Kristie@sknob I agree that it would be better in many ways if these things did not exist, but they do? And as I've explained there are positive uses for AI that can be done well within a personal ethical framework.
sknob@kristiedegaris I do a lot of things (or refrain from doing things), just because I want to be aligned with my principles and ethics when at all possible. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s impractical or hard, and sometimes I compromise or fail miserably, even though nothing is stopping me from doing better. Resistance doesn’t seem futile to me :)
@sknob It's not about resistance being futile. As I said I haven't flown in nearly a decade, but I understand why other people may need to fly. Do you understand why some people may rely on AI and how that doesn't mean they are unethical for using it?
@kristiedegaris I understand how GenAI can be marginally useful in some situations and how it can help people who come to rely on them, but I fail to understand how that makes that use case ethical. I understand the appeal, the need even, but that doesn’t make it ethical in my view.
If I think killing animals for food is unethical and my doctor orders me to eat meat for medical reasons and I do so, I will still consider that killing animals for food is unethical while I eat my steak.
@kristiedegaris it seems so yes :)
@sknob I just think ethical critiques of AI belong at the system level not the user level. And on a personal level, we don't choose to live like this, forced to use tools that are built this way. I dunno, feels so shit to have nowhere else to turn to help myself and my kid access healthcare and be told its unethical. I'm not sure anyone but the individual should get to decide what counts as survival?
@kristiedegaris maybe we don’t agree on the word ethical (English isn’t my first language so bear with me). I understand you tu use it in the sense of « justifiable » or « understandable », whereas for me, it’s more of a question of general morality, which is something you strive for in the absolute, before reality or necessity gets in the way.
@sknob I mean it means 'not morally correct'. I suppose I wouldnt describe for example stealing from a store when you are hungry as not morally correct, I'd describe the system that allows the circumstances to be immoral.
@kristiedegaris OK, then we agree on that 😅
I don’t know, it doesn’t seem weird to me to say that I understand perfectly why you would use it for the reasons you described, and at the same time to think there’s no ethical use of these technologies given how damaging they are on so many levels. These two things can be true at the same time, and we are all forced into these types of contradictions given the system we live in, and we do the best we can do.
@sknob Yeah I suppose you're right. By that token extrapolated all the way, I think that maybe nothing we do as humans could be considered ethical. Using our healthcare system, a bank, eating food from grocery stores, using the internet, travelling, buying property etc etc.
@kristiedegaris yes, but based on that, we can just throw in the towel and not care about anything, or try to minimize the harm we contribute to the world, whether it’s coerced or not, if and when and where we can. That’s what I try to do, and I succeed in some areas and fail in others.
@sknob But that's not what I'm saying at all. I'd argue that by using AI to write letters to the healthboard I am not causing harm to the world. In fact, the harm I am undoing justifies the miniscule amount I cause.
@kristiedegaris I’m not allowing or disallowing anything. People boycott stuff all the time on ethical grounds, if their situation allows them to. Using something intrinsically toxic out of necessity is not ideal, even if the usage is justifiable, understandable, and only contributes a tiny drop to the ocean of harm.
@sknob There's a difference between not ideal and unethical no? I think what I am hoping I can explain is how being called unethical may make people feel who are already facing sytemic struggle. Perhaps you can just say the system is unethical rather than point to individual behaviour? I don't think it furthers the cause in any way to make it individual.
@kristiedegaris I don’t believe I called you unethical. We are not reduceable to this or that single choice we make, but are the sum of all of them, good and questionable, plus all the choices that were made for us that are out of our control. We are discussing an argument you made in your initial thread, and I replied because I struggle everyday with this question of ethical choices. I wrote blog posts and even songs about it. And I have more questions than answers.
@kristiedegaris although I have to admit that regarding genrative AI, I have forged over time a pretty strong and intransigent opinion 😅
Morten Mosgaard@sknob @kristiedegaris thanks for taking this discussion out in the open, I found it a good and thought provoking read.
There are bad actors in all industries, AI is no different. Still AI has been around for years in many different forms, and we don’t always see where the use relates to us - it’s not all LLMs.
What we see now is big LLM companies, forcing development with an unethical approach, being normalized by a variety of actors, included in products most people use.
@sknob @kristiedegaris personally I find it way more problematic using Windows, than prompting an open source LLM hosted on servers run on sustainable energy - and they exist.
But I really miss regulation on training data, bias, security and more, which is a huge problem.
But Microsoft closing the e-mail of a judge, because Trump lost his temper, how can people even think of using such a system? (I use it at work, and work hard to change it).
@mosgaard yes, there are countless examples, unfortunately. I use Apple stuff and feel pretty bad about it.
(That judge also lost access to his bank accounts, credit cards, and anyone who helps him, including his family, is liable under US law for aiding and abetting a terrorist. And the EU has done nothing to help him. Crazy story).
Alison WilderJust want to say I really enjoyed reading this thread, and I think you both make a number of good points. Thanks for starting this convo, @kristiedegaris.