I have been struggling with this. I am a visual artist, but I am not very worried about AI replacing me because the people that buy my art buy it because of me. But it is true that AI plagiarizes art and thus takes from artists, and it also makes you less creative if you use it for creative tasks.
However, I know solar punk also looks to incorporate technology, but what is the right way to use AI? Certainly not creative tasks. I could see it helping us with the tedious, the unsafe tasks, though. What do you think? Or do you think there is no use for AI at all?
There is no ethical use for AI that's based on stolen artistic labor (visual, written, voice, etc).
The people who are plowing tons of money into AI and want to make tons of money off AI are the ones using stolen labor and using it to disrupt all kinds of markets. These are not solarpunk values.
There is plenty of "AI" (really machine learning) that is trained on scientific data and used for science purposes that doesn't make anyone money and doesn't have ethical concerns. AI companies will hold these uses up as "ethical" and then try to use them as a fig leaf to cover the unethical and non-consensual data theft for training material (ongoing btw). There are no concerns about science AI, but you'll see the AI-based-on-stolen-labor conflating the two to try to erase ethical concerns. Again, those are not solarpunk values.
Solarpunk (IMO) is about ethical and "appropriate" use of technology — not every technology is ethical, in fact most tech is not values-neutral at all, but there is a push in the tech industry to paint it that way. "You're standing in the way of progress!" It's not progress when you're actively accelerating con artists and disinformation with your AI-based-on-stolen-labor.
It's important to remember that if they *couldn't* steal the artistic labor, they literally couldn't make money with this tech (in fact wouldn't even have any tech at all--it's 100% the data, which they are ever-thirsty for more). They almost can't make money with it *with* stolen labor because the tech is so lousy. But they certainly couldn't without the exploitation — and if your business model fails without exploitation, again, that's not the world I want to live in.
All of that is on top of the massive data centers that are being built for this quest that are chewing through energy and water--the industry keeps hand-waving about how "yes this will violate all our climate goals" but it's all justified because it will "solve climate change" which is of course absurd. It's literally making climate change worse. We don't need a magical "AI" solution to "fix" climate change — solarpunk is open to new technologies (again if appropriately used and not just generating massive e-waste), but it's not technology that's going to "solve" the climate crisis. It's a social problem that needs social solutions.
Thanks so much. Great article. I have yet to listen to the video. I know it can be easy to be swept into the hype for a better future with good AI, but really, what can AI give us that we need for a content life in balance with the environment that we cannot already achieve by ourselves? Some thoughts come to mind:
1) just because you can does not mean you should
2) engaging in problem-solving, manual work, and creative tasks is good for the human body, mind, and spirit. Being completely comfortable is not good.
3) We have the resources to meet everyone's needs, including non-human life, if it weren't for greed. Maybe we should tackle that first instead of more exploitation to fuel tech to "save" us.
I have been struggling with this. I am a visual artist, but I am not very worried about AI replacing me because the people that buy my art buy it because of me. But it is true that AI plagiarizes art and thus takes from artists, and it also makes you less creative if you use it for creative tasks.
However, I know solar punk also looks to incorporate technology, but what is the right way to use AI? Certainly not creative tasks. I could see it helping us with the tedious, the unsafe tasks, though. What do you think? Or do you think there is no use for AI at all?
There is no ethical use for AI that's based on stolen artistic labor (visual, written, voice, etc).
The people who are plowing tons of money into AI and want to make tons of money off AI are the ones using stolen labor and using it to disrupt all kinds of markets. These are not solarpunk values.
There is plenty of "AI" (really machine learning) that is trained on scientific data and used for science purposes that doesn't make anyone money and doesn't have ethical concerns. AI companies will hold these uses up as "ethical" and then try to use them as a fig leaf to cover the unethical and non-consensual data theft for training material (ongoing btw). There are no concerns about science AI, but you'll see the AI-based-on-stolen-labor conflating the two to try to erase ethical concerns. Again, those are not solarpunk values.
Solarpunk (IMO) is about ethical and "appropriate" use of technology — not every technology is ethical, in fact most tech is not values-neutral at all, but there is a push in the tech industry to paint it that way. "You're standing in the way of progress!" It's not progress when you're actively accelerating con artists and disinformation with your AI-based-on-stolen-labor.
It's important to remember that if they *couldn't* steal the artistic labor, they literally couldn't make money with this tech (in fact wouldn't even have any tech at all--it's 100% the data, which they are ever-thirsty for more). They almost can't make money with it *with* stolen labor because the tech is so lousy. But they certainly couldn't without the exploitation — and if your business model fails without exploitation, again, that's not the world I want to live in.
All of that is on top of the massive data centers that are being built for this quest that are chewing through energy and water--the industry keeps hand-waving about how "yes this will violate all our climate goals" but it's all justified because it will "solve climate change" which is of course absurd. It's literally making climate change worse. We don't need a magical "AI" solution to "fix" climate change — solarpunk is open to new technologies (again if appropriately used and not just generating massive e-waste), but it's not technology that's going to "solve" the climate crisis. It's a social problem that needs social solutions.
I have a whole series on AI on my blog if you're interested: https://susankayequinn.com/2023/05/the-ai-hype-machine.html
Thanks so much. Great article. I have yet to listen to the video. I know it can be easy to be swept into the hype for a better future with good AI, but really, what can AI give us that we need for a content life in balance with the environment that we cannot already achieve by ourselves? Some thoughts come to mind:
1) just because you can does not mean you should
2) engaging in problem-solving, manual work, and creative tasks is good for the human body, mind, and spirit. Being completely comfortable is not good.
3) We have the resources to meet everyone's needs, including non-human life, if it weren't for greed. Maybe we should tackle that first instead of more exploitation to fuel tech to "save" us.