i am so tired of "ethical concerns aside" being a phrase i see every single time someone tries to defend the use of LLMs.
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every conversation about the potential usefulness of AI, divorced from ethical concerns, is just this dril tweet
@nicuveo
Or discussions about the benefits of zombie bites. -
@davey_cakes@mastodon.ie @nicuveo@tech.lgbt @MaddieM4@raphus.social
Love the hate.
I was unemployed, miserable, separated from my partner, and on the verge of Bad Actions
. Then I got a job that pays okay for where I live, was able to import my partner, pay off a good chunk of my credit, and get my health into a stable state.
Not because of AI, but because I spent my time obsessively learning about information security for a years or so. AI, however, is a pre-requisite for working where I do, because of severe understaffing.
At the same time, I can't afford to lose this job, because I'd soon go back to the previous state of affairs. Turns out, to nobody's surprise, nobody else is willing to pay for my food, medicine, or shelter.
Are you? Or, are you willing to provide free labor for my employer so I can quit using LLMs to get my work done?Just catching up on these messages now. I read some stuff between the lines in your original post, and came in guns blazing, but that's not what this situation needed. I'm sorry for what you're going through. I'm unemployed right now myself. I worry almost every day that my partner will lose her job before I get the surgery that'll let me work again. We're not so different.
I said a lot of "planet health" reasons LLMs suck, but I think the important thing in this context was actually the last one: collective bargaining power. This world *does* have enough resources to go around, but the people at the top with the power to hoard don't have a willingness to share. They are why the rest of us get a musical chairs, you-or-me economy, fighting each other over the scraps.
LLMs exist not to fix the understaffing problem, but to create and enable it. But it's a fair question where that leaves you as an individual actor, and I want to give you an honest and useful answer.
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i am so tired of "ethical concerns aside" being a phrase i see every single time someone tries to defend the use of LLMs. fuck that! ethical concerns front and fucking center! it is very revealing that tech is currently in such a state that the quiet part can be said out loud without any pushback.
@nicuveo Ethical concerns aside, what is the problem with punching AI CEOs in the face?
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Just catching up on these messages now. I read some stuff between the lines in your original post, and came in guns blazing, but that's not what this situation needed. I'm sorry for what you're going through. I'm unemployed right now myself. I worry almost every day that my partner will lose her job before I get the surgery that'll let me work again. We're not so different.
I said a lot of "planet health" reasons LLMs suck, but I think the important thing in this context was actually the last one: collective bargaining power. This world *does* have enough resources to go around, but the people at the top with the power to hoard don't have a willingness to share. They are why the rest of us get a musical chairs, you-or-me economy, fighting each other over the scraps.
LLMs exist not to fix the understaffing problem, but to create and enable it. But it's a fair question where that leaves you as an individual actor, and I want to give you an honest and useful answer.
@phil @davey_cakes @nicuveo This problem doesn't get better by providing the owner class with different unethical free labor. I think you and I both know that. And you might also be able to guess that the "individual actor" part is a clue, or bait, or whatever you like to call it - that one person acting alone can't accomplish much other than getting themself fired, but that's not the only framing available, it's just the only box the owner class wants us to do our thinking inside.
If it's possible for you to quietly coordinate with your coworkers to start a union (so that *together* you can demand an end to understaffing), I recommend it. If you can quietly look for other jobs (especially union ones) while reducing your effort at this one, that's a good idea too. That might mean looking outside your field, like I'll be doing when I pursue work again, even though it means I'll be paid less than I used to. You're in a terrible position, and might need to swim in place for awhile, but I hope you find an exit..
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Just catching up on these messages now. I read some stuff between the lines in your original post, and came in guns blazing, but that's not what this situation needed. I'm sorry for what you're going through. I'm unemployed right now myself. I worry almost every day that my partner will lose her job before I get the surgery that'll let me work again. We're not so different.
I said a lot of "planet health" reasons LLMs suck, but I think the important thing in this context was actually the last one: collective bargaining power. This world *does* have enough resources to go around, but the people at the top with the power to hoard don't have a willingness to share. They are why the rest of us get a musical chairs, you-or-me economy, fighting each other over the scraps.
LLMs exist not to fix the understaffing problem, but to create and enable it. But it's a fair question where that leaves you as an individual actor, and I want to give you an honest and useful answer.
@MaddieM4@raphus.social @davey_cakes@mastodon.ie @nicuveo@tech.lgbt
Yeah I'm 100% on board with what you're saying, but from where I'm standing, I don't think it's the users who should be demonized - if I want to eat, I have to keep working, and this is now a normal tool that nearly everyone's using, at least in my workplace.
I'd rather see more collective pushback against increasing demands vs. compensation.
The work I do would normally (i.e. 2-3 years ago) cost $200-300k minimum to staff, but I'm at $60k and barely functioning because of the cognitive overload.
But I can't quit, because hahahaha health and bills. HA. HA. -
@phil @davey_cakes @nicuveo This problem doesn't get better by providing the owner class with different unethical free labor. I think you and I both know that. And you might also be able to guess that the "individual actor" part is a clue, or bait, or whatever you like to call it - that one person acting alone can't accomplish much other than getting themself fired, but that's not the only framing available, it's just the only box the owner class wants us to do our thinking inside.
If it's possible for you to quietly coordinate with your coworkers to start a union (so that *together* you can demand an end to understaffing), I recommend it. If you can quietly look for other jobs (especially union ones) while reducing your effort at this one, that's a good idea too. That might mean looking outside your field, like I'll be doing when I pursue work again, even though it means I'll be paid less than I used to. You're in a terrible position, and might need to swim in place for awhile, but I hope you find an exit..
@MaddieM4@raphus.social @davey_cakes@mastodon.ie @nicuveo@tech.lgbt Yeah, union won't work because we're all remote. I'm in EU, we have staff in Asia and Africa as well. Not to mention I'm hired via PEO.
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@MaddieM4@raphus.social @davey_cakes@mastodon.ie @nicuveo@tech.lgbt Yeah, union won't work because we're all remote. I'm in EU, we have staff in Asia and Africa as well. Not to mention I'm hired via PEO.
@phil @davey_cakes @nicuveo Remote isn't automatically a dealbreaker for unions. I was actually a union leader at my second job while working remotely.
But I'll also admit, the level of spread you're talking about makes it tricky at best, since you're trying to bind together a crowd of people who don't necessarily come with a lot of cultural affinity to start with, who are at least as scared of unemployment as you are.
Your current job is a very rough place to try to make things happen, and will likely just keep squeezing harder over time. So if I were in your shoes and trying to figure out a plan for the future that didn't feel so day-by-day, draining, and desperate, I'd focus my effort on trying to find someone else to work for. If it takes awhile, that's okay, but you deserve better than being underpaid, overworked, unbenefited, and forced to use the LLMs that are making those problems widespread globally. I really do believe that.
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every conversation about the potential usefulness of AI, divorced from ethical concerns, is just this dril tweet
@nicuveo, funny enough I was about to make the same argument, except I wanted to use speed limits.
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@phil @davey_cakes @nicuveo Remote isn't automatically a dealbreaker for unions. I was actually a union leader at my second job while working remotely.
But I'll also admit, the level of spread you're talking about makes it tricky at best, since you're trying to bind together a crowd of people who don't necessarily come with a lot of cultural affinity to start with, who are at least as scared of unemployment as you are.
Your current job is a very rough place to try to make things happen, and will likely just keep squeezing harder over time. So if I were in your shoes and trying to figure out a plan for the future that didn't feel so day-by-day, draining, and desperate, I'd focus my effort on trying to find someone else to work for. If it takes awhile, that's okay, but you deserve better than being underpaid, overworked, unbenefited, and forced to use the LLMs that are making those problems widespread globally. I really do believe that.
@MaddieM4@raphus.social @davey_cakes@mastodon.ie @nicuveo@tech.lgbt I'm very aware of that. Very. First, I need to get this brain-fog gone. I genuinely have trouble thinking straight. Thus the PTO.
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@indigoparadox @nicuveo He says he is pro-breathalyzers in cars: "I think that if someone is convicted of driving under the influence, or something close to that, it is legitimate to attach a sensor-driven kill switch to stop per from driving while inebriated.", but the fact he links to a campaign against such things is pretty confusing.
@mrotteveel isn't he saying there that he is only for breathalysers if someone has been convicted before, but not everyone by default?
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@mrotteveel isn't he saying there that he is only for breathalysers if someone has been convicted before, but not everyone by default?
@lizbian Probably, but that is not how it reads at first glance.
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i am so tired of "ethical concerns aside" being a phrase i see every single time someone tries to defend the use of LLMs. fuck that! ethical concerns front and fucking center! it is very revealing that tech is currently in such a state that the quiet part can be said out loud without any pushback.
@nicuveo I am increasingly convinced Anthropic are engaged in an intentional effort to bastardise the very concept of ethics when discussing AI so they can kill it and wear it's skin the way Murray Rothbard did to Libertarianism.
'No need to worry about the ethics of AI, I read an interview with a person from Anthropic and they have 3 highly ethical people discussing the ethics of AI, working in an ethical soundproof broom cupboard so it's all covered!'
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@indigoparadox @nicuveo Seems like he is a quantum state where he is both for and against breathalyzers in cars.
@mrotteveel Schrodinger's toot.
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@nicuveo "Ethical concerns aside". What does AI even do other than produce slop and make people reliant on technology. In like 90% of cases it is a net negative or does no good. That means when we add ethical concerns BACK in we have lost the plot and Gen AI should die in a hole and burn in the underworld.
What does AI even do other than produce slop and make people reliant on technology
It allows a blind creature, who has to operate a Linux installation without working speech synthesis (because the maintainers messed that up and didn't care about accessibility), even attempt to debug the mess in the first place and have an operational, accessible machine:
Want to debug it?
You can’t—because you can’t hear anything.
So you grab your phone, take a picture of the screen, feed it to an image captioning AI, and hope it tells you whether the error dialog says “Audio device unavailable” or “Session startup failed.”Speaking about the reliance on technology, yes, some creatures have to rely on technology, like wheelchairs, pacemakers, etc. as well to be able to live.
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What does AI even do other than produce slop and make people reliant on technology
It allows a blind creature, who has to operate a Linux installation without working speech synthesis (because the maintainers messed that up and didn't care about accessibility), even attempt to debug the mess in the first place and have an operational, accessible machine:
Want to debug it?
You can’t—because you can’t hear anything.
So you grab your phone, take a picture of the screen, feed it to an image captioning AI, and hope it tells you whether the error dialog says “Audio device unavailable” or “Session startup failed.”Speaking about the reliance on technology, yes, some creatures have to rely on technology, like wheelchairs, pacemakers, etc. as well to be able to live.
@aronowski @nicuveo That's fair. If you need AI for something like that I won't judge. Especially when it is just extracting information.
When I said "AI" I meant more of Generative AI like Claude or ChatGPT.
If someone needs technology for something that's fine too, but some people are losing what they have because they use tech they don't need. Like if a person who 100% can walk uses a wheelchair constantly. Especially when it comes to things like Gen AI.
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@nicuveo Richard Stallman just did this toot opposing breathalyzers in cars: https://mastodon.xyz/@rms/116581752793267275
It's all tied together.
@indigoparadox @nicuveo I think the kill switch he’s opposing is not a breathalyzer but a driver-facing camera that’s supposed to detect “impairment” using some bullshit algorithm. It’s legit creepy and invasive - some cars already have them to beep at you if you stop watching the road while the assisted cruise thing is on. But there’s a bill proposing making them mandatory for all new US cars
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@nicuveo A lot of analyses of drunk driving focus on the deaths and injuries, but they ignore the hidden costs of enforcing driving regulations. In fact the strict regulations create a dependency culture that encourages more drunk driving. /sarcasm
@SecondUniverse @nicuveo Jesus, you are TOO good at that. Please promise to only ever use your powers for good.
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i am so tired of "ethical concerns aside" being a phrase i see every single time someone tries to defend the use of LLMs. fuck that! ethical concerns front and fucking center! it is very revealing that tech is currently in such a state that the quiet part can be said out loud without any pushback.
@nicuveo "aside from all the murdering, Ted Bundy was a pretty good guy!"
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@nicuveo@tech.lgbt I'll gladly stop using LLMs (professionally and personally) provided someone does the same tedious work they do for me at the same cost (i.e. near zero).
Ethics gotta step aside when 'I have to eat' and 'I can't think straight' is the cause. -
every conversation about the potential usefulness of AI, divorced from ethical concerns, is just this dril tweet
