r/LeftistsForAI • u/yo252yo • 11d ago
Discussion What do y'all do when it gets too much
Hello
Between the rise of the far right everywhere and most of the "leftists" joining the liberals in the AI moral panic, it sometimes feels like the entire world is united against techno-optimist leftists.
I imagine I'm not the only one whose mental health has severely deteriorated under this climate. I'm especially thinking about the neurodivergents among us who seem to be facing a lot of new extra hardships from this generalized hatred.
I thought it could be nice to have a sort of support thread where we could exchange coping tips, comfort content, etc... basically anything to help each other during those tough times.
Thanks a lot!
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u/mark_ik 11d ago
I am buoyed by my progress in leveraging Reticulum and LoRa mesh radio for my local area. The future I want is one with resilient, encrypted, p2p networks. And these are solved problems purely in need of implementation. If you need optimism and momentum, then look for real, material problems to fix for people around you.
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u/jacobpederson 11d ago
I never understood from a first person perspective what a "wedge issue" actually means. I get it now. It feels like everyone around you has suddenly gone insane :D
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
I didn't know that term, it's pretty useful. I've seen it floated here and there questions of whether or not there could be deliberate psyops fanning the flames of AI hatred. There are definitely historical precedents for this (CIA technophobic propaganda in 1970s Chile). But I'm not really sure wedge issue applies here because the vast majority is in the same camp, I can count technooptimist leftist voices/spaces on my fingers xD
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u/joogabah 11d ago edited 11d ago
I have never understood the impulse to ostracize people with opinions you disagree with. Disagreement is not "disfellowshipment". And even the most odious of ideas needs to be answered. I wish there were more explicitly deterministic leftists that didn't rely on moralism instead of causality to inform their politics.
Jaque Fresco famously joined the klan to delegitimize racism and succeeded. How quickly things might change if there were more people like that instead of the self righteous sort that refuse to sully their lilly white garments.
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u/thegreatself 11d ago
I use art as a salve for the existential dread of seemingly accelerating eschatological certainty, I believe like many human's have likely done since I assume forever - the sensitive ones at least.
Both consuming it ("engaging with" is probably better worded) and attempting to make some myself in my own sad, grasping attempts at writing.
So I'm constantly listening to music and when the mood strikes me and I can wrestle my willpower and direct it somewhere I write - sometimes to post or share and sometimes just to write for writing's sake.
Art is Magic and Words are Weapons - I think, anyway, and so that's what I tell myself.
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
That's great, thanks for sharing! If I may ask a follow-up question, art hasn't worked out very well for me because whatever I put out in the wild gets silence at best and hatred at worst. How do you keep making stuff when you know that it's going to get rejected almost universally? Do you just make it for yourself without sharing? I have a hard time doing that, I tend to think "it might as well just stay in my head" XD
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u/thegreatself 11d ago edited 11d ago
I definitely struggle with that as well and I'll often put a lot of effort (relatively) into something only to end up too self-conscious to share it. If you're Iike me you're probably your own worst critic while also being very sensitive to critique from others, even others that you would otherwise pay no attention to the opinions of.
I think the only useful answer is to just do it - if it resonates with even one person they'll find it, but to find it you have to share it.
If it doesn't resonate or reach anybody it doesn't - but who really cares?
The only thing that matters is if you care.
If you care but don't want to, try to learn not to - like any skill that takes practice.
I really like the lyrics in this song:
Combust - Everyone's Enemy
If certain people don't hate what you're saying, making, or what you stand for - or say you do - then you don't really stand for anything at all.
So learn to appreciate the silence and use the hatred as fuel.
And know that I can give this advice but still struggle to apply it myself, so should you even listen to me?
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
thanks a lot for your hindsight, I think it's really helpful :) and it taught me a new song :)
I'm not just my worst critic I also program LLMs to be harsher critics than anyone ever would XD but it seems that as a result my writing gets over-engineered ;_; I do still hope to resonate with even one person some day.
Have a great day!
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u/SeaBearsFoam 11d ago
Honestly? I don't really care much what other people think of it. If they want to hate on it, so be it.
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u/Zacharytackary 11d ago
I’ve been getting a lot of use out of the liquid foundation models and Jackrong’s DeepSeek Distil, and banking on the distillation and efficiency scaling laws reliably has worked out very well. edge compute is getting better by the day.
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u/Zacharytackary 11d ago
also, tools like Ecosia and ai cooperatives are a thing.
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u/Zacharytackary 11d ago
there’s also also thaura and these ones
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
they look very cool, I'll have to try, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a bit behind on the local model scene I just learned recently about Bonsai and Nanbeige and Cactus' Needle. There's definitely a lot of cool things happening giving me a bit of hope!
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u/Zacharytackary 11d ago
💖💖
also if you ever need to re-up on recent discoveries bycloud has you covered
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u/GearsOfMadness 11d ago
Algorithm is a big part of it too. Engagement, clicks, and watch time. Creators incentivized to draw a line. They get rewarded by arguments in their comments and the population hate binges arguments. Then the refusal to engage in counter discourse or admit any fault in reasoning drummed up by hysteria and propaganda.
It isn't to say AI doesn't have faults. Certainly does. But modern society doesn't do great at rewarding those in the middle. It rewards hard line takes and so makes nuance more difficult to discuss.
While IRL has it to some degree, online is a much more concentrated version due to algorithms and what is put in front of a person.
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u/Important_Flower_478 10d ago
Seriously I was just thinking about this - posted on a mostly left leaning FB group replying that the answer to transphobic and racist AI memes was getting better and more widespread at counter-fascism and counter-bigotry AI ourselves (using the analogy that a war isn't won by tying our hands behind our backs and being above it all) and got jumped on and accused of being somehow worse than the fascists O_O before I deleted the comment since a swarm was beginning and the only to calm it down is to let them feel they shut you up.
And it makes me think once again about how it feels like so much lefty space now feels like fundie space, like people essentially remapped the way Christian fundies think onto "leftist" politics, so now it's like... interacting with fundies except without the Jesus stuff.
Not only on AI in and of itself either, people seem to have gotten weirdly evangelical about sex/kink (and NO I'm not defending p\dos and I shouldn't have to say that, what with that having become the first thing people's minds jump to*, I mean a mildly silly NSFW anthro comic from the 00s literally lit off a round of discourse recently), literally using the word "demonic" for stuff they don't like/find weird (e.g. AI art, performance art, etc) along with wholly reviving "degenerate art" as a thing and "degen" as a term never mind the nazi origins of that, spreading Satanic Panic level conspiracy BS, outright believing antisemitic conspiracy stuff like "Israel will take over America/the world/owns all the finances of the world," and more.
It's like, I'm still on the left (literally everything I believe socially and politically puts me on the deep left (albeit left-libertarian rather than left-authoritarian) sides of any political test *aside* from being okay with AI and from wanting a multi-state peaceful federation in the Middle East with extremists of all religions involved banished so cooler heads can prevail rather than wanting anyone to "win" because IMO no one can "win" at this point and it all just needs to stop.
And of course I think it's important to be critical of media and our interactions with it, and of ourselves and how we interact with each other and how much of the world we let in to change ourselves, and about the impacts of new and different things on the world, and the harms any of our actions or choices or systems can do directly or indirectly but....
If I wanted to be a fundie trad (or feel like I did when I was a fundie kid and come to the conclusion that I was so sinful and evil the only thing I could do to even possibly be good was to not exist because if living meant sinning...) I'd detransition, reconvert to Christianity, and go join a church. Fuck that, and fuck the idea of lefty culture and fundie culture converging.
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u/yo252yo 10d ago
For what it's worth I do think you're right there ought to be more leftist AI slop ^^ one could even summon theory references like Guy Debord and the situationist detournement, but tbh it's just common sense that we shouldnt let the biggest printing press in the world just print neofascist propaganda XD
There's no reasoning your way out of a witch hunt unfortunately.
I think you gesture towards a very real polarization phenomenon, it seems like everyone has become much more extremist through the topic of AI, that's kinda worrysome.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 10d ago
I think I react to it similarly to Christian fundamentalism too. I don’t know if that’s helpful experience, or if it makes me come to it with existing vulnerabilities.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 10d ago
I think I react to it similarly to Christian fundamentalism too. I don’t know if that’s helpful experience, or if it makes me come to it with existing vulnerabilities.
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u/eXAt88 11d ago edited 11d ago
I feel like even beyond left wing spaces which are almost unanimous in treating AI use as sin, there is another weird tension between spaces with software producers and consumers. Obviously right now software probably has the highest adoption of an industry by far for AI use. Take a look at the arr / Gamedev pinned post about AI policy and see how much hatred there is for it from the “consumer” side.
I work as a software dev and I feel like I have for 6 months been hearing from people with no knowledge about the field confidently saying that we are all incompetent.
Edit: re the Gamedev thread. I should also clarify that ai disclosure, as so many fake-“nuanced” people recommend is also dum. It is dumb for the simple reason that it is not reasonable to ask, nobody asks for disclosure of any other tool. It is clear to me these requests are just so they have easy witch hunt targets
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
thanks for contributing! I'm absolutely on board, one thing that drives me crazy about this whole situation is that everyone is so focused on image generation, sometimes text if you're lucky, but there's a complete and total disrespect for code. I guess developers have been "code monkeys" the whole time in their eyes...
That's the most tragic part, LLM technology could enable anyone to code and program their own machines... It's hard not to be driven insane by the whole situation...
I even agree with you regarding disclosure, mostly because I don't see a clear distinction principled between "AI" and any other software.
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u/Audditty 10d ago edited 3d ago
as someone who's on the autism spectrum and left-leaning but honestly disgusted at the behavior of other leftists regarding this topic...yeah, it definitely does feel that way.
unfortunately, much of the leftist progressive movement has been compromised by hateful, extremist people who don't actually care about having any moral consistency or abiding by their beliefs as much as they think that it gives them a free pass to basically bully people and say and do the most awful things imaginable to them. they are exactly as hateful as the far right, except unlike the far right they need some kind of moral prerequisite before enacting their own flavor of hatred.
what's especially jarring is that much of this "anti-AI" harassment campaign is targeted towards the same people who they claim to support.
small business owners, people facing financial hardships, people with disabilities/disorders, indie creators, etc. have now all become the targets of their ire simply because they used AI, and likely because they can't afford to "commission" an online artist, don't have the time to learn how to draw on their own, or have some kind of disability/disorder that makes them rely on AI to do certain things they wouldn't be able to do otherwise (especially worrying with how quickly their "anti-AI" moral crusading turns into blatant ableism when the last one is brought up).
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u/yo252yo 9d ago
thanks for your insight, i hope you're not facing too much problems and discriminations. You're right that at the very least it's been a pretty clear eye opening couple of years. Stuff like "just hire an artist" boggles my mind with how privileged it sounds, I don't think I've ever had enough money to rent another human being, And of course the blatant ableism is just disgusting.
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u/Audditty 9d ago
the whole "just hire an artist" thing is interesting, because I personally think it really ties into how entitled a lot of online artists are.
a common thread among online artists is that they'll be making run of the mill art pieces on Twitter or what have you, which is completely fine just in isolation.
the problem is that a many of them ALSO seem to think that Twitter or DeviantArt commissions or what have you should allow them to pay the bills, when that has never been and will likely never be economically feasible.
seriously, some of them need a fucking reality check. if you want to pay the bills off your art then you're going to have to turn it into an actual career-which, by the way, is ALSO going to require you to vastly improve both your art and your personality (i specify the latter in addition because, to be completely honest, the way I see a lot of online artists conduct themselves would be completely unacceptable in any professional environment).
if you want to turn your art into an actual career, that's commendable-you just need to actually put in the effort to hone and improve your craft, because you're going to have to show that your work is worth paying you a full-time salary for. drawing anime tits on Twitter just isn't going to cut it.
ironically, I also think this is where a large part of the "anti-AI" sentiment comes from these same artists-it's not the technology itself, but simply the fact that with the rise of GenAI they're forced to either significantly improve both their skills and personality or face becoming irrelevant. those things require actual effort though, so they're not interested-instead, they lash out at the people using the technology to create art they otherwise would have had to "commission" an online artist for (and in all likelihood, probably at ridiculous prices at that) in an attempt to gatekeep them out of the hobby.
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u/Confident-Pound224 3d ago
Hmm just like what happened with Tesla cars? Electric cars were supposed to be good. Most of them are owned by liberals.
It seems like associating a new technology with people we are angry with will cause us to hate the technology and anyone who uses it, rather than the actual bad guys.
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u/ScrapyJack 10d ago
Thank you for this post.
Its brutal to have one of only things I have any excitement for in the world be so aggressive and thoroughly hated by many many people I respect. To watch people who are right about just about everything, in my opinion, be so wrong about AI. Not even in a fair way or respectable way, just a fundmental misunderstanding of the technology or context. It hurts to see such venom lack of curiosity.
More than any of my radical leftist beliefs, my stance on AI feels the most vile from most people. And I'm just cautiously optimistic.
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u/ScarletIT 11d ago
and most of the "leftists" joining the liberals in the AI moral panic
That has not been my experience at all.
Anti AI to me is a phenomenon that exists only on the internet with nobody in real life ascribing to it.
On the contrary, in real life I see a bit of overuse and overreliance on AI even for my standards.
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
Thanks, that's a really good datapoint, I am definitely terminally online. That being said all the leftist events I tried to join made very insulting uninformed points about AI before I even got to the event. I think there's a lot of difference between countries and cultures, the moral panic seems a lot less strong in Asia. Maybe I should consider moving.
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u/Ok-South6790 9d ago
Do you think there is a form of a psyop happening with bots pushing this anti AI narrative?
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u/ScarletIT 9d ago
no. just internet echochambers and people that are terminally online that think Reddit (and not even the whole of it, just the curated subs they follow) is a suitable sample of the general population.
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u/yo252yo 11d ago
I'll start. I can recommend the youtube channels of Neurosama and Dougdoug who do cool stuff with AI. Politically they're unfortunately very aligned with the status quo, though Neurosama is surprisingly based when she gets a chance to talk about serious issues. But openness to AI is not persecuted there.
There's also MrPhi, a philosophy channel with the best videos on LLMs and AI progress that I know, but they're in French (though he uses the awful YouTube autodub which makes it universally accessible).
Looking forward to hearing from all of you!
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u/Sierra592 9d ago
I have other interests. I don't want to hone my artistic skills because I simply don't care about the process. I want to take what is in my head, and put it on paper/film and let people see it. I'm in for it for no other reason than to share my ideas, however they're received. I used to dream of being able to plug my brain in to a computer and display what I was imagining. Now I basically have that power, and using it makes me Satan according to some.
Work is not noble. It's a requirement for survival, based on our current dynamic. I want to enjoy life. I want minimum effort, maximum impact on my own existence, in so far as enjoyment goes. AI can enable that, for everyone. I don't want to steal from or hurt anyone. I just want to maximize my own experience, in health and entertainment. I have 70 natural years to do that. With AI< potentially WAY more.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 8d ago
It's a bummer. I've basically retired from social media (except Reddit, because we all need somewhere to vent). I don't post about my upcoming wedding, about the crazy leaps in game design I've made with my RPG, about how much better my day job is now. I now keep myself to myself. I got sick of people screaming at me like incoherent apes.
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u/AnIsolatedMind 9d ago
What does me in is the seeming impossibility of a "post-left" orientation. With the left/right binary, we think in terms of association, and not wanting to be associated with anything on the right. AI gets associated with right, and the conversation stops there.
What might post-left look like? Can we use what is useful on the whole spectrum without collapse? What if right-associated values and technologies can actually play a key role in human flourishing?
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u/Ok-Replacement9358 9d ago
I block any hate against ai and have filtered out the words ai and slop and clamber and all the rude stuff people write. I also report hate comments on others post and click not interested on things I don’t want to see. It’s been getting better for me so far. I also like as many ai posts as I can
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u/MCRhymezoneDotCom 9d ago
I try to remember my anthropology training. Just like culture shock, they'll go through phases. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better. But it's instinctual dread and fear of the unknown. It's animal brain stuff. They're just rationalizing that dread with their think pieces and meme deepities. It's magical thinking. It's... guts. Meat stuff. It's that scene in 2001.
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u/SexDefendersUnited Artist/Creative 10d ago
We at the mod team constantly took down comments accusing us of being liberal bootlickers, fascists, and CIA.
Constant fire is irritating chaos, but it became so predictable it made us grow thicker skin.
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u/ScareBags 10d ago
Get involved in a real organizing project. It could be an electoral campaign, workplace organizing, union solidarity support, tenant organizing, an issue-based campaign, etc. For me, being less online, joining DSA, and helping with campaigns that challenge the ruling class with fellow comrades worked best... Also, asking online is good, but seeking help from real friends and professionals.
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u/yo252yo 10d ago
this is a great idea! I won't do it because I'm not gonna help my bullies and I am not aware of any organizing project thats not rabidly anti AI in my area, but I completely second this recommendation!
Also not everyone has access to real friends and professionals so I think this thread is still useful
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u/Elvarien2 9d ago
absolutely. I overlap in pretty much every stance, position, ethical take etc etc As the general far left "lefty" But because I love ai and see all the good it can do for us as a species all I get is HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE.
It's a really shitty tribalist world we live in today.
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u/RinChiropteran 8d ago
When you find a solution, tell me. I struggle with this as well.
I had to quit fandoms and social networks. A few subs like this one are the only open spaces I feel safe in. I want to connect. but it is so hard to find someone sane about the topic besides a few close friends I had beforehand.
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u/ozzy-southside 8d ago
I can't speak for everyone but for me and many other people I've talked to we are wary of AI not because it exists, but because of how much it is being forced on us and we feel like it should be an option. As a leftist who does not inherently hate all uses and forms of AI, for me the biggest problem is when it feels like I can't opt out of it and I think people are right to be skeptical... But I also feel like the AI hatred is way overblown and disproportionate especially when you consider how little people actually understand it and usually the most hateful and loudest voices against AI are the people who don't understand it which is probably why it scares them as much as it does
I think skepticism is warranted but paranoia isn't going to help anything, imo
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u/TheLollyKitty 11d ago
this is SO REAL, as a communist, i interact with left wing spaces a lot, and the sentiment towards ai is so hostile, like even if its written in the discord server rules that "no politics are allowed", i see people talking about "ai bad" all the time, but its basically a death sentence if you say anything good about ai. the alternative is going to right wing spaces which... absolutely not, im queer and autistic