Oct 18, 2026, 11:13 PM@zzt legitimately we haven't had to have this discussion before because nothing like this has ever happened before to us. such is life in these past few years.
someone's brought it to our board of directors now so a decision has to be made one way or another, just not over mastodon.
Oct 18, 2026, 11:21 PM
@netbsd I'm confused. You have never conceived of the possibility that someone might give you money that you wouldn't want to take?
I'm the head of a non-profit. We're always thinking about how to ask for money because we need it. But if someone who is fascist- or AI-adjacent made a donation, I would refuse it--especially if it meant I'd have to put their logo on our site. We don’t need money *that* badly.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt We're all AI-adjacent, and increasingly so. The devices & telecoms we're using to communicate include numerous levels of AI, and that's accelerating.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt Aircraft, motor vehicles, and household appliances including increasing amounts of AI.
@jonesmurphy Yes, the "smart" versions. I would turn them down, because if they support us, they get to green-wash.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt There's nothing to greenwash in many uses of AI. AI is not yet remotely comparable in threat to racism. All of the worst threats of AI today stem wholly from racism, the far bigger problem at least for the foreseeable future.
@jonesmurphy Was just listening to Naomi Klein talk about her latest book. AI as it has been embraced by Big Tech is part of a fascist, eugenicist project. Racist "thought leaders" love this stuff, in part as a convenient way to rewrite history.
It's not why younger generations are racist, but it's exacerbating the problem.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt Naomi Klein has huge blind spots because of her racism, just making her extremely reluctant to talk about racism and much more focused on problems which are consequences of racism and/or are far less threatening than racism. AI is much bigger and older than current Big Tech leadership. Western culture as a whole largely centers on rewriting history in racist ways. False, racist history is key to the self-esteem and happiness of the vast majority of Westerners.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt Younger generations are very divided. Most are less racist than older folk and thus are significantly better behaved. BUT the most racist youngsters join older racists in heavily causing the worst behaviors of Big Tech along with doing all kinds of horrible damage to themselves, the USA and the world.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt When I broke my hand 8 years ago, and was unable to type, AI-driven speech to text was the best I had for many tasks. AI-driven text to speech helps hundreds of millions of disabled people around the world right now, nothing to do with Big Tech or evil. There are numerous positive applications of AI right now, and those are surging. AI as a whole cannot yet be remotely compared to racism as a threat to humanity. It's not even close.
@jonesmurphy My son used to use speech to text that was built into Word. I didn't think it was evil. I find the speech to text software you reference annoying and it makes me paranoid, but I can see how it would have been very helpful for you.
The features I did like--e.g., useful spell and grammar checks--appear to be gone and replaced with garbage. I hope that's not the case for the good voice to text features.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt It wasn't just helpful to me with a broken hand(and broken leg/ankle/foot at the very same time back then 8 yrs ago). It's useful to hundreds of millions right now, most of all numerically senior citizens with deteriorating senses. Many if most most of us are heading that way if we're lucky to live long enough. I'm not sure what you mean re spelling/grammar. Language translation and tuition AI 'garbage' is growing tremendously amongst numerous languages around the world.
@dnkboston @netbsd @zzt AI is even helping marine biologists talk whale language in the Caribbean sea around my native island of Dominica:
@jonesmurphy @dnkboston @netbsd @zzt Personally, when I critique "AI" I'm talking narrowly and specifically about large language models (LLMs), and other "generative" systems that only work by hoovering up the whole of human knowledge and creativity, and regurgitating it back at us. They can't output anything that a human hasn't already contributed to the corpus - hence the "model collapse" problem. They can't reason nor solve any new problems.
Machine learning (ML) is a broader topic.