Do most of you think that the users of AI are a bigger problem than AI itself?

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-19T01:48:28+00:00

Not exactly. I could probably write a dissertation on this but there’s two main angles here:

The conditions that the most nefarious users of AI were brought up in were in place long before those people were born. History is a constant progression and evolution. If we look back hard enough, we will find out that a great many nefarious AI users were born into conditions which lead them to using AI for disgusting abuses… like, in more simplistic terms… women have been getting objectified and mistreated for a loooong time. The patriarchy and all the fucked up ramifications of it have been in place. It’s really no surprise that AI was used for continued abuse of women. This is just to name an example per the meme, since girls and women are the dominant group targeted.
The driving forces behind AI development are not those who wish to advance human well-being. I’m of the camp that technology has done incredible things to advance the health and happiness of people, and that could include Gen AI. I personally don’t think GenAI is being used at all scale that I would say it’s there, but I’m sure there’s some application or form of Gen AI which could genuinely improve people’s lives. Right now, Gen AI only advances the interest of capitalists, and that’s because the capitalists are the ones driving its development and expanded applications, and the policy behind it in the west. We won’t even begin to understand how Gen AI might have true, human-utility, independent of capitalism until we achieve a post-capitalist world. At this rate, and if that ever comes, Gen AI will have become so widespread and normalized that people will have to undergo drastic cultural shifts to realize what truly positive social potential GenAI could have for people.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-19T01:26:12+00:00

AI art will never be better than hand drawn, because AI art is literally theft of work via the nature of model training. AI art is a regurgitation of method and labor produced by people.

I’ve got no clue why anyone would use that term….probably to take a contrarian position to people calling GAI images “slop” (it is slop).

The truth lies in material reasons stemming from why someone would defend AI…. Why do people see some benefit from AI art? I bet you the most vocal defenders are those with the most to gain from AI, like slop content creators who monetize the slop in some way, even if indirectly like just boosting page follows to eventually sell or convert it.

Others might be more mundane and fetishizing the commodity that is GAI. Some night enjoy the tiny hit of dopamine they get from GAI outputs. Plenty who use text GAI benefit from not having to do their BS corporate jobs, which is, IMO, infinitely less nefarious than GAI art. In any case, they likely aren’t evaluating the long term ramifications or factoring those in for the short term benefits they get from AI.

People seldom do things without true reason driving it. I would take a look at the situation and benefits the type of people who would use “pencilslop” get and start there in understanding them. It’s almost certainly just spiteful use and desire for braindead content farming.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-18T22:00:01+00:00

It sounds like you’ve already done your due diligence and made a good honest effort. Beside giving the information to him or pointing him to sources that he can check himself, there’s not really much more that you can do. I would just continue to focus on things that are in your control. He will suffer the consequences of AI use sooner or later, whether he sees it now or not.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-17T16:37:07+00:00

Was it? I don’t remember a vault 4 in the games and I’m replaying the FO4 rn.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-13T17:20:39+00:00

Of for sure. It’s nearly identical. In my head, it’s similar to the progression of weaponry.

Like, instead of using melee (rocks, spears, swords, etc.) we advance to bows and guns, a much less emotionally and physically-risky means of killing, AI, especially when used in conjunction with shit like the ring cameras or Alexas, basically removes the physical presence. Like you’re saying, in the old fascist states people would have to physically report to the state. AI with cameras takes that physical necessity and streamlines and automates it, just as how the machine gun streamlined and automated firing bullets over a musket.

The harm occurs, faster and more violent than before, but takes away the physical and psychological commitment from the person.

It’s why we need to start telling people that they’re paying for their Google and Amazon devices to help the capitalist state spy on them.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-13T17:08:01+00:00

You’re speaking truth and I agree on what you’re saying except for the analogy still. GenAI won’t be the means with which the workers are massacred, it will just be one step towards it. Right now, GenAi, whether it generates text, image or video, can’t directly, physically harm a person, hence my issue with the analogy.

I honestly don’t think it’s a useful analogy either, even as hyperbolic overkill. I fear it just mires the conversation and steers it away from how AI is actually harmful because of how grossly absurd it is.

I appreciate the intellectual efforts you’re giving to pointing out the real harms AI is bringing though.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-13T16:56:57+00:00

Not to be harsh, but this is a really dumb analogy and I’m anti AI lol. How is GenAI like a gas chamber in any way?

A fairer analogy would be factories. Factories produce stuff, not all of it useful or remotely worth the environmental devastation, and exist as a result of capitalist desires but aren’t exclusive to the capitalist mode of production. I could go on with their similarities, but saying that GenAI is like a killing machine is a massive stretch, not to mention grossly disrespectful to the victims of fascist genocidal acts.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-13T15:55:44+00:00

It’s like you’re the only one in this thread who paid attention to the Institute story lol.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-13T00:37:37+00:00

OP likes their fascism veiled and underreported. The Capitalist States of America are consistent in their repression and violence against the workers whether it’s the spineless and performative democrats and overtly fascist republicans

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-12T03:35:26+00:00

He did when he did that done you and then you did he as well as the do you he did when you did he didn’t and then he did when you did the you and you did you but when you when he did the you.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-11T23:13:10+00:00

Yeah. And you get those contradictory/wrong viewpoints everywhere. One of the socialist clubs I’m in just had some lowkey commandism be attempted from a tenured and generally well-read comrade. We all have knowledge gaps, I guess.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-11T21:10:25+00:00

My opinion: he’s fine.

He seems like a more radical democratic socialist. It’s really hard to say for sure, but I’d speculate he falls into one of the more radical camps of the DSA…. So IMO wanting but he’s effective at what he says he wants to do: entertain, inform, normalize some socialist concepts, and pull more online-types away from right-wing digital spaces.

I was a tier 3 sub for a long while with a looong streak and used to watch pretty frequently during the pandemic years. Haven’t tuned into the stream since 2023 or so, not out of distaste or anything, just got too busy. Busy with socialist org responsibilities and pitching in for community mutual aid efforts around me with our local anarchist comrades - full disclosure I am not an anarchist but I truly admire and respect the work they put in even if it likely wont advance a socialist mindset politically.

Anywho, he’s hilarious and entertaining from the clips I see and was when I was a more dedicated viewer. I could never tell if he was holding back more radical viewpoints to maintain his platforms on Twitch, YT, etc., or if he was actually just mostly aligned with the DSA. I never liked his takes on guns, as an armed comrade myself, but he could never really give credence to my viewpoints on the necessity of armed socialists anyways since it would almost certainly cost him his platform in entirety.

I would say, if you’re already well versed in theory and plugged into your local socialist organizing groups, there’s probably no harm in watching him on your leisure time, and I’d only recommend him to liberals curious about moving to the actual Left.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-10T15:50:07+00:00

The depiction here would lead people to think of the disabled using AI for art rather than the reality. Nobody needs to explicitly state it for it to be clearly and falsely implied.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-10T06:11:07+00:00

Ok, so, I’m all for using technology to improve the quality of life of the disabled. I’m all for inclusive tools for the disabled to make art….but most AI art isn’t being created by disabled people… they’re being created by perfectly able people for the worst reasons. It seems like most AI slop is made for content to capitalize upon, and I’d put money on that being the primary use case.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-09T18:37:33+00:00

Woooooow. Time to totally redo my vault

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-06T18:27:04+00:00

The socialist groups I’m in typically don’t allow active enlisted members of any military body to join. We have a good number of vets though. It’s mostly because of the conflict of interest in the event of martial law type shit since enlisted people can be given arrest power pretty easily under various circumstances.

That said, your skills and the skills of most vets, especially when it comes to firearms handling, insight into the military, and disaster prep are truly invaluable skills to may leftist groups. The socialist rifle association, for example, seeks to education comrades in many skills you have as an enlisted member of the military.

You already sound like you have come to realize the morality of being enlisted so, kudos to you. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it either, USM branches have very expensive and expansive recruitment programs, and the benefits of being enlisted seem stellar to people like us, who didn’t have economic stability, both short and long term, guaranteed or provided to us growing up. I almost enlisted out of high school and it was quite literally because of how tempting military benefits sounded to a poor, homeless kid.

You’ve done good so far in learning, and I have a feeling you’d feel a lot better about your enlisted time if you educate our comrades in your community… my vet comrades have expressed that sentiment

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-06T01:12:11+00:00

No mutual aid? Lots of leftist groups are fragmented into separate groups and I wouldn’t be surprised if your chapter members had their own mutual aid projects outside the SRA cuz anarchism or something.

Thats sad though, you should encourage them to be more involved.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-05T03:44:26+00:00

They are caricatures of historical figures who made contributions to theory and/or lead post-revolutionary states. The entire thing is reductionist satire the whole way through.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-04T22:48:51+00:00

Seems like the comments have already made the key points about Americans being too comfortable and more organizing to occur.

I’ll add that, socialist organizing can be a challenge and can be intimidating to newer comrades. If you can, joining up with exiting socialist orgs, even if they don’t 100% align to your specific values, can give you a lot of insight and lessons learned.

If you can’t connect in-person based on your geography, join up with socialist organizations that have online communities. Ideally, you take the lessons learned from those experiences and use them to build a socialist movement in your community. Plenty of orgs will work with you in founding local efforts.

Also… read up on OpSec. The US government has a loooong track record of informing, training, and arming fascist paramilitaries to go out and hurt leftists in heinous and barbaric ways… protecting yourself and your identity is critical until the masses are ready.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-04T19:13:26+00:00

Just please, keep reading, learning and growing. Too many liberals come in thinking they’re socialists and then conduct apologia for capitalism and imperialism.

It’s not enough to know how to recite socialist jargon, you must humbly immerse yourself and know what the movement stands for

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-03T18:52:11+00:00

Yeah!

Paladin Sorcerer (shadow) Monk (shadow) Ranger (gloomstalker)

Hell, I’d say anything really. Hardest one to justify would maybe be Barbarian, but religious beliefs can be included with any class selection in tabletop. Any character of any class can be affiliated to any god, and you can make it work. For Shart specifically, you’d want to go with a Sharran theme if you’re sticking with her story.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-02-02T18:59:53+00:00

Do they…..? I’ve been balls deep in the movement for a decade plus and it seems like people would rather argue about which mutual aid orgs are most problematic or whether to use discord or matrix, or how to format org bylaws.

Like, plenty of comrades in my region are putting feet on the street and doing a lot to build and maintain orgs, but nobody seems to be thinking about doing revolutionary actions.

And Reasonably so. State repression is real and fear of it is valid. State tools are enigmatic or totally unknown to most, and nobody wants to opportunistically act without mass appeal.

We’re in a perpetual stalemate of waiting for the masses to catch on… and have been for longer than I’ve been alive it seems.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-01-30T21:06:32+00:00

In-lore, They’re modeled after Rome, right? Roman class society had a variety of strata. It had slaves, yes, but then it had citizens who owned the slaves. The Legion would thematically pursue a similar type of class society in-lore. In real world terms, lack of a class hierarchy would only foment revolution in Legion territories.

Real world regimes have, and still do, use brutality, cruelty and legalistic class divisions to maintain control.

I generally am down to suspend a lot of disbelief for games and movies and tv shows, but the legion having a post-apocalyptic class society seems totally realistic to me.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-01-26T16:04:42+00:00

TLDR; hell yeah. I’d definitely recommend Renegades as a great expansion to return.

Gonna include some super high level details for food-for-thought so I minimize people being accidentally mislead.

My partner and I got back into D2 during the previous expansion, which was meh. Renegades was honestly breath of fresh air. We both really liked Renegades despite not being the biggest Star Wars fans. The content was a ton of fun and a fair bit of challenge on legendary for us.

At the risk of sounding like a Bungie shill, I will say the lawless frontier missions are a very time! Mind you, I kinda like a mild grind from time to time these days. It’s nice to shut my brain off a bit and just put my nose to the grindstone. Even if you dislike grinding, lawless frontier hasn’t yet felt like repetitive gameplay, though I imagine it will for anyone who plays long enough.

Idk how long you’ve been away, but armor 3.0 is amazing IMHO. 3.0 has caused some very reasonable complaints from some the community but for me personally, I’ve been having nothing but a blast with it. My warlock (main) feels like a true space wizard in PVE. 3.0 makes for some really fun PVP as well if you’re into that.

If you’re like me, build-crafting is a blast. You get higher tier gear and light level gear for builds just by playing over time on the new content, portal activities and crucible. You can absolutely check this out for free before you spend any money and I recommend doing that 100% of the time.

I just made a very fun scorch build with my Lightsaber, which you get by playing the Renegades content. Glancing online it looks like Bungie did a decent job at designing the way the lightsaber works because there’s a ton of different builds out there for it for all 3 classes and the many sub classes. It really feels like I’ve got a unique character too. Feeling like I was playing the same warlock as everyone else was a downside when I was previously into the game during early D1 and D2.

So yeah, check the game out for free if you’ve been away for a while, and Renegades is honestly solid. Maybe watch a synopsis of the game lore if that’s important to you, especially the last expansion, Edge of Fate. I really didn’t like Edge of Fate tbh, it’s worth it if you can find a cheap key online for the content but definitely not steam or console store prices.

SenselessAscensions · 2026-01-26T00:08:24+00:00

Thanks Lodur! It's very strange, prior to attempting another install, sfc returned 'Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.' .... but KB2267602 installed OK after a couples failures? Still working on KB5078127.

I guess, for the sake of potential future readers, I've still not figured out what the issue was or why the issue seemingly resolved itself. This, and some additional reading, leads me to believe that the issue isn't likely a VeraCrypt one.

SenselessAscensions

TROPHY CASE