This is going to be one very long post. And I am sorry about that. But please read to the end. Take it in. And for the love of whatever gods you worship, don't have a knee-jerk reaction. I've reached my limit for those.
The Background...
My employer had a really ill thought out, knee jerk reaction to AI. Although there's no specific law against using AI (I think I saw a headline about trying to have not making pornographic deep fakes being written into law, which just shows how quickly the technology is outpacing the law). My employer obviously has to react to AI and the threat it poses to business. That part is not just entirely understandable but considered good business practice. Use of AI threatens the business, pure and simple (I can't go into further detail, but I'm sure how AI can threaten business is google searchable). Something needs to be done about using it. That much is plain to see.
Instead of thinking of the best way to go about banning use of AI in the workplace, they decided to compromise employee safety, security and endanger employee children. The new rule is that phones must be left on the desk of team leaders.
My phone needs to stay on:
- My child and his school need to be able to contact me should he fall ill or be injured. Additionally, he has an anxiety disorder that the school don't take seriously, so he may text if he is having a panic attack.
- My house is falling apart. The housing association phone and text with appointments for when repairs are being carried out.
- I'm still waiting on NHS appointments to deal with my failing health. I get put to the bottom of the waiting list whenever I miss one of these calls.
As you can see switching off my phone would endanger my child. I've tried changing numbers with schools before when I was on the receiving end of a vast amount of harassment. Despite having it in writing and being told repeatedly, the school did not stop calling the original mobile number they had for me. Teachers and school staff do not have the communications skills necessary to change a number. Yes, I did try explaining this to my manager. I was shut down. Plus, if teachers had the communication skills, they'd might stop committing sex crimes.
So, I now need to hand over my switched on phone to another person. This obviously compromises my online security and puts my safety at risk (indadvertedly, this also compromises my child's safety). Essentially, another person is going to have access to all my social media accounts (as well as bank accounts and paypal - the only problems I've had with another person accessing my financial accounts come under domestic violence rather than activity from someone outside of the home).
I have experienced problems with people sending out messages pretending to be me as well as posting. I am sure, if you haven't experienced someone posting and messaging in your name, you can imagine the damage this can do. I do rely on book sales and art sales as an additional income source. I have worked very hard not only without support but with active hinderances from family, teacher's at my son's school creating problems, discrimination and outright abuse to get where I am today. It would only take one fake message from someone pretending to be me to ruin all of what i've built up.
Not only do I rely on it as an additional income source, creating brings me a happiness and joy that I only ever felt before while training in infectious disease control or while on acid (I last took acid when I was 16, and I haven't touched any drugs, minus prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines since I was 18). Nothing really compares to writing a book or messing around with my pencils or drawing tablet beyond that. (And circuit bending, when I can sit there and relax with it, which hasn't been lately.)
I have been gifted an old phone (brick) that cannot access the Internet. So hopefully, I'll be allowed to divert my calls to that and bring it to the toilet with me. That does help minimise, although not eliminate the child endangerment issues (my child has anxiety problems, if he's having a panic attack, he'll text me to go Karen on his school because the school don't listen to him - he's of that interesting generation that won't speak on the phone, maybe one of his friends will phone next time it happens).
It also helps to minimise the security issues. Still, whenever I notice suspicious activity on my accounts, I go to the police. The more names I have to hand over for people who could have access to my social media, the more tedious it is. Even with my iPhone off, I will still need to list every single person in the office as having potential access to my social media.
I started this post before the phone arrived and weebly won't let me add an image box in the middle of this and I can't for the life of me remember the code so a picture will be at the bottom, along with some other pictures. And Weebly has always been a bit iffy about typing in the code directly instead of using their click and drag set up.
Add to the problems I've experienced with people accessing my accounts, my ex. This is going to be a problem for the rest of my life (therapy can't touch this one as it is very much a real world problem). He would take inappropriate photos of me. A lot of times without my knowledge and post them on social media where I would find them a few days later. "No" meant nothing to him. When he was told "no" he'd spend however long it took coercing, manipulating, not letting me sleep, purposely triggering, gaslighting, etc until he had his pictures all at the insistence of his so-called friends (teachers and former teachers, I really fucking hate teachers with such a passion, I didn't like them before the sex crimes, but now, there just aren't words). Then he'd pull out the gifting "body confidence" and "sex positivity" as to why he'd do it. He'd also call me paranoid etc. for refusing to post my home address and phone number on social media. So, I don't know how many inappropriate photographs of me have been downloaded and how many people have my home address (not from me, I successfully managed to prevent that one).
Although these pictures can't hurt my career, I pure and simple do not want them out in the world, nor did I want them taken in the first place. (I was trapped, if I didn't have a boyfriend, baring in mind, in my situation, I was never going to attract anyone that would be functional and listen and not treat me in the same way my family does, I was either going to be raped or when I became a mother, raped and lose my child - that's just the way things were for women like me until the #metoo movement, I did tell my family, they made things worse or actively ignored what was happening, as I said, not only did I have no help or support with my career, I had active hinderances, this extended to all areas of life and I still get shit from my family for remaining single because apparently 'women need someone to look after them' - from one side with 'that's not what women want, women want to be in the home and not have careers' from the other side - I was in a situation where I could not go to the police unless at least one member of my family would support me without risking my child, or risking my child and creative work, or risking my child, creative work, friends going back to early childhood, etc, going to the police for single mothers in my situation was not an option until #metoo and walking away also wasn't an option because there was always someone worse out there waiting to 'pick up the pieces').
Those photos pose a direct threat to my safety (another reason why I never wanted pictures like that taken of me ever, I broke up with a boyfriend many years ago for doing that and he didn't even share them). Plus with the fictional sex-bunny character he created and again, with no one listening to me, I am in danger. As these photos occasionally show up on social media, I tend to check feeds every few hours so they can be taken down, police notified etc.
Back to my employer...
In the UK, there's no specific law against corporate sabotage. However, there will be something in another law that could possibly come with a prison sentence if someone in the company were to attempt to use AI. Hopefully, the laws will catch up to the tech soon.
In addition, the office is open plan. You can basically look over and see what another person is doing (if you couldn't, you bet your arse, I'd sit there vaping as I work).There's no way anyone could use AI. Nor do I think anyone would risk the company like that by using it once the seriousness of using AI is explained.
There's a lot of talk in writing circles right now of AI replacing us, so most writers and authors are shying away from going anywhere near it minus to satisfy their own curiosity. Plus publishers are closing open submissions due to being swapped with AI subs from those 'get quick rich people' - writing really isn't a good way to earn a little money, let alone a lot. So, AI is creating problems for authors as well as for artists (I hear musicians are having problems too, but since it didn't work out with someone special, I haven't spoken to many musicians, let alone on a deep level about the impact of AI).
So, it would be difficult to use AI to begin with. With the seriousness of it being explained, it would be unlikely anyone would try. Then add in that there is a potential prison sentence for someone who would risk the company like that. Plus, self-respect and wanting to preserve their job and the same jobs for the workers of the future, real writers just aren't using it.
My own recent AI problems...
If you've missed it, I've been having some problems with Youtube's algorithm. I can't message Youtube because the algorithm is AI (and created by tech-bros). All I can do is battle with it and hopefully get my videos in a more appropriate place. Combine that with, publishers closing open submissions, it already wasn't my most favourite of things.
Then, obviously, prior to graduation, I had been really honing my graphic design skills in the hopes of working in advertising. I've been rebuilding them (clearly not with some of my book covers *cough* Ghetto Super Skank *cough* In my defence over that atrocity, I have had to relearn from scratch because I lost those skills between graduating and #metoo and I have a lot of other things on my plate, I have improved since then but haven't gotten around to a new cover). So now, I'm a bit worried that I won't ever get to where I want to be (that's if this last bout of the PTS I suffer with being badly triggered doesn't put me out of work forever). I'm including some AI images below so you can see what they look like. I have seen online advertisements made using AI. They kinda suck, but companies are using them. And my goal was print media advertising, which is still a thing but the pound is a lot smaller since most things went online and a lot of magazines etc crashed during that recession in was it 2009 (I don't know, I was sick).
The only positive that's come out of my employer's knee jerk reaction to AI is that I can now have my ongoing complex as hell legal case go all the way back to when I first returned to the UK and was not allowed to continue pursuing my first career path. I did get a pathetic apology from the school when they finally understood that my mother was not being truthful, but by that time, my life was ruined. I even suggested I be allowed to sit the GCSE exams the following year, accept a B or whatever the highest mark without course work would be, but I wasn't allowed to do that either. Did I ever mention that I absolutely detest teachers? It only became worse from that point.
The future of AI...
Despite my problems with AI, I'm not strictly against it. From an infectious disease point of view, AI can be very useful. But AI is not right, anything done by AI still needs to be checked over. Like a lot of people, I see that it can be a useful tool. It cannot at this stage replace humans. A tool is all it is.
I still have records with 'illegal taping is killing music' stamped across them. Music didn't die until Napster and then it didn't really die, the record labels did. Music, like horror, diversified. I understand that a lot of musicians are only being paid less than a penny per stream though. And that sucks. They work hard, just like everyone else in the creative industries.
I hadn't found the time to satisfy my curiosity with the AI writing before my employer's knee-jerk reaction. I won't be doing so until this mess with the AI and my employer is sorted out. I was a bit concerned about my experimental writing resembling it based on what people were saying about AI text. I've seen enough samples of authors and writers satisfying their curiosity and then posting the results on facebook to be pretty pleased that I don't have anything to worry about on that front at this point in time.
Rather ironically, I have been working on a short story that has an AI theme. I started it before these employer problems. Hopefully the PTS will be settled down enough to work on it later.
Genuine creatives are always going to find a way to create. Hopefully, we can continue to get paid to do so (preferably higher sums). The more we get paid for our efforts, the more time we can devote to creating. The more time creating, the closer we are to the path we are meant to be on. The more people who are walking on their true path, the better off this planet is.
This has been one long post. I did go get my nails and eyebrows done and stop in ASDA during it. I'll try to get up a Youtube video this evening. The algorithm doesn't seem to pick up my videos until the Sunday, so unfortunately, I lost of day of trying to convince people on social media to click the fucking link which can change the algorithm. But as long as I have the video up before midnight, it should be okay. I made some progress, small, but some, last week.
And now for some pictures...
Obviously, there's very clear moral and copyright issues in terms of how the AI creative tools are trained. I don't approve of those. The AI is taking images from all over the Internet and using them to generate these images. So, it is stealing someone's copyrighted art (apparently someone of the stuff AI is churning out still has watermarks on it, but I don't know what to type in to get one of those).
In this particular image, I thought it resembled a bootleg comic out of the Soviet Union. ^ So I decided to see what the AI would think a bootleg comic out of the Soviet Union resembled and you can see that below.
By the way, I think Ultravox or at least Midge Ure has recently toured, so they're still going. I don't think I'll ever have the energy for live music again, but if I do and Ultravox (or Midge Ure) are around, I will be seeing them because they're my favourite (except those dreadful Midge Ure solo albums, just because you appeal to the black metallers, it doesn't mean your production quality should resemble a black metal album). (I do have their actual albums by the way, I just knew for a fact this stamp was on the Collection and you can stream their music.)