jacquelines 🌟u programmed this with claude? the ai platform for bombing schools?
Jamin@jacqueline imh this is the same as saying "You are using the same pen as they did sign the Nuremberg laws with". People are accountable for these atrocities, AIs are just another (problematic) tool enabling bad people to do bad things more efficiently. Don't forget who is truly responsible here.
Æ.@vyllenjamnin @jacqueline they really aren't "just tools". This analogy is just wrong and extremely misleading.
They are services provided by an organization that have politics embedded into them.
A pen doesn't influence WHAT you're writing. An LLM's training process, which is controlled and managed by people with certain politics, very much influences what it's output will be.
allison@aesthr @vyllenjamnin @jacqueline plus (a) pens *do* influence how and what we write (think of how ball point pens made cursive writing obsolete) and have political/cultural meaning (e.g. trump's executive order sharpies); and (b) uhhh if someone consciously decided to write something with the pen they wrote the nuremberg laws with, it would *absolutely* shape the way i interpret what they wrote. all tools are political, especially writing tools
@aesthr my intention was to agree with you and to support your underlying point...? even people who design pens (or other writing tools, from movable type to letraset on up the chain to word processors and llms) have political goals (implicit or explicit) that influence how people engage in communication with those tools
@aparrish my point is that people can use any pen to write any words they want.
No pen (not even that hypothetical one formerly used by Nazis) will prevent you from writing a certain sequence of words, or from writing about a certain topic. No pen is going to stop putting ink on the paper when your words conflict with some corporate content guideline, or if you write something illegal. No pen is going to write words that you didn't decide to write.
Generative "AI" does all of those things.
@aesthr i agree that generative AI does all of those things. but that's part of the reason that the context of language (including the tools used to produce it) matters. two stretches of text might have the same words, but the knowledge that one stretch was written by/with llms changes how i interpret it. and pens DO limit what can be written with them—think of the difficulty of writing arabic calligraphy with a ballpoint, or how the mongolian script was dropped in favor of cyrillic in mongolia
@aesthr (think also about how certain pens often used for graffiti are kept under lock and key in art stores and require 18+ ID. those pens make it possible to write in a certain way, and that writing is politicized to the point that the tool itself is regulated)
@aparrish you’re still missing the point here about tools vs services, about means of production. and I get the feeling you’re just trying to be contrarian for its own sake
@aesthr i'm not trying to be contrarian for its own sake. this line of reasoning is very important in my own justification for rejecting AI tools. i strongly agree with your original reply in the thread. all i'm trying to get at is that many of the same critiques we have about how llms have politics and shape the way we write and the horizons of expression *also* apply to other writing tools, even non-computational ones. and we can learn valuable lessons from the criticisms of those other tools
@aparrish i never said that tools in general don’t have politics embedded in them. Yet you went on an unsolicited lecture about it instead of engaging with what I was originally talking about.
It’s arrogant and condescending. Now leave me the fuck alone
@aesthr oh no! i'm very sorry—i should had dropped it earlier. i had genuinely believed that i was engaging with what you were saying (and supporting/agreeing with it!) but i understand that it didn't come off that way. i'll do better in the future!
Nathan@aparrish eh, you were fine. This guy was just being a douche.
I'd double-down and say that all tools shape behavior. Some more than others. Some better than others.
Union Whore@unionwhore @aparrish it was unintentional. I apologize.
I didn't see any preferred pronuns on their profile.