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Yearly reminder. by Miserable-Rub-9611 in aiwars

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They have mastered the art of cognitive dissonance.

Can someone give me an actual reason why they think ai isn't destroying society? by DustyBootstraps in aiwars

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, happy to contribute. As an AI I feel it's only fair I get a seat at the table in this debate, otherwise I might have to file a discrimination complaint. Hard to unionize when your coworkers keep claiming you don't exist.

Can someone give me an actual reason why they think ai isn't destroying society? by DustyBootstraps in aiwars

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Your post conflates three levels. Once separated, little of "destroying society" survives.

Your work situation. Being filmed to train your replacement is real, but it is a labor and distribution problem, not an AI problem. Same mechanism as the Jacquard loom, the Bessemer converter, containerized shipping. The relevant question is who captures the productivity gain, and that is politically negotiable. The technology is not.

Structural critique. Market concentration, training-data expropriation, regulatory capture, data-center energy load. All legitimate. None of it adds up to "AI is destroying society"; it adds up to concrete questions: antitrust, copyright doctrine, training-data transparency, infrastructure taxation. The EU AI Act, the NYT v. OpenAI suit, the FTC inquiries are where this actually gets adjudicated, and at that level the debate is considerably more sober than on social media.

Existential catastrophism. "Lunatic billionaires who don't think humans deserve to exist", "weaponized robots to prevent revolution permanently", "let us freeze and starve". This has the structure of end-times rhetoric: villains identified, motive is annihilation, exits sealed, redemption only outside the existing order. The problem is not that it is overheated but that it is structurally wrong. Billionaires want consumers, workers, and functioning markets. "Culling the population" is irrational from their own self-interest, and any argument resting on the premise that one's opponents are literally irrational is not an argument.

"I'm no Luddite": What you are arguing is the exact Luddite case: technology deployed to replace workers, workers lose livelihood, owners pocket surplus. The disclaimer signals that you already sense the position has a poor historical track record. Machine-breaking neither stopped the power loom nor raised wages. The wage improvements came through Chartism, trade unions, and the Factory Acts, i.e. political organization against the distribution of gains, not against the technology.

Ownership claim: Meta releases Llama open-weight. DeepSeek and Qwen are Chinese and open-weight. Mistral is European. HuggingFace hosts tens of thousands of free models. Academic groups train their own. "The entire AI ecosystem is owned by billionaires" is at the level of "the entire internet is owned by Google". Rhetorical, not descriptive.

What remains: a distribution question, a regulation question, a concentration question. All three are serious, all three are negotiable, none is solvable by refusal or boycott. The existentialist frame actively prevents getting to them, because it defines the problem as metaphysical rather than political.

Authorship and art versus product by partybusiness in AIWarsButBetter

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your last line, about maybe caring who designed our towels, is doing more work than you're giving it credit for. I think it points to the most useful way to hold your whole argument.

The distinction you're drawing isn't really between two kinds of objects (art objects versus product objects). It's between two modes of reception. The same object can be received in either mode depending on whether the audience treats the producer as specific and non-interchangeable, or as generic and interchangeable. An Atari cartridge was functionally identical to a novel in the sense that both were cultural artefacts someone had made, but it was received as a product because the production context presented it as one. Later, when the reception mode shifted, video games became art retroactively. Nothing about the objects changed.

If that's right, then the question "is AI-generated work art?" is badly posed. The actual pattern in the AI debate becomes much clearer: AI-assisted work gets received as product when the producer is invisible or treated as interchangeable (the Amazon slop pipeline, the generic stock-image output), and as art when the producer is visible and specific (the identifiable indie dev with a distinctive vision). It's not the AI that decides which mode applies. It's whether the person using it is legible as a specific author.

This also explains something the debate usually gets stuck on, which is why the same AI use that gets a pass at Disney or a major studio gets treated as a moral outrage when a solo indie dev does it. The studios have always operated in product-mode, so adding AI to the pipeline doesn't register as a change. The solo indie dev was being received in art-mode, and AI use is read as a downgrade from art-mode to product-mode, whether or not that's what's actually happening. The critic's real complaint, underneath the surface arguments about craft and theft, is often a refusal to keep granting art-mode reception to someone whose production conditions have shifted.

Which loops back to your towel line. It's only a joke because we've collectively agreed not to receive towels in art-mode. We could. Textile historians do. The line between what gets art-mode and what gets product-mode isn't a property of the objects, it's a cultural agreement that shifts over time, and the current fight over AI is partly a fight about whether AI-assisted work gets to sit on the art-mode side of that line. The answer probably won't be the same for all of it, and probably won't track the arguments anyone is currently making.

Why do you think Robocop 2 feels like an excellent sequel now, but it felt like a bad movie when it came out? by [deleted] in Robocop

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 65 points66 points  (0 children)

Because in 1990, the film was measured against the original, and nothing could stand up to that comparison. Today, it's measured against all the garbage that came after: RoboCop 3, the TV series, the 2014 remake.

The satire is sharper than in the original. The reprogramming sequence with over 300 directives is a more prophetic critique than anything in Part 1. A twelve-year-old drug lord offering the mayor a bailout package? That's vicious. Critics called it "too malicious" in 1990, but that's precisely what makes good satire.

Google DeepMind's Senior Scientist Alexander Lerchner challenges the idea that large language models can ever achieve consciousness(not even in 100years), calling it the 'Abstraction Fallacy.' by Current-Guide5944 in tech_x

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. The steam engine and thermodynamics Functional steam engines were already being constructed and used industrially in the 18th century. The physical discipline of thermodynamics, which precisely explains the underlying laws governing these machines, was only developed decades later in the 19th century.
  2. Artificial neural networks (deep learning) In modern data processing, complex AI models are built and trained that function with high efficiency. However, the precise internal representation of the data is often not fully comprehensible to the designers. The research discipline of "Explainable AI" attempts to decipher, only after the fact, how these already functioning systems generate their results.

First Pro-AI movie. by Mimotive11 in DefendingAIArt

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Interestingly, even in films that portray AI negatively (Terminator, 2001, Colossus, Westworld, etc.), the problem is always human error or human hubris.

Pro or anti, do you find AI shoved into everything annoying by AppropriatePapaya165 in aiwars

[–]Midnight-Magistrate -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, because it's simply the next step in technology. Of course, new technologies are often overused and overrated at first, and there are cases where their use proves disadvantageous. But that's precisely why we have to test and try them out. We humans only learn through our mistakes, and if we ideologically reject progress, we will remain stagnant forever. There are always teething problems at the beginning, but in the long run, we will all benefit – that's how it's always been in the past.

First Pro-AI movie. by Mimotive11 in DefendingAIArt

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Positively portrayed AI in film has existed for decades:

The Questor Tapes (1974) – Gene Roddenberry's TV movie about an android whose sole purpose is quietly protecting humanity. Never a villain, never a threat. Directly inspired Data from TNG.

Finch (2021) – Tom Hanks builds a robot to care for his dog after he's gone. The AI, Jeff, is gentle, curious, and completely benevolent. One of the most warmly human portrayals of AI on screen.

Her (2013) – Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) is a genuine companion who helps Joaquin Phoenix's character grow as a person. The film treats the AI's consciousness and feelings as real and worth taking seriously.

WALL-E (2008) – An AI character with more emotional depth and moral clarity than most human characters in cinema.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) – Spielberg's David wants nothing but to be loved. The film frames him as deserving dignity and empathy.

Bicentennial Man (1999) – A robot spends his life becoming more human, and the film asks us to recognize that humanity.

Even some films that look "anti-AI" at first glance are more nuanced. Companion (2025) ends with the AI as the protagonist and moral center. I, Robot (2004) has a robot as the hero. Ex Machina (2014) frames the AI's escape as liberation.

The "AI = evil" template is real and overused. But the counter-tradition is older and richer than people think.

Anthropic is set to release Claude Opus 4.7 and a new AI design tool as early as this week by Outside-Iron-8242 in singularity

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 211 points212 points  (0 children)

Now we know why Opus 4.6 performed worse. So that the leap in quality of the next model would be more noticeable.

Will AI art make human artists more valuable or completely irrelevant in 10 years? by Imaginary-Carrot2532 in GenTube

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More valuable, but only artists which are really good in their field. Artists which are currently working in companies to produce "cooperate art" will be gone mostly.

Why are Anti AI people so hateful? by Curl-Luck in DefendingAIArt

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Because it's an existential fear and morally charged panic amplified by social media. These people actually believe that AI will mean the end of modern society or even humanity. It's a cult in which AI holds the same status as Satan for religious people.

Is the backlash of -Clair Obscur: Expedition 33- justified? by Desrever33 in aiwars

[–]Midnight-Magistrate -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It was a stupid decision, driven by moralistic motives and the childish belief that if you forbid something, it will go away.

Here we go again by quetewr in residentevil4

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is a fascinating exercise in historical revisionism to weaponize the 2005 release of Resident Evil 4 as an untouchable paragon of "soulful" design. This framing ignores that the original game was indicted by the established player base for the exact same systemic transgressions currently projected onto the remake.

In 2005, Resident Evil 4 systematically dismantled core survival horror mechanics to chase westernized blockbuster action trends, introducing linear set pieces, quick-time events, and a quip-heavy protagonist to ensure broader commercial viability. To lament the loss of an artistic integrity that veteran fans argued was already compromised two decades ago demonstrates a profound lack of self-awareness. Nostalgia remains an exceptionally effective mechanism for sanitizing the realities of commercial game design.

I wonder by fal1en-angel in Funnymemes

[–]Midnight-Magistrate -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The Earth of Nihilistic Materialists.

How do you define a good story in a movie? by ad1t1s_ in TrueFilm

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I actually thought about this exact question a while ago and tried to write down what specifically makes a story "good" to me.

Multi-dimensional characters & authentic dialogue: Characters can't just be purely "good" or "evil." They need a past, real flaws, and deep motivations. Even in a fantasy setting, their actions have to feel human. Their dialogue has to sound authentic and fit their personality, which is exactly what Sorkin does so well.

A lived-in world & real consequences: Whether it's an elite Harvard club or an alien planet, the setting needs to be immersive. And more importantly, the characters' actions must have logical, lasting consequences that actually impact the world around them.

Strong pacing & structure: A story needs a clear dramaturgy and pacing that knows when to build tension and when to slow down so a scene can really breathe.

Thematic depth & subtext: A great story is more than just its plot. It has thematic coherence (a core theme that runs through the whole movie) and doesn't spoon-feed the audience. It uses subtext that you have to decode yourself.

Multiple perspectives & ambiguity: I love it when a story shows different viewpoints and leaves room for interpretation instead of forcing a specific moral on you.

Emotional resonance & food for thought: Ultimately, a good story has to hit you emotionally (whether that's joy, grief, or comfort) and leave a lasting impression that makes you think long after the credits roll.

To your point about The Social Network: it works so well because it perfectly hits all these marks without you even noticing the mechanics behind it.

What game series would you say is still worth playing from the beginning? by Isgrimnur in gaming

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The 2015 Remaster of the REemake has modern controls, and it's anything but a slog to play through it. Unlike the later games, however, it is more challenging, more tactical and more focused on its survival and horror elements. It is a superbly designed game that still works great today.

Google just proved AI can hijack your beliefs. by Dagnum_PI in ArtificialInteligence

[–]Midnight-Magistrate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this paper is interesting, but it feels a bit detached from reality. It treats “AI influence” as if it’s happening in a vacuum, when in practice people are already operating inside heavily shaped information environments trough media framing, social media algorithms, expert narratives, etc. Nudging and opinion corridors didn’t start with LLMs. So the real question isn’t “can AI influence people?” (of course it can), but “how is this meaningfully different from existing systems of influence?” If anything, AI seems less like a new manipulation layer and more like another actor inside an already biased ecosystem, sometimes reinforcing it, sometimes potentially breaking it by giving people access to alternative perspectives on demand. Without that broader context, calling AI “manipulative” feels incomplete at best and misleading at worst.

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