AI not pretending the emperor has clothes

[JeannieDark]

Saw this on Facebook and thought it was interesting - the computers know and don't pretend otherwise.

The computers have been programmed by humans.

The computers will generate whatever text they have been programmed to generate by those humans.

If the computers have been programmed to scan the comments made on male dominated forums where no holds barred / abusive “takedowns” of other people’s selfies is standard practice, then the computer will use search+ find to locate and then re-use the sort of commentary that would feature on such forums. All that the computer has done there, is tell the person what sort of comments would be made by a certain kind of internet-user if those selfies were shared with them on their forums/ other social media.

If the computer had been programmed to do a search+find on female dominated forums for sharing make up tips where the standard practice is to be kind and supportive, the computer would have located and re-used those sorts of reassuring comments on the selfies.

Obviously it’s upsetting for the person who posted on FB to find out that those are the sorts of comments which would be likely to be made by some people on the internet.

Is the app mentioned by the poster one which is designed to be a safe way of finding out whether you’ll be able to cope with the likely comments if you post your photos on the internet? I’ve never heard of it.

Midjourney is AI Art Software.

‘Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called "prompts",‘

it is genuinely very interesting and there’s a lot of forums dedicated to refining propmps and sharing the artwork. I used to follow a few, but somehow each of them seem to degenerate into ‘mAkE iT dRAw BOOBIES‘. By a hardcore (pun intended) of male usernames. <sigh>

'Made of trash' 😁

The poor person. I hope they're soon feeling better about themselves. Relying on validation, whether from a computer or another person, is not a healthy way to live.

Thanks for the info Gharol, interesting.

And this: there’s a lot of forums dedicated to refining propmps and sharing the artwork. I used to follow a few, but somehow each of them seem to degenerate into ‘mAkE iT dRAw BOOBIES‘. explains why those selfies got the comments they did. Computer AI is taught to perform by humans.

Isn't that true of all new tech? That a significant number of (male) users find ways to make it create/access porn.

@Gharol do you know where Midjourney gets its reference input of images and descriptions from? Is it getting that from the open internet, and if so, I wonder what the process is for that.

Isn't that true of all new tech? That a significant number of (male) users find ways to make it create/access porn.

Yes, one of the sections of Invisible Women (if I’m remembering correctly) is about how supposedly “neutral” tech isn’t at all neutral as it’s been developed by a male dominated workforce.

Midjourney (along with a couple of other AI generators) is currently the subject of litigation from artists whose works are being used to build their databases without their consent.

Aside from the language the AI has picked up from its programmers or the sites it scrapes its knowledge from I read it as though the user had picked photos were they were more likely to 'pass' but the AI read the face as the correct sex rather than the desired one.

Identifying the sex of a face is pretty consistently possible to do, so I am not surprised by this. Unless the person has had significant facial feminisation surgery, or used pictures where a filter has been applied that feminised features, then that was fairly inevitable.

Beat me to it @Flickersy

The lesson here is to not use the internet for validation.

The lesson is don't be vain.

The lesson is to be comfortable within your own body because you can't change it. You can't disguise the truth.

The lesson is that the internet is programmed with the worst in human traits. And to not be surprised by this.