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I was invited to give a talk on and climate protests at the University of Warsaw next Saturday (11th of Jan).

I wrote a summary of my talk and linked to the page containing (among other things) a lot of my essays on why using AI for climate communication is counterproductive. The same page also has a lot of intentionally-created Creative Commons illustrations to use.

Yet, the students organizing the talk decided to AI-generate a banner for my talk.

Eh xD

@alxd

I'm curious to hear if you let them know about their error and if they are willing to alter the AI banner tbh

alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@maro oh I did let them know, with a lot of force and urgency. Provided them with my prepared illustrations again.

Looks like they changed the photo to a less obviously AI generated...? Not sure.

@alxd

Wow that speaks volumes on their organizational skills tbh. Kinda rude to not include your illustrations for YOUR talk.

Wishing you the best on dealing with all this and on your upcoming talk.

@maro it looks like the organizers changed the photo to another AI-generated one, ignoring my illustrations.

I asked if they're fucking serious.

They changed it to a stock mashup now, again ignoring my illustrations, and are actively offended by my unbecoming language which has no place at the esteemed University.

I asked if they really want to talk about climate grief, anger and protest with someone who uses phrases like "are you fucking serious".

@alxd @maro Better question: "Do you really want to talk about climate grief anger and protest while using technology actively killing the planet because it uses a shitload of energy and water for each prompt result?"

Not to mention how Midjourney, ChatGPT and all of the other parrots and big scale copyright violaters are heavily fueling disinformation worldwide right now. Any "esteemed university" worth their salt should be heavily opposed to this, considering they should be all about knowledge, but even more so when it's about an event talking about the climate crisis...

That aside though, even if all of these things would not apply, "please use my own illustration because I say so" should already be enough. It's simply a matter of respecting the person invited to a talk.

@Sirablopp @maro I just spoke with a climate literature lecturer from that university who asked me if I think using AI really uses as much electricity as heating a flat in winter.

It was really sad to learn that the students going through Kim Stanley Robinson and other books are actively discouraged from discussing hard scientific data on climate. Its a literature course, they are not physicists or ecologists.

@alxd @maro That's really sad to hear. I get why it might be better to focus on one thing when studying stuff, but so many topics are connected. Makes you wonder what else the students are missing out on because the university is adamant to stay in each lane. :(