Anyway, @zkat warned us. Talking about whether or not AI "works" was a trap, and always was. The ethical component is all that matters, and from that analysis alone, the onus is on all of us to reject and oppose AI.

Getting mired into whether or not it "works" is bad praxis in several ways: it de-emphasizes the ethics, it opens up to goalpost shifting about what it means for AI to "work," and it's easier for the boosters to Gish gallop or overwhelm with jargon.

@xgranade One reason many people want to avoid the ethical arguments is because many people won't actually take any action based on ethics. They may claim to have ethics, perhaps even the same ethics you do, but actually changing behavior, holding others accountable, organizing etc. simply doesn't happen.

These things only happen if other considerations come into play.

I don't know how to save our democracy/civilization/biosphere if we can't get people to act on ethics.

@sabrina @xgranade To be fair I don't think it's that easy, the tech industry is forcing workers to use it or get fired, and ordinary people encounter LLMs / generative AI in every product being pushed constantly. For example, every time I open Google Photos they want me to use genAI to make a cartoon of myself or some shit.

Avoiding becoming complicit in slop takes a large amount of effort, beginning with even recognizing something like Google search summaries as slop (one ex-friend refused).

@skyfaller @sabrina @xgranade

Who is looking for spiritual purity to the degree of "I've never even generated a Google search summary"?

I'm sorry I don't buy this.

I think you'd be hard pressed, even on here, to find someone that would get on the case of people unwittingly using genAI toys shoved in their face in the photos app yet stopped when the issues were explained to them.

No, the problem is people will be made aware of the problems and *continue* to use and defend the toys.