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4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

arstechnica.com

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Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#21

Post by wmidwestranger »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #5
mouse_ wrote: post #2

gijames1225 said: I'm a little curious as to why this is even an article. It's inevitable and has no bearing on 99.99999% of people. I get that it's low hanging fruit from a reporting / research perspective (sort of like the 'Twitter users blah blah blah' articles), but outside of the 'publish or die' mindset of churning out content this is pointless and continues to make 4-chan and these people seem much more releva…

I need a reminder from time to time that the internet has become a dumpster fire. These add fuel to the internal debate I am always having as to whether we ought to just toss the whole stinking thing away and go back to a world dominated by radio [1]. [1] (Not that I have of course any means to do that ... but I can drop out I suppose.)

As distasteful as memes can be; the slow, steady, and ever more complete of government and corporate control is just as sad to me. Maybe even worse because a lot of the distasteful stuff is made by people with bad taste while the plasticising of the internet is done for profit or influence. The Eternal September, done deliberately.

There is an interview between Mike Wallace and the Chinese leader in the 90s where Wallace asks the leader why they censor the internet. He specifically says, "don't you think your people are smart enough to make up their own minds and come to their own conclusions?" So it goes, now the entire world is treated the same way.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#22

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

bitwize wrote: post #9
mouse_ wrote: post #2

gijames1225 said: I'm a little curious as to why this is even an article. It's inevitable and has no bearing on 99.99999% of people. I get that it's low hanging fruit from a reporting / research perspective (sort of like the 'Twitter users blah blah blah' articles), but outside of the 'publish or die' mindset of churning out content this is pointless and continues to make 4-chan and these people seem much more releva…

Racist content has a bearing on the marginalized races. Ignoring the casual hate on 4chan brought us GamerGate and Trump.

As far as I'm aware, nobody got physically hurt from Gamergate, ie. ignoring casual hate would have completely removed its impact. Though you could argue that that was impossible.

Do you have evidence for your claim that ignoring casual hate caused either of those things? My baseless theory is that suppressing and excluding these people from the mainstream is what riled them up in the first place; it certainly didn't feel like they were being ignored even after that. But I am open to contradicting evidence.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #15

I mostly ignore these AI tools, so will just ask. Is there a risk of spamming racist memes causing non-racist prompts to return racist memes? Like the early Microsoft bot that 4chan made parrot their content.

> Is there a risk of spamming racist memes causing non-racist prompts to return racist memes?

It is conceivable, if a naive self-improvement feedback system is implemented. (This wouldn’t have to touch the base model at all, as there are ways of externally imposing qualitative guidance based on feedback.) But it is highly unlikely that any of the major online image generators are implemented in a way which would be vulnerable to this.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#24

Post by wmidwestranger »

bitwize wrote: post #10
JKCalhoun wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need a reminder from time to time that the internet has become a dumpster fire. These add fuel to the internal debate I am always having as to whether we ought to just toss the whole stinking thing away and go back to a world dominated by radio [1]. [1] (Not that I have of course any means to do that ... but I can drop out I suppose.)

What we need to do is build a progressive political orientation into all layers of the network, from site content moderation to actual packet routing. To quote Drew Devault, "no Nazis" is a better policy than "no politics".

Somehow, at this moment, industry having massive influence on government policy is not fascist but a guy in the UK teaching his dog to salute like a Nazi is.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#25

Post by marsupial »

mouse_ wrote: post #2

gijames1225 said: I'm a little curious as to why this is even an article. It's inevitable and has no bearing on 99.99999% of people. I get that it's low hanging fruit from a reporting / research perspective (sort of like the 'Twitter users blah blah blah' articles), but outside of the 'publish or die' mindset of churning out content this is pointless and continues to make 4-chan and these people seem much more releva…

The news cycle essentially is 'publish or die' and race topics get clicks. It's also bad PR and pressures the AI monopoly to bake shitlib orthodoxy into their models, to make them less transparent and hint regulation. Etc.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#26

Post by krapp »

chmod775 wrote: post #19
skulk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it brings you comfort to think they're just doing it for the lolz but unfortunately the reality is that a good chunk of them actually believe those things.

Or that's what they want you to believe - because obviously that's more lolz. Though maybe there's some that actually are, because of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 Ask yourself why an actual racist without any intention to cause chaos would engage in this behavior though. It's clearly intended to offend and get a reaction - that's the main goal. Whether it's done by actual racists is secondary.

Also known as Popehat's Law of Goats:

    He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.
If your goal is to be seen as a racist, and to provoke a response from people who are offended by racists, and you do all of the things that racists do to that end, spending time on racist forums spreading racist memes and hate speech, then the distinction between you being an "actual" racist and your racism being mere performance is one without a difference.

Because being racist as a hobby isn't really something non-racists tend to do.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#27

Post by chmod775 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
chmod775 wrote: post #13

In today's news: 4chan users who spam racist garbage, not because they are racist, but because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction, get a reaction. This is like writing newspaper articles about toilet graffiti. You're making the artist's day.

> 4chan users who spam racist garbage, not because they are racist, but because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction, get a reaction. No one spams racist garbage despite not being racists because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction. Now, its true, that people who are racist and also attention seekers might be motivated more by the latter than the former in doing that, but that…

> No one spams racist garbage despite not being racists because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction.

That's a bold statement and clearly untrue. A boatload of people gets their kicks out of pretending to hold any number of offensive views just to get a rise out of people online.

When I was a dumb 16 year old that was one of my favorite past times. Only works on people who don't believe anyone would do such a thing...

It speaks to your character that you wouldn't even immediately consider it.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#29

Post by totetsu »

In some ways this feels like not news.4chan does 4chan. This could even be outrage troll if that’s still the meta. But it does make me think about a few things.

- The Prime Minister of my little home country auto popping up as I typed in GIPHY memes the day she resigned.

- Politicians and would-be politicians and religious leaders using race baiting and meme language (woke and pulled) in the lead up to the coming election.

- I remember 8chan being the place that people supporting these same racist ideologies organized to carry out direct action in the form of murder and terrorism.

- In the month but I was a beta tester for the Dall-E3 it never once Struck me to use this tool To create images to spread Hate or some other ideological instrumental use. There is such a vast wide latent Space of images and pixels to explore with these text to image generators. How boring it is to make raciest or conspiracy imagery. And in the same thread the human mind is capable of such vast space of neural configurations, how boring it is to use it to be a racist.

- I immediately suspect anybody of Arguing for uncensored or nonaligned AI to be provided to them to be a closet racist or troll

- I’m glad Dalle and SDXL is not hosted for general use without a filter. But I’m also very glad that all it takes is commenting out one line and re-uploading the model to be able to use it uncensored myself.

Re: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images

#30

Post by brucethemoose2 »

chmod775 wrote: post #13

In today's news: 4chan users who spam racist garbage, not because they are racist, but because they want to create chaos and are fishing for a reaction, get a reaction. This is like writing newspaper articles about toilet graffiti. You're making the artist's day.

Maybe most are not earnestly textbook racist, but many are "based" to the extreme and end up earnestly supporting racist policy (even if they don't see it that way).
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