William J. Bowman🇨🇦Mar 18

I think if I spend any more time on this, I'll risk doing more harm than good: new blog post on "AI" and ethics.

https://www.williamjbowman.com/blog/2026/03/13/against-vibes-part-2-ought-you-use-a-generative-model/

Against Vibes Part 2: Ought You Use a Generative Model

Since the wide-spread availability and forced deployment of generative models, people have argued about the ethics of using them. Many arguments have been presented to argue that they're _bad_: they use too much electricity, boil the oceans, massively inf...

Show threadazul

@wilbowma That was an interesting read. I agree that power probably is the biggest issue.

Though I think we also can't ignore the slop & related skills problem, even if it might be fixed eventually (which i doubt will happen soon). I believe that collectively lowering standards will lead to harm, even if we can't predict exactly how that harm will manifest. We have reason to believe that e.g. poorly understood software will have exploits, poorly researched writing will have bias, etc.

Mar 18 at 7:26amWeb
Show threadazulMar 18
@wilbowma To make it into more of an individual issue: If we could use generative models carefully to ensure we aren't creating lower quality work or doing anything harmful, that would be better. But the issue is that as the user of the generative model, we may not be able to recognize problem(s) with the output. We see this a lot with people using generative models outside their area of expertise, but even an expert will misremember important details from time to time.
Show threadPhilippa CowderoyMar 18
@typeswitch @wilbowma there's a point where slop becomes epistemic poison, and mass producing it is even more harmful than what we've seen in medicine and psychiatry so far