It’s annoying that people are downvoting you just for asking an honest question. I think the anti-ai sentiment is strong enough that in many communities, people just oppose it in any context. The arguments I usually see against using ai are:
- It takes business away from actual human artists
- It takes a lot of energy, thereby contributing to climate change
- It is a privacy concern
All are real concerns, but I agree that making memes should be an effectively harmless use of it even if you otherwise oppose it. 1 and 3 aren’t really applicable to your average meme. 2 could apply depending on how you measure it, but most of the cost of ai is from training, not generation. For someone using the tool and not developing it, that training is a sunk cost they are not responsible for. I’ve seen estimates that you can generate about 9 images with the energy it takes to fully charge a phone. I think that’s more than worth it if you share it with a few other people to enjoy.
In case you were wondering:
Interestingly, the buildup of magma causes the plateau to be uplifted by about 1 in. per year on average, which is one of the ways we monitor it. NASA studied how we could go about preventing an imminent eruption by cooling the magma, but another scientist said we could accidentally trigger it by trying. We may have to wait for something else for our next extinction event though. Yellowstone going off again soon would be a bit ahead of schedule.
Most of the other articles were just fleetingly topical to a conversation or book or something. Cymothoa exigua is interesting though. It’s a fish parasite that severs the tongue of its host and effectively replaces it. I think I looked at it from another thread where people were posting their favorite deep sea animals.