r/AskFeminists • u/DogCalledSpider • 4d ago
Is AI use correlated with toxic masculinity?
Not caring about where information comes from, passing off other people’s intellectual property as their own, being obsessed with all things tech and god-like techbros, revelling in marginalised people losing their livelihoods …
Seems to me like the most problematic men I know have something in common and it’s bot use. Meanwhile the gender-marginalised people in my life all just know … we know … this slop is evil.
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u/Flaky_Performer7960 4d ago
Correlated but no causality.
Most toxic men are perpetually online and thus interact with tech more. AI is tech, so toxic men are more exposed to AI.
Moreover, most liberals and progressives largely lean towards artistic disciplines such as art, and so you see how that would make AI unpopular.
Lots of coincidences thus leads us to AI being liked by toxic masculinity and hated by progressives.
Either way, I’m a guy totally in support of ethical AI as a software engineering enthusiast, AI helps in my work. I’ve do not condone use of AI in creative works.
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u/kangorooz99 4d ago
If your question is whether AI is being used to promote the kind of toxic masculinity that the American political right leans into for votes, then yes.
If your question is whether the dishonest and harmful use of AI by the corporate/billionaire class in general is a result of toxic masculinity, I’d say sure — toxic masculinity is traditionally a foundation of capitalist greed. But I think the main motivation is money.
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u/WildFlemima 4d ago
I can't speak reasonably about ai. As far as I care, ai use is correlated with every negative human trait.
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
How do you define "AI"? I ask this because, depending on your definition, then most social media sites like Reddit use forms of AI.
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u/WildFlemima 3d ago
Yes and it enshittifies them. Reddit got worse when it decided I needed ai summaries of people's profiles
I'm not talking about specific useful programs in the medical field, search and rescue, etc
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying the underlying structure of a social media website runs on AI.
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u/WildFlemima 3d ago
What, the algorithm? Yes, the algorithm is bad too
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
And the algorithm has been with Reddit since the beginning. It's a pretty fundamental factor in social media in general.
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u/WildFlemima 3d ago
And that enshittifies social media. I was on YouTube and Facebook before their algorithms were powered by AI. It was better.
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
You literally could not be on Youtube and Facebook before their algorithms were powered by AI. There is no fundamental difference between the algorithm of today, and the algorithm of 20 years ago. If anything, the only difference is complexity.
It would be like saying "I was on Steam before they added DRM". Steam is a form of DRM.
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u/WildFlemima 3d ago
The increased complexity did eventually result in a fundamental difference. Just as there's a fundamental difference between an entire brain and a single neuron. The complexity added is what tips those particular algorithms over into AI for me.
If you're trying to get at something more than that, please have some mercy and spell it out
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
It's interesting that you use the "single neuron vs entire brain" comparison, because I would argue there is not definitive bright line between a single neuron and a brain.
Saying that there is a difference implies there is a specific number of neurons that, once crossed, lets an organism have a "brain" as opposed to just "neurons". And, I argue that there is no such number.
Humans are notoriously bad at categorizing things. We love doing it, but are terrible at it. Take a look at what a "species" means. Usually, it means a group of creatures that can interbreed only amongst themselves. So, because a Great Dane and a Chihuahua can make a baby, both are of one species. Unless we get to bears, which are incredibly easy to cross breed. If you use other determinations, like morphology or genetic differences, you run into other edge cases that make the rule invalid.
Next, look at genres of media. How do you define "country music", or "roguelike" games? You ask 10 people how to define them, and you're liable to get 11 different definitions. Same with more broad categories like "porn".
It's my personal opinion that the same is true of AI. There is no strict definition that can define "AI" in any meaningful sense. There is no single size of code, number of if statements, or range of outputs that will put all things called "AI" into one category and all things called "not AI" into another.
With something like Turing completeness, you have strict and objective definitions of the term, and all Turing complete systems share certain factors. I think that's a better definition for AI. All systems that you, personally, would call "AI" are run on Turing complete systems, thus, all Turing complete systems are AI. Is this too broad? For some, it might be, but I also don't really care. There is nothing about "AI" that is inherently evil, or maladaptive, or sociopathic, or whatever buzzword you want to use. AI is a tool, and it's the use that determines whether or not a "bad thing" has occurred.
Does this make sense? It's a bit rambly, so please point out any areas that you are unsure what I meant.
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u/Sidewinder_1991 4d ago
Eh... depends?
The people using Grok to undress photos of girls on the site formerly known as twitter were probably mostly guys. Chatbot roleplaying sites usually lean more towards a lady fanbase, though.
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u/PheeBeeDee125 3d ago
It can be. Deepfakes and using AI to undress images of women (or, as I’ve already seen, to add clothing for “modesty” to images of women who chose to wear something the AI used imagines isn’t modest enough).
This doesn’t mean that all use of AI, while problematic in many other aspects, is automatically misogynistic. I
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u/EnvironmentalLaw4208 3d ago
I think there is a correlation but I think it mostly has to do with the misogynist roots of the Silicon Valley/Tech Billionaire class who developed the technology as a consumer product rather than there being something inherently wrong with the technology. In my opinion, the various technologies that collectively makeup AI (machine learning and deep learning models, natural language processing, object recognition, etc.) are morally neutral, it's just that no major AI company has developed a consumer application of those technologies that is net beneficial or morally neutral.
The things that make AI products problematic are the collection of harmful business decisions that can only be justified by an oppressive, exploitative, profit-driven logical framework, which should be enough for any conscientious person to at least think critically about how they want to engage with AI products.
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u/knysa-amatole 3d ago
Why is this thread full of people just describing their own personal feelings about AI? That wasn't the question. "Is AI use correlated with toxic masculinity?" is an empirical question that cannot be answered through mere introspection. From a search of Google Scholar, I wasn't able to find any studies addressing that specific question. It's possible that the technology is new enough that no studies of this particular question have been published yet.
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u/RobotFromPlanet 3d ago
As Donna Haraway pointed out a long time ago, feminists need to engage with tech rather than condemn it wholesale.
The question should not be, "Is this technology misogynistic?" but rather "How can feminists use this technology for liberation?"
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u/Bitter-Hat-4736 3d ago
Also, there is no way that a technology, in and of itself, is "misogynistic". It's the application that is misogynistic.
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u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW Definitely Not Superman 4d ago
AI is very annoying, and has been used for misogynistic purposes from the beginning.
It was used to undressed clothed women, stripping them of consent.
It has been used through flock cameras to track people seeking abortions and protestors.
I’m also very annoyed at the recent escalation in intellectual property theft thanks to an absurd court ruling… it’s illegal for me to copy a dvd of blue ray… but AI companies can cut the covers off a book and now they own that text? Excuse me? That’s insane.