Poster: If a hammer was like AI.

Download and read more: https://axbom.com/hammer-ai/

#AiEthics

I'll add clarifications regarding some of the topics to this thread. 👇

Regarding Monoculture.
Today, there are nearly 7,000 languages and dialects in the world. Only 7% are reflected in published online material. 98% of the internet’s web pages are published in just 12 languages, and more than half of them are in English. When sourcing the entire Internet, that is still a small part of humanity.

76% of the cyber population lives in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, most of the online content comes from elsewhere. Take Wikipedia, for example, where more than 80% of articles come from Europe and North America.

Now consider what content most AI tools are trained on.

Through the lens of a small subset of human experience and circumstance it is difficult to envision and foresee the multitudes of perspectives and fates that one new creation may influence. The homogenity of those who have been provided the capacity to make and create in the digital space means that it is primarily their mirror-images who benefit – with little thought for the wellbeing of those not visible inside the reflection.

@axbom thanks for these clarifications. Could you elaborate on the power consumption angle too, and what other options achieve similar results for 1% of the power?

@pauldaoust

To be fair that is more of an intentionally provocative number, as OpenAI won't disclose energy use. There are estimates claiming that one ChatGPT query costs (in money) 100x more than a Google search, or consumes 10x as much energy. And one ChatGPT session, to get the response you want, can be estimated at 10 prompts.

But in the end there are many examples of things that can be done in more environmentally friendly ways. For example, writing a speech for a wedding. There's a lof of that going around now. Another way to write a speech for a wedding is pen and paper, and from the heart 😊

More on carbon costs here:
https://axbom.com/aielements/#carbon-costs

@axbom I appreciate the response! As well as what you've been writing in your blog. Quite an eye-opener re: the cost of querying the model; I thought that almost all of the energy was spent in training. I do see huge potential in LLMs, along with a lot of very concerning visions of the future -- not all of it dark and grim, just bland and meaningless. If these models are trained on the repository of human culture, and the best of that culture requires effort to hone...

@axbom (I love that the reasons for 'doing it the hard way' are both beautiful and more ecologically friendly)