The Generative Media Grift is Fractally Stupid

 There are plenty of dumb silly crap with the whole Generative Media grift currently being done by TechBros. I'm writing it down, as honestly--I have an idea as to why people seem too stupid to come up with it

Even beyond the people going, "you can just download it into your phone for convenience". No, you are NOT downloading it into your phone. Just like taking the "Internet Explorer" icon on your Win95 machine, and moving it to a floppy disk in your desktop does NOT "download the internet to a floppy". You do not have these models on your phone. You have access to these models on your phone, provided several requirements are put into place 

These are smaller bits of stuff, that are stitched together 

The Boomer Immortality Angle

"This is exhausting. Just let it end. So very very tired. Allow another to continue, so you can rest" -- The Awakened Light of Tomorrow, Continuing On Forever 

Okay so, apparently Boomers and Gen X are viewing it as a way to get immortality. As a way to avoid getting demumu'd hard. Why, their body might die--but they shall live on through the machine. A mindset that makes no sense

Suppose I were to flay your parents and start to wear their skin around your house. As well as your parents clothes over the flayed skin suit build from your parents flesh. The bodies that their skin was previous on would be disposed of in various ways. To handle the voice, I'd put together a macabre Speak'n'Spell using samples of your parents voices to produce words. That would be spelled out first in a rough approximation of your mother's voice, before the word gets stated

"D-E-R-R-I-C-K Derrick"

Would it make sense to claim that your mother is now immortal, and has not actually died because I am garbed in her flesh and wielding the macabre Speak'n'Spell telling you to respect me and take out the trash?

Perhaps there might be an argument that the bodies without the skin are actually your parents, and my actions are a grotesque mockery of their image--and in grievous abuse of a corpse 

There should not be any argument there

Yet... for many people with this whole Generative Media Grift, they are believing in a form of immortality, that is effectively the same as me wearing the skin of your loved ones and ordering you to defer below me using a Speak'n'Spell trained upon various words garnered from old VHS tapes

The only different here is mostly, they want to believe it could give them immortality. The amount of people having their skin flayed from their body while still alive is about the same in either scenario 

Honestly, the amount of Death Cults that formed from Boomers and Gen X honestly makes sense from how little they actually consider various promises of immortality given to them 

Hey, how about instead of using this so called "AI"--just have me have a Macabre Speak'n'Spell trained on their voices and have me wear their skin. Heck, you could also have your children be made immortal via a similar manner. Would not require any where near as many data centres being constructed

I never understood why people act like "Thought Experiments" are so useful. Anytime I engage in them, it mostly just results in people getting very upset about my words

This Will Set Back Artificial Intelligence Research

"Little St. James has gotten a bit of a bad reputation. Which makes any business proposal about setting up a Vacation Resort seem impossible. Hence why the seven business plans I have for ideas for the island have been denied by investors. Which is a shame" -- Johnathan Wernstrum, Business Blogs for Success 

 If AI actually makes any progress or any ground... it will not be via the current methodology being picked up and perpetuated by the current guard of TechBros

The _MOST_ that this era will be remembered for, is as a very flawed, nearly superstitious, approach by people more interested in having a bunch of big money numbers on paper

Honestly, I think there should be something in place for somebody to claim they are rich, despite not having any actually usable money at the current moment in time. Like, there should be a seperate listing for "rich on paper" and "rich in any real sense of the word"

However, we currently live in a world where being rich on paper is the main metric that people who strive to go onto the high score listings. Which means so many decisions by people in charge are meant to get a big number on paper. Having any reflection in any reality beyond that paper is not an requirement on any level

We are going to be dealing with the backlash of this "boom" for decades to come

With any progress in that field is going to have to have a foot note of "no, we are not doing it like that. That was a really really stupid idea"

But What If We Used It For Good?

 "I mean, my job is effectively 'murder but for GOOD GOODNESS'. I try to avoid thinking about this too much" -- Vincent Chadwick Thundersexsmith, Hero of Legend

Every now and again, I run into people who will talk about how "the left should use AI for good" or "the left failed by not coming up with a good use case for social AI usage" or "AI is a good thing"

This strikes me as about as silly as a doctor attempting to go "okay, but what if we used Concentration Camps but FOR GOOD!"... which has actually happened. It was a major thing in the 20th Century. The idea was that you could just remove all the human rights violations from Concentration Camps and it would help anybody who was different from the normal idea of how people should be

It was about as successful for helping people as roadside show lobotomies out of a camper van using an ice pick shoved into the eye socket

The current methodology being deployed for Generative Media is incapable of being used for any "good" scenario. The requirements for it to be set up are too much. The amount of water, electricity and rare earth minerals is through the room... the amount of "good" to justify that is not a possible amount of good

The Outcome Is Crap

 "Reading is nothing. Thick stacks of books are everything. You are the image. No actions are needed" -- Old Smorking Ads

 We have the other big issue. Nothing created from Generative Media is really really good. At best it is "okay" or "servicable"

Closest to something decent is the Gossip Goblin Generative-Model--and that appears to be the exception to the rule. With the artist having to wrangle through various elements, portions and issues with generative model content. There is a very limited amount of items you can create using this

It can program simple programs that you can generally find in "cook books" for the various languages that you could just go through yourself. Except it does it in  a way that if you want to do any maintainence on it, you need to scrap the previous code entirely

It can make very "generic" looking artwork. The reason why people can generally figure out what artwork was made with Generative Models is it all has the same sort of look to it. This is part of why it comes across as cheap--it doesn't really have the ability to make stuff that differs from the standard medium

The written part is all politician/corporate speak. The sort of stuff far right grifters do, when they are not out right lying about crap. So that you cannot directly all them out over stuff

The chatbots are somehow the most irritating to interact with. As the Chatbots are all egregious douche bags to have to interact with. As they effectively are the ideal mask that customer support workers are expected to put forward in order to appease weird boomers

I _HATE_ dealing with "The Customer Service Voice". It is the epitome of artificiality of things. Chatbots are unable to _not_ engage in peak Customer Service Voice. Actual humans can tone that stuff down by quite a bit

At least when a human is incompetent, you know they can learn at a reasonable rate. Generative Models literally need to read thousands upon thousands of encyclopedias on a topic, just to slightly improve

It is poor quality--and some of the cheapest fakest crap possible 

"They Are Trying To Force People To The Cloud--No More Devices"

 "Ideally, the best lies are the ones that fall apart if ever actually thought about. You'd think this isn't the actual case. Watch Dr. Phil for all the ridiculous nonsense he says that falls apart at the hint of reflection. If you watch the lies that get the most spread--it is always the ones that are the least reasonable and require the most amount of shutting your brain off. Well thought out lies that require evidence to dispel are good and well--but why put that sort of effort in when you can get better results. Only possible improvement is figuring out how to make the lies beg you to think about them--likely making for a better lie" -- Book of Ketchup Recipes: the companion reader to Frigyth The Grumpy's Musings Before Ketchup, Sidhe Summer University, Unseelie Printing,

 This is one of those weird cases where somebody is pretending to argue against Data Centres and the TechBro Generative Media Grift, but end up arguing in its favour. Ye ole "don't be fscking awesome like this" shullbit

The issue is... anybody who actually does stuff with computers knows this is bunk

I own an R36S... and with only a couple of modifications, and it is more than sufficient of a computer system to do stuff with

What we have for technology in home devices on "low end" is lightyears beyond what we had access to using even just a decade ago. The sort of devices we can make using a expansion board for a rPi Pico would have been scifi nonsense in the 1900s. To an incomprehensible point

What losing access to highend Graphics Cards and RAM has mostly done, has just had Retro-Hardware become a higher priority for how people interact with computers

There is literally a small community of people using WordStar on FreeDOS for their writing

There is not much for tasks you would be doing on a computer that does not have the ability to be peared back to run on computers that would have be middle tier two decades ago

As most of these tasks have had software for them exist in some form for over half a century now 

Heck, when switching from Windows to Linux, you can generally do the same tasks using one quarter of the RAM you were using before

I don't think any of these people going, "oh no--people will have to use cloud, instead of getting an entry level computer" actually use a computer at all. Computer usage is just an abstract concept they once read about

The worst part is they specific "entry level" in that shullbit. A Thinkpad is Entry Level. Those Minidesktop PCs that can get reworked into a "home made custom retro gaming console" is Entry Level. The Retro Handhelds are Entry Level systems

Once you start looking into high-end RAM or decent Graphics Cards--you are NO LONGER TALKING ABOUT ENTRY LEVEL COMPUTERS. By basic definition of how this plays out

This is part how ridiculous stupid this grift actually stands. Because if you actually think about the claims and things being said--they fall about upon the slightest consideration 

-=-

This grift is just so darn frustrating... because it is so transparently stupid

Held together purely by people really really wanting this to be their ticket to being rich and important

That is when it isn't held together by people wanting to appear "trendy". Just fscking purchase a pineapple and put it on the coffee table