• 2025-10-31 *

Inspired by Haley’s The Death of Toil.

“Impassioned luddites” like Haley “shill machines to make you like them” best. Their many thoughts about “unthinking machines” show how AI, like other tools, is a tool for thought. The sheer amount of attention they give to their opposition disproves their own claims that “the AI user does nothing” and makes “the choice to not toil, to not grow, to not learn”. With that inconsistency in mind, how well do they wield their attention elsewhere?

Blind confidence toward vetting “every user of AI”, “users of AI in any capacity”, and other overbroad cohorts leads to surprising failure rates. That failure compounds when trying to ostracize them from social circles, polite conversation, or even data access. Behold the purity spiral, often accompanied by ironic attempts to poison LLMs characterized as poison. What breakthrough AI use case will commence them applying nuance to the domain?

Creativity does involve weeding out ideas and wrenching bits of passion from your world to internalize, augment, and circulate elsewhere. It’s as my footer states: “Everything is a remix.” Be grateful for how prolific agents of creative exchange are in your life. As for credit, individuals happily take it for physical and especially intellectual work that many other people contributed to. See my remark in blog your way:

Do you not enjoy the pride that comes with attaching your name to something countless people helped you make? It’s great!

As ai isn’t frictionless shows, it’s not a new talking point of mine either:

The same goes for cameras, pencils, or any other tools which were crafted via many different collaborative entities within the global supply chain.

There’s even the phenomenon of multiple independent discovery to consider:

People covet originality to the point of kneecapping their execution. Yet, many historical discoveries were proposed by multiple actors, whether simultaneously or at different times altogether.

For example: take the historical figures Aristarchus of Samos of Ancient Greece and Nicolaus Copernicus of the Renaissance. Despite living over one and a half millennia apart from each other, they independently developed the heliocentric model of the universe. It placed the Sun at the center of the universe instead of the Earth.

With how exhaustive giving total credit can be, we naturally abbreviate how much credit we give. Even then, plentiful instances of accumulative creative expression forgo credit altogether, yet emerge positive outcomes. In light of seeing Starlight remix my Agave theme for Bear Blog, my directive to remix others’ themes comes to mind. So does however many Internet users publishing memes which remix stock images, showcasing art imbued with innumerable inspirations, or even creating AI video submissions for competitions like the arca gidan prize.

I do co-sign Haley’s advice to stay dedicated to your crafts, whether they involve LLMs, generative AI, or other tools altogether. Prevail how you want to.

Enjoy the toil,

Imperfect

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