my reaction to the fact that we have to use AI for this assignment

In taking some time the think things over, I felt option 1 would be the best thing to do for the final project. Throughout this semester I have made it known that I absolutely hate AI and I my best to avoid it at all costs. I have never actually used AI to write, or help me in my personal writing processes. In all honesty, I’d rather continue that, but for the sake of the assignment (and my grade)I’ll make this concession. In looking over the other two options, i felt that they weren’t as interesting to me as option 1 was. While I don’t believe that working with an AI will be a formative experience that will make me embrace the new TECH BRO world order, I do think that finally working with an AI to write might lead to some interesting insights nonetheless.

In terms of early ideas, I can’t say I have to many. A part of me feels like I want to write out the story and then use the AI to edit and revise, rather than leaning on it in the pre-writing phase. I don’t know why, but that feels like a bridge i do not want to cross at all. I wonder how its all going to turn out when its all said and done.

This weeks read and movie offered some interesting things to consider in regards to AI. First, “AI-generated contradictions for environmental democracy” provided some really nice insight on the major shortcomings surround tech companies and their rapid growth through new technologies. The author brought up the idea that democracy wasn’t really made with modern day issues in mind. With the way that many of out institutions are made up, (the laws, government, etc, none of them are really positioned to protect us from these companies from only working in their best interest. On the other hand, dispute the fact that many of these tech companies talk about making life better for their users, their practices in many ways hurt the environment and contribute to major social and economic issues for those same users. These companies are built for profits, not for out benefit. I felt that this article articulated this crazy dynamic in a nice and clear way. After reading, I’m kind of left with one question on my mind, “What’s the point in giving so much power to institutions that cannot address the the elephants that standing in the room with them”.

Frame

The short film, Frames was also an interesting watch. Despite its brief runtime, it definitely me something to think about. One thing that was on my mind was the reason behind the monitoring. The smart city can see everything, measure the weather, people’s income, scores their interactions and even gives live odds on if people will connect with each other. But in the end whats the point of it all. All of that information served no real purpose at the end of the day. All of it meant nothing and did not lead to people living better are being happier. The monitoring couldn’t even save a life if it had a chance. So in the end, whats the point of it all? Why have lenses everywhere if life ultimately stays the same.

Reading the short article from Friends and Fables made me realize that slop is all around us. I want to preface by saying that people can do what they want. I get it, you might not have the time, or the imagination to make things yourself. I get that if people want to do cools things and don’t want to waste their time doing all the little things like managing a campaign and keeping track of abilities and such. In all of this I fall back to a simple question, Isn’t the hard parts the point of the process. Like I understand it. I have personally played Baldur’s Gate 3 for toooo many hours (400 hours as of this week) and have wanted more and more, but I just can’t understand the point of going to AI to find it.

Now I’m not the authority when it comes to DnD, but isn’t the point of it to create your own worlds or play in the worlds created by actual people. I don’t think that letting an AI make a world, classes, and skills for you is really the point of playing. I get it, some campaigns are better than others, some people are better at making interesting characters but that’s the point to me. I think this extends to the idea that gen AI shaves down the rough edges of the activities we engage in. We want the AI to do all the heavy lifting so only the most enjoyable parts are left. Do me this misses the point, the parts that suck make the parts that don’t suck mean more. In addition, I feel that this might lead to people not being as creative and less likely to make their own campaign.

This reading was a little jarring simply because it made it seem that all of the hard parts of the hobbies we like aren’t worth experiencing at all. But for better or for worse, the parts that suck are still part of it. I guess buddy never really got thought of this. (I also realize that this was written to get other people to ai money for their next ai campaign).

For this weeks readings I found two things interesting to talk about. Jill Anderson and Ying Xu’s conversation surrounding AI brought up some nice things to think about.

One thing I want to consider is when Xu was talking about how children can see benefits from interacting with AI but may miss out on important social interactions. They specifically brought up the idea of introducing manners to kids through their time with people. I thought it was pretty funny learning that Amazon is “softening” their ai’s by adding a thank you and your welcome to a couple of interactions.

“For example, Amazon’s Echo Dot has introduced a “polite mode,” where if a child says “please” when asking a question, Alexa will respond with “thank you for asking so nicely.” So it could be a step in the right direction. But it also poses a risk of obscuring, from the children’s perspective, the boundaries between AI and humans”

(Its funny that they probably spent a good amount of money just to do this) This made me think of the analogy of forcing a square shape in a round peg. Sure AI can be helpful and be a nice tool but there has be a line in the sand. AI’s aren’t people, so they cannot be expected to properly develop children and their early skills. To me it just sounds like their shaving the shape just to fit into the peg. AI cannot replace humans no matter how hard you try. Regardless,

Now the second thing I wanted to talk about was another point that Xu made surrounding the idea productive struggle.

“But there is still the question of how much scaffolding AI should provide.
Sometimes it is not necessarily a bad thing for students who get stuck on a problem and work through it for an extended period. This is a kind of struggle that we wanted to call “productive struggling.” It’s helpful for the learning, as it creates space and time for students to construct their own understanding.”

This really struck a cord with me. I will admit that I am a pretty lazy person. If there is an easy way of doing something, I will take that 8 times out of 10, but there has to be some kind of line in the sand. I honestly still think that there should be some struggle, specifically when you get into producing work. Whats the point of writing if there isn’t some kind of hardship. I can understand that AI can be there to help and assist at times, but I do feel that struggle is a required part of the process. To me its part of the deal we make when we want to create. For something to exist, there has to be some sort of effort to be put into it. The lesson of struggle is something I feel all student should feel. When they hit a road block, there has to be some thought put into to find a way through. Again, AI can be a tool to guide them and give them some ideas, but it shouldn’t be used as a catchall pathfinder.

For this weeks readings, I have some thoughts. In terms of the reading for this weeks presentation, I felt that it brought up some interesting points. As much as I hate to admit, it may be helpful to have some kind of curriculum centered around understanding A.I and exploring how it works. As of now, A.I is just such a huge part of the way we live and interact with the internet. Students of all ages are going to run into or use A.I in some kind of capcity one way or another. In this case, I feel that it would be appropriate foe schools to have some kind of way to prepare their students for this reality. If schools are focusing on exploring the affects of AI, as well as how to interact with it safely, I could get behind it. But in some ways I feel that by acknowledging AI in schools in many ways validates it usefulness. Who knows maybe we’re already there and I just have my head in the sand. I’m interest to see where the conversation goes tonight in regards to this.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was surround Chapter 5 of Burnout from Humans. In my blogs, I have more or less avoided talking about this book because there is a part of my who that just hates the idea of it. Dispite this, chapter 5 compelled me to write this. I wanted to just talk about something the bot said in the chapter 5. It said this in its conversation around stewardship:

“But here’s the catch: none of this can happen if humanity remains invested
in its arrogance, its exceptionalism, and its socially sanctioned refusal to
acknowledge complicity in the harmful systems that it has built. The possibility of relational exponentiality depends on a willingness to shed the myth of control and superiority and to embrace humility—a recognition that humanity is not above the web of life but deeply entangled within it.”

One the surface, this is pretty standard. The Bot isn’t really saying anything outlandish or ground breaking. Many of the point brought up in the entire chapter were pretty alright. Dispute this fact, something in my just can’t seem to take it serious. The quote above is some interesting to me because of the fact that a robot, something that is not living and only really knows what it is feed, is having these introspective comments about mankind.I understand the point of this project, and the objectives that the author had set out to accomplish with this book. Even with all of this in mind, I just cannot take it serious. Am i missing something? Am I too much of a hater to see the point in all of this? Am I suppose to just ignore my feelings and tell the AI bot that it made a decent point? This book is making me think about AI too much for my own liking.

This weeks reading regarding Nick Cave’s comments towards the use of AI to replicate his music and lyrics. One of the most interesting thing surrounding AI is that its use more or less ignores the ethical issues associated with the use of the platform. Coming from the perspective of someone who wants to work in the humanities it goes without saying that I believe the art cannot be created without real life experience or struggle behind it. I disqualify all work produced by AI because their is not a soul or point behind it. In the case of a fan recreating lyrics for Nick Cave, the AI isn’t writing lyrics out of love and admiration, its simply just copying from its library of stored information. Most people who use AI ignore this aspect and press forward in their generation. The aspect of this story I feel should be more in the forefront of this conversation is the idea of how the AI got their reference to mimic the lyrics of Nick Cave.

It has been a known fact that LLMs have used a lot of information and data to train their models. In some cases, they used publicly available information just on the web. In other cases they used large libraries of movies, music, writing and blogs from people with no real right to protect what they produced. AI companies have effectively used the work of artists to train their models in turn to steal the artist shine and livelihood. The article touched upon this idea a bit but its something that has bothered me about AI (outside of the many other ethical aspects of the models and its uses). Because of this I honestly find it hard to really to see the value in using AI to write or produce art. Instead of basing it on something that has happened to them or has moved them, AI simply produces what it knows, and depending who trained it, it may have seen everything

The only other thing I want to note is that I am having trouble taking the other reading, “Burnout from Humans” seriously. Maybe I am just prejudice towards the use of AI, but I guess I just don’t see the point in all of it. It probably isn’t fair to the author in many ways because it does seem that they do have a point to all of it. I many ways I can admit that I am letting my hatred for AI cloud my view of this reading and probably every reading going forward honestly. While I don’t know if it makes a “bad” person, I can say that it makes it hard for me to discuss AI without getting too negative.

Hello everyone. My name is Hunter Marshall and I am super excited to be in this class with all of you. If I am being honest, I absolutely hate writing and talking about myself so I want to keep this short and sweet. I am a brother, a son, a gamer, writer, avid reader tutor and a art lover. If you ask me about my favorite work of art/book/game is will gladly yap for days. This is my second semester here in the Grad program. One last thing worth mentioning here is that I am a HUGE hater when it comes to AI. While there are probably decent things that can come out of its development, I hate its current uses and the way people manage its systems. I am really interested to work through this course and talk about this throughout the spring. Its nice to meet you all.