Continuous partial ick

Tracy’s “invasive species” metaphor for AI-generated content is right on the money, but in all honesty, I think I prefer the label “AI dogshit”—it’s annoying to have to try to avoid it, and when you do step in some, it’s hard to get rid of the stink.

I don’t have an issue with people using “AI”-type tools to help them solve problems (but let’s not get started on the business practices and ethics side of things for now); I use Grammarly to help tidy up my writing at times (probably not often enough!), and I’ve used ChatGPT to help me debug code on occasion. I do, however, have a strong aversion to the quantity-over-quality, generate-all-the-things mindset that so many (too many!) people have, especially when it comes to personal writing. I want to know what people think and feel, not what some statistical model calculates. The continuous partial ick is real.

@adactio I’ve been feeling exactly the same way but was unable to put it into words like you have.

The point about using the output as part of the process towards the real, final output is also something that I’ve been thinking.

I do wonder if part of the ick factor is the laziness of it. Why should I waste my time if the person sharing the thing didn’t bother? 🤔

Also… “unheimlich” is a fantastic word! Not come across that before. 😁

@adactio I wonder if it’s because LLMs and GenAI are essentially “Cliché Machines”?

By definition everything they create is formulaic, which can be really useful in lots of scenarios… just not when you’re trying to present something as “new” or “interesting”

@adactio — Yeah. There’s a definite icky-ness. The desire for machines to do creative work feels like such a false idol. There’s a category that LLMs are particularly good at: heavy lifting of tedious work, that should be value enough, which in theory ought to leave us with the absolute goal of technology in the first place: stronger connections between people.

@adactio this is spot on - I linked to a well-argued essay on gravity based storage energy yesterday that is hugely undermined by its icky illustrations https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/16/gravity-storage-101-or-why-pumped-hydro-is-the-only-remotely-real-gravity-storage/

Gravity Storage 101 Or Why Pumped Hydro Is The Only Remotely Real Gravity Storage - CleanTechnica

Also what gives me the ick is people glorifying being a “prompt” engineer. That’s like me saying I’m good at googling things but then trying to take credit for the results. It’s fucking weird, man.

@hbuchel so much this.

@hbuchel I’ve spent some time tinkering with image generation and it was oddly soul-sucking. I got pretty good at writing prompts but that’s it, but I didn’t feel like I really created anything, because I didn’t.

It just made me wish I had whatever artistic spark it takes to actually draw well. 😅

@hbuchel I’ve met so many people who still don’t know how to google for things. Many people don’t know how to type an effective query that will give them the right results, don’t know how to avoid sponsored ads, and don’t know how to use their browser without first googling for “google.com”.

Being good at googling for things is a pretty niche skill - not quite CV-worthy, but meh.

Taking credit for AI output is daft though

@hbuchel Isn’t googling things then taking credit for it basically most jobs?

@mercutio @hbuchel in fairness, google results have been steadily degrading

@hbuchel Just think of people describing themselves as “search engineers” :)

@hbuchel @adactio

> It’s funny how recognizing Al art nowadays is just the same old rules as recognizing the fae in old tales.

“Count the fingers, count the knuckles, count the teeth, check the shadows…”

… and under NO circumstances should you make deals with their kind.

Credit: @erkhyan

It seems ironic that even as smart phones have made photography accessible to most people, allowing the average person to take more photos in a week than they might have in a year with film cameras, as well as access to huge free, attribution-licensed photo libraries from all those other photographers on Flickr, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, etc, people still “need” to generate AI graphics for their email newsletter or blog Bottomless photos weren’t enough; now everything else must be bottomless too.

It’s like having a beautiful, fully-stocked kitchen and pantry where you could cook anything you wanted — and a fridge full of pre-made meals other people have gifted you, some of them even professional chefs — but insisting that you don’t want any of that, and instead you want a plate made of stolen bites from every one of your neighbor’s dinners so you can create the perfect personalized spread.

As Cam puts it, “I do…have a strong aversion to the quantity-over-quality, generate-all-the-things mindset that so many (too many!) people have, especially when it comes to personal writing.” It’s not an immediate unfollow if someone uses genAI graphics in an article, but it’s definitely a strike against them in my book (Generating text not for demonstrative purposes is an instant unfollow for me — I’m not wasting my time reading something if the poster couldn’t bother writing it.)

See also:

“To demonstrate why I think AI is unnecessary for asset creation…” by Mercy Morbid

Continuous partial ick by Jeremy Keith

We need solidarity across creative industries

@hbuchel @adactio totally agree, and not looking forward to “uncanny valley” becoming this year’s hot phrase

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Probably too many syllables, they’ll call in “UV” or “UnVal” for short.

Uncanny valley - Wikipedia

@hbuchel Feels like a bit of a god complex thing, that people want to have control of the levers of the thing that does the work.

I think there probably is a niche place for Prompt Engineers, but the hope (of others) that there’ll be millions of paying roles seems naive.

@ethanjstark @hbuchel @adactio Also check for weird reflections on mirrors, and weird jewelry that seemingly merges with the flesh.

@stevegrunwell @hbuchel @adactio “Unky”. That’ll be it.

e.g. “There’s something unky about that photo, man. Go and take a real one.”