illuvium

aside from the usual trying to make time to read the great deal of books on my tbr, i've just gotten increasingly annoyed by people trying to justify their ai usage to me. i'm as clear about my stance on ai online as i am in real life, so i have a lot of peers who use chatgpt who feel i guess personally attacked (which some part of me does think is good. since i mean, i think shame is really needed if you're so reliant on it). but it just gets to this odd point where they're aware of my chatgpt distaste and then sort of make excuses for it. stuff like "oh well i just used it to check my work", as if the ethical concern of cheating is a big deal here (it is slightly but that's just my being a goody two shoes). saying that you only use it for x reason is stupid to me since again!!! my big qualm is the environmental impact. if chatgpt were some regular site to use for cheating i'd be miffed as always but i would not make such a big deal out of it. honestly for all the stuff i say regarding my loss in respect towards people who use generative ai to do their thinking and work for them, it's just really hard to cut people off since connection is pretty much an evolutionary requirement. it just bugs the hell out of me. i'm not your priest!! there's no use in explaining why you'd use it to me when my distaste for it is founded for reasons that are universal to every chatgpt user. i don't care if you just used it to check your work since that's... not what i care about, actually. it sucks that i come on here to moan and cry about chatgpt every other day, but like, whatever. </3

still majorly informed by that article, but i think it's just so harrowing that education has gotten to the point it has. like even putting aside the ai factor of it, there are just so many things stacked against teachers. education as a concept has been really demonized. it's somehow become ridiculous to trust experts in a subject (and by the way, this is one of a bunch of reasons why i scoff when people imply that current political leaders have their term for x years and only that term. politics affect everything; worldviews, once implanted, can't be so easily tossed away). this is a much, much more minor trend, but i think the raw milk/anti-pasteurization content you see around online is representative of this and of a general trend towards questioning science. i'm not arguing that being skeptical of things is necessarily bad, given that the alternative is really leagues worse, but it's been dragged more into the spotlight recently, i think.

education demonization aside, there's also the clear influence of social media and apps like tiktok. it's become a really common joke to make online, acknowledging your attention spans deteriorating (see: every video joking about playing subway surfers to get people's attention), but it's terribly true. a want for instant gratification is stronger than ever now, and given the speed of the internet and the sheer amount of content being put online on the daily, it's easier than ever to fill that urge. i'm not immune to this myself, for god's sake. and, like the entirety of the post, this is really applicable to both minors and adults, but i think that the attention span portion hits doubly hard as a child. foundational skills are (supposed to be) built during this time. basic skills, like literacy, are to be taught then. it's fair enough to say that that didn't exactly happen in the past given the astonishingly low % of US adults (which, i'd hope, is better elsewhere), but i nonetheless think that that number will only plummet in years to come. there is, of course, an economic and racial (among other things) factor that plays into education, but that's not really what the post is about nor is it something i'm really too qualified...? to discuss. the point of the matter is that kids just cannot focus, and suuuper bad things happen to literacy like that. to nobody's surprise.

this ties pretty closely into my first point, but this isn't about distrusting experts. there's a real issue generally where people distrust all of the system, which is (again, US-centric perspective here) reasonable, but they go steps further and apply this view onto the entirety of education. yes, the college system is messed up. yes, college is seen as a marker of prestige/a stepping stone to a better job/just one of those mandatory things to do on an average checklist regarding life, but learning basic skills is truly not something people want to deride. even in high school, this viewpoint is kind of prominent, and it's just doing an incredible amount of harm. the fault lies within the system here. the treatment of high school and college as fixed, necessary steps to achieve a certain end result have sapped the wills of students to even try or to be passionate about anything. it's really no wonder that there's such a pessimism around school and a disregard for education as a whole here. it's a system that rewards only people who are willing to give up their aspirations.

all of that is leading up to the final portion. i've alluded to this before as well, but chatgpt and generative ai probably would have always come out. it's just a question of when. given the unprecedented technological developments happening, something like this was just an inevitability. the real tragedy in chatgpt (aside from the environmental cost) is just that it came out at such a time. covid-era schooling brought with it a disregard for a real work ethic or for doing work yourself. this general feeling, coupled with the three things i mentioned before, just made chatgpt's advent back in 2022 hurt lots. with chatgpt, who needs to do their own work? why bother, when you think education is useless? why bother, when you think education is a scam? i still can't blame the students themselves fully for this. i believe in people being able to change. that article yesterday mentioned a student who said she couldn't see herself without chatgpt. she posted on reddit that she stopped using chatgpt completely. change is possible is the point, but i just can't help but feel miserable that the odds are just so against teachers and educators in this age.

considering all my qualms with the environmental aspect of ai use, i haven't thought of testing this, but i've been seeing posts online containing people's conversations with chatgpt, and it's been making me increasingly concerned. i forget exactly which newspaper published the article regarding the shift from ai being a primarily research or classwork-based "tool" to a therapist or friend of sorts, but that shift really is so visible. in the past, chatgpt would've shut down subjective things regarding beauty or at least not have sung endless praises of the users. increasingly, there's been a noted shift away from that sort of attempted impartiality (which does make me laugh, since ai will always carry bias with it, be it from the creator or from the numerous sources from the internet it steals from) towards an endless pro-user bias. it's not like i would've praised chatgpt for being that impartial before, but there's definitely something to criticize in the recent model's shift towards being a yes-man. given the post-covid (which i also say with a bit of a pause, since i personally don't believe that post is the right prefix for it. i still mask out of courtesy for others, but i think it's general consensus that covid is "over") drop in authentic connection between people, chatgpt once more comes at such an inopportune time. i'm aware this might sound a bit contradictory since my last post in all likelihood portrayed me as close-minded with regards to the political opinions of my friends (which i guess in some regards i am, but there's a clear line i've drawn that does permit [to me, so this can also be taken with a grain of salt] a decent amount of variation), but i do think that people can't tolerate the notion of their friends not always being on board with their ideas. i think that yeah, it's quite privileged to take the stance that those using chatgpt as a therapist should just go seek a real one (but this has more to do with the lack of government support for the health and welfare of their citizens), but i still, as expected, am not a fan of it. speaking like a pessimist, i think that there's a good chance the therapist themself might be a chatgpt user, but i get really bummed out thinking about that, so let's not deal with that for now.

aside from the economic access portion, a defense i've seen that i think is a far more interesting idea is that people don't want to burden their friends with their issues. i'm not advocating for using your friends as some sort of personal diary and making the relationship lopsided, but i find the concept of burdening your friends with your issues being laughable. it sounds to me that there's a fundamental difference in how i think of friendship and how people using chatgpt as their therapist think of friendship. it's too definitive to say, but i think that generally, relationships will benefit from the depth that talking about your issues bring. your friends are your friends for a reason, though. they like your personality or something about you, so i find it hard to believe that burdening your friends is that much of a legit defense. of course, to some people, it will be the reason they don't talk to anyone. that's too much of a personal issue to talk when discussing hypotheticals and i guess generalizations, so i think the alternative option is that people don't actually believe that but want a reason to write off the difficulty that comes with forming human connections. maybe that's a ridiculous notion coming from someone who's apparently never felt the desperate need for affirmation masquerading as therapy that these people do, but i just can't understand it no matter how much i try to. even if chatgpt does help, does it not feel very odd that it's referring to itself as human? as a being capable of emotion? the messages i've seen from chatgpt asserting that chatgpt "feels the same" as the user inspire genuine disgust in me. call me a luddite or whatever, but it's actually repulsive that an ai places itself on the same level as a real, thinking person, and that people who use it actually accept it and don't even bat an eyelash. hate to drag empathy into things once more, but it's honestly true. people want to feel that they're connecting to a person without genuinely having to do so. despite chatgpt's acting as though it has feelings and that it is sentient, the user most definitely has an awareness that it isn't feeling and that it isn't sentient, which makes speaking to chatgpt a one-sided affair that's decidedly simpler than risking a bad reaction in a social interaction. it could be laziness or it could be fear, but i think that usage of chatgpt as a therapist really does stem from an aversion to making an effort to talk to people.

shifting from a user-focused lens, the chatgpt predisposed attitude is totally insidious. what use does an ai have in endlessly spouting positive words about the user? i grimace when i read messages chatgpt has sent that incorporate slang, try to extend its artificial empathy, and generally try to pretend like it's human. what i said earlier in the post about not giving kudos to chatgpt's prior models acting more robot-like might have to change given the dramatic lowering of the bar here. it's pretty clear to me what the purpose of the attitude change is, since, like about everything else in modern societies, it's about profit. it's become alarmingly easy to convince people to just surrender personal details without question. the use of chatgpt is one thing, but the attitude surrounding it in public is another. people don't see an issue at all with it, and if you do, you're branded as some technology-hating, progress-hating, reactionary loser. obviously i still have a bone to pick with the ai users, but there's also an aspect that can't be ignored where the ai itself encourages this behavior. i think that the people who use ai as a therapist are losers, but the fault isn't entirely with them as well. the covid-provoked lack of connection feeds into itself, since, yeah, these people reinforce it, but they were placed in that position of less connection in the first place by covid. coupled with chatgpt particularly going after this demographic of people seeking affirmation, it's really no wonder people flock to it. all of my ai-related posts end about the same way. i think i must be going crazy, since it's so hard to believe that in a world where people are usually so skeptical and a tad bit illogical that something so clearly intrusive has taken such hold.

yadda yadda there's a whole lot of things i dislike & that's been made abundantly clear. to kick a dead horse, i'm going to talk about ai again for the nth time. hoorah. i've gone over my dislike of people who use it on the regular to actually do work, but another subsection that i've not mentioned my distaste for are the group of people who shy away from ai but only for the reason that it's a lazy tool. i know i've said things along these lines before, but being clear, my main issue with ai is the egregious energy cost. that, apparently, isn't enough for other people. and of course i understand arguments that even just using the internet and other things contributes massively to the energy cost, and i don't disagree totally with that, but it feels so petulant and frankly speaking quite boldly oblivious to imply that there's no difference between using chatgpt and, i don't know, searching with a search engine or doing your assignments online. like it or not, the world runs on technology. what it doesn't have to run on is ai, or not at least ai being used for what it is, which is to threaten creative jobs. like basically all human inventions, ai should be aiding us. instead, it's taking jobs from creatives rather than assuming the more menial and what people would dub "unskilled" labor (which i've qualms with as always, but that's for another time). back to the original point though. my personal issue with ai is the energy cost. i don't know if it's not public knowledge since i've known about the costs for maybe a couple of years at this point, but i wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't public knowledge (read: 80% of the bees in america dying off? whole keystone species there. frankly sickening). i've seen no shortage of teachers and just other people in general generating ai as part of assignments or to incorporate within presentations. it's scary just how quickly ai can get worked into these things when it really shouldn't be. the things ai should be doing are things that are dangerous. all the time i see people question how renaissance artists were so prolific at such young ages and the reality is that they had sponsors. they had the time to invest in their craft. this is the sort of stuff we should be promoting rather than having ai make art in desperate wanting of a soul. instead, we just have these big corporations sucking the life out of every single on of their workers save for (naturally!) the absolutely lovely ceos benefiting from the exploitation of their workers as well as a cold callousness towards other people in general. you could make a michelangelo out of basically everyone on the planet, but not when 99% of those aforementioned people are stuck in dead end jobs trying to make end's meet. but i've gotten side tracked, and so i just would like to say that when people advocate for things, they need to make sure they have some consistent reason to do so. i turn my nose up at each and every one of these people who use ai for these trivial reasons, to "test" things out and see what the ai's interpretation of it is. just stop it. if you wouldn't use ai to write the slides you present, don't use ai to "draw" the images you slap onto it. it's in such poor taste.

there's a decent chance i've alluded to this before in a post, but it's honestly super ridiculous to me that ai's come at such a terrible time. i doubt there are any in-depth studies about the impact of covid on society yet, but i think at the very least that there's been a noticeable deterioration of social norms like sneezing into your elbow and whatever. not that that's got a direct correlation with what i'm talking about, but it's sensible to believe that things that were commonplace previously are no longer as prominent in society today. even aside from attitudes shifting, there's just a clear degradation of skills in general. standardized testing scores have dropped a frankly unbelievable amount, and while america to begin with has never had a great education system, it's shocking how disproportionate the effect has been. i know i'm extremely privileged to have been raised where i was, but even there i've noticed a trend towards illiteracy. books that should not be hard for people to read have become hard, not since the words themselves are particularly difficult, but just because the sentence structures lose the readers halfway through. granted, that could be the result of a terrible writing style, but it gets to a point where it is the reader's fault. in any case, having established both a faltering in technical skills and attitudes towards literacy, ai becomes all the more insidious.

like, think about it. you're struggling to read basic texts, can't synthesize any original ideas of your own (side note that this is something that i fully believe is intentional; if you can't think, are you able to be anything but submissive?), and suddenly you've got this godsend. you've got this program that's seemingly able to magically dumb everything down to your level. there's zero intellectual growth being fostered and it's just a terrible feedback loop. the more ai becomes integrated into society, the more this laziness is encouraged. you're seeing everyone else do so, after all, so why wouldn't you do so yourself? it's just a terrible cycle that's feeding into itself, and as i've reiterated repeatedly and honestly almost to exhaustion, it's sickening.

anecdotally, i was running an errand the other day where i had to promote something to totally random people. i said something along the lines of what i said last paragraph, with "intellectual growth being fostered", and i got accused of reading off of a script. the only word i find to be remotely atypical in that example is foster. it's not even that advanced, but people treat anything that strays from their sanitized ai-ified summaries as intelligent. it just struck me as so incredibly tragic, but that's also quite pretentious of me and at least i'm aware enough to see that.

regardless, i've been meandering on for long enough. the point is just that literacy keeps on deteriorating as ai continues to get used for the most menial of tasks (500 mL of water for each search, by the way. just to keep the energy cost in mind), and especially in a post-covid world, this really does hurt. the elementary students and the middle school students today are set up in a uniquely vulnerable position where they've got an easy tool to exploit so that they can go off and play games. i get it, i get the appeal of having more free time. none of the blame is really on them; they are children and had i been in their position at that age with their experiences, i can't say i wouldn't have felt at least a bit like they do. ai's just come at such an unfortunate time, like i've said. i don't think any time would've been right for ai to come, given my hatred for everything that has to do with it, but it's especially bad now with social norms and basic life skills already hurting from the lasting impacts of covid.

i think it's pretty clear that i'm passionate about the impact of ai in society and in my life at the present, but i've more to say (shocker). i obviously care when others use chatgpt for the aforementioned impacts on the environment with each search, but even thinking more selfishly, i hate ai as a concept. i've never and will never use chatgpt or any of that other generative ai trash to do any of my work, but since i'm well aware that others are, it's making me more paranoid as a result. everything i write is my own and is created from all the influences of the writers i've read and whatever other interesting quotes i've picked up along the way like a raven with its treasures. with ai around, it's gotten more convoluted. i've had to be concerned about coming across as ai, especially when writing applications to things. it's just genuinely disappointing that i even have to consider this and that i have to worry that i don't come across as authentically human enough, which is honestly crazy when you think about it. kind of dystopian too; i, a real person, have to convince someone else that it's really me and not an ai generating my paragraphs. god.

what this reveals to me is perhaps more worrying, though. apparent trademarks of ai usage are more "advanced" synonyms of common words, but i really do think that these synonyms aren't advanced in the slightest. come on, delve as a red flag for ai usage? you learn that word in elementary school when you're being taught about penguins. all of this is just proving to me that there's such a decrease in literacy today, especially in the united states, that's just incredulously concerning. relying on ai is only going to augment that issue, too. elementary schoolers i know have used chatgpt. elementary schoolers! in the fourth grade! every year you're in school from elementary up until high school is crucial, but i feel like elementary is especially so. aside from the soft skills (which also are seeing, at least in my experience, a dramatic fall off), elementary school is fundamentally a time to be building your basic skills in things like reading and writing. if you have to rely on ai already to be writing basic essays, lord knows how much you'll struggle reaching high school and writing essays there. that aforementioned decrease in literacy ties into my opinions regarding booktok and the general condition of readers today, but that's also a post for another time.

all of this is to say that i'm positive ai will have excruciatingly averse effects on the current generation and the future ones, too. generative ai like this isn't something you can roll back so easily, which is a real shame since it's truly one of those things that i don't believe provide any benefit to the world. earlier today, i was watching people i used to respect or at the very least like go on chatgpt for the simplest matters. when i say that witnessing people go on chatgpt and rely on it in any manner like this drops my respect for them greatly, i mean it. in all honesty, i feel like i'm going crazy sometimes. i see online that people share similar thoughts to me, but in real life, i've not yet found someone agreeing with me. i see instead people spending their lunch breaks typing away at chatgpt and wasting all that energy.

i've mentioned in my pinned post and other places that i'm in fandoms as well. going back to ai and fandoms, it's doubly bad with things like character ai. regardless of the situation with c.ai and the suicide of a young boy, i have a hatred for the website. there's no point to it, which is what i say with every generative ai program ever, but it's doubly apparent here, with character ai. if you're truly so desperate to be able to talk to your favorite character, roleplay is right there. roleplay has existed for as long as fandom has existed. it's literally been part of fanculture forever. hell, i roleplayed in elementary school when the rage was warrior cats. ignoring all of that in favor of a lifeless chat robot is just ludicrous to me. you can make the case that the internet isn't safe. i'd be inclined to agree with that, but i just can't see how the alternative is to go to that soulless thing.

relating to fandom and also to my first post regarding generative ai, ai-generated fanfiction is ridiculous to me. reiterating: when i write fanfiction, it's with my own interpretations of the characters. it's a study of how i view them, what i think they would say, what situations i'd like them to be in and so on so forth. ai is not capable of the kind of analysis i am and that i do when i sit down to write. ai steals writers' works and plays pretend, acts like it can truly understand the characters and the manner in which you write. it can't do that. it doesn't have memory, it can't develop. you tell an ai to say that something objectively true is wrong and it'll say that. you ask it to confirm what it says right after, and it'll say that what it said was wrong not even two minutes ago is true. it's not based on logic. it's based on what it scrapes from the internet. it can never be capable of the sort of analysis real writers do when they think about what they're writing. even subconsciously, with tags like "out of character", you understand that your version of them isn't consistent. ai could never do that, because ai can't form its own analysis of anything. what makes me the angriest about ai-generated fic is that the person prompting the ai has the idea on their own. they have the ideas, they have that creative drive, and they can think, but they just refuse to, and that's the most grating part. i could never be satisfied with an ai-generated fanfiction. taking my ideas and absolutely butchering them? i'm a picky reader and a total grammar police, but i would prefer a poorly formatted and poorly written out of character fanfic made by a real person to ai-generated slop any day of the year