In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
Who said this is where I draw the line? My job isn’t under threat from AI until it can actually reason, which an LLM will never achieve. Or at least, we’d better hope not because professorGPT is just a confident moron at the moment. That’s not how the foundational technology works. It may be able to amalgamate something convincing enough to pass for people who don’t care, but it will never understand art. Hell, it can barely produce usable code and that is with the tremendous benefit of defined syntax, which art does not have.
Drills didn’t have to steal the expertise of diggers to operate, and the diggers became the drillers because they knew where to dig and how to not die in the process. Telephones didn’t immediately cut out skilled labor and many became switchboard operators. Day laborers are still hired every day? Do you even understand how dumb your argument is?
Gen AI has nothing without being fed source material, if that material is not being paid for or in the public domain, it is just plain theft. Any other argument you want to make is going to have to reconcile with that fundamental problem first. Until then all you’re doing is advocating for the wealthy to own everything because you get to say “but it’s convenient, fuck the consequences.”
Also the irony of championing AI in a solarpunk community of all places. The current model is as bad as it could be through the lens of solarpunk ideology.