Post #290429

2026-01-17 21:43 UTC

the whole ai-bro shtick about "ai democritizes art/programming/writing/etc" seemed always so bs to me, but i couldn't put it into words, but i think i now know how. ai didn't democritize any of these things. People did. The internet did. if all these things weren't democritized and freely available on the internet before, there wouldn't have been any training data available in the first place. the one single amazing thing that today's day and age brought us is, that you can learn anything at any time for free at your own pace. like, you can just sit down, and learn sketching, drawing, programming, writing, basics in electronics, pcb design, singing, instruments, whatever your heart desires and apply and practice these skills. fuck, most devs on fedi are self taught. the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away. (not to mention said tech failing at it miserably)

Replies (9)

@lucydev@wetdry.world 2026-01-17 21:44

alr the sentence "the most human thing there is is learning and creativity. the least human thing there is is trying to automate that away." goes so hard imma drop it in my bio now

Open ##1494388
@atax1a@infosec.exchange 2026-01-17 21:47

@lucydev some well-known open source guy told us that RISC-V was good because it democratizes CPU design, and we said "how, exactly, does it do that, when lack of access to capital is a major obstruction" and he replied "i don’t see why access to capital is a problem" and anyway there's a reason we call him "miguel de iz caca"

Open ##1494392
@risc@wetdry.world 2026-01-17 22:50

@lucydev Vel can see the utility of LLMs in programming for making some like. quick scripts or whatnot for solving specific problems without programming knowledge (and not wanting to become an actual programmer). this could technically be called democratization however, in this narrow use case the LLM is acting as a stopgap, essentially as an idea -> language translator. ideally, in a more "well designed" world, this would not be "needed"

Open ##1494396
@rrwo@infosec.exchange 2026-01-17 23:45

@lucydev Saying AI democratises art, writing or programming is like saying that a chef democratises cooking, or a maid democratises house cleaning.

Open ##1494397
@quincy@chaos.social 2026-01-18 08:14

@lucydev this!

Open ##1494399
@zenia@mas.to 2026-01-18 08:50

@lucydev one thing it does, is to democratize access to specialized language for people with no education. And that can mean access to public services that were previously denied because of a lack of literacy.

Open ##1494401
@kevinrns@mstdn.social 2026-01-18 10:55

@lucydev Very very good. 👍 On one level, the seizure of computing and promulgation of AI is to end learning, end facts, end knowledge, and get some easy to control lie machines, and no tools. Just slop. Their slop. That they stole from all of us, and debased. And make us pay. No. No ai. #ai

Open ##1494402
@ZBennoui@dragonscave.space 2026-01-18 17:06

@lucydev I agree, and while AI does have some uses, it shouldn't be used to completely replace someone's creativity and livelihood.

Open ##1494403
@miki@dragonscave.space 2026-01-18 17:20

@lucydev It democratizes it by making it available for the people who can't / don't want to / don't have the time for learning it. We're already seeing non-programmers successfully create quite substantial coding projects with AI, to an extend which surprises even me, who was a huge proponent for AI in coding from the start. Same applies to art, there are many people who need or want art (small business owners, hobbyist game creators, wedding organizers, school teachers), but don't have the budget for the real thing. Of course, many artists and programmers don't want this to happen and try to invent reasons why this is a bad idea, just as phone operators didn't want the phone company to "force" customers to make their own calls, and just as elevator drivers tried to come up with reasons why driverless elevators were unsafe.

Open ##1494404