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

[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.

[avadoll11@mastodon.social]

@tante That’s a lot of big words! I just want to use tech without feeling guilty. But yeah, being respectful is always good—even online.

[claralistensprechen3rd@friendica.myportal.social]

@skyfaller @pluralistic @tante @FediThing @correl Chiming in to state that it's routine to re-state and re-re-state principles that get lost in long reads and long threads such as this one, where any late-comer needs to skim because of the tl;dr factor. There's a long standing principle based on this phenomenon: tell them in short what you're saying, explain what you said, then tell them in summary what you said.

[claralistensprechen3rd@friendica.myportal.social]

@tante @komali_2 Dear anarchist: the confusion you feel is due to the fact that the only people you see are "leftists" "liberals" and "anarchists". None of those are real everyday people. Because the political parties in the U.S. don't recognize real everyday people as voters, real everyday people are fed up and disgusted with partisan loyalties, especially and including anarchists.

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

@claralistensprechen3rd @skyfaller @tante @FediThing @correl

I don't know what this has to do with someone stating "you haven't clarified" something, when you have.

Also, I have reposted the paragraph in question TWICE this morning.

[shoshin@buzz.cicadas.surf]

@tante

thanks for writing and sharing your mindful critique of this argument.

[komali_2@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic capital murder on the timeline

[vansice@infosec.exchange]

@liquor_american @tante Agreed. The thing I don't get is embracing something so inefficient. Like, there are other, existing technologies that do the work he described *better*.

[denisbloodnok@mendeddrum.org]

@Colman @Life_is @tante I'll always remember him having a right go at some woman working at a coffee stand at the most recent London Worldcon. I intervened because I wanted coffee and I wasn't sure if he was there for the five minute argument or the full half hour, and he flounced off.

[bazkie@beige.party]

@pluralistic I gave it a good thought, and you know what, I'm gonna argue that yes, for me there is a degree of unethical-ness to that lack of permission!

the things that makes me not mind that so much are a variety of differences in method and scale;

(*btw just explaining my personal reasons here, not arguing yours)

- every word in the OED was painstakingly researched by human experts to make the most possible sense of it

- coming from a place of passion on the end of the linguists, no doubt

- the ownership of said data isn't "techno-feudal mega-corporations existing under a fascist regime"

- the OED didn't spell the end of human culture (heh) like LLMs very much might.

so yeah. I guess we do agree that, on some level, the OED and an LLM have something in similar.

it's the differences in method and scale that make me draw the line somewhere in between them; in a different spot from where you may draw it.

and like @zenkat mentioned elsewhere, it's the whole thing around LLMs that makes me very wary of normalizing anything to do with it, and I concede I wouldn't mind your slightly unethical LLM spellchecker as much, if we didn't live in this horrible context. :)

I guess this has become a bit of a reconciliatory toot. agree to disagree on where we draw the line, to each their own, and all that.

[loathsome_dongeater@toots.matapacos.dog]

@tante your writing is great. Thanks for articulating what I couldn't.