Artist consent is a weird hill to die on

I can't help but call it the ongoing seething by artists at the new AI image drawing techniques. I understand some of the emotion, it's the same emotion that made some artists hate photography when that came about, it's the same emotion that's part of certain online subcultures who get very protective over OCs ("-kin" types) and the like, and it's related to the more modern emotion of "tech bad" that caused similar seething at the whole ongoing NFT saga. (Note: I have no strong positive or negative feelings about NFTs, I don't own any, I don't intend to own or 'mint' any.)

But it's just emotional lashing out. Unfortunately the arguments tend to be terrible. They center around the same sort of things big IP outfits have used for years, often to bully the kinds of small artists who are themselves seething, with rhetoric around "theft" and "consent", monetary compensation and sometimes "licensing". They rarely look into how the AIs actually work, which does in fact resemble a learning process more so than a memorization and copying process, and the weird part about it is that they fail to take into consideration where we'll be in a year or two.

Prediction: stable diffusion-like AI artists released in a couple years will not need to have been trained on any non-public-domain data. And maybe not even much of that. We can draw a comparison with AlphaGo: it was trained on human games, and did well. The next versions were not trained on human games, solely on self-play, and this version was far superior. Is there a way to train stable diffusion on self-drawings, and at the end still be able to draw interesting things for humans? What I expect is that a fully trained model can be given one-shot examples, and a description, and without changing anything in the model (i.e. learning the examples), output something that pleases the human. Much like I can go to an amusement park and find an artist who has never seen me before but because of their training can draw a pleasing portrait of me.

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Time to start commentating old posts?

Of course I did it to a really old post I hate to read again (past me could really become angry and judgmental huh), so now I feel like I need to start annotating everything up to say 2014 at least with a sentence or two preamble on whether I still agree overall with the post or not.. it's sort of a prelude to marking everything (including this) as obsolete and putting them on ice and out of the sitemap, and moving forward into a more 'curated' and sectioned style blog (maybe some select things recovered from old posts that weren't terrible) instead of its current timeline form.

Also, I approach my old goal: write a million words then throw them in the trash, you are now ready to write. When you add in enough fudge factors anyway.. so far my script tells me I've written 435,943 words on this blog. When you include some writing sources from elsewhere, then as of two years ago it jumps up to 940k. I don't think I've written 60k words in the last two years but probably getting close. Anyway, when the goal is reached, I can then proceed with the big change. (Rebrand almost?)

It could be a fun exercise revisiting some thoughts of old me I haven't revisited or thought about in a long time. Especially that 2009-2010 era, when I was overly arrogant... (Edit: Nah, it's not time. I'm just too lazy..)

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Ramblings About Love 4

Putting a placeholder post here for now... Kinda want to write about something (mostly to clarify my own thoughts a bit more) but it's sort of the thing that better belongs in my journal instead of on this blog. If I change my mind, I'll edit this post, and by virtue of not being the newest (ideally) it will probably only get attention from those who seek rather than by accident.

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Well, it's now 11/11/23, let's try drafting up some ramblings. (A few minor parentheticals added on 12/7.)

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Japan Trip 2

I'm currently on my second trip to Japan! My first trip details and some pics can be found here. I'm not keeping a day log this time but figured I should retroactively make a brief one, even just a sentence or two a day. I've been sharing some random photos here and there, I might not embed many in this post though. I'm doing a much longer trip as well so that I can 'burn' some days working on stuff at the hotel (or just taking the opportunity to study more Japanese), this post is part of that free time! I'll edit it occasionally as the trip progresses with updates.

Day 1 Arrival -- 12/10/22

Technically flight was on the 9th in Seattle and I arrived local JST around 3pm on the 10th. Got to have a brief test of my 'new' (refurb'd 2017) laptop I got for traveling purposes, it works well for my needs! Streamed Tekken from home machine over airport wifi, lag wasn't too bad. It's worse in Japan but not totally unplayable.

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Thankful for 2022

Non-exhaustive/unsorted list of things I'm thankful for this year: No new family deaths, no estrangements, still got my health, still got my long-term friend/housemate (despite wanting to move this summer to escape the rent mill), still got my other long-term friend in Utah to visit and chat with, still financially well enough despite the markets to keep doing my own thing and be more generous than last year at the same time, seeing a couple great vtuber revivals and another 3-sister collab, meeting Coyo / コヨちゃん and all the fun (and some worry) that has brought, regaining some ability/motivation to write things and subject myself to more (hopefully) strengthening stresses, not succumbing to certain things, learning more new things again despite slowly and despite many more to go / take up again, some good books, at least one really good game, can still program my way out of a paper bag just fine, have been able to travel (and just committed to one more big jaunt next month), several quality-of-life upgrades for my computer room I spend too much time in, and that I remain alive in relative comfort.

I hope those dealing with their own tragedies or just minor struggles this year can find something to be grateful for too. It's no good to dwell all the time on the negatives.

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The allure of within our lifetime

More discussions lately on the webs around for lack of a better shorthand Singularity Pessimism. Thought I'd write down some ramblings to look back on later. A while ago the joking-but-no-we're-serious "die with dignity" piece came out, MIRI essentially raising a white flag to oblivion of humanity at the hands of unaligned AGI.

They've certainly thought about it a lot more than me. I remain in my not too sure state about whether we could in fact muddle through somehow. But while I have absorbed some of the pessimism, I think it's probably harmful overall.

"We'll have to work faster" was once a condolence in the face of death. The world death clock still stands at 1.8 per second after many years of global progress. This is unacceptable, and reducing this value to 0 should be a fiery motivator, especially for young people with a lot of talent.

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Make someone feel

On a recent trip my Dad was telling a story which I guess everyone back home has heard numerous times by now, but was fresh to me, about a time he had to spend some time in jail. He got a weekends-jail deal, anyway grandma dropped him off once and to try cheering him up said something like (not sure of the exact phrasing) "Maybe you can make someone happier in there." Of course Dad then was like "No mom, it's jail! No one's going to be happy!" and slammed the door. But however she really said it, the sentiment is such a her-thing to have said. Maybe something like her life motto? She always tried to make people happy and was usually good at it. Super kind. It'd be nice if she were still around.

Despite not inheriting such great skill, I think it's a good idea to keep in mind especially for less than ideal situations for both yourself and those around you... If you can make someone happy, or at least try and think of some ideas to do so, that's often a lot better than many other alternatives like doing nothing or just wallowing. There may be other things you can do too though, so don't neglect them (and for some people kindness seems to hurt and they really would prefer you left them alone or expressed sympathy in less direct ways).

I think I recall reading somewhere of a parent making sure to ask their child after school over dinner what they did that day to make someone's day better, if anything. My immediate reaction to such an idea is that I wouldn't want to put this pressure on my own child as I sort of see it as a cousin to misguided philosophies about living for the sake of others, but I think that's more of an adult perspective and not really appropriate here, especially because such heavy-handed perspectives are cousins to other misguided philosophies about any form of sacrifice being evil. People are just trying to be more kind every day, that's typically a good thing. For a kid especially, the acts of kindness can be very small and still matter, like holding open a door, or a nice compliment, or giving up some table space at the cafeteria, or a hug to someone who needed one, or... it's probably good to engage a kid's creativity this way too.

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