Cowbee

Yes? When do you think liberalism came to be?

Why?

I'm saying capitalism is the issue, not the tool. Art should be liberated from the profit motive, like all labor. Art has meaning for people because it's a deeply human expression, but not all images are "art" in the traditional sense. If I want to make a video game, and I need a texture of wood, I can either make it by hand, have AI generate it, or take a picture. The end result is similar in all cases even if the effort expended is vastly different. This lowers the barrier for me to participate in game making, makes it more time-effective, while being potentially unnoticable on the user end.

If I just put some prompts into genAI, though, and post the output devoid of context, it isn't going to be seen as art at all, really. Just like a photograph randomly snapped isn't art, but photos with intention in message and form are art. The fact that meaning can be taken from something is a dialogue between creator and viewer, and AI cannot replace that.

AI has use-cases. Opposing it in any and all circumstances based on a metaphysical conception of intrinsic value in something produced artisinally vs being mass produced is the wrong way to look at it. AI cannot replicate the aspects of what we consider to be art in the traditional sense, and not every image created needs to be artisinal. What makes the utility of a stock image any different from an AI generated image of the same concept, assuming equivalent quality?

The bottom line is that art needs to be liberated from capitalism, and technology should not be opposed whole-cloth due to its use under capitalism.

Fair point, but I do think that until we see more widespread adoption of renewables in the US and other heavy-polluters, energy use in general is a hot topic we are already beyond capacity for. There needs to be a real qualitative leap to green energy some point soon, and we can't just rely on the PRC to electrify the world if the US is intent on delaying that shift as much as possible.

The vast majority of Marxist-Leninists don't treat it as a sport where we pick a side. MLs are fully capable of recognizing progressive movements like Cuba, the USSR, and PRC, and recognizing faux-communism a la the Gonzaloite terrorists of the Shining Path in Peru or Pol Pot the mass murderer. These latter two were not successful applications of Marxism, but deviations far beyond the norm.

Communism remains to be the logical progression of society. As production continues to centralize and class struggle heightens, the more necessary revolution and sublimating property into collective ownership and a common plan becomes. It's as much economically compelled as it is morally. The alternative, again, is barbarism as capitalism crumbles under its own unsustainability.

We can do our best to live ethically, sure, but being ethical does not mean rejecting technology whole-cloth that is simply used to its worst extent and fashion in capitalism. Not every image that exists needs to be painstakingly made in artisinal fashion, like stock images, and at the same time AI art will never be able to replace art as a human expression.

AI has use cases, and cannot replace art, but it can make some more tedious tasks that don't need artistry faster and more accessible, like this banner. If I quickly jotted down a sketch of the banner, it would not have any more artistic value just because a human drew it. Photography also has use-cases, but has not eliminated the use of sketching or traditional art forms.

Why on Earth does democracy have to take the form of competition? Discussion and direction can be cooperative, you've done this hundreds of times in your life without needing to take an antagonistic stance.

The point of "no ethical consumption under capitalism" isn't that we should focus our efforts on being as moral and upright within capitalism as possible, but on actually overthrowing capitalism.

I never for one second suggested that thoughts had no purpose or utility, or that we shouldn't want to change the world. This is, again, another time you've misinterpreted me.

Human thought is what allows us to change our environment. Just as our environment shapes us, and creates our thoughts, so too do we then reshape our environment, which then reshapes us. This endless spiral is the human experience. Art plays a beautiful part in that expression.

I'm a Marxist-Leninist. That means I am a materialist, not an idealist. Ideas are not beamed into people's heads, they aren't the primary mover. Matter is. I'm a dialectical materialist, a framework and worldview first really brought about by Karl Marx. Communism is a deeply human ideology. As Marx loved to quote, "nothing human is alien to me."

I don't appreciate your evaluation of me, or my viewpoint. Fundamentally, it is capitalism that is the issue at hand, not whatever technology is caught up in it. Opposing the technology whole-cloth, rather than the system that uses it in the most nefarious ways, is an error in strategy. We must use the tools we can, in the ways we need to. AI has use cases, it also is certainly overused and overapplied. Rejecting it entirely and totally on a matter of idealist principles alone is wrong, and cedes the tools purely to the ruling class to use in its own favor, as it sees fit.

Yes, I'm aware that the Luddites weren't stupid and purely anti-tech. However, labor movements became far more successful when they didn't attack machinery, but directly organized against capital.

GenAI exists. We can download models and run them locally, and use green energy. We can either let capitalists have full control, or we can try to see if we can use these tools to our advantage too. We don't have the luxury of just letting the ruling class have all of the tools.

Better to treat people with respect and just explain them. If we try to oversimplify everything, we make it confusing and create a section of people that are in the know, and a section that aren't. That disrupts the mass line.