First off, I can’t personally cast any stones: I sometimes use chatGPT so summarize a text or help me debug a code. I resisted the idea at first, but many of the other students of my promotion recommended it. Almost any time I asked someone for help, they either told me to use chatGPT or themselves prompted it my question. I try to do without it as much as I can, and I never prompt a queston without having spent several minutes looking for an answer online written by a human, but I have difficulties in several subjects and I’ve already failed my first semester, so it’s not easy to scorn a possible source of help when all else fails… I’ve installed locally a light weight version of Deepseek on my computer to get some of the benefits with a smaller climate footprint and staying in the Open Source side of the force, but so far I haven’t found it satisfactory, perhaps I’ll try a heavier version of the model.

But now, it seems you’re using it for something way different. You say it dictates what you think, do you have difficulty parsing your own thoughts? I don’t think you should feel guilty for it, if you need the help, but I do feel somewhat concerned. Large Language Models only learn and repeat patterns, I don’t think it’s a good tool for introspection, because it’s giving you more generic thoughts and only making it seem personal. It is common for people who enjoy reading to find in the text things they’ve thought themself without being able to word it and to feel a connection with the author. But in this case, you still know these words are from someone else’s mind. You see where the connection starts and where it ends. I think reading helps being good at putting one’s thoughts in words, and is healthier than using an llm for it. You should probably also write, even if you keep it for yourself. That way, you’ll be certain that these thoughts are your own.

Oh right, that’s a shame, I should’ve tested it first.

I personally use searx, a metasearch engine which lets you chose among many sources and returns results from all the selected ones. If you go into the settings, pic the “engine” tab, you have tabs for each specific search mode, and under “image”, Pinterest is along the options, alongside many others.

If you intend to make it your everyday search engine as I have, there’s one tiny caveat you should know: Like the Fediverse, it’s a service without a central server, where everyone can host an instance, the list of public instances is here. But since all of them are managed by individuals or small groups, they can fail or be overloaded, so you may have to switch to another one once in a while. Hosting your own instance is also an option, but I have yet to get around to learning that. Right now, the instance I use is search.be .

I see, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Maybe it’d be an easy choice for the American left, but I’m from the French left. Along with groups such as La Quadrature du Net have been protesting reforms like the aforementioned european directive for adressing antiterrorist contents, of France’s temporary ban on Telegram during the riots or the ban of Tiktok in Kanaky during the uprising, and now we’re supposed to turn around and say “actually censorship is cool”? Are we to empower those we’re fighting in hope that they exclusively use this power against our common enemies? I’ve left Twitter the very day its purchase by the muskrat was officialized and I’ve been telling everyone I know to do as much. Sure, a european ruling would give me something I want, but I don’t trust in what comes next. There’s no way the European Union bans X and don’t end up blocking left wing fedi instances like ml or hexbear, as soon as their existence is brought to their attention.

I don’t believe there is any value in X. In fact I’d say it has negative value. However, granting the UE power and legitimacy to censor any website for political reason also has a negative value, and I’m not certain which is lower.

As much as I hate X, I might have to think about this one for a while. Sure, this platform is a vessel for fascist propaganda and a threat to democracy, but on the other hand, creating a legitimate precedent for banning a social network on political grounds might be a slippery slope. The EU has already made dubious reforms regarding internet freedom, like their antiterrorist bill which require website hosts to remove content whithin an hour if it is signaled to them by the police. I’m not sure if giving them more power and legitimacy in policing online content is a good idea…