677: I Accept the Battery Costhttps://atp.fm/677

[starling@keyboards.social]

@atpfm

Skipped ahead to the AI ethics chapter. I think it is important for you all to try this kind of stuff and report on it, but every bit of reporting you do on it should be explaining the horrors of the system. Otherwise you’re whitewashing their crimes and are complicit in the creation of their technofascist state.

It is only inevitable if everyone goes along with it, especially people with such a large platform as y’all. The people have power if we participate in collective action!

[rmorey@mastodon.social]

@atpfm I really appreciate the nuance and bridge-building regarding AI in this episode - every day I feel the AI culture war rising in temperature and it scares me…

[jon@det.social]

@atpfm @caseyliss your snowpocalypse stories seem to suggest that you do in fact care very much about the freezing temperature of water outside, Casey

[caseyliss@mastodon.social]

@jon

this is just about the only pro-Celsius argument I’ve heard that wasn’t utter bullshit

[mpbarlow@mastodon.social]

@atpfm The AI ethics section hurt to listen to.
The industrial revolution example: that may yet lead to the end of habitability for large parts of our planet. The negative externalities affecting people right now are presumably not affecting you all that much yet. “There are huge downsides yes, but we need it for our work” does not feel like an ethical argument when you are well-respected folks with an audience, and when these companies have done absolutely nothing in good faith. I’m sorry.

[colman@mastodon.ie]

@siracusa @vmachiel and yet they (and you) will manage to rationalise using it.

[bnys@lasersword.club]

@DanEngler @atpfm

well on one hand we have a coming financial collapse, mass layoffs, and an ecological disaster cheered on by and enriching the most deranged lunatics in the world.

but at least llms write fantastic, creative code that saves time and is verifiably more secure, and they don't burn dumpsters of money doing a middling job at most things. seems like everyone is just making a mountain out of a mole hill

[v600@mastodon.au]

@atpfm I propose the following one true conversion system.

1 mile = 1.5km
1 lb = 0.5kg (always round down to the nearest significant digit) i.e. both 20 and 21lb = 10kg, 350lb = 170kg
75f = 25c (minus 25 and divide by 2 - always round down. 80f also = 25c. Minutes 30 for oven temperature)

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@mpbarlow I think I made all the points you mentioned regarding the industrial revolution on the show. Presumably you also use electricity, manufactured products, etc., despite climate change and other ongoing negative externalities. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism.

[avakining@hachyderm.io]

@siracusa @mpbarlow There’s still less-unethical consumption.

There’s a reason the order is reduce, *then* reuse, *then* recycle. Not creating demand or wastage when it’s not needed is better than just giving up/in.

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@Colman So will you, and everyone else, eventually—for better AND for worse. (See also: electricity, automobiles, modern agriculture, manufactured goods of all kinds, etc.)

[avakining@hachyderm.io]

@v600 @atpfm I mean for miles to kilometres, you just multiply by the golden ratio (or take the next Fibonacci number, so 5 miles ≈ 8 km; 13 mi ≈ 21 km)

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@avakining @mpbarlow I'm not giving up!

[mpbarlow@mastodon.social]

@siracusa I do, but I was born a hundred+ years after those things became an essential part of life.

AI’s not there yet, and I don’t fancy helping it along the way when the people pushing it have neither a plan nor a care to address the problems they openly talk about causing.

I realise I’m being hopelessly naive. I’m just sick of the rich getting richer and the rest of us always having to deal with the fallout.

Anyway, I’ll stop now. Thanks for continuing to make my favourite podcast.

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@jamesnvc @mpbarlow It's barely a choice now, and will be less so as time goes on. (Do you know how many LLMs are active and doing work for you when you use software products and services today? How could you?)

Also, "LLMs" are not inherently immoral or evil. Using, say, image generation in Photoshop using an Adobe model trained exclusively on licensed data is very different than, say, creating nonconsensual sexual abuse material with Grok.

[v600@mastodon.au]

@avakining @atpfm I never knew the golden ratio was exactly 1.5 🤯 you learn something new every day

[fds@mastodon.social]

@atpfm Always her for team fahrenheit. ️

It's good to use the browser that works best for you so not shame there. I'm forced to use Chrome at work and I use Safari at home. I would say my experience is largely the opposite.

However, I’m using content blockers. Is it a slight cheat removing the problem? Maybe, but I wouldn't call the Chrome experience on an ad heavy website great but even if was, so much of the web is ugly and hard to read with the ads. I just would choose to avoid the web tbh

[jamesnvc@social.occasionallycogent.com]

@siracusa @mpbarlow I respectfully disagree, both that it is “barely a choice now”, as well as that believing the choice will decline in the future is a reason to “comply in advance”.

I am also not claiming that they are “inherently” immoral, but I’m talking about all the specific instances that are really being used now, which I’d argue largely are.

[freediverx@mastodon.social]

@siracusa @mpbarlow

[freediverx@mastodon.social]

@siracusa @jamesnvc @mpbarlow
I think for most of us here, when we say we're opposed to “AI” we're not referring to its use where appropriate and useful (e.g. computational photography, etc.) but to the way it's being hyped up to maintain the stock market valuation bubble and to destroy countless jobs that it can't effectively replace—not to mention how it will lead to AI slop destroying the web.

As with industrialization, the main issue is not the tech, but how its benefits are distributed.