It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp I think those doing it(atleast here and the ones I've read), are evaluating the usefulness of the technology by itself.
The point is not to throw away the ethics, but to understand if the technology is worth it at all.
If so, an ethical implementation, e.g. a coding LLM that trains on and generates boilerplate can be considered.
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp I understand that your main point is that the moral and ethical problems alone are enough to stay away from LLMs, but are you also making the secondary point that LLMs are obviously useful for people's work?
I ask because in your analogy the answer is that yes, the immoral and unethical practice of breaking and entering actually would be useful for acquiring people's stuff.
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My dude, if there are obvious moral and ethical implications, how are you able to "put them aside" so easily? I just don't get it
@Joshsharp Well, I see it as a manner of approaching things that's similar to your typical anti-social politician. -
It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp Today I needed a network diagram. I never liked drawing on a computer. It is a mindless and annoying task.
Instead, I drew it roughly on paper. Then took a picture, uploaded it to Gemini, and told Gemini to make it look neat and professional. What I got back was done after one spelling correction.
What are the moral and ethical implications of that? It definitely did work from a pragmatic perspective.
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@Joshsharp I understand that your main point is that the moral and ethical problems alone are enough to stay away from LLMs, but are you also making the secondary point that LLMs are obviously useful for people's work?
I ask because in your analogy the answer is that yes, the immoral and unethical practice of breaking and entering actually would be useful for acquiring people's stuff.
@oantolin the analogy is not meant to be read as literally as that
But if you want to be literal, I think it does fit - LLMs and breaking and entering do both give you stuff, at the cost of harms to others, and you don't have a lot of control over what that stuff is... Probably it's mostly pretty commonplace stuff. And if you keep doing it, eventually there won't be anything valuable left to steal -
My dude, if there are obvious moral and ethical implications, how are you able to "put them aside" so easily? I just don't get it
@Joshsharp
I would say we all (industrial countries, middle-class) have years of practice in putting aside moral and ethical implications of our way of life. AI is just another instance of the same problem.
In our wealth and our perceived superiority, we convince one another that we have a right to prosperity at the expense of others and cling to our privileges. Our media, politics, culture, and lifestyle enable this cognitive dissonance. Fuel by greed and capitalism. -
@Joshsharp computers make copying near-free. LLMs are just another step in that. They bring no new dilemmas.
@StOnSoftware @Joshsharp Well, they spew out junk data while consuming huge amounts of electricity and cooling water. Freely copying is one thing, jacking up people's electricity bills while further heating the climate is quite another.
Using an LLM instead of your head is like using a Learjet to commute to work.
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp like in ‚Moral and ethics aside, pocket size nuclear bombs are really fascinating‘
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@StOnSoftware @Joshsharp Well, they spew out junk data while consuming huge amounts of electricity and cooling water. Freely copying is one thing, jacking up people's electricity bills while further heating the climate is quite another.
Using an LLM instead of your head is like using a Learjet to commute to work.
@LukefromDC @Joshsharp also that is nothing new. The scale of it is caused by lack of enforcement of anti-monopoly law
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My dude, if there are obvious moral and ethical implications, how are you able to "put them aside" so easily? I just don't get it
@Joshsharp It's simple, they said that to forestall a tiresome lecture.
For training coding AIs, anything with a liberal license is on board with it according to the license. At least as far as that goes (most of github's contents...) there aren't any "moral and ethical implications".
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp there is genuine value in figuring out what attracts people to bad things and how you yourself might be attracted to bad things. Knowing the risks is an important part of mental hygiene, and also permits one to make nuanced arguments about why other people shouldn't do those bad things.
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@Joshsharp
Honest answer: The same way that I'm writing this on a phone which both in the production process and as a software-social ecosystem has obvious moral and ethical implications. Or how I use retirement investment funds which likely prop up the price of many terrible corporations. Nothing's perfect and we make imperfect choices of balancing comfort of life with the world impact every single day.@viraptor @Joshsharp that’s a fair point. The slight difference to me is that if smart phones were replaced with Nokia bricks tomorrow, there would be a bit of an impact and adjustment to make that’d take time, whereas I think if all LLM chatbots ceased tomorrow, there would be little impact at all for the vast majority of folk, so we are not at all at a stage with LLM where they are indispensable and who knows when or if we will be for the average person?
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@Joshsharp "Putting aside the moral and ethical implications, don't you think I'd look hot wearing these conflict diamonds?"
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My dude, if there are obvious moral and ethical implications, how are you able to "put them aside" so easily? I just don't get it
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
@Joshsharp it can be, but you wanna make sure your neighbors have valuables to find otherwise you're wasting your time tearing through all their possessions for nothing.
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It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."
Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."
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@Joshsharp
Honest answer: The same way that I'm writing this on a phone which both in the production process and as a software-social ecosystem has obvious moral and ethical implications. Or how I use retirement investment funds which likely prop up the price of many terrible corporations. Nothing's perfect and we make imperfect choices of balancing comfort of life with the world impact every single day. -
@Joshsharp It's simple, they said that to forestall a tiresome lecture.
For training coding AIs, anything with a liberal license is on board with it according to the license. At least as far as that goes (most of github's contents...) there aren't any "moral and ethical implications".
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@hopeless you're quite wrong: all free software licenses at the very least require retaining attribution.
and of course you chose ignoring all other extractive aspects of building the large commercial models.
I am not required (by copyright law rather than the license...) to attribute squat if I read, eg, MIT code and use the ideas I saw in there to write something different. Just like there's no attribution for container_of in the Linux kernel despite the idea came from elsewhere.
> and of course you chose ignoring all other extractive aspects of building the large commercial models.
Is there something specific you have in mind from this handwaving dark muttering I should care about?
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