I agree that, from a European perspective, the USA has unfortunately turned out to be an unreliable partner, mainly because of the Trumpist’s strange closeness to Russia. But I don’t see why Europe needs to massively rearm its military because of this. Europe has nuclear weapons, which makes open conflict pretty unlikely in the first place. What’s more, I don’t believe that Europe could build a competitive conventional army even with massive investment. For this reason, the path that Switzerland (not part of the EU) is taking, i.e. far-reaching neutrality with simultaneous economic cooperation with more or less all players, seems to me to make more sense. I just think that instead of spending billions on armaments, it would be much better to invest in futureproof infrastructure. There is a massive lack of this in Germany, for example - in terms of telecommunications, transport and in the energy sector. I am simply not convinced by the arguments of military deterrence, especially as I think that Europe has little prospect of ever reaching a corresponding level in conventional warfare capacity anyway - all the more so in the very unlikely worstcase scenario that is that the USA under Trump turns into an autocracy with Russia as a partner.
I think Europe would then be forced to intensify its relations with China. Since China has so far been somewhat cautiously supportive of Russia’s military expansion policy, or at least has not decisively sanctioned it, I think that would be a reasonable way of minimizing the risk of military aggression from Russia in the first place. I hardly believe that Russia would risk a military conflict with Europe if they could not expect support or even just tolerance of such actions from China. The consequence for the USA would then not only be a loss of strategic military influence in Europe, but probably also considerable losses in terms of trade and so on.
Thank you for raising this interesting topic. It is nice to discuss this matter together - even if our insights will have no influence at all on future developments. It is certainly a complex issue. If only because AI is not just image generation, or text generation. Not that I want to start a fundamental discussion here, but I think that one way or another this technology is in the world. So Pandora’s box has already been opened; there will be no turning back. I think the most sensible thing Lemmy can do is find a workable way to deal with all the consequences. This is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the fact that even a multi-billion corporation like Google doesn’t have the right answers (because of Google’s business model, this company has to be interested in making its search results as useful as possible, because only market leadership promises the highest profits - and that’s only possible if the usebility is somewhat right). Back on topic: I don’t think that all the things that someone does with an AI image generator can pass as art at all, simply because a lot of it is nothing more than an attempt to create low-efford and therefore cost-effective reach. I hope and am reasonably convinced that this model won’t work because it’s completely transparent - little amount of time invested still results in poor quality content (or even just staight up plagiarism). On the other hand, I have the impression that many Lemmy users (and not only them) have a completely wrong impression: It is simply not possible to generate high-quality content within a few minutes using generative AI - well, it is but the result would just be plagiarism in most cases. These attempts are quite rightly rejected here. On the other hand, it is quite possible to create high-quality content with AI support that cannot even be recognized as such (and is not a plagiat in any known sence). However, this is not done in a matter of a few minutes, but requires considerable effort. Certainly less than designing/writing/whatever yourself from scratch; but still far more effort than copy/paste or the usual low-effort shitpost. So overall, I think the question should be less about whether content is AI-generated or not. The question should rather be whether it’s good/helpful/informative/funny/… content or not - if it is, you won’t recognize that AI is in play anyway. I think everyone should be aware of that. Not because I think this is in any way fair or desirable, but because I think generative-AI-created or supportet content will dominate the internet in the future. I think the key question is how to make it at least somewhat fair for all those not compensated till day.
I think you can use AI for creative things that convey a message. Isn’t that what it’s all about? For example with memes: stock photos are often used for these, which in themselves probably don’t have much to do with art or creativity. However, if you put them in a different context by adding something to the stock material, interesting, creative and funny things can emerge. This also seems possible to me with an AI-generated image instead of a stock photo.
Me too. I just don’t understand why so many people think that these “ok boomer / millennials, gen x,y,z does this and that” things don’t work on the same principle tho. I think it’s just as stupidly stereotypical…and I’m not even a boomer.
Yes, that’s the thing. I find it terribly frustrating that the same old playbook still works with all its pamphlet-like explanations, its false accusations and its pretended messiah logic: “It’s the foreigners’ fault that you can’t find job; a strong leader will stand up for you and save us all if you just follow him unconditionally” and so on and so forth. It simply boggles my mind how people can still believe that - in Germany, with its terrible Nazi past, just as much as in America, where an obviously criminal billionaire pretends to care about those left behind and dissatisfied. It’s almost as if people want to be exploited and instrumentalized against their own interests. I don’t get it.
That’s pretty much reddit’s approach. On this platform, the community takes over the moderation of all posts without any financial compensation - this is rather unusual as far as larger platforms are concerned. But this approach also presents major difficulties: Reddit has a large number of moderators who manage several very wide-ranging communities/subreddits. In the past, this has led to the problem that Reddit admins have sold their direct “influence” to advertisers and other interest groups. The social media application, in this case Reddit, has little to no influence on this - after all, the admin is not an employee of the company.