ChatSCP

It is strange watching the world go weird around you. Here I use weird in the sense of weird fiction, most of which is mercifully not penned by known rapists who scrubbed their crimes off the internet or racists so virulent they were deemed disturbing a century ago. The well-known example is cosmic horror: entities breaking the world through their mere existence, unseen by most - or worst, deemed normal.

It is strange being one of few standing up against the tide. You look on as people around you willingly mess with things that you know will shatter their minds, and not in fun reversible ways. You try to warn them. You explain, again and again, that there is no safe dose of this particular poison. You watch it spread anyway, money poured into claiming it's the future. States do what they do best, lulling and bullying exhausted people into compliance.

It is strange analyzing the impact on labor and marginalized people in great detail, only to run into activists who tell you that your principles are wrecker shit. Haven't you seen the counterinsurgency manual? By refusing to budge, you are causing conflict, and that is how The Movement loses. Get on with the times. It's here to stay. Be kinder. Be more open-minded. Yet you thought principles was kind of the point.

It is strange feeling as if everyone is slipping into an alternate reality. You start to question yourself, of course. Are you the one falling into conspiracy thinking? Surely this many people can't be wrong at once. With the rich and powerful it's easy to dismiss: they never lived in your world to begin with. When it's people closer to you it stings more, though. You might even be having a perfectly lovely conversation until they reveal the ideological equivalent of a tentacled horror lurking behind their eyeballs.

What's strangest of all, though, is watching most of your own side run this exact strangeness analysis on one topic and entirely miss the other big one.

Bluesky is abuzz with news of yet another investor losing his mind to a chatbot. Notable is that this time, the lying machine clearly pulled from the SCP Wiki, a collaborative internet archive of weird fiction. The irony is delicious, the dunks write themselves.

My own hope is that pre-existing curiosity, leftist politics and a familiarity with the weird would have maybe shielded this man somewhat. If you are used to thinking about systems of oppression, about the ways in which voices are quietly suppressed, about how the world itself can be slanted against you, maybe it is harder to start believing that a shadowy cabal is disappearing your peers. If you are used to exploring whispers of conspiracy through horror, maybe it is easier to spot that you are drifting away from rational thinking. Maybe weird fiction is a beacon in an age of fascism.

Many generative AI opponents, myself included, proudly declare ourselves luddites. We know we are right against power and money, we know the machinery of States and capitalism does not have our best interest at heart. This is deemed self-evident. The brain damage argument recurs often. Brain damage is bad. This is deemed self-evident.

I don't think it's accidental that said argument is often deployed without care or empathy for the people with brain damage, though. Sure, I'm not going to waste my limited supply of tears for rich boys who found a new and exciting way to boil their own brain - but I'm not comfortable celebrating it, either. Part of it is that they still wield immense power and keep doing harm. Part of it is that as a supporter of psych abolition, I do not trust psychiatry to mend any of this.

Most of it though is that the large majority of people with brain damage aren't rich boys who fucked around and found out. They're people who had accidents. They're people with burnout. They're you and I in year 6 of an airborne pandemic. Deploying the brain damage argument with care rather than callousness requires interrogating the ableism that structures so much of the world.

Which is maybe what is strangest here. Folks can see, clear as day, that capital and States are working to normalize generative AIs no matter the harm. Folks can see, clear as day, that exposing yourself to avoidable brain damage is a mistake. Folks can see, clear as day, that those who say otherwise are living in a world of alternate facts.

The same people will often think nothing of posting a maskless restaurant or convention selfie like it's still 2019. Why can't folks see, clear as day, that the world has in fact changed? You keep claiming generative AIs are not a given, that we can push back. Value yourself enough to treat covid the same way.