Mastodawn

Yesterday, had an argument with an AI booster. I'm not going to link, both because I don't want to platform that and because I don't want anyone to go harass them. But what I thought was very interesting was that I asked point-blank if there was any degree to which ethical problems with LLMs could make them not want to use AI — they told me no, there was not, and implied that they evaluated AI purely on the basis of its efficacy.

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Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 22

I don't have time nor the inclination to argue that point with them further when it comes to AI. But I do think there's a broader point that is worth critical examination, especially as tech continues to build out surveillance, age verification, automated filtering and censoring, and other tools that do immense damage when used by authoritarians.

We *cannot* afford to evaluate tech purely based on whether it "works" or not.

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Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 22

AI doesn't work¹, so it's easy to forget that larger point, I suspect? That *even if* AI did work (and again, it doesn't), it still would need to be critically examined from an ethical perspective.

Failing to do so is how we have massive surveillance networks today.

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¹Here again, referring to the wave of current hype products. Boosters love wearing the ML shit that does work as a shield against criticism.

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newbery

@xgranade
In a meeting today, I recently raised the analogy to debates about torture. The debate gets muddy when people mix together questions of efficacy with questions of ethics and morality. Sometimes this confusion is deliberate but I suspect most of the time, it's just a lack of clarity on priorities. Whatever action we are considering, the first question should always be whether it's an ethical or moral action. The efficacy question should always be secondary.