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.

7/

For a bit of context, a return flight from Scotland to Spain uses roughly the same amount of energy as hundreds of thousands of substantial text only AI interactions. That’s a lifetime’s worth of pretty heavy AI use. Something, somewhere in our thinking has gotten skewed. This is not to advocate for, or excuse excessive AI use, it's to ask that judgement is proportional and accurate.

8/

I understand that drawing these stark moral lines feels very clean and very clear but I think that it can often end up protecting harmful existing heirarchies.

9/

I’m not aguing for a ‘fuck it’ attitude to AI use, not at all. We need to approach this powerful technology in a considered and careful way. It needs to be heavily regulated at the policy end too. What I’m asking people to see is that it is possible act ethically within an unethical system (there are exampels everywhere!) and that if we care about ethics we must make sure that our judgement is ethical too.

END

@kristiedegaris

1. Use of AI as a disability aid is ethical IMO. And might account for 1 in a thousand (?) of current AI usage.

2. I hold discretionary plane travel to be unethical.

3. I engage in many activities that are contaminated by unethical aspects.

@skua I think my point, which I maybe didn't make well, is that we need to stop laser focusing on one thing as *the* issue. The things we want to change are systemic. I find it so incredibly exhausting to see such polarised, un-nuanced opinions over and over again.

I think it's hard to say what people use AI for, what's often amplified is the worst case stuff? That's not to say that a lot of usage isn't genuinely trash. It is.

I think excess is the general issue though.

@kristiedegaris @skua 1/

you made it well.

There are people wandering around with broad brushes, doing the value signaling thing... even Cory Doctorow was recently held to task.

I ain't a fan, but I think his use isn't bad.

The key issue most detractors have is that training data was stolen by corporations running large models.

There are options. I pointed at 2 yesterday.

https://knowprose.com/2026/02/ethical-local-ai-olmo-apertus/