Mastodawn

Scott Jenson Apr 5

Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber? This post from @carnage4life has me questioning our community. The Mastodon team is finally getting some traction, the product improvements are increasing, The #UX is improving, yet people posting on multiple platforms are making comments like this. It's confusing.

I *know* people here don't want this to be a classic social media-clone but we'd *like* journalists to be here right? They aren't coming with examples like this!

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

@scottjenson so, I find this discussion disappointing for a few reasons.

The biggest one is this: all three platforms that @carnage4life calls out are connected via ActivityPub. They are on one inter-network.

In theory, he should not need three different accounts, with three different follower groups. He should have one account, and all 103k followers (minus duplicates!) could be part of the same conversation, on whatever server platform they use.

In practice, few people do this today.

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

As technologists we need to do more to smooth those junctures and make them less of a barrier. I hope in a few years when @carnage4life looks at his network, it feels more integrated and less separated.

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

@scottjenson @carnage4life on the topic of AI, I find the abusive conversations on the Fediverse pretty dispiriting. People I like and respect have worked themselves into the position that use of AI is an inexcusable sin, and that anyone who uses AI merits harassment and abuse. Given that 85% of developers use or plan to use AI (Stack Overflow poll), that means a huge number of tech people getting brigaded by our anti-AI squad.

@evan @panos @scottjenson @carnage4life Two things can be true at the same time:

- Using LLMs is unacceptable
- We should not abuse individuals for using LLMs, both because that is ineffective at stopping LLM use, and because everyone does harmful things to survive capitalism

The real problem is when people deny the harms, or decide to ignore the harms because of "inevitability" etc. It's understandable that you want the thing you're doing to not be harmful, but wishing won't make it so.

@skyfaller I don't think that using LLMs is unacceptable. I don't buy the "built on stolen property" argument for this, every developer ever has searched for how to do something in stack overflow etc, I don't know why LLMs shouldn't be trained the same way in order to automate work for us. I get the climate impact argument, but again, flying with airplanes has much more of an impact, but it is normalized by now, practically nobody will tell you it's unacceptable to visit a foreign country by plane. @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson

@panos @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson This is what I'm talking about. You're both minimizing/denying harms and saying they don't matter. This is one of the biggest problems with LLMs, they turn people into apologists for the fossil fuel industry because they don't want to think they're helping destroy the world.

*If* flying is more harmful, that's no excuse. There's always something more harmful until you reach the top, and then the excuse will be it's too important or too difficult to stop.

@skyfaller if flying is more harmful, and one still flies, then there is no convincing argument that a behaviour less harmful by orders or magnitude is absolutely unacceptable.

@panos @carnage4life @scottjenson

@evan @panos @carnage4life @scottjenson I do not concede that LLMs are "orders of magnitude" less harmful than flying. Also I do not fly.

Anyone dismissing LLM harms doesn't understand the scale of the climate crisis or of LLMs. Sadly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I can't force this understanding onto anyone in a few toots, they would have to want to understand, when the industry requires LLMs if you want to eat.

Scott Jenson Apr 5

@skyfaller @evan @panos
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are ethically trained models (apertus from the goverment of Switzerland comes to mind) as well as many open source small language models that run locally and do not burn down the planet.

I'm with you, the large foundational models are a crime and horrible and shouldn't be used. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss local, open, and ethical models.

o lаvrоvsky Apr 7

Thanks @scottjenson for the props. Just a quick correction: #Apertus was trained by a research consortium on publicly funded infrastructure, but is not government-run.

Let me know if you're interested in knowing more about that 'bathwater'.

Open Risk Apr 9

is there a conceptual analysis of factors behind energy costs for developing LLM's. E.g., as function of "size" (working assumption that this a relevant metric of "usability" 🤣 )

I am curious to what degree there is a measurable impact from "urgency" to iterate fast, capture markets, IPO or whatever, versus slower (and lower energy?) hardware options.

@skyfaller I believe that (further) ecological descruction is sadly unavoidable under capitalism. No matter how more ecologically some of us try to live, those who profit from this will only see any climate gains from our behavior as a chance to do even more damage on their own. I don't mean that this means that everything is acceptable, I also do what I can from other aspects, I just don't believe that I am responsible for the climate crisis and that I/we could avert it, sorry, you can't guilt trip me into this, that's victim blaming and thanks but no. @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

@skyfaller My work has been up until recently building software to make greenhouse gas inventories. I am well aware of the causes of the climate crisis, and I can tell you categorically that AI is not a significant one. You've already seen my math on the topic, but I can share the links again if you need them.

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

@skyfaller AI is projected to rise to as much as 1/3 of all IT emissions by 2030, so about 0.3% of global emissions. Air travel is about 3.5% of global emissions. That's an order of magnitude.

Evan Prodromou Apr 5

@skyfaller for individuals, an hour of flight can emit about 1kg CO2. An hour of LLM use on a dirty grid emits 0.01kg of CO2.

idlestate's garrulous side Apr 6

@evan
@skyfaller

this is whataboutism

Air travel is a relatively mature industry, but putting "graphics" cards in data centers, and not just graphics cards but the highest end ones that use approximately All The World's RAM is quite new in comparison & whose growth is being flogged at the highest levels.

so, that 0.3% is an addition to our carbon use. I doubt airline carbon use has grown anything like that in a similar time frame.

Evan Prodromou Apr 6

@emittingstate @skyfaller it's not whataboutism. We are in the middle of a real climate crisis. The things that are causing this crisis are not AI -- they're gas cars, red meat, rice cultivation, cement production. Telling people that AI use is singularly unacceptable because of its effects on climate change, but accepting all these other behaviors, is a lie.

idlestate's garrulous side Apr 6

there is a tremendous difference between "replace things we have used for millenia" (3 of the 4) and "slow down or even stop this thing we all did quite well without in very recent memory"

idlestate's garrulous side Apr 6

I mean, @skyfaller already told you he doesn't fly and you come back with this bit about accepting it being a lie?

your tone policing about "abuse" on the topic rings ever more hollow

@emittingstate @evan Not that this should matter, but:

* My family is car free, and I refuse to get in cars except in life-threatening emergencies (complicated by my recent baby for whom anything can be life-threatening)
* I have been a vegetarian my whole life (second generation)
* I buy dryland rice exclusively now (shame there aren't more suppliers, but I do my part)
* I... haven't poured concrete? Not sure I get points for not doing construction

I dunno, I care about all these issues.