Good memes, bad memes, unite towards a united front.
If we're gonna engage on shortform content platforms (and I think we should) then minimizing the amount of labor spent (wasted) doing so seems tactical. Effort asymmetry has always been a disadvantage for leftists, since fash and libs can just pump out absolute nonsense garbage.
We've seen how effective recuperating Soviet aesthetics has been. Brainrot edits with commie aesthetics (new idea for a username) get engagement.
She could be holding a Pravda on one hand and some dank Communist memes on the other for even more effect. lol
why the AI graphic ? was the text also AI generated cause the font looks awful
The AI graphic is because the meme is about using AI as a tool for agitprop.
I thought it was just about posting online
That's not really a controversial thing we need to raise awareness about though, if anything there's too much focus on posting online as opposed to engaging with people in the physical world.
But then AI is not that useful either
I don't see how that follows. I'm not suggesting that online agitprop is not useful, I'm simply saying that we already do a lot of it. However, AI somehow became controversial within left circles and people are avoiding using it. Yet, it's an excellent tool that drastically lowers the barrier for making memes and other types of content that we should be leveraging.
Furthermore, AI tools can absolutely help with real world organizing as well. You can use LLMs to create study guides, sum up key points in literature, and so on. If you're working with a local group in person, you still have to prepare material that you use for education. Having a tool that can save time doing that is invaluable.
@yogthos Generative AI companies are tied directly to fascist organizations and government. Their aesthetic is tied strongly to far-right movements. They are not a tool for us; you may as well say Volkswagen and that Nazi Propaganda Gothic German font are our tools.
Nobody is talking about using US based generative AI companies tied to fascist organizations. There are plenty of open source models and companies from China that are readily available. This technology is absolutely a tool for us, and ignoring it simply give advantage to the fascists.
May I ask if you could point to a compiled list of them for the uninitiated and tech illiterate?
If you're looking for online tools, here are a few Chinese based ones to check out
For open source models you can run locally
There is a project I've discovered recently which is similar to GPT4All, except you can throw multiple GPUs at the workloads (and yes it can use Vulkan): https://github.com/LostRuins/koboldcpp
I haven't messed much with it but it builds and works fine on Linux. The only thing I don't like is that the source tree has a bunch of Windows binaries in it.
@yogthos Stable Diffusion is open source, too. And it doesn't matter where you got it from when it comes to the fash aesthetic, which this only serves to normalize and to make left-wing pseudo-content that is significantly easier to muddy and appropriate.
And...people don't want it. The only people for whom it would be effective agitprop are the backward group.
Surrendering generative AI and all of its utility to the ruling class because of its disruptive effect on intellectual/artistic labour is a folly, it's luddite tactics that we know come from a good place but are ineffective and leave its advocates in the dustbin.
We are marxists and as such the material world and its realities are most important to us. The fact AI is capable of spitting out shortform content more efficiently than ever before cannot be neglected or the ruling class gets another cudgel under its belt. Why not produce propaganda using the same avenues as the elite? In addition, letting something like 'fash aesthetics' influence you is absurd. If I can eek one positive thing for the working class out of 'fash aesthetics' then I really don't care about said aesthetics.
Another thing - the 'cudgel' under the belt of the ruling class - at the moment generative AI is dominated by paid services and companies controlling its input and output. Despite this, all forms of generative AI can be handled locally. AI running on your own machine truly is just another tool at your disposal. If we don't utilize and educate about generative AI then the ruling class keeps its grip and knowledge of the 'true democratization of art' and any benefit is lost.
@MasterBlaster I didn't mention its disruptive effect on intellectual/artistic labour. I brought up the fact that these generative platforms are created and run by companies who have their fingers wrist-deep in current successful far-right movements, and that the AI aesthetic has become the aesthetic of these movements.
I don't think Yogthis is using a generative LLM produced by China on their computer. I looked around; there are two of them, and neither seem to have their source published on an English-speaking website. So unless one goes through the trouble of tracking down working links for ERNIE or Alibaba's generative AI source codes and implementing them off of Chinese instructions, you are using the software and the aesthetic of these fascist companies, therefore normalizing it and benefiting it.
Edit: God, they even responded to someone asking for the source with an AI-generated answer that only links chatbot source codes and only touches on one of the above two mentioned generative AIs out of China (which, again, doesn't have a working link that I could find; it's based on a model by PaddlePaddle, which you can get, but ERNIE's text-to-image AI itself seems to be gone from the English internet).
I don’t think Yogthis is using a generative LLM produced by China on their computer.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. I run DeepSeek and Qwen models using Ollama locally. They work great. I also use full DeepSeek online. It's absolutely bizarre that you would make this assumption without even asking. I also run Stable Diffusion models locally using https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui
I looked around; there are two of them, and neither seem to have their source published on an English-speaking website.
No you haven't because if you did then you'd quickly find plenty of Chinese models ready to use that are in English. I've linked a few in this comment https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8454753/6668311
You've literally done zero investigation before spewing nonsense here. It's incredible to see such low effort trolling on here.
@yogthos Ollama is, if I recall, an American project sponsored by Meta. And Stable Diffusion, as already mentioned, is American too. So, after your very first post to me in here was proclaiming that you're using Chinese software, now you admit that you aren't.
In your post there, you have two text-to-image generation models. Again, one of them I'd found (and is the one that I could find nothing but broken links for), one of them I hadn't.
(Edit: Two that I had; I see Qwen is the one that Alibaba is released, so, my bad on reading comprehension)
I'm not lacking in research, you're lacking in honesty. And you accuse me of low effort trolling when you're literally using AI to manufacture replies to me? Dude.
you're doing an awful lot of talking out of your ass in this thread
Ollama is an open source project. The fact that this tech originates in the US does not mean it shouldn't be used. Most of the software and hardware you use is of US origin in one way or another. The discussion was about the models themselves, which are of course Chinese. You are shamefully ignorant on the subject you're attempting to discuss here.
The only one lacking in honesty here is you bud, and you ain't fooling anyone here.
On another note Ollama is really shitty and they're trying to push their own API format, please consider using the one true community deriven gigachad Russian developed 'llama.cpp'. KoboldCPP even has a nice web UI for use.
oh thanks for the heads up, I've heard of llama.cpp, but never bothered looking into taking it for a spin.
That's just pure reactionary nonsense I'm afraid. This is an automation tool like any other. The notion that agitprop should be produced in artisanal fashion is beyond absurd, especially given that it tends to have throw away nature to it. Some event happens and people make a meme about it to raise awareness. This is a perfect tool for this sort of thing and it makes it possible for anybody with an idea to flesh it out quickly. It's an equalizer because it lowers the barrier, and one has to be incredibly myopic to not understand this. The only people who are backwards are the ones who keep fighting against use of these tools on the left.
Not only that, but the whole anti AI narrative is literally being promoted by large corps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRq0pESKJgg
Some points from the video to consider
But I'm afraid that if we aren't careful with how we critique the use and abuse of artificial intelligence, we might end up, as leftist philosopher Mark Fischer once warned, foreclosing the possibility of a technologized anti- capitalism. I fear that framing this debate as anti-tech versus pro and handing the pro tech position to the right-wing is a generational blunder. Again, I need you to listen carefully, okay? I don't like big tech. I'm not here to promote a cryptocurrency. No Gen AI was used in the creation of this video. In fact, my videos have been used to train AI against my will. There are legitimate problems with the ways AI is being developed and implemented. And it's not as simple as doing the predictable leftist video essay thing that handwaves problems away by concluding that actually the real problem is capitalism.
But we're stuck with unanswered questions that have kept the left and progressives in a state of constant defense, running aimlessly into the future, swinging a sword around with their eyes closed. What is it exactly that we're fighting for? What is it exactly that we should resist? What are we trying to build? What is foreclosed within this well-intentioned AI backlash? What types of futures are we abandoning in the race to counter AI hype? What regimes of private property are reinforced when AI training is called art theft? Who actually benefits from the narrative that AI is reaping environmental destruction? What are the human costs of anti-tech humanism?
People often think of the battle over AI art as the conflict between the interests of small independent artists versus large multinational corporations. But the full picture is more complicated and in many ways more insidious. In fact, large multinational corporations stand to benefit from the artists arguments in cases like Stability v. Anderson. The anti-AI art movement might actually result in the largest expansion of media corporations power over copyright law in recent memory. Here's the thing about copyright law. Capitalism doesn't really care about artists. It cares about property and therefore the property owning class. In the United States, the dominant intellectual property owning class aren't independent artists. It's the mouse. It's Warner Media, NBC Universal, Paramount, Comcast, not you. When it comes to generative AI, the property owning class is doing everything it can to consolidate its power and promote its interests, even if that means misrepresenting whose interests they defend. One of the artists in the Anderson v. ability case is named Carla Ortiz. She's a concept artist who's worked on big name Marvel films and video games, and she's staunchly opposed to the current uses of generative AI. She's also a board member of the concept art association who in December of 2022 launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised nearly $300,000 for a lobbying effort marketed as protecting artists from AI technologies. So, what did this campaign do to support human artists? Well, for one, the lobbying team at the Concept Art Association join forces with fellow intellectual property associations like the Copyright Alliance. The Copyright Alliance is a nonprofit organization that claims to represent the copyright interests of millions of individual creators and creative organizations in the United States. They are also one of the most powerful and prominent voices when it comes to generative AI and copyright. But the Copyright Alliance does good work, right? We definitely need advocacy groups like the Copyright Alliance to advocate for the interests of small-time exploited creators like Adobe. Oh, uh, and Disney. Okay. Uh, and NBC, Universal, uh, News Corp, Nike, Oracle, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers. Okay. Well, that's unnerving. But these aren't the only people that the Copyright Alliance claims to represent. You can technically sign up to join the organization for free, but whose interests do you think might be disproportionately represented when someone like Troy Dao, the vice president of Disney's government relations and IP legal policy team, sits on the copyright allianc's board of directors, or when their board of directors, is stacked with representatives from America's largest media companies and copyright holders. And it gets worse. The Copyright Alliance has uncomfortably strong ties to the Nichols Group, a consulting firm started by former Republican Senator Don Nichols. When Nichols wasn't consistently trying to make women and gay people's lives worse, he spent much of his time as a corporate shill supporting tax cuts for the wealthy and introducing anti-UN legislation. In 2005, he started a lobbying firm called the Nichols Group, which has consistently sided with big corporate media interests like lobbying for monopolistic media mergers and against net neutrality. The Nicholls Group also lobbies and or works with really awesome people like Coke Industries, giant health insurance companies, Walmart, Exxon Mobile, and Jewel. You literally could not assemble a more evil list. But what does the Nicholls group have to do with the Copyright Alliance? Well, let's check the Copyright Alliance's list of staff in 2008, shortly after its founding. Nickels. Nickels. Nickels. Nickels. Nickels. That's like 25. Okay, so what if tons of Nickel Associates, including one of its founding partners, were on the Copyright Alliance's initial staff list. 2008 was like a 100 years ago. That proves nothing. If only we had firm evidence of a nefarious connection. Something like, I don't know, a copyright alliance member organization sending dues directly to the Nichols Group. But I guess we'll never know. LM2 is a financial disclosure form that labor organizations with receipts of 250,000 or more are required to submit yearly. These contributions are legally required to be disclosed to the public. For example, if we look up one of the copyright allianc's member organizations like the Graphic Artists Guild, tons of reports about their financial transactions come up. So, let's just quickly verify that they really did pay the Copyright Alliance and not the Nicholls Group. Okay, everything looks good. Wait, that address looks familiar.
Wait, no, wait, no. 6013th Street, Sweet 250. That can't be because the Copyright Alliance says they're located at 1331F Street. Okay. Well, uh, maybe they switched addresses or something. What we need to show is that the Graphic Artist Guild sent money meant for the Copyright Alliance to what is exclusively the Nickel Group's address. All right. So, in 2017, the Graphic Artists Guild sent $10,000 to the Copyright Alliance, which is supposed to be located, as it says here, at 60113th Street. According to the Wayback Machine, in 2017, the Copyright Alliance was located at 1331H Street, not 6013th Street. Now, the Nicholls Group. In 2017, they were located at, you guessed it, 60113th Street. So, can anyone please explain why members of the Copyright Alliance have been sending thousands of dollars in member dues to a corporate lobbying group's address for at least a decade? Oh, I know why. Because the Copyright Alliance is a front. The point is that campaigns like this GoFundMe, lawsuits like Stability V. Anderson, the Copyright Alliance's lobbying efforts, all claim to represent the interests of human artists. In theory, they do. and maybe some of the artists on board with the coalition sincerely believe in the work they're doing. This video is absolutely not a call to harass all the plaintiffs of these cases, but in practice, these high-profile efforts to regulate generative AI disproportionately represent the interests of the intellectual property owning class. Now, there are tons of independent artists who own their own intellectual property. But by far, those who stand to benefit from the expansion of copyright law are not independent artists, but the multinational corporations that the copyright alliance represents. The means of artistic production are disproportionately held by media giants, and copyright law keeps it that way. That's why companies like Disney have consistently led the way on copyright expansion in the US, spending millions in lobbying dollars every year. Do independent artists stand to benefit from the expansion of copyright? The answer is usually no. Here's why. If these lawsuits were successful, the end result is not going to be that author's works are excluded from AI training. This is Dave Hansen. He's a copyright attorney and executive director of the Authors Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supports authors who want their work to contribute to the public good. The end result is going to be that we will have a group of very very large tech companies entering into licensing deals with very very large content holders and everybody else gets sort of left out in the cold.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
@yogthos you uh, couldn't even have given those "couple of points" yourself and had to ask an AI to even do that for you?
Frankly, it looks like a paper tiger. It calls out one organization that is involved in lawsuits against generative AI companies and acts shocked that it's backed by large corporations. Of course it is. But no one that you'll ever meet really gives a damn about these lawsuits; no one is complaining that AI is violating copyright. This organization isn't at the root of the anti-AI narrative; it's vestigial at best.
And this video seems to understand that, but you don't: Even the title states that the organization uses the anti-AI narrative, not the other way around. However, generative AI is the fascist-corporate alliance, the evolution of the crypto and web3 bubbles into something that is tailored to the mass production and dissemination of misinformation in service to the far right. Just because some capitalist organizations are against it doesn't make it not a fascist endeavour; that's a fallacy I'd hope you understand.
Also, reactionary doesn't mean "opposed to the use of a technology".
@yogthos you uh, couldn't even have given those "couple of points" yourself and had to ask an AI to even do that for you?
Frankly, it looks like a paper tiger. It calls out one organization that is involved in lawsuits against generative AI companies and acts shocked that it's backed by large corporations. Of course it is. But no one that you'll ever meet really gives a damn about these lawsuits; no one is complaining that AI is violating copyright. This organization isn't at the root of the anti-AI narrative; it's vestigial at best.
And this video seems to understand that, but you don't: Even the title states that the organization uses the anti-AI narrative, not the other way around. However, generative AI is the fascist-corporate alliance, the evolution of the crypto and web3 bubbles into something that is tailored to the mass production and dissemination of misinformation in service to the far right. Just because some capitalist organizations are against it doesn't make it not a fascist endeavour; that's a fallacy I'd hope you understand.
Also, reactionary doesn't mean "opposed to the use of a technology".
Llms have nothing to do with crypto or web3. If you ever tried installing one, you'll notice that llms are made by scientists (python everywhere), not by techbros. Also techbros would never make open source stuff.
@m532 I'm not talking about the makers of memecoins, I'm talking about big players in the rings of Meta and Amazon. And, I mean, Musk?
Also, most AI is now proprietary. Like crypto, it started out as an open project, but has since become a profit generator even in cases that (unlike Deepseek and OpanAI) are still open source.
Big players like disney that hate it when the new software strikes right through their "copyright" thoughtcrime law?
I simply transcribed the video for you since I know you're not going to watch it. The root of anti-AI narrative on the left is reactionaries pining for the fact that automation has come for the industry that used to be artisanal. The fact that self proclaimed Marxists go along with this narrative is absolutely phenomenal.
People such as yourself are trying to create a self fulfilling prophecy where these tools will only be used by fascists. This technology is not going away, and the only question going forward is who will control it and how it will be used. It's also quite illustrative to see how people view AI in a sane country like China compared to capitalist hell holes in the west https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/chinese-people-are-the-most-optimistic-about-the-impact-of-ai-on-jobs.html
Artists being proletariat-ized and it's effect on online discourse has been one hell of a historical moment to observe as MLs
Indeed, we can now see that a lot of people who describe themselves as MLs have an incredibly superficial understanding of theory.
The root of anti-AI narrative on the left is reactionaries pining for the fact that automation has come for the industry that used to be artisanal.
We have, time and time again, seen the result of Luddism. It can come from a good place. It can be ethically relevant. It can be handled correctly. Yet - time marches on, and the proponents of it are seen as jokes of history.
I have no love for AI slop, but it's a part of our world and the world my children will grow up in. You better believe I intend to have a good handle of it.
Exactly, you can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and cutting ourselves off from new tools will only harm us.
@yogthos You didn't transcribe it, you got an AI to, and told me "here are some main points". If that doesn't speak to the culture of dishonesty and laziness inherent to generative LLMs, I'm not sure what does.
"the root of anti-AI narrative on the left" is an oxymoron that again shows you don't know what reactionism is. You can't be both "on the left" and reactionary. Reactionism is opposition to social progress, which AI is frequently at the heart of now. Again, is it "reactionary" to oppose using fascist aesthetic in agitprop? Yes, or no?
The link you gave lumps AI and robotics into one question, which is inherently misleading. Also, we don't live in China — a country that is still developing and advancing its capitalist means of production and is not yet suffering the decline plaguing the western world. Chinese people aren't just "more sane" than I am, they have a different material reality. More importantly, I never brought up AI's effect on labour, so I'm not even sure what you're trying to say with this link in the first place.
You didn’t transcribe it, you got an AI to
Yeah, I used a tool to automate the task of transcription because I'm not a Luddite.
and told me “here are some main points”. If that doesn’t speak to the culture of dishonesty and laziness inherent to generative LLMs, I’m not sure what does
What are you even bleating about here. I gave you relevant text transcription of the point I was referencing in the video. The only dishonesty and laziness on display here is your own where you refuse to engage with the fact that anti-AI narrative is sponsored by media corps.
“the root of anti-AI narrative on the left” is an oxymoron that again shows you don’t know what reactionism is. You can’t be both “on the left” and reactionary. Reactionism is opposition to social progress, which AI is frequently at the heart of now.
Thanks for confirming that you have no clue what the term "reactionary" means. In Marxist terms, a position is reactionary if it impedes the development of productive forces, even if those forces are disruptive under capitalism. An anti-AI narrative on the left is reactionary because it lacks material analysis of AI as a transformative productive force. Opposing the technology itself rather than its capitalist application leads to resisting technological progress itself. This is a modern version of Luddite resistance to industrialization. It prioritizes existing labor structures over fundamental societal advancement.
Again, is it “reactionary” to oppose using fascist aesthetic in agitprop? Yes, or no?
There is no fascist aesthetic here, it's just a straw man reactionaries such as yourself use to shut down the discussion.
You didn’t transcribe it, you got an AI to, and told me “here are some main points”. If that doesn’t speak to the culture of dishonesty and laziness inherent to generative LLMs, I’m not sure what does.
I read part of it, it is clearly a video transcription. Seems like you are the dishonest one.
Is it reactionary to oppose all the people, instead of an elite minority, having access to the means of picture production?
And…people don’t want it. The only people for whom it would be effective agitprop are the backward group.
What exactly are you trying to say here? That if someone likes anything an AI generated, they are automatically part of a backwards ideology?
'the backward group' is pretty uncomfortable phrasing, if I'm being honest.
@amemorablename @MasterBlaster Not my words. Read Mao.
This isn't Church, we aren't here to worship specific political figures of the past. You need to explain what your thoughts mean and in the current, modern context that we're in. You don't get to excuse yourself from accountability by vaguely pointing at a famous communist who has written tons of things.
@amemorablename I would've thought people would be familiar with the terminology, given this is an ML group, and Mao uses this terminology with some frequency.
This still doesn't explain what "the backward group" has to do with generative AI, which didn't even exist in Mao's time. Hell, he says in the passage you linked:
The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements.
(bold emphasis mine)
So he was specifically in favor of winning over the "backward elements", which contradicts with your implication that AI as agitprop is "unwanted by people" and somehow bad as propaganda because it would only "be effective agitprop [for] the backward group."
And…people don’t want it. The only people for whom it would be effective agitprop are the backward group.
What crack are you on? You can build and run completely local SD models for any need you possibly have. As a matter of fact I do exactly that. Not everyone is using bigCorpAI out there