tanteFeb 20

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.

EDIT: Diskussions under this are fine, but I do not want this to turn into an ad hominem attack to Cory. Be fucking respectful

https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/

Acting ethically in an imperfect world

Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]

Smashing Frames
Show threadFediThing Feb 20

@tante

I really like and admire @pluralistic and have utmost respect for him, and that's why I'm totally baffled about why he is claiming "fruit of the poisoned tree" arguments as cause of LLM scepticism.

The objections to LLMs aren't about origins but about what they they are doing right now: destroying the planet, stealing labour, giving power over knowledge to LLM owners etc.

The objections are nothing to do with LLMs' origins, they're entirely about LLMs' effects in the here and now.

Show threadIan BetteridgeFeb 20
@FediThing @tante @pluralistic Some people - in fact quite a lot; if my reading is correct - do indeed argue that LLMs can *never* be ethically used because they are “trained on stolen work”.
Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 20

@ianbetteridge @FediThing @tante

Performing mathematical analysis on large corpora of published work is not "stealing."

Show threadIan Betteridge
@pluralistic @FediThing @tante I agree - but that is the (incorrect imho) argument they make.
Feb 20 at 6:46pmWeb
Show threadJohn MierauFeb 20

@ianbetteridge @pluralistic @FediThing @tante

Again, great respect to Cory, he's been deadeye sharp in Pluralistic but...

I think once some authors cut an admittedly problematic deal with AI companies to settle their losses, I think the ship has sailed on whether it's theft or not.

O'course much more damaging is the whole 'burning the world for profit and trying to elect comservative-loving AI bros to help them keep doing it' argument.

The tech may be good. The cost it extracts? Nope.

Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 20
@ianbetteridge @FediThing @tante Yup.