Mastodawn

[object Object]Mar 12

“I’m just so exhausted by both sides of the AI argument” imagine being the kind of piss baby that sees a mass of people who are righteously furious at a system designed from the top down to fuck them over, and decides the anger is just as much of a problem as the exploitation

Just Boby Mar 14

[object Object]

oh cool yet another “I’m exhausted by all the anti-AI anger” post got boosted onto my feed

please don’t let anyone gatekeep your own anger away from you, especially when your ability to exist and to make a living are both under active attack. if you’re angry because of LLM-enabled war crimes, the loss of our software commons, or any of the other wrongs the AI industry has started that never stopped, you aren’t wrong. you don’t owe the people enabling and forgiving this stuff your kindness.

[object Object]Mar 14

and since there was some very off stuff in this last post about how “morality isn’t absolute” in “the trans discourse”, let me make something clear

the AI-critical spaces I help operate are for trans and marginalized people above all else. they are spaces with no place for people who exploit other people.

in AI and all other “discourse”, if that’s what we’re calling the trans genocide being orchestrated by the far right, I am and always will be against the side doing the exploitation.

[object Object]Mar 15

I cannot keep doing this but since today’s has seen a number of boosts:

the people asking you to stop forcing slop and ongoing damage onto their communities are not purity testing you. they’re asking for basic human decency.

no, disliking LLMs doesn’t make you… a list of right-wing stereotypes for leftists???? is this what we’re doing now?

please don’t use ChatGPT to self-diagnose or treat medical issues. seriously, please don’t do that or advocate for it.

[object Object]Mar 15

it is of course rich as always that the examples for purity testing are shit like vegans being correctly harsh about the environmental impact of the meat industry (and I say this as someone who eats, medically, way too much meat) and not, for example, getting kicked out of a leftist group for expressing support for the people doing one of the ongoing genocides that use LLMs to both select targets and to hinder accountability for the resulting murders. you know, aka “kicking out an asshole”

[object Object]Mar 15

anyway seriously please don’t use ChatGPT or any other LLM to self-diagnose or treat a medical condition. it’s such a dangerous thing to do that OpenAI warns you to not do it and they’re the type that has no qualms about their technology being used to kill people at random.

LLMs are designed to trick people, and an LLM has already tricked you into being a fucking asshole. if you trust an LLM’s output for medical issues, it won’t be long until it tricks you into being a dead fucking asshole.

[object Object]Mar 15

oh no there I go purity testing again

[object Object]Mar 15

and while we’re fucking here, what insular group are you being purity tested out of again? cause if you talk to people outside of tech or read any of the polling that’s been done, you’ll realize very quickly that the general public fucking hates AI. they might not know why on a technical level but they don’t have to, they know a massive grift when they see one.

[object Object]Mar 15

so uh if we’re going with purity testing, how am I doing it and not the tiny group of tech assholes telling me I’m impure for not using the slop machine for literally everything, who have only shut up about the machine god being nigh because it became bad optics to attribute godliness to technology the general public knows is fucking busted?

[object Object]Mar 15

is it not purity testing when the capitalist class does it and failing the test means you can’t feed your family? that’s fucking grim

Passenger Mar 15

Prince Andrew got purity-tested out of being a royal, and I don't recall people complaining about that one. They only seem to complain about purity-testing when it's by people they dislike for things they don't think are wrong, which means the term becomes one of those "my freedom fighter, your terrorist" terms.

M Nesce Drake Mar 15

@passenger @zzt

Him facing consequences for crimes such as raping under age girls isn't being "purity tested."

Passenger Mar 15

Counterpoint: yes it is. "Facing consequences for his actions" is simply "purity testing" when you agree with it and consider the people doing it to be a legitimate authority.

Nick Appleyard Mar 15

@zzt
Remember that is essential to follow the approved purity testing protocols. If not, then you are at risk of not doing purity testing properly, opening yourself to criticism from purer purity testers.

David Cantrell 🏏Mar 15

@zzt if you talk to people *in* tech, most of them think that pretty much everything that is being done with LLMs is really fucking stupid too.

George Collins Mar 15

@zzt for some time, predating the AI thing, people have seen the dehumanisation and mechanisation of every interaction they have with officialdom or corporations, and it's all awful. Everyone can see the direction of travel.

@zzt Oh I saw that post boosted into my feed too. That was exactly my reaction.

Regardless of your stance on LLMs it is literally and provably unsafe to turn to them for medical advice and that's the very last usecase anyone should promote.

I didn't want to start an argument, but it made me so angry. Thanks for putting this into words

[object Object]Mar 15

@brib of course! I have a couple more posts about it in this thread too: https://mas.to/@zzt/116232736363646650 which might be interesting. there’s so many dangers to using and advocating for LLMs like this, and it feels so bad to see people falling into patterns that I’ve seen have terrible consequences before.

[object Object] (@[email protected])

@[email protected] this one hit close to my heart because I’ve had two family members die in large part because their caretaker ignored medical advice and used awful alternative medicine information from the internet to try and treat them. an LLM can’t do critique. as you’ve said, truth is not a data type in an LLM. all of these models suck in every form of medical crankery available on the internet, mix it with words from authentic medical sources, and present it all as credible.

mas.to

@zzt Yeah, I've been following the studies on the matter fairly closely (yay bromism!). iirc the OP mentioned using LLMs for mental health advice too which also has a body count

[object Object]Mar 15

@brib shit that’s even worse, we have very recent examples of the severe consequences of trusting LLMs for mental health advice.

I really do hope that OP finds the help they need that isn’t an LLM. I don’t want there to be more victims of this stuff.

Enola Knezevic Mar 16

@brib @zzt I blocked the poster and unfollowed the booster. It is attentional hygiene.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦

@zzt I'm at the point where anyone who relies on ChatGPT for medical advice should absolutely have to use ChatGPT to treat the results of that. And nothing else at all.

Quoth the techbros: "it's only a sacrifice if we didn't want to dump them."

Rycochet Mar 15

@zzt My response to people who keep banging on about AI being inevitable and resisting it being bad for society is to have them ask themselves, 'If you saw a man in a bar 'flirting' at someone who clearly and vocally did not want them to, someone who repeatedly stated that going home with them was inevitable and saying no was only making the night worse for both of them, you'd be repulsed right? You would interrupt, tell the staff or at the very least keep an eye on the target's drink for them. Why is that level of attack on consent acceptable here because you like the tech?'

It's not purity testing to want to be able to say no to something and have that be heard. Consent is important for society to function and it isn't being granted, the insistence that consent no longer matters because billionaires and people who want to code worse but faster want something doesn't change that fact.

SamuelJohnson Mar 15

@Rycochet @zzt This applies in other domains too. I had dinner w an Eli Lily exec once who was sure that the synthetic bovine somatotropin hormone should be used to increase milk yields and resisting its use was futile. "Because it's identical to the natural version."

At the time Trump was blackmailing Canada about its refusal to accept US milk in order to sustain viability of Canadian family-owned dairy businesses.

Social consent seemed a novel idea. He felt that because we can, we must.

Kevin Granade Mar 15

@Rycochet @zzt I'm afraid part of the answer is your analogy is accurate and a LOT of people wouldn't be disgusted because they're *that guy* themselves even if they don't act it out.

draNgNon Mar 15

@zzt I had a tech at my house to upgrade my internet connection and we got to talking. He told me he had COVID a couple years back and digestive issues since but he was using Grok to self diagnose and my soul climbed out of my body and hid in the ceiling corner above. I gently tried to dissuade him from this path and suggest he see medical professionals

But I'm in the US and a stranger to him who knows if he paid any attention

Peter Brett Mar 14

@zzt I saw the same post and, eww

Peter Brett Mar 14

@zzt Fortunately no-one's trying to kill AI sceptics yet

Rycochet Mar 14

@zzt The AI industry are desperate to make it inevitable, like the car or the internet, even as it ruins lives and breaks things that existed for decades and worked better without it. They need to control the discourse on the topic and have tried and failed at lumping people with legit concerns in with the Skynet doomerists, so now we're on to 'both sides!' faux centrism to try and guilt people with any sort of social conscience into being quiet so not to upset the 'poor people who just want to live their lives' by pointing out how the profit driven life worsening engine is being used to ruin lives for profit.

If people give up and allow AI bros to control the narrative, they will never let go of that control. Google have applied an AI filter to internet search, Elon has created a white nationalism filter for Twitter and a nazi version of Wikipedia, Oracle now have TikTok and an increasingly large chunk of the traditional media and Zuck has consumed the souls of everyone old enough to have voted for Reagan, we can see what they're doing and shutting up about it will only make it easier for them to get away with it.

If the past twenty years have taught us anything, it's that shutting up and accepting things only leaves the door open for worse things.

[object Object]Mar 14

@Rycochet this is an excellent analysis. thank you for writing it!

Bebadefabo Mar 14

@Rycochet @zzt #AIsbestos

Sam Beebe Mar 14

@Rycochet @zzt
AI is the New Plastics. Can We Govern it Better? https://www.justsecurity.org/132615/ai-new-plastics-govern-better/

AI is the New Plastics. Can We Govern it Better?

Like plastic, AI is permeating every corner of life. But there is still time to manage AI better than we did with synthetics.

Just Security

Morgan ⚧️Mar 14

@Rycochet @zzt I don't think the car or the internet were inevitable either. And I'm grateful for the internet, but I also think cars have been at least as destructive as AI has been, perhaps even more than AI has the potential of being. I see AI as an invention as *very* comparable to the car--it made things slightly more convenient for people until we completely lost the ability to do many things without it, and it became just another way to kill poor people who can't afford to participate

@zzt there's a certain mindset that wants to always classify anger as noise, muddying signal and making it harder to "see clearly", and if you do otherwise then you're intellectually/epistemically compromised and "letting anger drive you". but really anger is information, it's social and emotional feedback. and if enough people are angry about something that's a sign that something important is happening and deserves a non-dismissive response.

@zzt ok since this is getting visibility i probably need to clarify: this does not mean i believe the anger of misogynists, racists, transphobes etc is "valid". it simply needs to be understood so it can be countered and neutralized.

Sofia ☭🇧🇷☭Mar 14

@jplebreton @zzt people who say that they're anti-anger because bigots are angry at marginalized people will absolutely stab the marginalized people they claim to support in the back as soon as those marginalized people get angry at bigots. This is toxic positivity pretending to be progressive

🏴🏳‍⚧🏴‍☠Mar 14

@sofiav @jplebreton @zzt

thank you

@sofiav @jplebreton @zzt The people who have the privilege of not being angry love to smugly style themselves as 'enlightened' but there is in reality something enormously animalistic about failing to respond to content and responding only to tone.

@jplebreton I always think of this anger as fundamentally misplaced rather than invalid.
Example, guys who were told they would be rewarded with sexual and emotional attention from women if they just manage to kill the emotional side of themselves and work hard and acquire the trappings of capitalism, then getting angry at women for not keeping "their side of the deal" rather than realising it was all a lie in the first place.
@zzt

Neil Moffatt Mar 14

@jplebreton @zzt As a mechanism for driving resolution of injustice or dangerous situation, anger really really has a vital role to play.

That it can descend into an emotional storm that misses that role is not something that should stop us seeing that it can be meritorious.

I am angry with people walking with thick headphones on looking at their phones in the middle of the road as a car approaches.

🏴🏳‍⚧🏴‍☠Mar 14

@NicelyManifest @jplebreton @zzt

if you are out of control while angry, that is literally a skill issue. not all of us lose control while angry. the anger helps us focus

Neil Moffatt Mar 15

@coolcalmcollected @jplebreton @zzt Yes, very well put.

Many tarnish the anger emotion with that twin factor combination default.