THREAD

1/

I’ve gotten quite a few messages from disabled people who benefit from AI in the same way I do but feel unable to admit to it because they are scared of backlash.

I will start by saying I understand concerns about AI, they are real. AI is energy intensive, data centres use water, a resource that is already scarce in many places, and the companies behind these products are unethical in so many ways.

#AI #Ethics #Scotland #Disability #UK #LLM

2/

But something feels off in how this debate is being handled. We live inside unethical systems constantly. That is our baseline as humans in the 21st century.

3/

The aviation industry is a good example It is hugely environmentally destructive, and bound to inequality (only 10 - 11% of the world's population takes a flight in any given year, with only about 2 - 4% traveling internationally annually. Despite high passenger numbers, an estimated 80% of the global population has never flown in an airplane!) and yet we don’t generally judge people for flying. In fact travel has come to be seen as so essential that we don’t really put limits on it at all

4/

I’m sure you would all agree however that there are ways to be an ethical user of this incredibly unethical industry? I think AI should be treated the same way.

5/

Collapsing all AI use into one immoral category doesn’t make sense to me. Frivolously chatting to it all day, repeatedly generating images for fun, or asking it to write your book is not the same as asking AI to help navigate the labour and bureaucracy of disability, or the pressures of other forms of inequality.

6/

For me the distinction is between creative and functional work. I don’t want AI to be part of the process of my creative work, but AI being involved in the functional work of managing my disability frees up space for the creative work which feels integral to my happy existence as a human being.

@kristiedegaris a thousand times this.

Which is what makes me so incredibly angry about the snake oil peddlers.

AI is fantastic at the boring stuff as all computers are. They're fantastic at bureaucracy and memory and speed.

They have no soul and are not actually life, incapable of joy or meaning.

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Agreeing:
We should be focusing on these benefits to humanity instead of trying to strip mine humanity into labor and consumption.

@ketmorco Make the robots do all the emails so I can take my kids to the beach and take photographs of flowers.
@kristiedegaris this meeting could have been a robot
@ketmorco I need a robot to overthink for me.