jamil
KettAm I Just Being A Vegan About It
I posted. I didn't want my next long-ish blog post to be about this, but it has been taking up a lot of space in my mind for the past few weeks. Let's talk about it.
camposhadn't thought of the vegan analogy but honestly it very much does feel like that
I'm gonna be real, this framing really helped me understand a few things better. It's the indirection that makes people comfortable. It's the ability for them to be able to tell themselves they're not doing anything wrong while supporting a system that does everything wrong. Capitalism word.
iwein
💯% BꞮG DΣMӨП ΣПΣЯGY™ 𖤐@kett the repetition of "it's not their fault" reminded me of benn jordan today saying (paraphrased) "i don't have spotify as a user, but my music is still on it even though it pays very little, it's just easier for my fans who don't know better" which made me kinda :/
I do feel people find it very tough to take a stand against something even when they do find it morally reprehensible. I'm glad a good few artists pulled the plug on Spotify last year. Including King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. I need to listen to their stuff, maybe. Never looked into them.
Alexia 
@kett regardless, this gave me an angle on the issue that might come in handy; Good post :)
Robert Kingett
V@kett From the perspective of a vegetarian, yeah, the response from LLM-booster folks when I say their slop-generator is bad and evil, actually pretty close to the response I get from meat eaters.
@kett It probably also makes it easier on my end to shrug and move on with my life when they're mad or offended by it - you get use to people taking ethical disagreements as personal insults, after a while. A lot of people hear "The slop-bot is evil" or "eating meat is evil" and parse it as "You are evil.", or respond with an angry rejection, rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from evaluating the claim or considering why one might claim it's evil.
tiger tiger tiger@kett I love your post, and surprisingly I'm on the other side of the argument (despite ethical concerns...), and the parallels are very noticeable.
Here's the plot twist, I went vegetarian (considering vegan) to offset my carbon footprint for the time I experiment with frontier LLMs...🤪
Thanks for sharing your insights on your blog, it really gets me thinking about other ethical or rational "sides" people take, and perhaps how to reach them better... or at least to try and be better myself.
bikesebas@kett
From this perspective, there's a lot of parallels. There's lots of reasons to both go vegan and abstain from LLM usage. Some people are motivated by environmental/climate concerns. Some put ethical concerns first. Some underline better outcomes (health, better code), also because they feel like it's easier to convince people this way than hoping for them to take responsibility for their life choices.
From this perspective, there's a lot of parallels. There's lots of reasons to both go vegan and abstain from LLM usage. Some people are motivated by environmental/climate concerns. Some put ethical concerns first. Some underline better outcomes (health, better code), also because they feel like it's easier to convince people this way than hoping for them to take responsibility for their life choices.
Arthur Dent@kett
Good point!
I am vegetariam, since quite a while.
And I try to avoid AI, whereever possible (I am no programmer).
Both because of ethical reasons, and because I simply don't want to contribute to the System behind.
Good point!
I am vegetariam, since quite a while.
And I try to avoid AI, whereever possible (I am no programmer).
Both because of ethical reasons, and because I simply don't want to contribute to the System behind.
brainwashed by lentils@adamsfan @kett
#vegetarian sounds like #vegetables — but it is really about abducting calves to #breastfeed from their mums and crushing newborn male chicks because they don't lay #eggs.
#vegetarian sounds like #vegetables — but it is really about abducting calves to #breastfeed from their mums and crushing newborn male chicks because they don't lay #eggs.
Kraftwerk-Das Model Collapse@kett I know it's not the point of that post, but I'm reading it at a particularly vulnerable time and my nerves are very worn thin, so.
Let's pleaae not pretend the pandemic is in the past. The virus is less deadly now, and we have vaccines, but there's no cure for or reliable protection against Long Covid, which can uproot/pretty much end your life even if fully vaccinated. I'm affected by it and can very rarely do any work or leave the house.
It's really triggering for me to run into
@kett Covid denialism every day, in content that has absolutely nothing to do with the disease. It's absolutely everywhere and had me screaming at my computer last night when yet another video essay on something totally unrelated shoved that part in.
Pxl Phile@kett I like the points being made in this post.
And yet the comparison is a bit off. Eating meat was half culture-historically required to live a life which continued over hundred thousands of years. Until people got smarter - well: in a way but I digress.
Inventing AI with all the impact in your post wasn't born from selective pressure to survive against the coldness and hunger but a completely new invention and people are pushing the world into a knife with closed eyes. No cultural history, only near-world-ending capitalist moneymaking.
I am vegan because at some point in my life I couldn't turn a blind eye on these things. Like you, I do accept that different people are on different journeys. While I accept people use AI, it doesn't mean I have to keep silent about it.
Aidan
lucasi can't deny that chatbots are doing more evil than good at this point, but at the same time i feek like theres a middleground to be had, much like eating meat, you can still minimize the cost of your consumption (eg. meat sorced from more ethical farms). chatbots can be used productively even if halucination is not hard to come by.
its also important to know that ai is not completely going away anytime soon even with the bubble bursting. (in my opinion) its better to try and play to the chatbots' strengths instead of completely rejecting anything that even comes close to grazing them, like i've seen alot of people do.
tl,dr: a chatbot can be used productively, if you know what youre doing