Notices by emenel (emenel@post.lurk.org)

@inthehands and data != context or understanding … something people seem to misunderstand these days.

@thomasfuchs definitely. I can check with my dad also.

The strange mp3 player camera was the Kodak mc3. Nothing about it made sense.

@thomasfuchs that is entirely possible. We actually did get prototypes and unreleased cameras often. Why do you need to know?

@thomasfuchs i’m going to see what i have. But it might be so long ago that’s i’d have to look in archived stuff

@thomasfuchs i also can’t find evidence of it… dc20, dc25, etc … dc210 … could it be one of these berenstein/stain situations? :)

@thomasfuchs i had one! My dad worked for kodak from the mid-80’s until the early 2000’s. We had every version of the DC cameras, including one that was also an mp3 player.

Applying to university/college for the fall? Withhold or defer until the institution divests from genocide and arms. Students are both the customer and product of the institution. Deprive them of you.

If you had code on GitHub at any point it looks like it might be included in a large dataset called “The Stack” — If you want your code removed from this massive “ai” training data go here:

https://huggingface.co/spaces/bigcode/in-the-stack

I found two of my old Github repos in there. Both were deleted last year and both were private. This is a serious breach of trust by Github and @huggingface.

Remove all your code from Github.

CONSENT IS NOT OPT-OUT.

Edit — thanks for all the replies. More context here: https://hachyderm.io/@joeyh/112105744123363587

Also the repos i found of mine i’m sure were private, but even if they were public at some point, for a brief time, in the past that isn’t my consent to use them for purposes beyond their intent.

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Edit 2 -- I see this made it to HN, which is a level of attention I do not want nor appreciate....

For all those wondering about the private repo issue -- No, I am not 100% sure that these ancient repos weren't at some point public for a split second before I changed it. I do know that they were never meant for this and that one of them didn't even contain any code.

If my accidentally making a repo public for a moment just so happened to overlap with this scraping, then I guess that's possible. But it in no way invalidates the issues, and the anger that i feel about it.

@killyourfm yes! I also stopped asking this question and instead try to ask something more like “what’s interesting you these days?” Or something like that.

This is a must-watch to understand the roots of current "ai", it's ideology and philosophies, and how that manifests in the tech and its immediate impacts.

Thank you @timnitGebru

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XT4TWLzJw

a thought: so-called 'ai' is another step towards the complete devaluation of the act of making culture in favour of consuming it.

It seems to me that a big part of what these generative systems do is continue to push the economic value of creating towards zero, while increasing the value of consuming. It aims to optimize out of existence the process of creating writing, images, music, etc to the point where all creative acts are commodified and consumption is the primary mode of interaction in order to make something. This isn't new, but it certainly expands and intensifies this aspect of neoliberal society to an extreme.

It stems from a worldview that only values the output of creation as a consumable economic object. It intensely devalues the importance of what we learn about ourselves, each other and the world while making things; of what we express about our inner worlds through making things and how we connect with each other through those expressions. Art is amazing because it is a peek into somebody else's thinking, ideas, and values. Making art is amazing because if forces us to confront our values and ideas while trying to make them tangible. Corporate controlled generative algorithms are a shortcut to consumable 'products' without all the trouble of meaning-making or human connection.

I've started to see more and more large language model interest (usually referred to as AI) in the contemporary art world. The language used around it--terms like AI, 'cognitive technologies', etc--are misleading at best and deeply concerning and dangerous imo. new media art/art+tech/etc has been so captured by the tech industry "progress at all costs" mindset that new tech is seen as good or neutral, critiques often ending up in the "more genderfluid drone operators" mode of so-called ethics.

As artists in the 21st century we need to be, and are unavoidably, political. The complexities of that in the current context aren't lost on me ... but this uncritical acceptance of new tech because it's "cool", or under the guise of research (i.e. "this residency aims to research the creative affordances of cognitive technologies") is disturbing and dystopic.

Personally, I'm conflicted about how much I can publicly call out organizations (or people) that are doing this before I sink my own career, but it's getting harder and harder to worry about that.

@Moon i know this history and understand it. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make in relation to my post tbh, i never claim or argue that technology can’t be art or is somehow less.

@Moon that’s not what i was saying…

And if you want to understand my, and many others’, objections please read up. Many recent articles all over, both academic and journalistic, have explored the underlying ideologies, labour ethics, honesty in claims, funding … and more.

@Moon here is one article that i have handy.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor-behind-artificial-intelligence/

I don’t have the energy to educate about this right now. Search for articles about ai criticism… lots from just the last few months. Emily M Bender, Timnit Gebru, and more from there.