Mastodawn

Back in January I was looking around for some positive "pro-AI" analysis of the ethics of the problem <https://mastodon.social/@glyph/115908558259725802> and it looks like I finally got what I wanted: <https://types.pl/@wilbowma/116247527449271232>

I definitely don't think I'm fully convinced, but there's more than enough here to sit with for a while and consider. It's such a relief that someone is taking the ethical question *seriously* though.

William J. Bowman🇨🇦 (@[email protected])

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/

types.pl

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V Mar 18

@glyph He seems to land in a similar position to me on it, honestly?
I fall into... if your use is such that the various ethical concerns *around* the chatbots are dealt with, then... I don't particularly care about your locally-hosted solar powered AI girlfriend or whatever, anymore than any other ML thing you might have.
The parts I care about are ... the context around it - the climate damage from how they're trained & run, the slop littering and polluting communal spaces, the toxic power >

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V Mar 18

@glyph dynamics and abuses of power, etc. etc.

... And the health and wellbeing impacts of how the chatbots are influencing people, spreading misinformation, etc. which seems more and more severe every time a study is done about it. (which I didn't see mentioned in his post, but is a major factor on my assessment of them.)
And so on...

but - *if* all of that is managed?
Then.... whatever, it's no worse than a fancy IRC bot at that point.

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@glyph I'm not aware of any case that *does* address all those other problems, though?