Odd thoughts upon awakening (Beware: Dream logic)

[Labster]

"If 'abject' means 'can't be spoken' and 'abominable' means 'can't be foretold,' shouldn't 'absorbent' mean 'can't soak things up?'"

* I didn't check the actual etymology of any of those, it's just where my waking mind wandered.

ab- means "away from", and in Latin ab introduces the ablative case.  So those words are: abject = thrown away; abominable = away omen; absorb = suck away; ab urbe condita means [number of years] from the founding of the city [of Rome], which was replaced by AD.

I think I've resolved my mixed feelings on generative AI art/writing, and my conclusion is that no one who creates or comsumes fan works has any right to complain about it. Doubly so if they've got stuff paywalled on Patreon/Subscribestar/etc. and are actively profiting off of other people's IP without so much as a handshake agreement let alone formal licensing.

Necroing, but I didn't notice the first time: Honestly copyright is perhaps the least interesting moral question to me with regards to AI.  I'm not even sure that copyright should exist at all -- is man not entitled to the thoughts under his own brow?  Is any idea really original?  All creation is subcreation, and I guess AIs do that much.

When you posted, Magnifica Humanitas wasn't published, but I think the Chicago Pope has the right idea: "Does AI "make human life on earth 'more human' in every aspect of life?  Does it make it more worthy of man?  If the answer is yes, then we can recognize it as an opportunity to be embraced responsibly, on a path of patient, shared reconstruction, akin to the rebuilding of Jerusalem narrated in the Book of Nehemiah.  If, however, power grows while the heart withers and human bonds fray, then we are faced with a new form of Babel – a construction that is grandiose, yet fundamentally dehumanizing."[MH 129]

Of course, we know that was written by AI because it has an em dash in it.  But besides that silliness, the core problem that I complain about has maybe 0.1% of my care about copying that floppyright, and the rest is that we seem to be making reality worse.  We're at the point where you can't trust video be default, and people in this country have deep partisan distrust, which means we are very soon getting to a situation where we our concept of underlying reality has diverged.  And worse, from the pope's point of view, is that we've moved out of communion with each other.

There has been a CEO – one of my former workplace's clients – who has gone on the record that he want to replace "lower-valued human capital" with AI.  It's enabling people to imagine a transhumanist dreamland where all of their problems are solved when we give up our humanity to move into the computer ... who consequently start giving up their humanity now.  AI will solve all of our problems, therefore the right thing to do is to throw everything at AI.  Future people matter more than any people now because there are more of them, according to effective altruism, which means people now don't really matter. This is religion, and not a good religion.  Silicon Valley has always had a secular libertarian thread going through it, but this has left a God-shaped hole, which they have slouched towards filling with AI.

All of this is besides the massive environmental damage (New Data Center Equivalent to Setting Off 23 Nuclear Bombs Per Day, Professor Finds) and real people losing real jobs.  It can make life easier, but does it really?  Should our lives be easier in that way, outsourcing thinking even more?

I write fanfiction because I want to share my humanity with my readers, so why the hell shouldn't I be upset?