The timing on this meme sucks. Ignore that timing, please. ... so. AI's coming to Scratch, and I've been getting mixed messages about it. A lot of people are very frightened, especially us artists, and there are also people that have seen more recent ST things and aren't as concerned. I, personally, very rarely have thoughts on things like this that I bother to go and make public. However, honestly, I have my issues, even though I've seen things talking about how it's not really going to be a major issue, because of the core value at the centre of this all: AI, artificial intelligence, is coming to a kids' coding platform. Despite the fact that I don't care to reveal my age on here, I was in third grade when I first saw Scratch, on a school account, and though a while had passed before I got the opportunity to get this account that was capable of sharing projects (but, no, I wasn't in seventh grade when I got this acc.), I joined Scratch in elementary. Now, I'm not in elementary any more. It would round up to me having four years on this site, which... I'm older and much more grizzled now. I can't help but have some sarcasm in here. But it retains: elementary kids are going to be exposed to AI, and I personally have strong feelings against that. First off, AI can decrease imagination, something valued and unique to especially children. When you're a kid, imagination is your life, in some ways, especially when you're younger, and though Scratch isn't necessarily becoming an "AI assistant" site, it's still going to have some of that in here, which I don't feel fondly towards. Also, I don't see any reason to include AI, especially if things on Scratch are being used to train it: AI (think Alexas, ChatGPT, Google Gemini) being taught how to be by children is... farcical at best. With that, the imagination issue, and also the fact that AI has some things about it that are questionable at best already, I partially find this a little ludicrous. "Our work in [AI] is still in progress and as we iterate and improve our approach to AI, we want to hear from you. We will create opportunities to invite our community to test and provide feedback on AI-powered features as we design them, [...]" -ST I understand this, but at the same time, this is contradicted by an earlier statement, in the terms of service: "non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license (with the right to grant and authorize sublicenses) to publicly display, publicly perform (including by means of a digital audio transmission), reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, and otherwise use and exploit the User Content to provide the Service, for internal business purposes, to advertise, market, and promote the service, and to otherwise improve our products and services and create new products and services, including through the training of AI models." The latter of these two statements, the first thing mentioned on it, kind of says they'll be using things we put on Scratch to train AI, and that by agreeing to the Terms of Service and proceeding to use Scratch, everything you create can irrefutably be used to train AI. The part especially about that for the is that you can't take it back: by agreeing to the Terms of Service, you can't not disagree or have an issue with your projects being used to train AI. It's been stated that artwork isn't explicitly going to be utilized for this purpose, but the wording of the terms of service means that if the ST wanted to use it for training their AI, you wouldn't be able to reject it. Which doesn't exactly sound fun to me. Also, it's apparently going to lean more toward the coding aspect of things, from what I can gather, which means that as well those are going to be exploited. The only thing it brings to mind is this: "Nobody's safe." It's not, of course, a danger thing, and also it's been stated, "We also want to assure you that right now, we are not training any AI models on Scratchers’ data." I still don't enjoy it. One of the possible ways for this to occur, just sayin', is by being a coding assistant, which not just means you don't have to learn how to code (meaning those of us who have been here for a bit and taught ourselves from nothing how to code have wasted soo much time), but it also could potentially be used to kind of generate projects, meaning no effort is required for Scratch any more. Plus, AI, even if Scratch isn't training it on this, is actually good at drawing conclusions from personal data, anyways, which is another reason to not want it on Scratch. It doesn't matter if this particular AI isn't focusing on it, as we know still it is able to expand itself to do. Scratch seems to be doing fine without AI being really incorporated yet... so what's the point in doing it? It's also been causing some really amazing Scratchers to leave, which is only more negativity being spread about it. According to Prof. Mitchel Resnick, Scratch's founder, [cont. in notes & credits]
[cont. of desc.] "We need to expand opportunities for children to develop the most human of their abilities. That is, we need to help them develop as creative, curious, caring, and collaborative learners. These qualities have always been important, but they are more important now than ever before, given the technological and political disruptions confronting today’s societies." That's something I can respect, but I don't feel the best way to help with creativity, learning how to code, and being a child is by throwing something to do those things for us in our general direction and wishing for the best. And, yes, the providing of this quote means that I've done a little research on this, so for those who disagree with me, as long as you can provide an ample argument, I can respectfully disagree. I don't often voice opinions on things like this, though, for a reason: if my thoughts differ from yours and you want to share that, feel free to, but also respect the fact that I have a different conclusion than you. Returning to the AI portion of this, I find it just overall a thing that shouldn't be finding its way onto a kids' platform. Scratch boasts that it has kids from all different countries, but that just means it's going to be giving the results of interacting with AI to that many young children. "Scratch is designed especially for young people ages 8 to 16, but people of all ages create and share with Scratch. Younger children may want to try ScratchJr, a simplified version of Scratch designed for ages 5 to 7." Eight-year-olds. Eight-year-olds spending time interacting with AI, using it to evaluate issues with their code and get advice for ideas, and growing up alongside it. My generation is already growing up alongside AI, in addition to being growing-up with all these devices at our hands; we're kind of the millennials of AI, with it being made while we're children: we now are also introducing this to young kids. I've also read somewhere that if AI had to choose within being shut down or saving a human, it chose to kill a human over 55% of the time. Do we really want this to be exposed to our younger generations? Again, feel free to respectfully disagree with me, but I have personal thoughts on AI without adding in the age here. A few related things to the AI-on-Scratch: https://mitscratch.freshdesk.com/en/support/solutions/articles/4000219182-scratch-terms-of-service https://scratchfoundation.org/blog/coming-soon-your-creative-learning-assistant https://www.scratchfoundation.org/ai --- A few anti-AI things on Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/51277362/ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1269751874 https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1269754324 (potential?) Boycott: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1270264768 ^^ I'm nearly positive I have a robotics competition that week, so I'll prolly be participating in this, just as a warning, rather I mean to boycott or not. But I know for a fact I'm very DEFINITELY not the only person out there who is strongly against adding AI to Scratch. This was written at 12:00am, so… if you’re confused, just ask me for clarification.
