Freesoftwareenjoyer @ Freesoftwareenjoyer @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Yes, after at least a few months of practice people were able to create simple art. Now they can generate it in minutes.

And for people who didn’t want to hone their skills, they could pay for art. You could argue that’s a change but AI is not gonna be free forever, and you’ll probably end up paying in the near future to generate that art.

If you wanted a specific piece of art that doesn't exist yet, you would have to hire someone to do it. I don't know if AI will always be free to use. But not all apps are commercial. Most software that I use doesn't cost any money. The GNU/Linux operating system, the web browser... actually other than games I don't think I use any commercial software at all.

You input a direction and something else made it, which isn’t that different from just getting a friend to draw it.

After a picture is generated, you can tell the AI to change specific details. Knowing what exactly to say to the AI requires some skill though - that's called prompt engineering.

It’s not really anonymous.

I can go to a local ATM right now and buy crypto with cash anonymously. I can then pay with it online without having to identify myself. Yes, it is anonymous in this scenario. It depends on how you bought it. But even if you can only buy it through some website that requires ID verification, you can just buy Monero, which has a private transaction history (transactions are mixed together to obfuscate them) and you will be anonymous anyway. In Monero you can have multiple receiving addresses and they can't be tracked back to your wallet. Unfortunately stores that accept Monero are less common, so this can get a bit more tricky.

Now, if 253832893 wallet paid a home mortgage for John Smith with Crypto, then I’d be closer to figure out who owns 253832893 wallet.

Then have a separate wallet for your mortgage payments. But even in your scenario only the bank will know who you are (and maybe the government). Some random store will not know your identity, unless you tell them who you are. Another solution would be to use Monero, which has a private transaction history, so nobody will be able to see what 253832893 wallet has done.

The whole point to Crypto is the block chain and the fact that they are very traceable

Yes, it means you have no privacy, unless you use Monero. In most cryptocurrencies transactions are public, but this doesn't mean you can't be anonymous.

Crypto can be anonymous if you’re smart and you don’t link yourself to your wallet. But once you are linked to a wallet, it is far from anonymous.

You can create an infinite amount of wallets. It costs nothing. It's kinda like the fact that you can use one email account for every website or have separate emails for different things. Or you can use Monero and not need to have so many wallets.

If John Smith wanted to sell me cocaine. Handing him cash is basically untraceable and anonymous. Sending him Crypto ties my wallet to his wallet with a transaction.

People buy/sell illegal drugs on darknet and they use Monero.

But to those people that fill their Crypto wallets with their bank account and just think they are anonymous, they have another thing coming if someone wants to trace them.

You are right about that, unless they buy Monero :). But I don't say that cryptocurrency is anonymous, only that it can be used anonymously. Unlike a credit card for example. It is important to make that distinction though.

You could say that gaming is also bad for the environment and that's just entertainment. But I wouldn't say that we should get rid of it. Both cryptocurrency and AI have uses to our society. So do computers, internet, etc. All that technology has a cost, but it is useful. Technology also usually keeps improving. For example Etherum doesn't require mining anymore like Bitcoin does, so it should require much less electricity. People always work on finding new solutions to problems.

A human being writing stuff only uses as much energy as a human being doing just about anything else, though.

But if a computer the size of a smartphone could do the work of multiple people, that might be more efficient and could result in less coal being burned.

Computers and automation have improved our lives and I think AI might too. If AI takes away my job, but it also improves the society, would it be ethical for me to protest against it? I think it wouldn't. I've accepted that it might happen and if it does, I will just have to learn something new.

Anyone can use AI to write a simple program, make art or maybe edit photos. Those things used to be something that only certain groups of people could do and required some training. They were also unique to humans. Now computers can do those things too. In a very limited way, but still.

The slow transaction speed is a valid criticism, but it doesn't make this technology a scam. Different cryptocurrencies have different speeds. With Litecoin I think it takes me 40 minutes to pay for something. I still prefer that over being tracked by my bank or having to use PayPal. I think you can pay instantly with Dash, but I haven't used it.

I don't sell anything online, so what are you talking about?

You are forgetting that cryptocurrency has real uses. You can send money to people without using a bank or PayPal. I use it to pay for things online anonymously and being able to do that is very valuable to me and to other people. You can use crypto to buy a gift card for any store if they don't accept crypto directly.

I have nothing to gain by saying this, since I don't keep any significant amount of money in crypto. I don't care what the price of Bitcoin or another coin is. It's irrelevant and doesn't affect my ability to use this technology.

Cryptocurrency is not a scam. It's just a distributed ledger.

Being able to pay for things anonymously is very valuable to me and to many other people. That's just one example of what this technology can be used for.

You could use this kind of argument for almost anything. For example if we stop burning coal, many coal miners will lose their jobs. That doesn't mean that we should keep burning coal.

I think the problem is education. People don't understand modern technology and schools teach them skills that make them easily replaceable by programs. If they don't learn new skills or learn to use AI to their advantage, they will be replaced. And why shouldn't they be?

Even if there is some kind of AI bubble, this technology has already changed the world and it will not disappear.

Except that cryptocurrency has real uses, which are valuable to a lot of people.

The word AI has at least 3 different meanings. People who understand the subject usually just mean machine learning. But there is also AI we see in movies (which is usually a sentient computer) and AI in games (which is just programmed NPCs). I think most people confuse the stuff they see in movies with machine learning.

You can observe what it does and understand its biases. If you don't like it, you can change it by training it.

Yeah, it's kinda scary to see how much people don't understand modern technology. If some non-expert tells them AI can't be trusted, they just believe it. I've noticed the same thing with cryptocurrencies. A non-expert says it's a scam and people believe it even though it's clear they don't understand anything about that technology or what it's made for.

I don't know if it's good investment or not, but cryptocurrency has uses that are valuable to a lot of people. You can send money to other people without using a bank or PayPal and you can pay for things online anonymously. Some cryptocurrencies might have additional properties like Monero, which also gives you privacy. NFT might also have practical uses some day - for example it could be used for concert tickets.

That video is probably the biggest piece of misinformation about cryptocurrency on YouTube and it's sad to see that so many people have been fooled by it. Most people are so bad at understanding modern technology that they will believe a random youtuber who has no idea what he is talking about :(.

Cryptocurrency is just a distributed ledger. NFT is just a certificate of ownership. Those technologies have real uses and nothing about them makes them a scam.

How is distributed ledger a scam? It's nothing new and we know exactly how it works. It has nothing to do with making money. If I use it to pay for things online how am I getting scammed? I'm sorry, but it seems you don't fully understand what this technology is.

Good to know, thanks!

That's true. Still it's more difficult for everyone.

Every language is gonna be weird if you don't know it well enough. In Lua arrays start with index 1. Is it weird? Yes. But do Lua programmers care? Probably not.

The stuff that many people say is bad in JavaScript is usually irrelevant. That doesn't mean that there aren't bad parts like the Date api or the lack of types is a flaw to many people. Those are actually important issues. In this case they are solved by libraries and TypeScript. The performance is also a problem in some applications. Which is why there is WebAssembly, which can help in some cases.

So there are plenty of real flaws that can be pointed out, but you have to know the language to be able to tell what actually matters. To me it doesn't seem any worse than any other modern language.

Didn't know about this, thanks!