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@yucandu@lemmy.world

2026-04-23 05:05 UTC

>The right loves those patterns because they confirm their prejudices: Ask an image generator for a picture of two people kissing and you most often get a heterosexual couple, often white. Because that’s what the training data looks like. That makes “AI” perfect for creating the form of idealized, fictional “past” that fascists love to allude to (“make America great again“), a past that never existed but that needs to be saved or restored (we’ll get back to that later). It depends which AI you ask, no? Ask AI made in a mostly white country, you're going to get pictures of mostly white people. Ask AI made in a mostly Asian country, it'll be mostly Asian people. This same dilemma came up with search engines. Everyone complained that "doctor" in Google Image search showed mostly white doctors. Except if you made the same search in Weibo, in showed mostly Asian doctors. Same goes for heterosexual couples, it's just what's more common. I'm starting to get the impression a lot of this anti-AI push is coming from Russia and China, the way it's being framed as an "anti-West" thing. Because the chips for it are coming from the West. It's just like vaccines, and how a lot of the anti-vaccine propaganda was coming from Russia and China. Because they need to make the thing that's saving the world look bad. I'm not saying AI is saving the world. But a "fascist artifact"? Come on. That's classic Russian propaganda hyperbole.

Replies (2)

  • > It depends which AI you ask, no? Ask AI made in a mostly white country, you’re going to get pictures of mostly white people. Ask AI made in a mostly Asian country, it’ll be mostly Asian people. > ...it’s just what’s more common. I think you're misunderstanding the author's objection here. The problem is _exactly_ that the genAI will reflect "just what's more common," and that in doing so, it over-represents that which was already over-represented. It glosses over variety and difference, it reduces the past to a cartoon. It's the next bit that's important: > That makes “AI” perfect for creating the form of idealized, fictional “past” that fascists love to allude to (“make America great again“), a past that never existed but that needs to be saved or restored... This is how the original 20th century Fascists did things, too. It's not a hypothetically Fascist appeal, it's a historically Fascist appeal.

    Open ##1607271

  • Read the whole article, don't just react to a single bit I highlighted.

    Open ##1607272