Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture".

[bazkie@beige.party]

@zenkat good point. I will admit, if we didn't live in a techbro-feudal slopworld, I probably wouldn't mind a non-consenually trained typo checker LLM all that much.

[zaire@fedi.absturztau.be]

@pluralistic @FediThing @tante you’re attempting to legitimize use of an unethical technology for something you don’t actually need a plausible-sounding-wall-of-text generator for

it goes beyond “it’s made by bad people in bad ways”. it’s a “”tool”” that actively causes cognitive decline and psychosis and sucks the soul out of everything it touches. and mind you promoting and legitimizing it is an act of support for those bad people and their bad ways. your deflection is a typical that of someone with no regard for ethics

“I installed Ollama” instantly gives a person away as a techbro

• your not-so-friendly not-so-neighborhood “””liberal”””

[zaire@fedi.absturztau.be]

@pluralistic @bazkie @prinlu @FediThing @tante Is DDOSing independent websites an unalloyed good?

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@skyfaller @correl @FediThing @tante

That is completely backwards.

The entire point of measuring embodied emissions is to *make use of things that embody emissions*.

We improve old, energy inefficient buildings *because they represent embodied emissions* rather than building new, more efficient buildings because the *net* emissions of building a new, better building exceed the emissions associated with a remediated, older building.

[claralistensprechen3rd@friendica.myportal.social]

@tante Chiming in, in defense of people like me who are not "neoliberal" and refuse to use AI of any sort because we don't have a use for them and find them rather superfluous to the functioning of our own native-born great minds. We simply have no use or need for them at all. Such things are for the weak-minded and lazy.

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@skyfaller @correl @FediThing @tante

Yes, that is just more fruit of the poisoned tree.

This thing harmed people in its creation, therefore the thing is bad, as are all things derived from it.

However, the things *I* use don't count, because the bad things in their history are different because [insert incoherent rationalization].

[correl@fedi.fenix.lgbt]

@pluralistic@mamot.fr @skyfaller@jawns.club @FediThing@social.chinwag.org @tante@tldr.nettime.org While I can understand your argument and almost certain exhaustion at hollow criticism, that response feels very dismissive of the points being made against your application of that argument.

I'm not sure how fruitful of an argument can be had with regard to what you may or not be using, as you really haven't clarified that anyhow besides locally hosted software that could be used to run terrible models, so this whole mess is just an endless back and forth of "You seem to be dodging the nature of the evil you may be accepting" vs "You're over-concerned with purity", and I think that's justifiably leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@correl @skyfaller @FediThing @tante

> as you really haven't clarified that anyhow

I'm sorry, this is entirely wrong.

The fact that you didn't bother to read the source materials associated with this debate in no way obviates their existence.

I set out the specific use-case under discussion in a single paragraph in an open access document. There is no clearer way it could have been stated.

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@zaire @FediThing @tante

I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist, so perhaps this is why I disagree with you.

The argument that "something is unethical because someone else used it in an unethical way" is so incoherent that it doesn't even rise to the level of debatability.

[wackjackle@norden.social]

@tante I like 'cyberphysical world'. Es benutzt 'cyber' auf eine Art und Weise, die es wieder vertretbar macht. Sehr spaßig, wie begriffe so verwolft werden, dass sie wieder schmecken können. 🙃

[zaire@fedi.absturztau.be]

@pluralistic @FediThing @tante yea no the thing is you’re acting like a liberal, what we in the biz call a shitlib, and i’m a leftist, and you have things conflated a little

[komali_2@mastodon.social]

@dhd6 @tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa

Isn't this just purity testing? Aka liberal aestheticism masquerading as praxis?

The planet is hot because capitalism is a malformed cancer that can't stop growing until it kills itself and everything growing in its environment, not because a writer used an LLM. Therefore we need environment change to make capitalism maladaptive, see: ice age, mammals.

The environment is society, not one guy. Purity testing is the opposite of focusing on social change

[zaire@fedi.absturztau.be]

@pluralistic @FediThing @tante The argument that “The argument that “something is unethical because someone else used it in an unethical way” is so incoherent that it doesn’t even rise to the level of debatability.” doesn’t address what i’m saying here at all

again, pretty clear you don’t know what ethics are or how to be ethical in tech

[musevg@23.social]

@wackJackle @tante
Den Begriff "Cyber-physical" gibt's schon länger und unabhängig von Cory:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-physisches_System

[weirding_is_real@mstdn.social]

@tante

"Sometimes a belief or ethic you hold is so integral to you that you will not move. Sometimes they are held loosely enough to let go under certain conditions." 🔥🔥

[skyfaller@jawns.club]

@pluralistic You're missing my point. Old houses should be used, but if new houses are built using fossil fuels, then we can cook ourselves by building them even if new buildings are fully electrified.

It feels like you're ignoring the context where LLMs are still being created. It's ethically different to use something made by slaves if slavery is not in the past. If you golf on a golf course maintained by prison labor yesterday, it matters that prisoners will clean it again tomorrow.

@correl

[komali_2@mastodon.social]

@tante questions for the leftists and liberals from a confused anarchist:

1. Do you think you can put the cat back in the bag with LLMs? How?

2. For those that believe that LLMs were trained on stolen data, what does it mean for data to be private, scarce property, that can be "stolen?"

3. What about models that just steal from the big boys, like the PRC ones? Theft from capitalists, surely ethical?

4. Will you not using any LLMs cause Sam Altman and friends to lose control of your country?

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@skyfaller @correl

I'm not ignoring that context, it is *entirely irrelevant*, because I am *not* using some prospective, as-yet-to-be-trained LLM to check punctuation on my laptop. I am using an *actual, existing* LLM.

So if your argument is, "If you did something that's not the thing you've done, that would be bad," my response is, "Perhaps that's true, but I have no idea why you would seek to a stranger to discuss that subject."

[komali_2@mastodon.social]

@flesh @tante @osma Realistically, will rag tag groups of progressives on mastodon and bluesky refusing to use LLMs do anything to stop LLM proliferation? I mean even if we could dent openai MRR, there's still the PRC models to consider.

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@elle @dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa

"You used the wrong open model because I don't like the company that made it" is the actual definition of nonsense purity culture.