Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

I've gotten emotionally to a place where I find this lack of conviction actually disgusting, like looking at worm that's struggling to move. To have such little feeling about your own home state, your own people, it's beyond pathetic, it's abdication of your dignity

1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 4h

But I need to continue because this criticism has been scratching at my brain for years and I'd like to find a way to articulate it

1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 4h

I've read I, Robot, and I had the same distaste I always have for these robots achieving humanity stories, rooted largely in this Frankenstein fantasy of a tabla rasa sinless creature

1 1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 4h

To be honest I'm mostly shocked that anyone apologized or got fired for the Hitler Youth groupchat when the administration is putting out AI videos regularly that are just as openly racist. Nothing in there is out of line with what the admin says daily

4

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

It's hard for me to get to a simple statement of *why* robot oppression stories tend to not work for me, I think it's not impossible for them to work---but I've always preferred alien stories

1

Reposted by skelly

Annette Gordon-Reed @agordonreed.bsky.social · 6h

1)You may remember the articles criticizing liberal students for their hesitancy to make friends with conservative students—alleging that they were less open-minded than their conservative counterparts.

Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 14h

Here are the little darlings they’ve created. Horrifying.

www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

54 1.1K 3.7K

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

What do we think of this? Role playing fascism? And to be clear I'm not being a scold, I have a picture of myself in a similar encounter at Disneyland having a grand time. But what are we really doing when we do this as a society?

www.tiktok.com/@beastlyappe...

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

To me the only difference between those skits and Asimov is that Asimov was a very talented writer with a more deft hand for metaphor and better taste. But the underlying logic of fantasizing oppression is the same, and in my opinion it's always been ugly. I've never liked robot oppression stories.

1 1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

Fantasizing about a future where AI is oppressed requires fantasizing about a future where AI is everywhere and is close enough to human to be meaningfully discriminated against. I think vanishingly few people currently believe that's true, but we're primed by sci-fi to expect it...and side with AI

1 1 2

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

*and* that AI is truly human or human-like and can be discriminated against in a way that's morally reprehensible

1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

Now do I think it's questionable that people are leaping up to perform skits on Tiktok dressed as Jim Crow era policemen? Yes, but it's in the same way as it's questionable that Disney marches Stormtroopers down the streets of Disneyland for the giggling of children. It makes you kind of itchy

1 2

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

My potentially hot take on the "AI slurs" and those "cosplaying robot Jim Crow" is that they aren't anti-AI at all. They're sci-fi flavored role play that's "fun" in the same way watching Blade Runner is fun. Our culture fixates on narratives of oppression but the oppressed are always the heroes

2 2

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

Anglos being non binary icons since the start fr

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

oh to clarify: American law, although a historical perspective on Anglo law in general would be appreciated

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

also I want to learn some of that cute fake French y'all use

1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

any recommendations for a person who did not go to law school and has no interest in going to law school but wants to get a first order approximation of it? it's quite apparent to me when lawyers are tapping on a logical framework that I don't really get and I'd like to have better insight

1

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

I remember the days when we used to call "machine learning" a hype term and get frustrated about it being misused and overused...

god those were the days. we didn't know what we had

2

skelly @iid.bsky.social · 5h

Never had much patience for this behavior but I have become intolerant of it since the last two years of being roundly sneered at for trying to inject specificity into AI conversations. The same people who mock genpop for not knowing gradient descent sneered at me for insisting on "LLMs" over "AI"

Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 7d

also a more general point about this:

I'm starting to lose respect for tech people who have to run around being condescending about people who don't understand the various nuances of machine learning.

It frustrates me, too! But I also recognize where the blame for this mass societal confusion lies

Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 7d

Like I'm sorry, but the AI weirdos have DELIBERATELY created this confusion 100% so they can capitalize on the assumptions people who don't understand the difference will make.

This was the endgame of all the AI bros! no one knowing the difference!

Sorry they created this mess BUT THEY DID!

1 1