I'd argue that people got way too excited about what NFTs offer. Being able to own/transfer a digital item with a standardized interface is interesting technically (and has real value, for example ENS names), but holy hell did people go all Beanie Baby on them...

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's not arguing with my point though, people definitely did get excited about perceived value, but it didn't really benefit most people in any way because it was only a promise, not an actual thing

LLMs and other generational AI produce something that immediately has value

If I ask chatgpt to write me a python function I now have a python function I can use, if I ask it to explain something and then attempt to apply that knowledge I've learned something useful

If I bought an nft the value of that nft would only be what people decide it is worth

[–] cadekat@pawb.social 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh, sorry, I wasn't intending to argue against your main point. For the most part, I agree with you.

What I don't agree with is that the value of NFTs (as a technology) is dubious. Instead I think it's overstated.

In the same vein as "LLMs can write Python", NFTs provide ownership information. Regardless of what some asshat pays for a picture of a monkey, the underlying technology still has merit.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

True I suppose, but I don't really gain anything from owning that information other than being able to say I own it

A copyright or a patent does the same job, but is actually enforceable

I guess you could use an nft to prove something is a copy but a hash should do pretty much the same thing (also they could change one pixel to invalidate the nft if I understand correctly)

[–] cadekat@pawb.social 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm a furry, so I'm going to use an example that is familiar to me. Apologies if you dislike furries. Also note that, as far as I am aware, the general opinion of furries is strongly against blockchain.

So, some setup:

I have a character. I pay artists to draw art of my character.
There is a... subgroup among furries that do not get art of their own, and instead use other people's art as avatars/profile pictures for erotic roleplay.
I would prefer that I am the only one using my character's art as profile pictures (erotically or not.)
Some furries sell their characters and associated art to other furries.

Here's how NFTs would actually be useful:

Whenever an artist draws some art, they mint an NFT and transfer it to the character's owner. Now that owner can prove to whatever roleplay websites that they officially have permission from the artist. The roleplay websites would need to allowlist artists for this to be effective.

You could (partially) solve this with PGP or some other non-blockchain cryptographic tool. What NFTs offer above this is that there is only one current owner. That makes it possible to safely transfer ownership of a character to someone new.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No need to apologise for what you enjoy it's just a hobby

Furry ERP is the thing that weirds people out and doesn't sound like you're into that

My question here though is has anyone actually managed to achieve that using the nft as proof? I feel like you'd struggle to do that even with regular copyright which is actually recognised legally.

I'm pretty sure nfts have no weight legally and proving they're using your avatar to people in general is only going to get you made fun of for having an nft in the first place

[–] cadekat@pawb.social 2 points 2 months ago

The problem with copyright is that it cannot be automatically enforced. Twitter did do a trial with nft avatars, but yeah, people just got made fun of. It's possible to tie a copyright license to an NFT if you want, but copyright and NFTs serve different goals IMO.

Anyways, I don't want to take up more of your time. Thanks for a very reasonable discussion! It doesn't happen often.