Agree that once it did acquire the othering connotations it should have become out of bounds, and that breaking those boundaries is a deliberate political act that should have negative consequence.

First time i heard "aliens" in this context was the phrase "resident aliens" in the late sixties. As a scifi kid i had visions of ET. But it was mostly outreach ads for available services and when my parents explained i found it a whole lot less exotic and interesting. Dehumanizing flavor is newer.

So, no surprise to see settler fascists supporting Netanyahu's genocidal project and sketching out their latest expansionist back to the land fantasies on the imagined corpses of the victims-to-be of the latest incursion. It's textbook. History textbook.

What I will say, though, is that what a martyr wants when they do things like this is to writhe on the cross while you hurl abuse at them so they can tell their friends how much they suffered for Truth. This is what they LIVE for. And you can choose to contribute to this fantasy of theirs... or not

Saying that scientists or scientific institutions should stay out of politics is saying that they should be indifferent to all the things that affect their continued existence as both a sector of human endeavor and as living human beings. It’s unrealistic and absurd.

The issue is that it's an umbrella term, so there are quite a few solid applications of things that are called "AI" that are not vapid statistical engines putting thirteen fingers on a mock-up picture of Jenna Ortega with John Lennon.

Yes, and good software will highlight every place its LLM makes a statement of fact.

i am not saying authors, and everyone else, should not be demanding their slice of pie today. The people stealing this labor certainly plan to share as little of that pie as they can get away with. And today that is very little indeed.

The money in play is enough that GenAI will continue to spread largely unabated by any sort of regulation. Just like printing presses, steam engines, power looms, cameras, movies, radio, television, and the internet.

Not paying authors (and artists in general) is a market capitalism problem. We should have full health, education, housing, and a fat UBI for everyone. Then we could see the entire corpus of human creativity for what it is: the birthright of humanity.