Post #3740452

2026-07-11 13:13 UTC

RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/116899003692938721 What I find really frustrating about the present moment is — if you say something like “It is not a good thing for airplanes to be enhanced into birds by cameras”, you get all these people coming out of the woodwork saying things like “Boy, if you think that your phone wasn't changing your picture before AI, you are really mistaken” or something. It's true that cameras do an immense amount of processing of raw data in order to make it look like something that resembles our memory of the event. Putting aside the fact that a some of this processing actually is excessive and makes photographs look weird, there's a huge qualitative difference between that kind of processing and something that adds feathers to an airplane or inserts a new picture of the moon. It's the same as when we talk about generative AI and people say things like "Guess calculators are destroying the brain too huh!!". It's such a Low Brain Energy take.

Replies (2)

@gallais@mamot.fr 2026-07-11 13:23

@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz There's even worse; I am astonished that articles purporting to use deep learning to "enhance" pictures meant to be use in research settings are being published. Or that the research is being funded to being with. What do you mean vibing missing pixels into existence is useful for "monitoring of aquatic ecosystem"?! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-47888-7t

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@mjd@mathstodon.xyz 2026-07-11 13:30

@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz I'm sorry if I'm being low-brained, but people did, in fact, make this argument about calculators in the 1970s and into the 1980s. So I think some answer is required. A different but similar example: When I was in first grade our classroom had acquired a cheap manual typewriter, which at the time was an unusual novelty. I liked practicing on the typewriter, but my teacher complained that I would be better off spending more time on my penmanship, which was a more valuable skill. Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, I can say: she was wrong.

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