It’s not a “problem”, as such. As I said, I created the account to view the pages and groups of small businesses and organisations that have no other online presence. I don’t use it for the doomscroll algorithm. This was just my observation of what kind of content is targeted towards males in my location by default.

I found this article quite interesting, as I deactivated my main Facebook account around the time the article asserts Facebook was still “trying” and only recently created a new account under a generic pseudonym to access all the community and small business information that is still locked entirely to the platform. Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with “recommended” posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. I guess the algorithm uses my location and gender to generate these recommendations, since I’ve provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use. As a result, my default feed is basically just a wall of misogynistic and highly sexualised slop and even the few genuine recommended posts (like backpackers looking for travelling buddies) are clearly being recommended because they feature young women with a bunch of older men thirsting over them in the comments.

Really great article, and thanks for posting the text of it.

You’re welcome. It was their daily free article to email subscribers. I can’t afford to pay a subscription fee for full access but I find the combination of their mailing list + podcast is a good way to keep up to date with their investigations.

Safe and official are not the same thing. I’m not sure there is any pirate site that is 100% safe when downloading applications. You are always taking an educated risk based on the history of the site, the moderation, the users and the application in question. It is not a good habit to think of things as clean or unclean, safe or unsafe, because circumstances can always change and you need be actively on the lookout for warning signs.

SolidTorrents is a pretty good aggregator. You can also search on non-English sites (I use Korean ones).

How is stacking 10 buckets of sand and letting them fall in an art gallery, comparable to real art? Dunno, but they call it that: “real art”.

Your insinuation here was that AI art is “real art” because someone once stacked 10 buckets of sand and called it “real art”. It comes across as pretty desperate that you relied on a comparison with something as questionable as this to argue that AI art is the equivalent of traditional art. As you said, there will always be artists and “artists”. Sounds like AI “artists” fit in quite well with the latter group.

Stremio is pretty easy to setup. You will need to make use of the community add-ons, found here.

Err, you admitted yourself that you are absolutely clueless when it comes to AI music generation. So yes, your “point” was a bad one and clearly came from a place of complete ignorance.

I’m not sure equating AI art to sand bucket man is the glowing endorsement you think it is.

They’re not just typing in “make me a pretty image” and then refreshing a lot.

The only explanation I’ve received so far sounded exactly like this, just with more steps to disguise the underlying process.

You’re sort of stepping around the issue here. Are you confirming that AI art is about cycling through options blind until you stumble across something you like?

It was a terrible and irrelevant point, as I explained. Thanks for the links though, I will check them out.

In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.

Hopefully this doesn’t go the Apple direction where “security” becomes the catch-all defence for anti-consumer business practices.

You keep using the word “vision”, but I have a hard time understanding how an AI artist has a vision equivalent to that of a traditional artist based on the explanation you’ve provided. It still sounds they are just cycling through AI generated options until they find something they like/that looks good. That is not the same as seeing something in your mind and then manually recreating that to the best of your ability.

You see where I’m going with this?

No, I’m sorry but those are terrible examples. Synthesisers still require full creative control and an understanding of sound production techniques to create a custom sound. Some musicians rely on presets and samples, but even then they still need to be capable of actually composing a piece of music. Also, the debate was largely about whether synthesisers could be considered real instruments, not whether the music created by synthesisers was real music. The Hip Hop comparison is completely irrelevant and an even worse attempt at conflating genuine criticism of AI “musicians” with “old people are just mad”.

I don’t know anything about AI music generation

It’s literally just prompts AFAIK, so the people making it don’t require any musical talent, ability or creativity. They are just asking someone/something else to make them music that has a certain sound. It’s the equivalent of a monarch commissioning a piece of work from their court musician and then claiming they are a musician too.

visual art can be generated by AI models on local machines with a great amount of fine tuning and depth.

Are there specific pieces of AI art software people use? Any popular ones you can recommended to help me understand the process better?

But even if you don’t, have some respect for the AI artists out there who put time and effort into their craft.

What kind of time and effort? How is AI art a skill that is comparable to real art? I am genuinely asking here, I’d like to understand your work process.

I am not a visual artist, but I have composed my own music and the amount of time and/or effort needed to create a comparable piece using generative AI is not even close to being the same. I think there is a place for AI tools that assist artists, but people generating entire pieces using AI and then referring to themselves as “artists” is honestly delusional and sad. I hope that’s not what you are referring to here.

From the article:

The Atlantic has a corporate partnership with OpenAI. The editorial division of The Atlantic operates independently from the business division.

Yes, I always get the feeling that a lot of these militant AI sceptics are pretty clueless about where the technology is and the rate at which it is improving. They really owe it to themselves to learn as much as they can so they can better understand where the technology is heading and what the best form of opposition will be in the future. As you say, relying on “haha Google made a funny” isn’t going to cut it forever.

There is not a single attack on your character at all in that reply. If you don’t want to engage, fair enough. Just be honest about it instead of trying to smear others so you look like you “won” by default due to some imagined moral high ground.

I think you’re imparting your own biases on the article here. The reporting on the “Chinese roots” of the company is provided as context for the reader because, as I explained above, China’s alleged influence over American society and politics is very relevant at the moment - regardless of whether you agree that it is happening. As far as I know, there was also zero evidence provided by the US government of CCP-guided interference by Huawei or TikTok, yet it moved ahead with bans anyway. Particularly within the context of the reasoning for banning TikTok, NewsBreak’s connections to China are extremely relevant. Note, in particular, this line from the article:

In February, IDG Capital was added to a list of dozens of Chinese companies the Pentagon said were allegedly working with Beijing’s military.

You accuse the outlet/journalist/editor of xenophobia and quote their findings of zero links to the CCP as evidence of this, but I would argue that this is actually evidence of the complete opposite. They are doing their best to provide a balanced view of the situation by reporting the lack of connections in contrast to the allegations or implications. If they actually had a genuine xenophobic intention with this reporting, there would be absolutely zero reason to include that line.

It is not an outrageous thing to say: being Chinese does not make you a CCP operative.

The article doesn’t state or imply that, though. What it does do is provide information to the reader that is, again, relevant because of the current situation in US politics where you do have politicians alleging or implying that being Chinese, even ethnically, equates to being a CCP operative.

I just wish they would stop saying “China” or “Chinese” as shorthand for “CCP”.

This is standard in the field of international relations, though. We always use the name of the country or the capital city of the country when referring to it on the international stage. You are suggesting that we should refer to China as “the CCP”, the USA as “the Democrats”, Australia as “Labor”, etc. That is obviously an extremely confusing and illogical way of presenting information to a global audience.

I think the fact that you are so concerned about how Trump might hijack this type of balanced reporting is a massive tell that you are not reading it impartially. You are approaching it from the position of “the West has an anti-China bias” (a position I don’t necessarily disagree with) and are then trying to link the dots between the information provided in the article and your world view. You need to understand that reporting facts, that may be parroted in bad faith by political groups and their supporters to reach an inaccurate/unsupported conclusion, is not the same as an opinion piece where the objective is to emotionally manipulate the reader or lead them to a particular conclusion. Reuters has an extremely good reputation for highly factual and unbiased reporting and there is nothing in this report to suggest otherwise.