The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.
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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.
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@sortius @reading_recluse What a simplistic answer. Care to elaborate?
@papageier @sortius @reading_recluse You've basically shown you know very little both about industry history or the reasons behind the mechanizing of it and the current forced pushing of LLM in modern companies.
Please document yourself.
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@reading_recluse I admit to having created songs with AI, pictures with AI, code with AI, clips of video with AI, everything more out of curiosity than nothing else. But generating text with AI, where is the fun in that...? AI generated text gives me that immediate uncanny valley effect more so than video, music, or pictures. I've quit buying the Sunday edition of a certain newspaper because reading some articles I was sure there's AI involved there. If I got that feeling reading a novel, what a disappointment that would be.
@mattijamsa @reading_recluse "AI generated text gives me that immediate uncanny valley effect more so than video, music, or pictures" – that's because you're not an experienced artist in these fields. To me as a visual artist, AI generated pictures and video appear uncanny as well. Musicians would probably agree. Bad writers don't notice it in LLM generated text. People who lack skill in a certain area simply don't know what they don't know, that's why trash is proliferating.
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@mattijamsa @reading_recluse "AI generated text gives me that immediate uncanny valley effect more so than video, music, or pictures" – that's because you're not an experienced artist in these fields. To me as a visual artist, AI generated pictures and video appear uncanny as well. Musicians would probably agree. Bad writers don't notice it in LLM generated text. People who lack skill in a certain area simply don't know what they don't know, that's why trash is proliferating.
@mattijamsa @reading_recluse it's not just that things appear uncanny to experienced artists, we can tell exactly why they do. Because we've been practicing how to notice those errors in our own work for decades.
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Finally a grown up take, hoorray
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@papageier @sortius @reading_recluse You've basically shown you know very little both about industry history or the reasons behind the mechanizing of it and the current forced pushing of LLM in modern companies.
Please document yourself.
@Enthalpiste @sortius @reading_recluse While it is certainly possible that there were also other economic reasons behind the rise of mechanical looms, the fundamental driver was the same that now drives the progress of AI/LLM: improve productivity, reduce costs, make more money. Frederick Winslow Taylor all over. If you don't believe it, I have nearly a thousand billion dollars in the market to prove my point.
So documented.
Now, let's hear your expertise, shall we?
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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 I agree with you in full, except in one thing: Non-generative, translation-only LLMs, as long as they give and explain alternative wordings, so I'm in total control of the result and the tone, I want to set, even in languages, I do not understand a single word of AND that they do not try to "improve" my writing.
This way, I can communicate with people, I userwise wouldn't be able to and give answers, that are meaningful for the receiver.
That's my only use case for LLMs. -
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 @afreytes It is very frustrating.
A lot of "Oh you object to LLMs because of 'ethics'? Tsk, tsk."
As though ethical convictions are a problem.
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@reading_recluse @mollymay5000 what if this reply were written by an AI assistant? #claw
@zzeligg @reading_recluse @mollymay5000 I don't need to know to block you two assholes / clowns, you've already given me enough information!
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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 Thank you for your words
My job as a copywriter is one of the first professions to be replaced by LLMs. The results are worse than bad because AI machine texts don’t have ideas, they don’t have empathy, they have no understanding of anything that’s human. They are full of mistakes. BUT: LLM is cheap (or seems to be) and companies love this. I’m boycotting. -
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 unfortunately LLMs have also stolen the tropes of effective writing, so the negative parallelism and staccato phrases in this post set off my spidey senses... we are cooked
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@mollymay5000 @reading_recluse
putting middle-finger emojis in my texts because almost all other emojis indicate that it was written by an LLM(JFC I fucking hate those texts or even technical documentation full of
and IDK what other shit)@Doomed_Daniel @mollymay5000 @reading_recluse maybe explore more of what unicode has to offer? 𓂺
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@Enthalpiste @sortius @reading_recluse While it is certainly possible that there were also other economic reasons behind the rise of mechanical looms, the fundamental driver was the same that now drives the progress of AI/LLM: improve productivity, reduce costs, make more money. Frederick Winslow Taylor all over. If you don't believe it, I have nearly a thousand billion dollars in the market to prove my point.
So documented.
Now, let's hear your expertise, shall we?
@papageier @sortius @reading_recluse It is more complicated than that and private industrial financial incentives are only a restrained and poor explanation. There has always been arguments for the state to keep people in the campaign and the economy crafts centered, this keeps people busy in the fields and goods of high quality reserved to the wealthiest as they require high amount of labour to be made. The push for mamechanization is essentially caused by a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic factors, mainly armement and colonialist expansions for colonies exploitation. The industrialisation is a by-product of that. This is discussed in the scientific literature: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691247489/the-wealth-of-a-nation
Also I teach basics in scientific study of work in an industry oriented curriculum at university and integrated such informations as part of one of my introductory classes. Taylors view are interesting to know in this context but clearly outdated and historically incorrect.
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@reading_recluse I spend a lot of my time these days trying not to send middle finger emojis to people to be honest... Probably isn't very socially acceptable, but it's how I feel.
@mollymay5000 @reading_recluse
is such a good answer to things 
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The only way anything this aggressively useless gets investment on this scale, is when it's a weapon.
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social @adrianww@mastodon.scot @reading_recluse@c.im
even then, it's not like anyone is checking the rubble of gaza to see how many 'terrorists' were actually killed by the AI guided bombs, because by their reasoning they are all terrorists...
So it's real function on the battlefield is to obfuscate responsibility for war crimes -
@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@digitalcourage.social @reading_recluse@c.im
This is such a lazy argument:: You can WEAR clothing.
No one wants to read AI generated text, AI images are hideous. Beyond some niche industrial cases, which are not the focus of the hyperscalers, LLM's are generally useless and a massive waste of resources. The entire industry is based on a speculative, utopian fantasy of created an AGI that will solve all problems. It's utopian fantasy mixed with sunk cost fantasy.
It's like saying "why eat human shit when you can now eat robot generated shit.
Also sabotage and worker resistance got workers everything they ever had. -
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