scratchcode1_2_3 wrote:

codubee wrote:

(#3093)
Okay. Okay. Okay. NO. I'm sorry, I have to jump in now… Membership has absolutely ZERO to do with anything AI. ~snips the rest~

Yes! I absolutely understand Scratch is not sustainable! So why not put the money you guys do have into actually making the website better? I know this sounds superficial, and you've heard it from everyone, since “better” is very subjective. However, I don't think wasting so much money on an AI “assistant” that the majority hates is a good idea.

Since you said it wasn't about AI though, the membership still has some flaws. The most blatant flaw is the potential for superiority complexes and/or bragging from people who have the membership since it shows up in so many places. It's pretty much advertised as a badge for any other membership, so you should consider rebranding it to something like “scratch donation badge” not “membership”.

But this thread is about AI, and the membership is a completely different argument. The membership, I've accepted it's something okay. It's not even that bad. The ToS? This is egregious. It's horrible. There's no other way to explain it. You could've done the membership without the whole garbage ToS and the AI training. If you're going to make an AI assistant, well, that's just not sustainable! There's no way to make AI sustainable without charging users a ridiculous amount of money. Unless they self host it, but most students have potato school laptops, and LLMs are very computationally expensive.

THANK you! Like, okay, the membership isn't related, whatever, but the point is, you had money lying around - or not lying around, but the point is, you had money to use - and you decided to spend it on an AI ‘assistant’ which, and SF probably knew this while making the descicion, half the community, if not more, disapproves of.
There were plenty of other things to spend that money on that would get only positive/no feedback! That would, all the small fixes combined, make Scratch so much better than it is now! Yet, SF chooses to do…. this! I'm honestly ashamed of them.

PaperMarioFan2024 wrote:

Ai is the last thing we need on here, that should be on the bottom of the list, not the top of the list of priorities.

This website has not only been getting buggier, it’s worse than it was a year off when the accessibility update was rolled out required by accessibility law. What we need to do as a community is prevent Ai from developing so quickly and drastically so that we don’t end up falling behind as a society, the current legal system has been broken for several years now and so far there has been little to no just action to stop artificial intelligence from becoming even more dangerous for people to use, Ai is not your friend, ladies and gentlemen.

What I’m also worried and concerned about is the lack of compliance from billionaire investors and tech companies that are rolling out these algorithms and Ai APIs about issues regarding Ai’s going rogue or even turning on somebody, there should be laws that regulate and enforce legality and transparency involving artificial intelligence. Currently, it feels like mass surveillance and control over anyone that speak out against or calls out these attempts to silence and intimidate others, and kids aren’t safe from this kind of act and behavior, either.

YES, EXACTLYY!! There are so many bugs they could have and should have fixed! They're so annoying and they pop up everywhere! Why don't my messages load? Why do comment threads on profiles just never show up? Why does the explore page not work (for me at least)???

So many USEFUL things that don't get BACKLASH FROM THE COMMUNITY that they could've done! Ugh!

Blobfish_Industries wrote:

codubee wrote:

We haven't fully worked out how AI will be part of Scratch yet, so when you say, “add AI” what exactly do you mean? Because we don't even know exactly what that will mean yet…

I feel like they should focus on fixing currently broken features (search indexing, wiki modifications, etc.) before they add things that they aren't sure how to implement. Not that I'm against AI, I just think that it shouldn't be a top priority.

We are doing all of these things. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

scratchcode1_2_3 wrote:

can someone explain to me that how can AI in scratch not be “fully implemented” or “ready” or fully thought out when it's LITERALLY AN AWARDEE AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY'S “Stanford Accelerator for Learning”

scratch in stanford's entry wrote:

snip

So… are you arguing that we should just push forward with what we already have and deploy that? Or are you asking that we take a careful and measured and not hype based inclusion of AI tooling? Because, that's what we're doing, using grants that specifically target this sort of exploration, and we are trying out many different things, and seeing how they work and if they are appropriate for our values and mission. “Cannot figure out how to implement” doesn't mean we haven't implemented multiple things to see what might work and what might not work, it means, “We are not satisfied with how these tools work, so we continue to iterate”. This is how Scratch was created in the first place and it is what we're continuing to do. But nooooooo, you seem to know better than anyone who is actually _working_ on this in the Scratch Team.

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

StarFutureFox wrote:

PaperMarioFan2024 wrote:

Ai is the last thing we need on here, that should be on the bottom of the list, not the top of the list of priorities.

This website has not only been getting buggier, it’s worse than it was a year off when the accessibility update was rolled out required by accessibility law. What we need to do as a community is prevent Ai from developing so quickly and drastically so that we don’t end up falling behind as a society, the current legal system has been broken for several years now and so far there has been little to no just action to stop artificial intelligence from becoming even more dangerous for people to use, Ai is not your friend, ladies and gentlemen.

What I’m also worried and concerned about is the lack of compliance from billionaire investors and tech companies that are rolling out these algorithms and Ai APIs about issues regarding Ai’s going rogue or even turning on somebody, there should be laws that regulate and enforce legality and transparency involving artificial intelligence. Currently, it feels like mass surveillance and control over anyone that speak out against or calls out these attempts to silence and intimidate others, and kids aren’t safe from this kind of act and behavior, either.

YES, EXACTLYY!! There are so many bugs they could have and should have fixed! They're so annoying and they pop up everywhere! Why don't my messages load? Why do comment threads on profiles just never show up? Why does the explore page not work (for me at least)???

So many USEFUL things that don't get BACKLASH FROM THE COMMUNITY that they could've done! Ugh!

StarFutureFox wrote:

PaperMarioFan2024 wrote:

Ai is the last thing we need on here, that should be on the bottom of the list, not the top of the list of priorities.

This website has not only been getting buggier, it’s worse than it was a year off when the accessibility update was rolled out required by accessibility law. What we need to do as a community is prevent Ai from developing so quickly and drastically so that we don’t end up falling behind as a society, the current legal system has been broken for several years now and so far there has been little to no just action to stop artificial intelligence from becoming even more dangerous for people to use, Ai is not your friend, ladies and gentlemen.

What I’m also worried and concerned about is the lack of compliance from billionaire investors and tech companies that are rolling out these algorithms and Ai APIs about issues regarding Ai’s going rogue or even turning on somebody, there should be laws that regulate and enforce legality and transparency involving artificial intelligence. Currently, it feels like mass surveillance and control over anyone that speak out against or calls out these attempts to silence and intimidate others, and kids aren’t safe from this kind of act and behavior, either.

YES, EXACTLYY!! There are so many bugs they could have and should have fixed! They're so annoying and they pop up everywhere! Why don't my messages load? Why do comment threads on profiles just never show up? Why does the explore page not work (for me at least)???

So many USEFUL things that don't get BACKLASH FROM THE COMMUNITY that they could've done! Ugh!

Scratch has struggled with next steps since the introduction of Scratch 3.0. Not only did we have to support the existing user base, we had the following occur:

At the release of Scratch 3.0, we maxed out at about 30K simultaneous users on the site. Today, we regularly experience 250,000-300,000 simultaneous users on the site.
We have been constantly distracted by scaling the backend systems to keep up with this unexpected growth. It's not as simple as just buying more equipment, it requires changes to how the software works and is configured, on-prem load balancers, and running a distributed system that runs across “the cloud” as well as our own equipment. Example, in 2020, commenting increased 4x across the entire site due to Covid. Forcing us to take time to pull comments out of the main DB in the backend, slowing down all other development work, and, practically no one even noticed it happen because we spent the time and effort to make sure that's what happened.
We've had designs for a new backend system going back to 2019 and at this point, we are making serious progress on this, and it will entirely replace the old django based systems and the node based ones as well. The bugs and glitches you are talking about are us making heroic efforts to keep a system primarily developed and written from 2013-2016, from falling over before we get to the new.

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

codubee wrote:

But nooooooo, you seem to know better than anyone who is actually _working_ on this in the Scratch Team.

Maybe they should fix trending, /j

We can't forget about this quote you made.

Codubee wrote:

One of the first things you should learn about engineering work is what looks simple is generally not, and what looks like someone could do quickly, depends on how many resources you have in terms of engineers, project planning, communication with the community, etc…

codubee wrote:

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

oh really then why wasnt the st formed of the new tos and ai update

codubee wrote:

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

Here’s another question, why do you have the audacity to accuse me of spreading lies when I was just asking a question.

codubee wrote:

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

if someone didnt bring this up then we wouldnt talk about this, i guess.
how do we know this that no one “brung it up”?

Exascerbescence wrote:

codubee wrote:

source
No they (referring to @scratchcode1_2_3 and @Exascerbescence) aren't. They are cooking up a bunch made up nonsense out of thin air.

Nonsense, you say?

Here are my sources for every post I’ve made since @codubee joined the discussion

Post 1

Exascerbescence wrote:

pippy2011eight wrote:

Guys! Codubee also commented this:

codubee wrote:

We haven't fully worked out how AI will be part of Scratch yet, so when you say, “add AI” what exactly do you mean? Because we don't even know exactly what that will mean yet…

king

How can anyone pretend the CLA is being handled carefully?

The moderators weren’t told about the extremely controversial TOS change, and not even the director of technology actually knows what the AI will look like a full year after it was announced. How are we meant to think Scratch hasn’t left behind its values for greed when it has left behind its own employees?

For “the moderators weren’t told about the extremely controversial TOS change,”
source

cheddargirl wrote:

mingo-gag wrote:

Some Moderators didn't even know about this update.

This was closed because it was flamey here.so let's not start a flame war again.

More like… all the moderators. I just happened to quite horribly, terribly, woefully, incredibly quite unlucky in this particular instance to have been cursed with handling the report ticket about the flame war comments. (O_o)

Speaking of which, sometimes we see forum reports that are not really reports but comments that really should be posted in a Suggestions thread or submitted via the “Feedback” link on the foundation website. Particularly, when it comes to a decision that has more ramifications (switch from Scratch 2.0 to 3.0, putting a cap on comment chains in studios, and in this case AI), those not-a-report-but-a-suggestion-ticket flood the queue a lot, which makes it harder for moderators to get to tickets that need more urgent attention. I'll still do my due diligence to forward a copy of those reports before moving on to the next ticket, but the moderation queue does need to be clear, I don't think people want to have non-moderation reports to slow down moderators from handling tickets that require more immediate moderator attention (like someone sharing personal info or inappropriate comments).

For “A full year after it was announced”
2024 Annual Report speaking about 4.0

Post 2:

Exascerbescence wrote:

codubee wrote:

-haruto-- wrote:

ok but why people saying that this ai will deprive kids of their debugging like i saw that and what mean you

I have no idea dude.

Exascerbescence about 50 pages ago wrote:

I did once get addicted to AI when I was a much more vulnerable person and I think the people who support AI should know what that’s like before they make their decision.

You lose all of your energy, you no longer have any will to create or do things, you stop researching and pursuing inspiration and ideas and thinking deeply and trying to understand the world around you, because why not just ask the AI? You lose the ability to fact-check and become gullible and eventually you stop having the energy to just go for a walk. This is not exaggeration, this is personal experience and I only got out of it because I knew the AI (or rather, the company behind it) was there to take all of my time and control me.

How in the world are young children supposed to navigate this? I do realize that Scratch is a non-profit, but you still quite directly risk exposing young children to these other intentionally controlling AIs. I have seen grown adults who allow themselves to get controlled by this sort of hyperconvenience and not even take a moment to question it. There are 7 year olds here. I fear that including an AI here would not just be annoying and saddening but could quietly ruin lives.

This is an anecdote so I can’t really cite a source for it, I’m only including it here for completion and because I don’t think @codubee saw it

I do agree with @codubee’s assertion that, when excluding arguments related to the AI, the arguments against the membership are weak and the membership was the best way for sustainability. However when combined with the context of an upcoming AI (which will no doubt be very expensive) this falls apart. How is this working towards sustainability when you are simultaneously doing something extremely unsustainable?

Thank you, @codubee, for taking your time to read the posts here and respond, it is great that someone who might actually be able to do something about this is now listening to us

Please stop spreading misinformation. A single moderator's words were misinterpreted and it is false that the moderators were not informed about the ToS.

Also, this is literally what we are doing and why we haven't deployed any AI tooling yet. How do we present these tools in a way that they help. And we _always_ listen, but we can't always respond openly with what we are doing behind the scenes.

I hope everyone who reads this, if you haven't caught on to this yet, there has been a _dramatic_/world changing shift in the last 3 months alone. The entire software development industry in the midst of changing how programming is performed that is fundamentally different than what has happened over the last 60 years. I have lots of software engineering/systems admin/SRE friends who are making the move from their decades long practices to new ones based on using tools like Claude/copilot/… You are witnessing a seismic shift that shows it isn't “just hype” and “slop”. Another friend I've know for 30 years, who isn't a “engineer” or programmer, and yet, recently created a customized health tracking IOS custom app that she spec'd out and built using Claude.

*think about that*

A > 50 year old person, who has experience with web technologies such as css/html, but no other programming experience built a customized IOS app for herself and now runs it on her own phone. It took her a day to have that app running, and she's been tweaking it since then, but stopped after one week. Why? _because it was what she wanted and didn't need to do more on it at that point_

These tools are moving incredibly fast, and we don't want to jump unthinkingly into using them, but it would be ridiculous for us to ignore it and not explore how we might be able to present these tools in a Scratchy way. We anticipated this happening and we've been planning and developing as our resources allow.

Please stop spreading misinformation. A single moderator's words were misinterpreted and it is false that the moderators were not informed about the ToS.

so your saying this whole information is false and scratch ai is never gonna get added?

catsarebest1 wrote:

codubee wrote:

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

oh really then why wasnt the st formed of the new tos and ai update

They _were_, stop spreading misinformation please. This rumor started because of a misinterpreted statement from a single moderator.

codubee wrote:

littlejoeywhoiscool wrote:

Just a little question… who made this decision? And did everyone in Scratch Team initially agree on it?

What decision are you talking about? A single person did not make this decision, stop spreading lies about how the “Scratch Team” has no power, or somehow wasn't involved in the decision. The Team is part of that decision making process, _by definition_.

I meant the AI thing

Someone2939 wrote:

Please stop spreading misinformation. A single moderator's words were misinterpreted and it is false that the moderators were not informed about the ToS.

so your saying this whole information is false and scratch ai is never gonna get added?

So you're saying the ToS is about adding AI? The ToS is a reflection of having to shift our policies with the times and current legal frameworks, are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand and ignore it, meanwhile 5,000 AI startups are continuously skimming all publicly shared projects multiple times a day?

BTW, looking at the “source” for how “moderators weren't told”, it says nothing of the sort if you just read it.

codubee wrote:

Someone2939 wrote:

Please stop spreading misinformation. A single moderator's words were misinterpreted and it is false that the moderators were not informed about the ToS.

so your saying this whole information is false and scratch ai is never gonna get added?

So you're saying the ToS is about adding AI? The ToS is a reflection of having to shift our policies with the times and current legal frameworks, are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand and ignore it, meanwhile 5,000 AI startups are continuously skimming all publicly shared projects multiple times a day?

thats not what i meant, can you please stop forming arguments. i see your comments have a bit of a rude attidute. i wanted to ask if you just were trying to say that the cla is never going to get added, and i WASNT trying to spread any misinformation, nor information, and it was simply a question if you are trying to say that the cla is not going to get added.
are you having an extension in my text? i did not say that tos is about ai, i was asking you.

end of sentence.
( i am adding these to make sure you dont have an text entension add-on.)

This AI thingie is giving me the heebie jeebies man, if y’all add it, then lotta people gonna leave. And I don’t care about “This >50 yo built this app nothing but Claude and a box of scraps!!” baloney.

codubee wrote:

Someone2939 wrote:

Please stop spreading misinformation. A single moderator's words were misinterpreted and it is false that the moderators were not informed about the ToS.

so your saying this whole information is false and scratch ai is never gonna get added?

So you're saying the ToS is about adding AI? The ToS is a reflection of having to shift our policies with the times and current legal frameworks, are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand and ignore it, meanwhile 5,000 AI startups are continuously skimming all publicly shared projects multiple times a day?

it litterly is about how its gonna use OUR coding/sprites without credit and we cant do anything about it