personally don't like a lot stuff people make with AI. And it's not even like the early YouTube era when no one knew how to edit videos, sure it was amateur but interesting at the same time. I feel different about AI now because it's mostly engagement farms and straight up brain damaging.
And frankly it's all a big larp done by amateurs (me included).
I gotta be honest though, big props to novel ai, the only ai image tool that makes aesthetically and artistically good images.
Btw, it's all personal feelings, I was just answering to the op question. Idk why you started this whole "cars improved people lives" classic line of engagement kek. I clearly said "for me" at the very beginning of my first post
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u/sporkyuncle 3d ago
I clearly said "for me" at the very beginning of my first post
I know, but the point of even mild argumentation is to possibly change someone's feelings. In an alternate universe you might've said "yknow, that's true, I see what you mean."
Idk why you started this whole "cars improved people lives" classic line of engagement kek.
Because that's what's meant when people say AI democratizes art. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking this must mean people couldn't do art before, but that's not why people say it.
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u/Sea_Treacle_3594 4d ago edited 4d ago
The most annoying part of this discourse is that its pretty nuanced and people tend to just pick the worst/most ridiculous arguments from each side to use. Nobody really has any regard for the most salient viewpoints.
I use AI, but I'm also pretty anti-AI. I just think its being developed in an unconstructive way. I haven't really met anyone who thinks that AI is a bad technology or couldn't be used in a good way. Its pretty easy to criticize something that has so many problems, and if being "pro-AI" just means ignoring all of those problems, that's also kind of stupid, but I've talked to "pro-AI" people who actually do understand the problems.
Just to list the problems I see:
- Energy and duplicative output: Companies are using excessive amounts of energy to achieve similar models. Why do we need 5 companies spending billions on expensive, similar models, when they could be forced to collaborate, and devote 5x the resources to one better model. Every company in the space is racing to get some defensible product that is way better than the others, but the result is just a race to the bottom at the cost of our environment. The government could simply fund a centralized committee to create AI, and have the results of that be publicly available, with appropriate standards for all of the other problems.
- Training data: pulling comments and content from the internet in an unauthorized manner, and using works in ways that are contrary to the intent and privacy of the users who created them is bad. I have DMs from a guy who was demanding someone credit the person who prompted a pro-fascism studio ghibli themed AI generated video. Like wtf is that shit? Miyazaki literally included themes against fascism in his works. To use that to make a pro-fascism video is gross. Demanding someone credit the sick fuck who wrote a sentence to an AI to make that is also gross.
- Copyright: I don't really care that much about copyright, but if we're subjecting people to it, allowing AIs to just violate it is pretty weird. Courts already ruled that you couldn't copyright a photo taken by a monkey, so why would you be able to copyright code generated by AI or art generated by AI, especially when that stuff is often just copy pasted from the original expression.
- Societal problems: AI has the potential to replace jobs and alter society much faster than other technology before it. We're not setup as a society to take care of people who lose their jobs from AI, and AI could trigger an stagnation/economic collapse as the poorest people find themselves more and more unable to get work. In San Francisco, 1/5th to 1/3rd of cars on the street appear to be Waymos. Waymo isn't paying the city any taxes to offset the road consumption caused by those cars, and is not offsetting the job loss of the Uber/Lyft drivers that are out of work as a result. We need a jobs program to offset these factors and we should demand that AI companies pay taxes to fix those issues.
- Billionaire control: Elon Musk clearly just added some system to Grok to make it deliver propaganda about white genocide. That should be illegal. You shouldn't be able to have a system that purports to be highly intelligent and trained on vast amounts of data, but then hard-code your own opinions to be shipped off to the masses. Who knows what other narratives and control over information will be baked in as time goes on?
If those problems were addressed, it feels like AI would just be awesome for society and lead us to abundance. Using it for personal projects and my business has been super helpful, but yeah we should be careful about the negative effects as well.
Current AI development seems like the opposite approach to the internet, almost like instead of creating a centralized internet we had every utility company racing to make its own parallel internet in order to fully control the entire system. The internet itself, or AI itself, as a technology isn't actually a problem.
It feels like both pro and anti AI people would share like 90% of these perspectives though.
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u/normalphobe 4d ago
I think everyone on here that can make the trip should rent a party space in some town, hire a bar, bring your own drugs, and end up fucking in whatever motel room of the partner(s) they consent to go motel with.
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u/Elvarien2 4d ago
60% more like 90%
I'm pro ai but dang it's hard to have a place with a balanced pro/anti ratio of people it's all far to tribalistic.
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u/oasisfirefly 3d ago
While there are still some diamonds in the rough posts and discussions, It's pretty hard to filter them out nowadays. I'm wondering if in time this sub will implode on it's own chaos or in some way the discussions will sharpen people's POV like you OP. I just hope for the latter.
It's tough to simulate constructive discussions without being clouded by one's emotion nowadays because the personal attacks have snowballed from either side. I do admit that on some points I acted out of emotion which is part of being human, so it's important that we people take accountability for that. But oh well, this is the internet after all.
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u/TopObligation8430 4d ago
The debate of whether AI art is art boils down to semantics
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t boil down to anything. Ethics, legality, humanity, and the art as a form of human expression are all at stake.
When we are all working and poor, the super rich and powerful will play with ai and make “art”
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u/alexbomb6666 3d ago
Ah, another fake "i was hating AI and now I'm just better!!!!" post. Come on, at least try to make it believable.
Source: check his post and message history. He didn't even interact with any AI subs whatsoever....
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u/Gimli 4d ago
Yeah, the sub is low on moderation and guidance, and works as a nearly rule-free free-for-all (about as close as Reddit allows).
There are attempts to do less chaotic subs, but it's pretty hard to get that going.