@davidgerard We should consider one thing: if one calls something AI, it is mostly like that's the tool the arson group uses, useful things often aren't called AI.

Even if they share the same mathematical principles! Take good old machine translation: great to make people understand each other, yet uses the same transformer model as LLMs. No one calls it AI (unless there is a shitty LLM inside).

How about speech recognition? It is awesome for accessibility yet often has the same ethical issues as generative AI: many models are trained on stolen work from humans who never subtitled things wanting their work to be used by big AI companies, many volunteers even.

@qgustavor @davidgerard

I don't want to be 'that guy' and I'm not.

But there is one thing I use that is AI based, and isn't ripping anyone off - noise/wind reduction.

Sure when it's music extraction, that can mean training on unpaid work/stems. But in that case, the wind isn't going to be ripped off for royalties.

Not sure whether Whisper was trained on legal or dodgy sources, but AI transcription has really helped with accessibility, so it's a hard one there...it's shitty if people have had their work stolen though.

But it is niche, and a lot of AI IS exploitative, but there are a few examples of tools where I don't see a down side.

Unlike GenAI, which is genuinely a massive problem and needs to die in a fire.