Reading RecluseFeb 22

The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.

Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.

LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.

Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.

Show threadPapageierFeb 22

@reading_recluse You do wear machine-woven cloth, though, no?

Seriously: Why?

It's exploitative, the quality is mediocre, it kills jobs, it's a waste of resources, consumes vast amounts of energy, hinders creativity, destroys small businesses, forces uniformity onto people ... why wear it?

Because not doing so would be a waste of time. And time is the one resource that's (still) strictly limited for all of us. We compromise on the quality of clothing (debatable), in order to do other things we couldn't if we were still weaving cloth manually.

When mechanical weaving machines came about, the workers threw their wooden shoes, in French 'Sabot', into the machines to stop them.

All that is left of this effort is a word describing the futile attempt: Sabotage.

So protest all you like, it's just not going to get you anywhere.

Show threadsortius Feb 22
@papageier @reading_recluse what a load of brain rotted crap
Show threadPapageierFeb 22
@sortius @reading_recluse What a simplistic answer. Care to elaborate?
Show threadG. ClavierFeb 22

@papageier @sortius @reading_recluse You've basically shown you know very little both about industry history or the reasons behind the mechanizing of it and the current forced pushing of LLM in modern companies.

Please document yourself.

Show threadPapageierFeb 22

@Enthalpiste @sortius @reading_recluse While it is certainly possible that there were also other economic reasons behind the rise of mechanical looms, the fundamental driver was the same that now drives the progress of AI/LLM: improve productivity, reduce costs, make more money. Frederick Winslow Taylor all over. If you don't believe it, I have nearly a thousand billion dollars in the market to prove my point.

So documented.

Now, let's hear your expertise, shall we?

Show threadG. ClavierFeb 22

@papageier @sortius @reading_recluse It is more complicated than that and private industrial financial incentives are only a restrained and poor explanation. There has always been arguments for the state to keep people in the campaign and the economy crafts centered, this keeps people busy in the fields and goods of high quality reserved to the wealthiest as they require high amount of labour to be made. The push for mamechanization is essentially caused by a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic factors, mainly armement and colonialist expansions for colonies exploitation. The industrialisation is a by-product of that. This is discussed in the scientific literature: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691247489/the-wealth-of-a-nation

Also I teach basics in scientific study of work in an industry oriented curriculum at university and integrated such informations as part of one of my introductory classes. Taylors view are interesting to know in this context but clearly outdated and historically incorrect.

The Wealth of a Nation

How the development of legal and financial institutions transformed Britain into the world’s first capitalist country

Show threadPapageier

@Enthalpiste @sortius @reading_recluse As I have mentioned above: there may have been other factors behind mechanical looms. An argument putting colonial interests in the driver's seat is, however, equally misguided. It was Adam Smith (if I recall correctly) in his Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations who emphasized that national prosperity is always a secondary effect of individuals seeking personal profit.

If that is not entirely off the mark (and I'd like to say so much for poor old A. Smith), then the same is true for LLMs.

AI has military implications for sure, and may have - horribile dictu - even neo-colonial uses. But if you are in the IT industry where manual implementation is the most expensive bottleneck, then using AI to implement plain old Taylorism is a perfectly sound strategy. No military or national or colonial interests required.

Call it poor judgement on my side if you will, but this is what I see and what I hear from fellow IT managers. 🤷

Feb 23 at 4:44pmWeb