Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture".
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@tofticles @tante @onepict it's a bitter pill to be forced to use a spell checker that until very recently didn't even know how many rs are in "strawberry " (or ls in "blackball").
@perigee @tofticles I think @tante captured the difficulties existing and surviving in this world.
I'm still disappointed with Doctorow, especially since he felt the need to get his defence in first.
His choice of wording there was saddening to me. He outsourced his feelings of guilt and judgement on the rest of us.
Whenever I hear or read someone using the term purity anything I feel a mild disappointment. Because I do expect better of our leaders who take the public stage.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
@tante Thanks for putting this into words. Struck me the same way.
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What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
I am astonished that I have to explain this,
but very simply in words even a small child could understand:
using these products *creates further demand*
- surely you know this?
Well, either you know this and are being facetious, or you are a lot stupider than I ever thought possible for someone with your privilege and resources.
I am absolutely floored at this reveal, just wow, "where's Cory and what have you done with him?"
Massive loss of respect!
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What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
Of course, I am speaking in generalities.
Encouraging the use of LLM's is counterproductive in so many ways, as I highlighted.
Pop a power meter on that LLM adorned PC and let us all know what the power usage looks like with and without your chosen LLM running on a typical task
That's power that generated somewhere, even if it's with renewable energy.
The main issue with LLM's is that they don't encourage critical thinking, in a world which is already suffering from a massive shortage.
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That doesn't seem to be the best idea @pluralistic
AI and LLM output is 90% bullshit, and most people don't have the time nor the patience to work out which 10% might actually be useful.
That's completely ignoring the environmental and human impacts of the AI bubble.
Try buying DDR memory, a GPU or an SSD / HDD at the moment.
@simonzerafa @tante @pluralistic
At best 40% junk, but unless you are so expert you don't need it, you can't know which is plausible rubbish.
Would you play Russian Roulette every day for hours? -
What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante
But Google Docs anything is rubbish. -
Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
@tante Use of the word "neoliberal" in earnest in an essay is an almost infallible sign of nonsense. Certainly it works here.
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Which parts of running a model on your own laptop are implicated in "destroying the planet?" How is checking punctuation "stealing labor?" Or, for that matter "giving power over knowledge to LLM owners?"
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@simonzerafa @tante @pluralistic
At best 40% junk, but unless you are so expert you don't need it, you can't know which is plausible rubbish.
Would you play Russian Roulette every day for hours?@raymaccarthy @simonzerafa @tante
Again, what does checking the punctuation on a single essay per day have to do with "play[ing] Russian Roulette every day for hours?"
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante
But Google Docs anything is rubbish.@raymaccarthy @simonzerafa @tante
I see. And do you have moral opinions about whether people should use Google Docs? Do you seek out strangers to tell them that it's dangerous to use Google Docs?
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@tante I still haven't completely unpacked these arguments. To dwell on the gramnar checker thing, I assume that pre-LLM checkers were to some extent developed by building statistical models from a large corpus of existing text. That's not quite the same thing as the mass plagiarism used to build generative AI models. For myself I've never used such tools, I consider them an annoyance: If there's a mistake in my writing, the human reader will make a better job of correcting it from context.
@kbm0 @tante
Spelling checkers need a curated dictionary related to a style guide as only one valid variant spelling should be used by an author, novel series or organisation.
Grammar checkers seem tuned to particular kinds of document, which certainly wouldn't include novels or blog posts.
Certain kinds of punctuation errors can be found. You don't need an LLM for that! Even some Regex can supplement a basic Grammar checker.
A lack of closing quote isn't always an error, nor a repeated word. -
Of course, I am speaking in generalities.
Encouraging the use of LLM's is counterproductive in so many ways, as I highlighted.
Pop a power meter on that LLM adorned PC and let us all know what the power usage looks like with and without your chosen LLM running on a typical task
That's power that generated somewhere, even if it's with renewable energy.
The main issue with LLM's is that they don't encourage critical thinking, in a world which is already suffering from a massive shortage.
As I wrote (and it seems you haven't read what I wrote, which is weird, because that seems like a good first step if you're going to criticize my conduct), I'm running Ollama on a laptop that doesn't even have a GPU.
Its power consumption is comparable to, say, watching a Youtube video.
I know this because my laptop is running free software that lets me accurately monitor its activity, and because the model is also free software.
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As I wrote (and it seems you haven't read what I wrote, which is weird, because that seems like a good first step if you're going to criticize my conduct), I'm running Ollama on a laptop that doesn't even have a GPU.
Its power consumption is comparable to, say, watching a Youtube video.
I know this because my laptop is running free software that lets me accurately monitor its activity, and because the model is also free software.
Checking for punctuation errors is does not discourage critical thinking. It's weird to laud "critical thinking" and also make this claim.
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@simonzerafa @tante @pluralistic
At best 40% junk, but unless you are so expert you don't need it, you can't know which is plausible rubbish.
Would you play Russian Roulette every day for hours?Beats me.
I thought Cory was supposed to be clever or something? I've blocked him for now. Not interested in banging my head against that particular lack of critical thinking.
Perhaps when the AI bubble bursts, he will become more rational.
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@tante I still haven't completely unpacked these arguments. To dwell on the gramnar checker thing, I assume that pre-LLM checkers were to some extent developed by building statistical models from a large corpus of existing text. That's not quite the same thing as the mass plagiarism used to build generative AI models. For myself I've never used such tools, I consider them an annoyance: If there's a mistake in my writing, the human reader will make a better job of correcting it from context.
@kbm0 @tante
It would have to be curated text. The MS one with Word 2003 is worse than a current LO Writer plug in.I can see no value in checking documents with an LLM.
A dictionary can be edited.
An open source grammar checking plug-in can have rules adjusted.
You can also add a regex.
Every replacement needs manually reviewed.The LLMs are opaque, can't be edited and based on content that's neither curated nor legally obtained. The economics don't work and it's environmentally damaging.
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@tante@tldr.nettime.org That's not the only thing where the actions and words of Doctorow do not match.
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@FediThing @tante @pluralistic I’ve been utterly baffled why he’s so popular for decades.
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@FediThing @tante @pluralistic I’ve been utterly baffled why he’s so popular for decades.
@Colman @FediThing @tante That's interesting. I've never wondered that about you.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
Good critique. And I say this, as well as like your arguments, while also believing there are certain domains where LLMs do have reasonable utility value - nowhere near the value required to make OpenAI, Antrophic or the rest profitable, but some value nonetheless.
@tante -
@FediThing @tante @pluralistic I’ve been utterly baffled why he’s so popular for decades.
@Colman @FediThing @pluralistic this is just a dumb attack on Cory as a person which I will not accept. You can talk about what he or I wrote (both things can be criticized) but have some respect
