The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.
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@reading_recluse Absolutely. LLMs are the biggest, most bloody useless con ever invented by the vacuous arseholes in charge of the tech industry.
The extra annoying thing is that there are other potential approaches to AI out there that are ultimately likely to be more useful, less destructive and work better (e.g. some expert systems, decision support systems, etc.) But so many folks are just playing with probabilistic horseshit generators instead.
The only way anything this aggressively useless gets investment on this scale, is when it's a weapon.
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@reading_recluse There are fundamental differences between
1. "the person who had the idea was bad, so I will not touch things they tainted with their badness" (purity argument)
2. "the tool was created using bad (or catastrophic) means, so the ends don't matter" (purity)
3. "the tool creates bad ends every time it is used, so the means don't matter" (function)
4. "the tool creates bad ends when used inappropriately" (define "appropriate")
5. "the tool is sometimes helpful under limited circumstances". (define "limited")
and they can all be true.
Right now I'm somewhere between 2 and 3 - the means are bad but it may be possible to avoid adding to them,
and the bad ends are hard to quantify.But as someone whose ability to code is almost completely gone due to long covid, but who sees a need for unprofitable software tools that no-one else will build, I may eventually end up in 5, supervising an LLM out of desperation.
For now I'm continuing to try to avoid LLM-generated content.
Good luck with whatever the clankers define as 'appropriate', since - to date - they seem to have settled on 'Whatever I can get away with, and then some.'
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@reading_recluse My first thought was that the people wittering on about "purity culture" literally can't grasp the concept of collective action. But then it struck me that framing everything as an individual choice is a classic neoliberal tactic to defuse and dismantle opposition when it becomes a threat. So I say: Good work, keep it up!
I think they also are having a hard time grasping the concepts of morality, ethics, or conscience in general.
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They would enthusiastically tell you it's not your fault and there's nothing wrong with you even if you're a damned axe murderer.
A glorified Furby is no substitute for therapy or peer support from actual caring, empathetic, properly trained humans.
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The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.
Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.
LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.
Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.
@reading_recluse Why do so many of the apologists that squirm into posts like this keep making arguments that wind up sounding like "it's Eeeephebopheeeilia, that's diiiiiferent!".
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@thesofafox @reading_recluse I also think it’s difficult to say if there even is much real consumer demand for AI, considering how much it’s been forced into everything. There might be, but how would we know?
@sidereal @thesofafox @reading_recluse
They don't actually give a shit about its profitability. Making money was never the point.
Control is the point. Surveillance, signal jamming, enclosing the digital commons. Destroying anything useful or free about the internet, poisoning the wells of information, trapping everyone.
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@reading_recluse I like to remember when we realized that all the nice imported surveillance cameras were suddenly phoning home and that it would be really expensive to remove them again from all our infrastructure, which is when the wonderful term "digital asbestos" was brought up in 2022:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63749696
With AI, I mean "artifice infliction", it's much the same. It's the new wonder material that gets put into everything and then we'll have to "live with it".
And it's no accident this time.
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Russian Roulette is perfectly safe, five times out of six.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis
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@harisont @tseitr @papageier @reading_recluse Perhaps the difference is that my job is not, and never has been, 'professional software developer'.
My current job involves trying to help people to be more organised. As part of that, it's very helpful if I can write computer programs and websites. In that aspect of my business, I find Claude Code very useful.
It provides much the same utility as does my accountant. As a business owner I must file taxes. But it's not what I do. It's not the function I serve.
My job, arguably, is much closer to that of a writer. The _ideas_ that I present are mine, from my human brain. So I value the act of creation.
I can see how a software developer might think differently. But for that person to deny me the utility of an LLM is like me telling my accountant that they can't use Xero and that they have to enter everything by hand in a double-entry ledger.
@johnnydecimal @harisont @tseitr @reading_recluse The 64k$ question: it's obviously a rearguard battle. Technology is advancing, Humanity is retreating. Tech has just captured a base we thought invulnerable until yesterday.
So the 128k$ question will be: Is your job as writer / creator of ideas still safe? I seriously doubt that. But what if not?
Me thinks we don't need next level AI, we need next level economics.
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@sidereal @thesofafox @reading_recluse
They don't actually give a shit about its profitability. Making money was never the point.
Control is the point. Surveillance, signal jamming, enclosing the digital commons. Destroying anything useful or free about the internet, poisoning the wells of information, trapping everyone.
@violetmadder @sidereal @reading_recluse all the stuff you named off that AI is purposed for are things that have been happening long before LLMs and genAI were a thing for the public to consume. And in some cases, maybe even more efficiently without AI.
I don't buy this at all. If large AI companies were forced to stop operating tomorrow nothing would change. The same shit would happen with a different face to it. -
Just to be clear - you decided to take time out of your day to tempt vulnerable people into playing russian roulette based on nothing other than it worked out 'fine'(1) for you - and you knew that before you sat down to reply?
Really?
(1 - " they (in hindsight) correctly determined that it wasn't my fault or anything wrong with me. " sounds like how AI gets therapy exactly /wrong/ - Congrats on lucking out?)
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I think they also are having a hard time grasping the concepts of morality, ethics, or conscience in general.
@violetmadder @reading_recluse I never thought the face eating LLMs would eat my face, I continue to insist as I slowly shrink and turn into a transformer model...
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The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.
Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.
LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.
Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.
@reading_recluse@c.im
My view on this basically boils down to: "If you have put no effort in writing it (because you used "AI"), then why would I put any effort into reading it?" -
@reading_recluse You do wear machine-woven cloth, though, no?
Seriously: Why?
It's exploitative, the quality is mediocre, it kills jobs, it's a waste of resources, consumes vast amounts of energy, hinders creativity, destroys small businesses, forces uniformity onto people ... why wear it?
Because not doing so would be a waste of time. And time is the one resource that's (still) strictly limited for all of us. We compromise on the quality of clothing (debatable), in order to do other things we couldn't if we were still weaving cloth manually.
When mechanical weaving machines came about, the workers threw their wooden shoes, in French 'Sabot', into the machines to stop them.
All that is left of this effort is a word describing the futile attempt: Sabotage.
So protest all you like, it's just not going to get you anywhere.
@papageier @reading_recluse what a load of brain rotted crap
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@papageier @reading_recluse what a load of brain rotted crap
@sortius @reading_recluse What a simplistic answer. Care to elaborate?
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@sortius @reading_recluse What a simplistic answer. Care to elaborate?
@papageier @reading_recluse nope. I don't put effort into brain-dead pro-LLM "people"
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@tseitr @papageier @reading_recluse I genuinely fail to see the distinction between this view and being Amish.
There's nothing wrong with being Amish. I long for a life in the country with nothing but Lucy and chickens for company. But if your line of 'essential' is 'clothes so I don't freeze to death', I must wonder what you're doing here, on the Internet, that you're using via some computer, none of which is essential for life.
@johnnydecimal @papageier @reading_recluse Essential is subjective indeed. I think it is up to everyone to try to cut down consumption where they can... for everyone sake.
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@johnnydecimal @harisont @tseitr @reading_recluse The 64k$ question: it's obviously a rearguard battle. Technology is advancing, Humanity is retreating. Tech has just captured a base we thought invulnerable until yesterday.
So the 128k$ question will be: Is your job as writer / creator of ideas still safe? I seriously doubt that. But what if not?
Me thinks we don't need next level AI, we need next level economics.
> So the 128k$ question will be: Is your job as writer / creator of ideas still safe? I seriously doubt that
that's kind of (one of) the point(s). Someone who's not really a writer but still crucially needs writing will easily say about writing what @johnnydecimal says about coding and suddenly both jobs are at risk. Instead, devs and writers can just work together. If LLMs are *that* good, maybe that's slower, but I think (social) sustainability > productivity
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@violetmadder @sidereal @reading_recluse all the stuff you named off that AI is purposed for are things that have been happening long before LLMs and genAI were a thing for the public to consume. And in some cases, maybe even more efficiently without AI.
I don't buy this at all. If large AI companies were forced to stop operating tomorrow nothing would change. The same shit would happen with a different face to it.@thesofafox @sidereal @reading_recluse
The industrial generation of plausibly human-sounding bullshit on this scale would not be possible without these tools. Already more than half of the internet's content is slop. Burning the library at Alexandria is one thing-- silently running all the books through a funhouse filter that distorts what they say is quite another thing.
The analysis of writing and video footage etc on this scale is not possible without these tools. They're using it to digest all available data and "summarize" who might be an enemy of the state and target them for much, much worse things than advertising.
Of course they'll use every resource at their disposal to build their hellish panopticon no matter what, but the giant data centers ramp it up to a level that would make Goebbels faint.
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> So the 128k$ question will be: Is your job as writer / creator of ideas still safe? I seriously doubt that
that's kind of (one of) the point(s). Someone who's not really a writer but still crucially needs writing will easily say about writing what @johnnydecimal says about coding and suddenly both jobs are at risk. Instead, devs and writers can just work together. If LLMs are *that* good, maybe that's slower, but I think (social) sustainability > productivity
@harisont @johnnydecimal In the long run, I absolutely agree. I'm also rather an observer, not an evangelist. I just have learned through one or two disruptive innovations (like, the Web) that economic forces and technological progress are a powerful tag team that tends to leave scorched earth rather than wait for academic discussions to conclude.
My assumption is: we'll lose those jobs first and deal with the consequences later. As usual.
