introduction

        Since ""AI"" (I'm going to start referring to separate kinds of ""AI"" as LLMs for text generative services and procedural image generators for image generative services because I have no respect for the term artificial intelligence) has become a big thing, I've gone through a few phases in terms of my overall opinion of them.

1) middle school and a fun app

an image i made for a wallpaper

        When procedural image generators first became popular, they couldn't generate much more than shapes and colors and I thought that they were fascinating. I remember that at one point, I went around asking people on random Discord servers if they wanted me to make them phone backgrounds using procedurally generated images.
        I don't exactly "miss" this period of generative ai, I certainly believe that it was one of the most inoffensive and potentially transformative periods. At this point, the models didn't know how to make solid shapes, and so everything that was spit out was, as seen here, amorphous and often quite pretty. This process is at least somewhat transformative, because it takes images and creates a sort of intricate collage, melding them together in odd and new ways, instead of trying to create a perfect average. If I could recover this app, I think I would, it was fun.

2) middle school and chatgpt

        When ChatGPT was popularized, I first learned about it through one of my school teachers, who glazed it relentlessly. He explained how it was an incredible translation machine, especially between Latin and non-Latin languages. He had us play around with it in class, including asking it to create scripts for short skits, including one of the funniest videos I have on my phone, of seven of the guys in that class acting out a skit about "Seven Dudes in a Hot Tub." I asked it to write some things, mostly fantasy stories and in the style of particular authors, and I was honestly thoroughly underwhlemed, and didn't use it or think about it much for like a year.
I think this was the most hopeful era of ""AI"", in which people like that teacher saw that there was a lot of potential in the translational abilities of the service, and it was a fun little gimmicky thing. Even at that point, though, the computational resources needed to run an LLM were immense, and the abilities of LLMs like ChatGPT to provide useful services does not justify the disproportional guzzling of resources to run. Human translators exist, and Google Translate is serviceable in many situations, and neither represent such an incredible strain on natural resources in comparison to the relatively insignificant services they provide.

3) tumblr, art, and anti-ai

        When various LLMs and procedural image generators began to really explode in popularity, I was still a Tumblr user, and my exposure to the creative side of Tumblr naturally made me incredibly hateful towards AI. Because of the way that the companies behind LLMs and procedural image generators started scraping the web for human-made writing and imagery, the people behind that writing and those images began speaking out fervently against such predatory practices. I do not believe that they're wrong; it is very wrong for companies to take advantage of people shariing their creative expressions online, much less without evven notifying them. Much of the conversation, however, revolved around copyright, which is a long-had debate surrounding ""AI"".

returning to the previous topic

        The generative programs that existed around this time were becoming more and more believable, beginning to generate hands with five fingers and correctly-proportioned scenes, although video generation was still extremely goopy and unconvincing. This was, I believe, the most useless phase of generated imagery; before this, the odd and shapeless output of popular programs were novel, interesting, and unique, and after this point, the output had a place (if a horrific and dystopian place) as a stand-in for actual, human-made content. In this era, however, these images were simply significantly worse versions of human-made content. Also around this time

4) stem and a softening

        When I entered high school, I joined a FIRST Robotics Competition team, and that environment was full of upper-middle-class, technology oriented students and adults. It's a positive environment for me, but many of the people there have neutral or positive views of generative programs, which is very different from what I'd experienced in online spaces up til then, and although my current stance is very negative I think it was good for me to see that perspective.
        In terms of LLMs, students and adults alike on the team expressed neutrality towards the idea, and called it a tool that could be used for good or bad things. Some students used it like lots of students do, to write papers for them, or just to generate ideas, and adults used it to aid all sorts of kinds of brainstorming, from name ideas to code debugging. In contrast, procedural image generators get much less attention, but were sometimes used as a joke, to say "hey look at this funny thing that ai made when i told it to make this," and these attitudes slowly changed my attitude to a more neutral one: ""AI"" is a tool, it's neutral in and of itself, etc. I remember saying, "I believe that AI can be a good tool, but at the moment it's just too awful to be actually useful in pretty much any scenario." I think I was missing some things then, and by now that second part is flat out wrong.

5) "modern" generative programs and some key youtube videos

        My current beliefs about generative programs is very, very negative. After a while of spending my time around these people who believe that generative programs are fun gimmicky tools, some who use them regularly as a second brain, I eventually stumbled across a series of YouTube video essays made by different kids of artists that explain why these programs damage the artistic process in fundamental ways. Around this time I also started learning about the ways that the facilities that these programs need to run physically damage the communities around them.

the physical drawbacks

        I will admit, I am not extremely knowledgeable about the environmental impact of the server banks that are used to run generative programs, but there are some things that I know, and so I'll share them here. First, these centers absolutely guzzle water. I have heard of communities being asked to conserve water as ""AI"" corporations purchase as much water as they want. They also suck up electricity and are an extremely heavy burden on local electricity grids.

subheading

        Cat ipsum dolor sit amet, sit and stare. To pet a cat, rub its belly, endure blood and agony, quietly weep, keep rubbing belly catch eat throw up catch eat throw up bad birds lies down but eat my own ears demand to have some of whatever the human is cooking, then sniff the offering and walk away. Really likes hummus one of these days i'm going to get that red dot, just you wait and see , but where is my slave? I'm getting hungry kitty ipsum dolor sit amet, shed everywhere shed everywhere stretching attack your ankles chase the red dot, hairball run catnip eat the grass sniff jump five feet high and sideways when a shadow moves.