Baldur Bjarnason
“Why does everybody get angry at me whenever I defend a new tech that’s purpose-made to destroy industries, misinform, and pollute the environment?”
A mystery for the fucking ages. First help us stop the harm done by these tools (both the makers and what they make) then you can come back and talk all you want about your vague wishy-washy positive use cases that you use to justify your blatant neophilia
Of course, you will have lost interest by then because it won’t be new anymore
Baldur Bjarnason
Most of the comments I've seen that call for moderation in the discussion of generative models have come from dudes reacting emotionally to hearing criticism of their new favourite toy. They are impossible to reason with because they don't want reason, they want to be flattered for their choices. I don’t have time to flatter somebody that shallow just to find out that they were never going to take the discussion seriously.
Erik Jonker
@baldur I think we can distinguish between the technology neural nets/transformers and how these are applied by some BigTech companies. The technology itself is not ment to destroy industries, it has been around some time.
Rich Felker
@ErikJonker @baldur Spotted one of them 👆
Baldur Bjarnason
@ErikJonker Not “some”. It’s pretty much all of big tech. And given that only big tech cos have the resources to build and roll out LLM-based products at scale—every small outfit is using a model made by a big tech co under the hood—the distinction is pretty much moot. All of this is only getting funding because they think it can destroy jobs and industries and let them loot the remains.
Rich Felker
@bmaxv @baldur This is like saying that skript kiddies running mass untargeted automated exploit scripts are good because they're revealing that everything is insecure shit.
WE ALREADY KNOW THAT. Making everything break while we try to fix what little we can is not doing anyone a service. It's just being an asshole.
Same with "AI".
Baldur Bjarnason
It's impossible for me to tell over Gore's Internet whether you, Clever McSmartypants, are genuinely trying to have a nuanced discussion of the pros and cons of the tech or are just a hurt manbaby reacting defensively and since the whiny toddlers outnumber the nuanced thinkers by several orders of magnitude, most people online are going to treat both the same, with good reason
bmaxv
@baldur My argument "pro" AI, particularly when it comes to serious applications like journalism and science, is that it reveals a weaknesses in current approaches.
If a homework, "proof of skill" or publication paper can be written by AI, it can't be that significant. Or the process for checking it can't be that good. Or if it can be useful, it's just not worth doing that by hand anymore.
And yes, that's destroying an industry to some degree.
Doesn't solve the licensing/Art question though.
Baldur Bjarnason
In the absence of functioning regulation of the tech industry in the US, the only mechanism we have to mitigate the harms of generative models is mass action, which is a blunt instrument that doesn’t allow for nuance
Regulation is how risky products get into wide use. That’s what it’s for. Without regulation, mockery and boycotts are the only mechanism available to us that have any hope of working
Rich Felker
@bmaxv @baldur It doesn't get more investment to fix because the dudes with all the money are gleeful that the damage is happening.
bmaxv
Close, but not exactly.
I want to say it like: "there are already hundreds of script kiddies causing massive damage, but now there are ten of them that have become so efficient, they do 200% of the damage the rest of the are already doing."
I'm not calling the damage "good".
I'm calling the threat more extreme, warranting more attention and investment to prevent it.
Aral Balkan
@baldur :110:
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