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Tante thinks that Open AI didn't just steal Studio Ghibli's art to show they're still relevant, they did it to move the goalposts, and stretch what people will accept as behaviour:

It’s not that they just picked something cute and accidentally the co-founder of that studio hates their whole approach from the bottom of its heart. OpenAI picked Studio Ghibli because Miyazaki hates their approach.

It is a display of power: You as an artist, an animator, an illustrator, a writer, any creative person are powerless. We will take what we want and do what we want. Because we can.

(From: Vulgar Display of Power)

The crawlers that collect data to train LLMs on cost sysadmins lots of time, writes Drew DeVault:

instead of working on our priorities at SourceHut, I have spent anywhere from 20-100% of my time in any given week mitigating hyper-aggressive LLM crawlers at scale

(From: Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face)

Richard wrote about a number of different aspects of AI, including sales people complaining they don't sell, erosion of copyright, design tools and mediocrity, AI as a trick to sack humans and bias:

I read a couple of posts about AI recently, which seemed to hold opposing ideas, but I agreed with them both to some extent. (It’s a radical idea, I know).

(From: Another uncalled-for blog post about the ethics of using AI | Clagnut by Richard Rutter)

Good post, I am glad practitioners continue to share their thoughts beyond the hype.

culture change is creating the conditions that make it easier to choose to do the right thing, to close the gap between your enacted values and your stated values

(From: the values of work | The Roof is on Phire)

If the pursuit of an easier, slower and more pleasant life comes at the expense of others, is staying where you are and suffering the right thing to do? Maybe.

(From: How Digital Nomads Are Exploiting the World - Thrillist)

Bravo to Michelle Barker putting this out there, putting into words what many of us feel:

The web is becoming hostile to humans. Users are tracked and their privacy is routinely violated. Search results are populated with ads. We are constantly spammed by bots. Generative AI threatens to turn previously useful public forums into soulless marketing soup, while sacrificing the livelihoods of the creators that unwittingly power them. Power-hungry data centres demand the burning of fossil fuels, and divert water and energy from communities, emitting tonnes of carbon in order to power this digital junkyard. Users abandon hostile websites that take too long to load on low-powered devices, or are forced to upgrade, as the pile of electronic waste grows. We need a web by and for humans.

(From: Manifesto for a Humane Web)