this is an excellent post! I really like the examples you’ve given of how to actively resist the discriminatory systems enabled by LLMs, alongside personal examples of how those systems have negatively impacted Blind and marginalized folks. it’s very rare to get this kind of perspective on LLMs and generative AI, and it’s very much appreciated.
this quote towards the end of the post stood out in particular:
(I’m not sure how the quote will be represented by the flawed ActivityPub bridge from Lemmy to Mastodon and then from Mastodon to a screen reader, so I’ll note that the quote starts here:)
To the bafflement of tech people everywhere, books will still be popular even though they work on imaginations and not code. Even though tech people will still not understand books, I, along with others, will still be here providing art because it’s our way of speaking to the world. What’s even better is that people will continue to appreciate and enjoy art instead of morning the shattering of LLM servers because, well, people are people and people like art. I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you should learn to art and people instead of code.
(end quote)
this says so much about the extreme lack of imagination we’ve seen among LLM and generative AI boosters; there’s a fundamental flaw in the way they conceptualize and engage with creative work. we’ve seen again and again how those AI boosters will try to appropriate the style and trappings of especially science fiction while demonstrating barely a surface-level understanding of the work — see also our recent posts on awful.systems about how poorly some rather loud voices hyping AI understand Iain M Banks’ Culture novels
@self Oh wow! Thank you so much for this absolutely brilliant reply! I do have a question from the Mastodon side of the Fediverse. Is there a cleaner way I can share links to Lemmy communities? I figured out that if I drop a line,
like this.
It creates a post, but don’t really wanna create a whole text post when I really wanna share a link, but anyway!
You win all the replies ever! Thank you! If you want my Javascript prompt injection I made, DM me because I don’t wanna give LLM developers easy ways to put up input and output guardrails against my prompt injection.
I do have a question from the Mastodon side of the Fediverse. Is there a cleaner way I can share links to Lemmy communities?
I’ll do a little bit of experimentation tonight on our test instance and see if there’s a cleaner way to do link-only posts from mastodon! this’ll kill two birds with one stone for me — I needed to run some federation tests as part of an infrastructure upgrade I’m looking to deploy to our main instance. unfortunately, the federation between Lemmy and Mastodon is very limited and janky in a lot of ways so there might not be a cleaner way to do it, but the thread you created looks good on our end.
also, I can’t speak to how the experience for Blind users would be in any of the Lemmy apps or its web frontend, but if any of them end up being a more convenient way to interact with our posts, we can definitely get you set up with an account on our instance if desired.
If you want my Javascript prompt injection I made, DM me because I don’t wanna give LLM developers easy ways to put up input and output guardrails against my prompt injection.
definitely! I will reach out on Mastodon when I get the chance; I don’t remember if Lemmy even attempts to federate DMs between us and Mastodon, but I don’t trust it to do it well if it does.
His work made me extremely optimistic about the future at a time where I really needed it, and is what got me to enroll in an AI-centered study course (thank fuck I dropped out and enrolled in something else).
we’ve got a few Banks fans on our instance so it’s an ongoing conversation, but the most recent posts are here
I enjoy Banks a lot and firmly believe he’d be here sneering with us if that were physically possible; it’s tragic that the rationalists and a number of AI fans have leaned into subverting the meaning of his work.
this is an excellent post! I really like the examples you’ve given of how to actively resist the discriminatory systems enabled by LLMs, alongside personal examples of how those systems have negatively impacted Blind and marginalized folks. it’s very rare to get this kind of perspective on LLMs and generative AI, and it’s very much appreciated.
this quote towards the end of the post stood out in particular:
(I’m not sure how the quote will be represented by the flawed ActivityPub bridge from Lemmy to Mastodon and then from Mastodon to a screen reader, so I’ll note that the quote starts here:)
(end quote)
this says so much about the extreme lack of imagination we’ve seen among LLM and generative AI boosters; there’s a fundamental flaw in the way they conceptualize and engage with creative work. we’ve seen again and again how those AI boosters will try to appropriate the style and trappings of especially science fiction while demonstrating barely a surface-level understanding of the work — see also our recent posts on awful.systems about how poorly some rather loud voices hyping AI understand Iain M Banks’ Culture novels
@self Oh wow! Thank you so much for this absolutely brilliant reply! I do have a question from the Mastodon side of the Fediverse. Is there a cleaner way I can share links to Lemmy communities? I figured out that if I drop a line,
like this.
It creates a post, but don’t really wanna create a whole text post when I really wanna share a link, but anyway!
You win all the replies ever! Thank you! If you want my Javascript prompt injection I made, DM me because I don’t wanna give LLM developers easy ways to put up input and output guardrails against my prompt injection.
absolutely!
I’ll do a little bit of experimentation tonight on our test instance and see if there’s a cleaner way to do link-only posts from mastodon! this’ll kill two birds with one stone for me — I needed to run some federation tests as part of an infrastructure upgrade I’m looking to deploy to our main instance. unfortunately, the federation between Lemmy and Mastodon is very limited and janky in a lot of ways so there might not be a cleaner way to do it, but the thread you created looks good on our end.
also, I can’t speak to how the experience for Blind users would be in any of the Lemmy apps or its web frontend, but if any of them end up being a more convenient way to interact with our posts, we can definitely get you set up with an account on our instance if desired.
definitely! I will reach out on Mastodon when I get the chance; I don’t remember if Lemmy even attempts to federate DMs between us and Mastodon, but I don’t trust it to do it well if it does.
(I can’t usefully contribute to much of this thread right now 'cuz still reading the post, likely finishing tomorrow, yaaaaay computer yaks…)
opened it myself (mastodon.social localized view), quoteblock seems to have survived
which semi-sorta makes sense from the code I saw in the lemmy post-handling AP code the … “other” day (oh christ that was over a month ago -_-)
Do you have a link to that Iain M. Banks post?
His work made me extremely optimistic about the future at a time where I really needed it, and is what got me to enroll in an AI-centered study course (thank fuck I dropped out and enrolled in something else).
I have so many feelings on this.
we’ve got a few Banks fans on our instance so it’s an ongoing conversation, but the most recent posts are here
I enjoy Banks a lot and firmly believe he’d be here sneering with us if that were physically possible; it’s tragic that the rationalists and a number of AI fans have leaned into subverting the meaning of his work.
Awesome, thanks!
And yeah, for sure. If anything, those people want to be the GFCF from Surface Detail, not the Culture; they just want the shiny toys.