Question for people who choose not to use generative AI for ethical reasons: Do you make that choice despite accepting the growing evidence that it works (at least for some tasks, e.g. coding agents working on some kinds of software)? Or do you reject it because of the ethical problems *and* a belief that it doesn't actually work?
I'm thinking that principled rejection of generative AI might have to be the former kind, *despite* evidence that it works.
@matt
Question for people who choose to use generative AI: Do you make that choice despite accepting the growing evidence that it incurs frankly terrifying external costs? Or do you use it because you ignore those costs *and* believe it actually works?
I have yet to see an application for whatever you want to call these "AIs" where their performance is worth the cost. Yet for some reason that makes me an ethical purist in an ivory tower who ignores "growing evidence" [citation needed] that "gen AI" works for anything but the most trivial cases. Meanwhile, "AI" boosters are allowed to flout ethics, flout externalities, and flout logic, but you don't accuse them of "belief" in something contrary to evidence. Why is that, I wonder?
If you're genuinely interested in asking the question, you need to rethink your phrasing. If you're not, you might still want to rethink it because it smells funny. Hope that helps! 🙂
Matt Campbell
Nerviest Initial