Meet the AI vegans. They are refusing to use artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons
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The only AI I'd ever want is something like a VI from Mass Effect. Runs locally and harvests absolutely zero data.
I wouldn't mind a Geth or two, for jolly cooperation
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Eh. Factory farming is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases, particularly through methane released by large livestock herds.
But the industry is so saturated with subsidies and shielded from liabilities and exempted from taxes and so comically wasteful in its surplus production that there hasn't been any material benefit to veganism as a social movement. You can take a moral position (and you should, eating meat is awful for a variety of reasons). But there's no actual correlation between an increase in vegan eating habits and a decrease in agricultural emissions. All we ever get is more meat shipped abroad or thrown in the trash.
The real curb to agricultural production has been raw materials constraints - limits on arable land, potable water, and slaughterhouse workers - that have (directly or indirectly) emerged from a changed climate. Outside these limits, all we've really achieved is "Grapes of Wrath" style surplus destruction to keep retail prices up.
If a factory farm can produce another dead cow, it does, even if it can't reliably bring the carcass to market. The profit margins are set so artificially high that they'd be fools not to do so. Only herd die-offs resulting from heat waves, water shortages, and a lack of below-market migrant labor seem to dissuade them from trying to expand.
20 years ago you could have said "Well, solar panels might be great for sustainability in theory, but the fossil fuel industry is so overwhelmingly powerful and solar panels so bad and expensive, it's absolutely futile."
Now, over 90% of added power plants are renewable, because there was at least some pressure to implement alternatives, and now they have matured enough to become economically viable on their own.
I think there are certain parallels to factory farming and plant-based alternatives + cultivated meat. We know that factory farming is very unsustainable, especially in terms of climate impact, resource use and zoonotic diseases (like bird flu and swine flu). These issues become ever more pressing as factory farming continues. We just won't have a choice at some point but to switch to alternatives that are more sustainable, or everything goes to shit.
Creating demand for the alternatives funds their R&D and furthers their availability, which in turn leads to better products for lower prices, which makes further adoption much easier. Advancing the alternatives might have a much bigger impact than the mere reduction in meat consumption.
The more early adopters, the faster new technologies can advance. That's true for every sustainable industry like solar energy, wind energy, battery storage, electric cars, and also meat alternatives.
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i wonder if they came up with such term to mock those who dont want to use ai and possibly actual vegans on the side.
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You only notice AI-generated content when it’s bad/obvious, but you’d never notice the AI-generated content that’s so good it’s indistinguishable from something generated by a human.
I don’t know what percentage of the “good” content we see is AI-generated, but it’s probably more than 0 and will probably go up over time.
Shit take, the more AI-made media is online, the harder it is for AI developing companies to improve on previous models.
It won't be indistinguishable from media made with human effort, unless you enjoy wasting your time on cheap uninteresting manmade slop then you won't be fooled by cheap uninteresting and untrue AI-made slop.
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Abstaining from a thing does not make one a vegan. That's not how any of this works.
Awe so the article author has a vendetta against vegans got it.
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Why neo?
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Abstaining from a thing does not make one a vegan. That's not how any of this works.
It's like how they put the word gate after something to say that it is a scandal involving the former word.
Somesort of political scandal involving road maintenance? Oh yes well that's roadgate then. Even though the Watergate scandal was in fact it scandal in the watergate hotel, rather than a scandal about water.
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- Amish: techno vegans
- Mennonite: techno vegetarians
I interpreted that as techno, as in the genre, for too long.
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i wonder if they came up with such term to mock those who dont want to use ai and possibly actual vegans on the side.
wrote last edited by [email protected]They use to mock us with “Luddite” but the Technologists looked into that actual movement (rather than the caricature) and agreed, “yeah sure, like them”. That took the sting out of the pejorative, so they picked another mocked group to connect it with.
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So just the “Appeal to futility” logical fallacy?
At some point, you have to recognize factory farming as a public policy decision rather than a retail choice. And the response has to be organized and political, not individualistic and consumerist.
You joining the current vegan population is significant!
It's significant for popular politics, sure. But a vegan community that satisfies itself with attaching blinders when they pass through the Bad Foods aisle at the grocery store is going to end up in the same place as the climate activist who only owns a bike.
The vegan population is estimated to be 9% in india and mexico, 5% in Israel, 2% in the UK, 1.5% in the US
The difference between the US and India is that if you go around trying to butcher cows in particularly devote areas of India, you're subject to serious political reprisals. In the US, it's practically a sacrament to eat burger.
At some point, you have to recognize factory farming as a public policy decision rather than a retail choice
It is both, and both affect each other. False dichotomy?
a vegan community that satisfies itself with attaching blinders when they pass through the Bad Foods aisle at the grocery store is going to end up in the same place as the climate activist who only owns a bike.
Strawmaning what being a vegan is. It is far from just turning a blind eye.
The difference between the US and India is that if you go around trying to butcher cows in particularly devote areas of India, you're subject to serious political reprisals.
You know that they eat plenty of other animals right? If you go there, meat and animal products are a very big part of the local food.
I can't take these arguments seriously.
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Incels: sexual vegans
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At some point, you have to recognize factory farming as a public policy decision rather than a retail choice
It is both, and both affect each other. False dichotomy?
a vegan community that satisfies itself with attaching blinders when they pass through the Bad Foods aisle at the grocery store is going to end up in the same place as the climate activist who only owns a bike.
Strawmaning what being a vegan is. It is far from just turning a blind eye.
The difference between the US and India is that if you go around trying to butcher cows in particularly devote areas of India, you're subject to serious political reprisals.
You know that they eat plenty of other animals right? If you go there, meat and animal products are a very big part of the local food.
I can't take these arguments seriously.
It is both
It's induced demand. Increased capacity invited consumption.
You know that they eat plenty of other animals right?
Per capita they're heavily constrained. They have three times the population and one third the land area. They can't slaughter animals to match US consumption patterns even if they try.
That's incentivized a culture of veganism as normal and virtuous, as a consequence. And it has allowed the population to expand to 1.3B without experiencing rates of malnutrition common to more rural countries (Kenya, Argentina, and Haiti, for instance) where enormous stretches of land have been dedicated to feedstock.
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I am a AI Freedom Fighter.
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This was an actual response that Google's stupid Gemini LLM really gave somebody. The notion was lifted from a satirical Onion article which the LLM regurgitated as if it was an established fact.
We need to poison the models with more satire on the Internet.
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I'm a sex vegetarian gotta be a bit open
Sex flexitarian is where it's at
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I'm a sex vegetarian gotta be a bit open
I'm a sex pescatarian. I will not be answering questions.
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Shit take, the more AI-made media is online, the harder it is for AI developing companies to improve on previous models.
It won't be indistinguishable from media made with human effort, unless you enjoy wasting your time on cheap uninteresting manmade slop then you won't be fooled by cheap uninteresting and untrue AI-made slop.
“All AI-generated content is self-evident” is an unfalsifiable claim. It might also be true, but you don’t and can’t ever know.
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I'm sex vegan. Cry about it virgins
No animals harmed during sex...hmm
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No animals harmed during sex...hmm
Disagreed. I am an animal.
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No mayo in the bedroom? Why even bother.
Vegan aioli just doesn't cut it
