a little slop for thought
i am really trying to focus on thinking and writing about positive and productive things or meaningless and fun little things, but we have become inundated with anti-ai sentiment slop. uncreative barely critical writing in an echo-chamber no better than what generative ai can churn out.
%%purple%%we have always been a little ai%%. a %%orange%%hivemind%% regurgitating popular thought and ideas. it reminds me of this right wingy pundit (can't remember who, and don't care to look up) who once noted that the rise of youtubers was a sure sign of the rise of the dictatorship of mediocrity. even as a woke leftist, this made me laugh.
%%green%%i love the indie web%%. i champion self-expression, %%yellow%%but i would hate to break it to you that most neocities and indie websites kind of look and feel the same%%. slop maximalist aesthetics. love em! but get off the high horse and own up to the similarities between hivemind aesthetics and generative ai. between your ideology and your slop.
%%red%%we just ain't that creative as a species%%. sorry. we feel we are creative, but most of us are dogmatically conformist. that is why when we see something we think is truly creative, we feel it is revolutionary. breaking from dogmatism in the everyday does this. a khunian-style paradigm shift, and back to dogmatic conformism.
writing about ai, or against ai, rather, feels like sloppy dogmatism. this writing you are reading too. it is trite and boring. where is the paradigm shift? i hope it is in ecosophical and anticapitalist approaches to ai development and use. solarpunk ai. %%purple%%technology is not neutral%%, neither is mediocrity. be better, write better, have more fun with it. ai, no ai ... don't care, not an essential tool in life, has potential, blah blah blah.
%%yellow%%but of generative ai on writing and art: yours sucks too, which is likely why it sucks at making it%%. soulless art and writing are the norm, not the exception. sure, let's celebrate the exception, where we find writing and art that purely expresses human creativity. but be honest, many of us are in the trenches in a war against our own mediocrity, stupidity, and dogmatism. which is why, to many, generative ai feels smart and creative even when it is based off the piles of garbage we created that it feeds off of. %%red%%its mediocrity is a mirror of our own%%. but as i've said before, fuck it: %%green%%be critical, have fun, don't cry ;)%%.