Exhaustion
The proverbial dishes are piling up, it's time to wash them for a change.
Exhaustion Pipes?
Introduction
I knew a few months back I was pretty much done with whatever was going on with AI. I’m a leftist, a nerd and a gamer, this stuff’s been really on my radar for a while now, but somehow I started ignoring it. I felt like I was doing a public “disservice” of sorts, leaving the AI circles.
Telling myself: people “LOOK UP TO ME” so I must “CONTINUE”.
That’s where the doubt starts. The doubt that I’ll always be connected to something that I am utterly unsure about.
There’s nothing better than walking into a community and being faced with the largest amount of echo chamber statements. (Can you hear my sarcasm with this one? It’s pretty damn strong!) People left, right, center, justified, unjustified, hooked, subscript whatever typography terminology. Yelling that we’re all stupid, we’ll all be LEFT BEHIND if we don’t pack up and listen to Daddy Altman.
Space data centers, lack of consent, lack of security in some departments - it’s not just one side of the political spectrum anymore. You’ve got people clamoring for the “ITS RUINING OUR DRINKING WATER” theory, you’ve got people on the other end claiming that this is all fake news.
The Lines We Draw
If you look between the lines?
It’s all lobbying.
Green based protection and Eco-lobbying on the left, and I hate to say that as a conspiracy theory - but when AoC starts yapping on about something that even scientists can’t confirm… You know something is a little more corrupt, skewed or even destructively confusing. Before we hear leftists in the comments defending AOC: the issue isn’t the water, in fact the water is only a poorly written propaganda paper by the right to distract the left (in theory).
The problem isn’t the water, in fact to be fair to any datacenter: your own computer if it runs water cooling is just as much the problem. We haven’t moved past the Kyoto Protocol long enough to denote what’s the correct PPM level of a COW FART, let alone the exhaust pipes of a car. We do know that poorly built structures, due to cost cutting and corner cutting - are largely more the issue. The pollution stems from buildings that aren’t even required.
The water ISSUE you see on news, isn’t incorrect in “THEORY” because it’s not stemming from LONG TERM water use. It’s from the chemicals, offset of the building and the likely hood something else in the system is leaking. Poorly contained materials, especially leftover construction ones can likely in theory (as i’m no scientist, nor construction expert) leak into water supplies. Again, the issue at hand with that as even PBS likely will tell you is: The cooling systems aren’t likely the ones causing dirty water. There’s other pollutants nobody’s able to figure out, because corporations don’t want you to find out.
Area 51? — Yea Naruto Running was a joke for that, but nobody wants to apply that logic in 2026 to corporate projects with far dirtier dealings than some secret government bunker filled with Wolvie, Deadpool and Likely Gambit.
(I’m going to stick to that Marvel joke, because Marvel and FFXIV are the ONLY THINGS KEEPING ME GOING RIGHT NOW GRR.)
That’s something we should be concerned about: We’re too focused on social media justice, and it’s not that justice isn’t important. Social media is an incredible platform…
But?
The Shifting Sands of Social Justice
You ever hear someone tell you that it’s fake news just because they don’t like what you’re saying? Called you a liar because they’re saving their own skin and refuse to admit there’s more to the story? That’s because both sides of every story have a lot of common bias, something to hide and something to keep from everyone.
Just like you hear an AI has bias and “EMPERYICAL (sp?) DATA” or “SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH”. Humans are at fault for what’s wrong in the world, and you can’t blame a machine, because a machine was created by man. Damn, I could’ve written a two line thesis and handed in for a Nobel peace prize.
Humans have rights, needs, don’t get me wrong. What happens though is, the sands shift, we’re all fed misinformation. We do our best to ascertain what our morals, and ethics align with in the current climate. Until someone on TikTok tells us someone’s a “DIRTY PIECE OF SH#!” and comes up with plausible (not really) evidence to unfollow someone and “ruin their lives”. While yes, I've been on the receiving end of that for other reasons BEFORE AI (Genealogy, and Second Life both), I’ve also been on the receiving end of death threats because of AI.
We don’t talk a lot about the justice issues with what’s really going on.
Artists have rights yes.
Authors, Developers etc.
But so do the communities at large that have been displaced, ecosystems destroyed.
We don’t hear about it as often because the noise of misinformation, and the noise of who’s supposedly propaganda making, and who’s the woke leftist etc. — everything’s translated into “Algo speak” and left at that. We’ve become the algorithmic machine our own pages have warned us about.
We have enough information out there on the internet and data to prove what could be the issue, even if we don’t PROVE it? We have enough to make constructive scientific and unbiased-academic theories to present to people.
“BUT MUH TARRIFFS”
…As the wildfires rage in Canada we now have a rife of stupidity where nobody’s allowed to exist because they’re polluting their idiot neighbors. Just as we can’t peel back what’s exactly happening because misinformation, we also can’t do it because governments are run by people who don’t know what the Letter A in AA means.
Not just the USA.
No, no. I have way worse answers for this.
"Native” vs “Non Native” Data
Children, I have a new phrase for you to study this week in class:
“DATA SOVEREIGNTY”
Yes, you probably have never heard this and unless you’ve been in a politics class, or an ethics class probably really haven’t gotten far into caring. Same here, I haven’t really even bothered to look up why this phrase is even being used. But because of where I live currently, and I'm entirely hyper-aware of how SMALLER countries react to LARGER countries doing stupid things.. I’m aware all too well WHY this is a problematic phrase.
First of all you can’t really claim this over data, and building one more AI datacenter in Invercargill in New Zealand, is entirely not going to solve your “Sovereign” issue - because Jimmy TwoBrainCells and Sleep Paralysis demon are likely either using a TOR network OR a VPN to figure out how to spy on Trump’s video game playing.
The issue at hand isn’t what DIGITAL items are “SOVEREIGN” as more what physicality should be considered so.
The problem is we’ve shoved the idea of AI so far up our rear ends, and glorified it farther than we have Elvis’s “GOLDEN TURD”, that we’re blindsided. We’ve been fed lies about the lies, and now it’s too late to go back. We’re talking about a cross border, multi national feud for data, who’s more toddler about who’s traffic?
Is my jpeg now native to the four winds of AOTEAROA? Should I pay trump a tariff for using 2degrees as my mobile carrier since I'm only a permanent resident of NZ and not a dual citizen?
An AI data center is not going to solve “SOVEREIGNTY”, if anything that’s just going to make it worse. The cold war at this stage never ended, we just broke down walls and made it worse with technology. I’m aware I'm wrong to a point and slightly offensive on this case, because there was much good out of the original end of the cold war, but you have to understand: I’m not erasing history. Everyone else is.
Copyright vs Ethics
The original idea for this article was to apologize for my RSD fits and explain in short length why I'm re-re-re-retiring from AI spaces and AI as a whole. Yet there’s so much more I need to explain (and validly whine about) before I delete myself from the spaces of the fake pixels.
(Delete doesn’t mean death, it just means that I'm deleting accounts so it doesn’t stay indexed in google search, trying to retire means cleaning my nose and no longer sucking the powder the data centers try and feed me lol. I have indeed, backed up a lot of my content, shuffled newer content off to an old account that I barely have access to… I won’t be lying about what I've done, I just don’t want much to do with it anymore.)
Artists: Grow up a little here, have some nuance to a small amount - I'm not saying LET people train on your work. I’m saying stop re-pasting the same g-d botted meme and start doing your homework. There’s some intelligent talented people on threads that showed me the start of why I might be wrong.
Musicians: Ai music does suck, and people who are consistently using it as a commerce profitable gain - need to stop sucking so hard. There is room for experimentation, and I’ve seen some cool things made. However, consent, regulation etc. are failing everyone. I’m technically a bedroom producer even though I half quit due to being into AI and just not believing in myself (AND THE COST OF DISTROKID).
If AI sounds shittier than my worst: then what’s the point?
Everyone else: Hold your beer, do some good research, stop re-posting all of the misinformation. Nobody’s perfect, but if we finally find the truth or at least some of it - maybe Scully and Mulder will stop crying at our failures.
The thing is? Even design isn’t consented perfect, do you know how many people keep BACKUP COPIES OF FONTS they don’t own? Students for one, and yea don’t come FBI raiding my hard drive, I don’t care that you made pixels - if you want a donation to your 3,000 USD font I'll just delete it. I don’t mind licensing fonts, or doing what’s good for the whole of our artistry, but damn are we getting greedy.
The thing is: training an AI is for the most part a MESS, it’s expensive, it’s hard to explain to even someone with a computer science degree. You could train it from the ground up ON OPEN SOURCE, and ethical content - but someone’s bound to disagree.
This is how design and art converge in the ever loving stupid arguments of: What’s stolen and what’s not stolen and who’s breaking the rules and who’s not.
If I gotta see one more argument that Salvador Larocca is evil for tracing, and that Rob Liefeld is an AI Bot - I’m going to tear my hair out. We don’t have data on things that are constructively: an opinion. (Although anyone whining about 90s comics needs to understand, tiny waists were a product of weird styles — you’re all still whining about proportions when the comics got more realistic recently.)
We have to abide by the sliding scale of harm, what’s going to harm someone?
AI might yes, Indeed - but the ethics debate started with “PICK UP A PENCIL” - and it ends with: I have, and you all told me I did it wrong. Ai is suffering from the same problem, it needs to be “PERFECT”, or else it’s not good enough.
What’s The Deal?
“Jones is so alone one million miles from home” -Zilch ‘Whats Up Mr Jones’
No, I’m not “ALONE” but sometimes I do feel a million miles from home, and no I didn’t sell my diamonds and dogs for something or other. What I did do is cling very tightly to a lie. One that I almost sold very well to everyone in my family, my partners and likely the 3-400 plus in my system. (Yea bet you forgot about the DID diagnosis didn’t you!)
It’s more exhaustion.
Polluted thoughts, polluted process and workflows.
It’s not that I've become “CYBERNETIC” like the movies, it’s that I drank the kool-aid and now I have to atone for my stupid. I went against everything I thought I stood for, and it became a deal with something worse than the devil. Experimentation, trying different things is ALWAYS suggested in any field. Even if it’s slightly unhinged, and going against the grain.
Yes, I do feel like you could always be able to use something for a concept tool, for something to do differently but not always in the finished product. I don’t feel like this inhibits a sense of “cheating” either, because we’re taught by society everything has to be black and white. Yet it doesn’t.
Designers can code.
Coders can Design.
Ai sucks major d*ck and I wish it never existed, but it’s here and there’s always an interesting thing or two you can experiment with. I don’t think you should lean into the corporate models by any means of the fact.
But I'm not advocating that you DO this entirely either: I’m stating that’s how I feel about how I’ve used generative image AI in the past. I may still once in a great while use it for alters that aren’t already fictional or factional. That’s yet to be considered in my long term exist strategy.
I advocate for “you do you boo” because there’s some really cool tools people have done, people who despite the ethical boundaries being broken - have pushed through brick walls to understand math papers, science papers. ArXIV is an amazing resource, just don’t ask me to understand the algebraic functions of a tensor node.
I will be “removing oneself” from a few sites as to clear the SEO strategy from my name. Many will see this as an act of “rebellion” in a bad way, as to “hide” from what I've previously done. No, trust me, I just don’t want to get emails and social media contacts from AI bros every single day of the week. My peers from threads? some of them from Civit and Arc? That’s different.
I don’t have to align 100% with my peers that I’ve learned from anymore, I just have to respect their journey, and if I ever have anything to add to their statements across social media: be intelligent enough to not misinform.
I also feel that part of my journey was rife with: I don’t know enough even if I were to study more in this particular field. I’m not a mathematics genius, if anything I failed math in high school. I dabbled for many years in web design, to the point of trying to wrap my pea brain around PHP and other things like MySQL and whatnot.
I’m no developer.
I am however, a designer, and thus I will still stay close to the agentic end of AI and continue tinkering with web design. Focusing largely on being different and trying to learn how to influence a design standard, using my degree for what it’s worth, rather than what it’s not. I enjoy the idea of creating something with meaning, and the more i’m able to influence that by hand or with actual knowledge - the better.
While yes, one of my applications i’ve created that’s adjacent to AI is in the camp of “I dont know a lot” - it’s somehow got way more meaning to me than the other one. My dataset tools, was my first attempt at using python, though I've moved to nodejs since then - it was a start in EXIF data reading for AI and other standards. I refused to let go, wanting to increase what was available compared to other applications. Knowing that EXIF standards exist, and all you have to do is see where the software hides the data, the half of it wasn’t just the design - it was the constant chase to be accessible.
I gave up on python.
I moved to next/node. Then… the RSD spiral and the choice to reinvent yet another wheel started with the trainer UI.
I do, abhor gradio.
But I also know that I don’t understand nor care about python enough to see the rest of the trainer UI through.
I can’t explain enough of the backend even in node for the cropper tool we tried to port, to even guide the LLM into fixing the problem. Why? Because i’m not sure what i’m trying to ask it exists in the framework we’re using. Because I don’t have enough data NOR understanding if it was in front of me - to guide the agentic tool.
You’re only as good as the shit you know.
And with that: Your agentic tool is only as good as you are.
Educate yourself, be your best and may the rest take care of itself. I have myself to babysit, and my partners shouldn’t have to handle my constant battle. It’s no longer a matter of “omfg I'm stained” - it’s now a respectful exit, a hanging up of my hat. I’ve left my “Legacy” by backing up and renaming accounts previously, and I’ve shuffled newer content off to another account.
Even if something uses my art for training: it’s still trained on stolen content, I cannot in good faith claim ownership even if the data is in part mine on the other side.
Consent, legislation and regulation deserve to be here now, but instead we’re whining about why a trans woman wore a mini skirt. Trans women are women, Nonbinary people are way cool, Trans men are men. Gender is a spectrum, and Trump is definitely a toddler.