I do understand why folx, including many whom I respect and care for, collaborate with the "AI" enemy. I get it, I really do. Collaborators live longer and better than the resistance. If I weren't retired, I might well be collaborating: I am not a brave man, and I love my well-off life.

But damn. "AI" feeds the system, enriches the oligarchy, and if it's not stopped, it will come for you.

Maybe one should live the best life one can until the end, putting the end off by going along.

1/2

But damn. Could I respect myself? Probably: I've rationalized other bad behavior in my life. I know we're all doing the best we can.

But damn. It would feel so dirty, digging my friends' graves, and my own.

Damn.

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@RonJeffries Frankly, I'd do worse things to be able to provide for my family, and there aren't many options out there for software engineers who refuse to use LLMs. In fact, these days there aren't many options out there for software engineers at all.

@RonJeffries Just because one does “the best one can” assumes one cannot do better. More often than not, that’s just that–an assumption..

Seduction comes in many forms … as does control.

Rationalization, is “turning a blind eye” to the truth.

Train your replacement, use AI.

… but then, there is no reason to keep humans alive, is there? Species-ism is a thing.

#life

@RonJeffries All any of us can do is be the best we can be.

If that means taking the cash being thrown away, so be it.
If it means getting close enough to sabotage the system from the inside for the greater good, so be it.

But be the best you can be, and sleep soundly at night. Many cannot.

@thirstybear
We can imagine a sort of declining level of responsibility that one might hold: me, my family, my friends, ..., my country, ..., the world. In that light, learning "AI" to take care of self and family makes a kind of sense.

But part of me thinks that ethics / virtue is more absolute than that, that "wrong is wrong". In *that* light, working with it is just plain wrong.

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I get why people choose as they do, and grant that in different shoes, I, too, might fall into that group.

And I think it would be immoral of me to do so. Wouldn't be my first sin, but it might be my worst. Then again, I did work at Strategic Air Command ...

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@RonJeffries I am glad you are saying this. Others whom I looked up to go around saying how beautiful the AI emperor's clothes are