Mastodon.art just banned AI art

[Ms. Toad]

29. Ripping off human work is a legal problem.

It is relatively easily resolved by using a licensing program similar to the one used for music currently so that people whose work is used are compensated for it.

What troubles me about this discussion (broadly - not just these few posts) is the assertion that taking advantage of technological advances is inherently bad or somehow makes the results not "real."

AI is just a tool, in the same way the digital darkroom automates processes which used to be manual. Many photographers, including me, prefer making the changes by hand, using tools similar to those available in the physical darkroom. And - even before the automation of the processes in the electronic darkroom, many photographers preferred the physical darkroom - and believed work produced in the digital darkroom wasn't real art.

Any time there are technological innovations, a fair number of people reject the shortcuts it facilitates as somehow cheating. AI is just another tool.

As for how AI can be used to teach writing - there are a lot of teachers already implementing it. A lot of writing is formulaic - you learn the formula and make decisions as to what to plug into the formula. Many students struggle with natching their work to a formula. AI does formulaic well. I have not only taught math, but also writing. While I haven't used AI in teaching writing, I can easily see a role for it in having students critique AI writing, pick it apart, compare their own work to it, use it as a starting point for the structure and improve it, fact check it (AI lies with absolutely no conscience).

In other words, I'd use it exactly the same way as I did calculators - as a tool to teach them about writing.

As for being unable to do basic arithmetic without a calculator - there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. What people do need to be able to do is to problem solve (what arithmetic do I use) and estimate a general expected answer (so they can identify garbage-in/garbage-out answers). All of which I taught (and they learned) more easily when they had calculators as tools to assist them. When students haven't mastered basic arithmetic by the time they are in their 2nd - 5th year of high school (and no, that's not a typo), they aren't going to master it. Far better to teach them to estimate what their weekly paycheck is so they can ballpark what it should be, and if it isn't what is expected - to use a calculator to check it precisely.

I've been through this revolution, personally, with a number of technological advances, in a number of fields (photography, writing, mathematics, computers (across many disciplines). With each advance, there is always a body of people who can't get past the equivalent of, "When I was your age I walked 5 miles to school, uphill both ways" attitude. There are others (and I'm generally in that category) who prefer more traditional tools. That doesn't make new tools inherently bad - it's simply a matter of preference.