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 threadSimon ZerafaFeb 20

@tante

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.

Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 20

@simonzerafa @tante

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.

Show threadSimon ZerafaFeb 20

@pluralistic @tante

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.

Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 20

@simonzerafa @tante

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.

Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 20

@simonzerafa @tante

Checking for punctuation errors is does not discourage critical thinking. It's weird to laud "critical thinking" and also make this claim.

Show threadtanteFeb 20
@pluralistic @simonzerafa on this one for example I fully agree with Cory. This is not him having a genAI system write or anything like that.
Show threadDavid Huggins-DainesFeb 20

@tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa I agree in principle with Cory, but I really wish that he had clarified that:

1. Ollama is not an LLM, it's a server for various models, of varying degrees of openness.
2. Open weights is not open source, the model is still a black box. We should support projects like OLMO, which are completely open, down to the training data set and checkpoints.
3. It's quite difficult to "seize that technology" without using Someone Else's Computer to do so (a.k.a clown/cloud)

Show threadJens Finkhäuser

@dhd6 @tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa IMHO this is already going down the wrong path.

If you follow anything I write or boost, you'll quickly note that I'm very vocal against AI. But that is a shorthand; my actual position is that I'm fine with the *tech*, strongly dislike the *waste* (where applicable), but my actual complaint is that the AI bubble is literally a fascist project.

Outside of FOMO, every reason people use or promote AI based things in this bubble is designed to...

Feb 21 at 7:43amWeb
Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 21

@dhd6 @tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa ... disenfranchise people, by partially replacing them with a machine that imitates their work. And unlike people, machines can be owned.

Their output functions like a natural resource (except it's not natural), and there is insurmountable historic precedent that this promotes tyrannies. The TL;DR of it being that when you can mine natural resources, you are less reliant on a fed, educated, healthy, mobile population - so public spending becomes a waste.

Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 21

@dhd6 @tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa The problem isn't ingesting text from the web. The problem isn't using this to generate new text, or spell check existing text.

The problem is that capitalist logic demands that this is used to move "value" from the general population to property oligarchs own. Marx would have started talking about labour here.

That this promotes fascism is certainly the effect, and when you look at those who stand to win, probably also the reason.

Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 21

@dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa So, yes, whether something is or isn't open plays into that, and I get the complaint.

But at the same time, it's a distraction.

The general position @pluralistic holds in the blog post is very much in line with distinguishing between the tech and the bubble.

Personally, I feel like responding to that with "yeah, but it's not good enough" is a very good example of the kind of Leftist purity culture that is so, so effective at hindering collaboration.