lenazun1d ago
I completely understand the position of people who don't want to use LLMs or consume any content produced with LLMs. I do not understand the position of "NO ONE should use LLMs at all" because how are you planning to make that happen? no one should be *forced* to use them, but plenty of people are using them now. it's not something you can wish away or achieve via moral condemnation.
Show threadNelson23h ago

@lzg No one should use fossil fuels. How are we going to make that happen? It's not going well, I'll admit, but it's actually relatively straightforward, it's just there are these shitty rich people pushing fossil fuels and destroying democracy to do it.

I leave the parallels as an exercise for the reader.

Show threadlenazun23h ago
@skyfaller Right but we're not (I hope) out there yelling at individual people who use cars "you're destroying the fucking world" as our only means of activism. there's research, there's decarbonization goals, there's clean energy development, idk. other things.
Show threadNelson

@lzg Yeah, I'll agree with that, shaming individuals won't get the job done. Systemic change is required.

That said, if all individuals are determined to continue driving gas-powered cars, it'll be hard to make the systemic change necessary to obsolete them. Some change has to happen at the individual/cultural level as well. You can't impose that from the top down. So I think the real question is, how else can you shift individuals/culture aside from shame?

Mar 26 at 9:54pmWeb
Show threadlenazun23h ago
@skyfaller I think in the case of clean energy there's been some clear economic incentives. biking is good! electric cars are becoming cheaper! in my opinion LLMs are too cheap for consumers, compared to the cost of running them.in a better world they could be used in actual applications and the price of access would reflect that.
Show threadNelson23h ago

@lzg Clearly there are a lot of benefits to moving the market price closer to the true costs (rarely actually achieved). See the success of congestion pricing in NYC, for example.

But the flip side of that is that rich people get to ignore any cost because they have so much money it doesn't register. It can lead to tensions if poor people can no longer drive into Manhattan while rich people joyride in and out. There are many ways to avoid or reduce such tensions, but it should be considered.