You don't hate LLMs. You hate computers.

I'm serious. I mean LLMs are annoying in their own way, but all computers and computer like things are there to make work more efficient. That is to say, less total people, doing less overall work but each individual having to do more. Computers are just the production line in a factory with better PR. Charlie Chaplin was right.

#LLMs, #Capitalism, #Computers

@RobertoArchimboldi Bullshit. I understand the difference between automation and generative models. And I basically never use computers to make my work more efficient, I use computers to communicate with people and to access information. Some of that communication is in the context of work, sure, but I hate neither work nor computers. Also plenty of computers, like other machines, are tools that allow humans to do things they can't do at all without automation, not just improve efficiency.

@individeweal the right response, because I am being a bit silly. The real claim is not that you hate computers, not LLMs. It is that there is no consistent position in which you rail against LLMs but not the IT world more generally. Even this is strictly false, as we shall see. It is very influenced by this article:
https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/

It is maybe better to start at the other end though. First the counterexample. You once pointed out to me that LLMs are bad in a very specific way. They poison the web, by scraping sites, putting huge loads on servers and making it too expensive for the little guy to run their own site. That is a reason to hate LLMs that is unique to them, I think. It is also not a very deep objection to them and not what motivates much of the hatred.

People also like to claim that they hate the tech because it is useless, but that is bullshit. They don't do all they are cracked up to do, sure, but they do solve some problems. To use your example of tech allowing communication, they are good editors and translators. I use Deepl every day to write better French or to understand texts in languages I don't speak. I use speech-to-text software to write most of my stuff. This is improved dramatically by LLMs. They are good at summarising text, enough to allow for interactive natural language searches.

All of this feeds into what really upsets people about the tech. It is making jobs obsolete. This is what computers have been doing for ages. You used to have an army of highly skilled archivists and clerks to organise data and to do the searches. Now you have massive databases you can query from anywhere. The fear of the LLM is that it will do away with the database.

But it is not the job loss that really upsets people though, at least if they are not hypocrites. Where after all are the typists, the runners, the compositors, the typesetters, the legions of people in the sorting office? Done away with by computers. Where even are the artisans, the taylors, the book binders, the weavers? Outsourced to sweatshops in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Here we get back to Whittaker's article. This whole global system of exploitation and environmental destruction is dependent on the vast data processing and storage power of computers. Palantir doesn't exist because Peter Thiel is the Antichrist. Peter Thiel exists because he is the embodiment of what computers were built to do. The reason there is a PC in on every desk and smart phone in every pocket is that IT takes the logic of the production line and expands it into every aspect of our lives. We are all Charlie Chaplin, turning our spanner to the rhythm of the machine.

Chaplin perhaps thought that the modern world was redeemable because we could film it. You might think that it is redeemable because we can talk to each other across continents. I do think that what the opporbium to LLMs reveals is a deep anxiety with the computerisation of our modes of production and of our lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n9ESFJTnHs

Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.

Logic(s) Magazine

@RobertoArchimboldi @individeweal
"All of this feeds into what really upsets people about the tech. It is making jobs obsolete."

i could make a similar claim to yours, here. no, people aren't upset that jobs are obsolete, or about automation, they are upset that unemployment is high and wages are low, that they are confined to wage slavery

automation under a liberatory system is not objectionable to many people. your arguments seem to be geared towards liberals more than radicals.

@johnbrowntypeface @individeweal I think that my target here is indeed the liberals. We definitely need to end wage slavery and the bureaucratic administrative state that underpins it.

I am suspicious of claims of automation within a liberatory system. It feels like automation requires central, top down control. Indeed I suspect that this is the lesson that we should learn from the Soviet Union. I'm not sure though. It could be a false dichotomy. It accepts the Benthamites claim that the traditional liberties of the 18th Century were incompatible with the 'benefits' of industrialisation and Victorian 'progress'. Maybe that is just pure propaganda and we can freely organise to have a high level of material luxury