"When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed. When I see an AI-generated flyer for an event, I’m annoyed and much less likely to go."
This kind of anti-AI sentiment really is baffling to me, as baffling as anti-trans sentiment.
The two really have a lot in common if you look beneath the surface: both are instances of aggressive intolerance as a response to other people failing to live up to an arbitrary moral standard the aggressor has decided they have the right to impose on other people, whether or not those other people have any interest in the aggressor's arbitrary moral standard.
The response to the aggressor is the same in both circumstances: "but how does that affect you in any way?", with the honest answer being that it doesn't, and the more likely answer being some goofy rationalization invoking the rest of society's collective well-being, as the aggressor fantasizes everyone else as better off if they all also adhered to the aggressor's choice of arbitrary moral framework.
Anti-trans sentiment targets a population for who they are rather than what they do. It has also led to things like banning medical care for minors, banning trans people from accessing facilities safely, banning expressive entertainment like drag shows, banning trans people from joining the military, ending grants for studying gender identity, and banning discussion of gender identity even through undergraduate programs.
My point isn't that the impacts are remotely similar, it's that the rationale for the aggression comes from the same place - enforcement of one's arbitrary selected moral framework on other people who don't share that framework and are just trying to live their lives. Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons, one's just more harmful than the other.
P.S. No need to apologize for politely expressing ideological disagreement :)
> Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons
Only in the most abstract sense where virtually all criticism would fit. What you describe is not some unique similarity.
And the example here is how AI use harms the experience of a customer. This is distinct from "just trying to live their lives." If somebody is using AI at home to do whatever, fine. If somebody is using AI to produce low quality children's books to read to my child at day care, that matters to me.
The customer isn't compelled to transact with a business using AI any more than right wingers are forced to interact with trans people though. If you don't like a practice a business is doing, just don't do business with them. To that end, any "harm" suffered by a customer due to AI use by a business is essentially voluntarily chosen by the customer, no? Going to a daycare that gives children AI books and then being upset about it is like a bigot going to a trans pride convention and then being upset that there are trans people around them. It's like... you chose this, didn't you? If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to be there.
> If you don't like a practice a business is doing, just don't do business with them.
That is what is happening here. TFA is upset that AI-generated content is making a thing they love less enjoyable.
In comparison, transphobes are banning things that do not affect them at all (trans healthcare for minors, drag shows) and are enacting policies in public spaces like schools, universities, and libraries.
This kind of anti-AI sentiment really is baffling to me, as baffling as anti-trans sentiment.
The two really have a lot in common if you look beneath the surface: both are instances of aggressive intolerance as a response to other people failing to live up to an arbitrary moral standard the aggressor has decided they have the right to impose on other people, whether or not those other people have any interest in the aggressor's arbitrary moral standard.
The response to the aggressor is the same in both circumstances: "but how does that affect you in any way?", with the honest answer being that it doesn't, and the more likely answer being some goofy rationalization invoking the rest of society's collective well-being, as the aggressor fantasizes everyone else as better off if they all also adhered to the aggressor's choice of arbitrary moral framework.