Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture".
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@tante I, for one, enjoyed the write-up.
As you, I do plenty of things that I either cannot morally or ethically defend or simply am ignorant of the harms of.
For other technology, I am either pressured to use it (by government or similar institutions) or I can at least use it 'for good' (facilitating some other good - in current case, student administration) and also make a living.
For LLMs, I fail to see the redeeming qualities that make the compromise 'worth it'. It's all nett negatives.
@tante My point is that LLMs 'try' (and very often fail) to solve the wrong problem.
Writing all the boilerplate -> should be solved by better frameworks.
Spell check -> I think this is already invented.
Summarize long texts -> Executive summaries.
Produce (verbose) text -> Writing in my view is as much thinking as it is writing - skipping the thinking part is counter-productive. -
Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante chef's kiss: "This also shines through in Cory arguing that we need to “liberate” technology. What a strange idea: Technology doesn’t need liberation, people do."
Thank you for writing this cogent piece.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante Dunno where you got the idea that I have a "libertarian" background. I was raised by Trotskyists, am a member of the DSA, am advising and have endorsed Avi Lewis, and joined the UK Greens to back Polanski.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante There must be something in the air; I think this is something that has been on many folks' minds for a while... not criticisms of Cory, but rather the general cognitive difficulty of reconciling survival in a world far less under our control than we thought it was when our character and values accreted and congealed.
It's a nuanced phenomenon especially for a limited-attention-span world. It's good to see people taking up the challenge. Thanks for this.
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@tante chef's kiss: "This also shines through in Cory arguing that we need to “liberate” technology. What a strange idea: Technology doesn’t need liberation, people do."
Thank you for writing this cogent piece.
@dingemansemark @tante To be fair I assume that was meant in the open source spirit: Technology liberated from corporate control as a vehicle contributing to the liberation of its users and developers.
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@tante Dunno where you got the idea that I have a "libertarian" background. I was raised by Trotskyists, am a member of the DSA, am advising and have endorsed Avi Lewis, and joined the UK Greens to back Polanski.
@pluralistic @tante My impression was, Tante meant this specific argument and the way it is structured, and the way it functions. I hold the both of you in high esteem, and I don't have the impression that he'd somehow characterize anything beyond that argument he discusses.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
That doesn't seem to be the best idea @pluralistic
AI and LLM output is 90% bullshit, and most people don't have the time nor the patience to work out which 10% might actually be useful.
That's completely ignoring the environmental and human impacts of the AI bubble.
Try buying DDR memory, a GPU or an SSD / HDD at the moment.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante “Technology doesn’t need liberation, people do.“ It seems so crystal clear to me.
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@tante My point is that LLMs 'try' (and very often fail) to solve the wrong problem.
Writing all the boilerplate -> should be solved by better frameworks.
Spell check -> I think this is already invented.
Summarize long texts -> Executive summaries.
Produce (verbose) text -> Writing in my view is as much thinking as it is writing - skipping the thinking part is counter-productive.@tofticles @tante @onepict it's a bitter pill to be forced to use a spell checker that until very recently didn't even know how many rs are in "strawberry " (or ls in "blackball").
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That doesn't seem to be the best idea @pluralistic
AI and LLM output is 90% bullshit, and most people don't have the time nor the patience to work out which 10% might actually be useful.
That's completely ignoring the environmental and human impacts of the AI bubble.
Try buying DDR memory, a GPU or an SSD / HDD at the moment.
What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
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@pluralistic @tante My impression was, Tante meant this specific argument and the way it is structured, and the way it functions. I hold the both of you in high esteem, and I don't have the impression that he'd somehow characterize anything beyond that argument he discusses.
> Cory shows his libertarian leanings here...
> Many people criticizing LLMs come from a somewhat leftist (in contrast to Cory’s libertarian) background.
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> Cory shows his libertarian leanings here...
> Many people criticizing LLMs come from a somewhat leftist (in contrast to Cory’s libertarian) background.
This falls into the "you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts" territory.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante Wow, it's weird to me that Doctorow pipes his own writing through a plagiarism machine.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
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@tofticles @tante @onepict it's a bitter pill to be forced to use a spell checker that until very recently didn't even know how many rs are in "strawberry " (or ls in "blackball").
@perigee @tofticles I think @tante captured the difficulties existing and surviving in this world.
I'm still disappointed with Doctorow, especially since he felt the need to get his defence in first.
His choice of wording there was saddening to me. He outsourced his feelings of guilt and judgement on the rest of us.
Whenever I hear or read someone using the term purity anything I feel a mild disappointment. Because I do expect better of our leaders who take the public stage.
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Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante Thanks for putting this into words. Struck me the same way.
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What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
Of course, I am speaking in generalities.
Encouraging the use of LLM's is counterproductive in so many ways, as I highlighted.
Pop a power meter on that LLM adorned PC and let us all know what the power usage looks like with and without your chosen LLM running on a typical task
That's power that generated somewhere, even if it's with renewable energy.
The main issue with LLM's is that they don't encourage critical thinking, in a world which is already suffering from a massive shortage.
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That doesn't seem to be the best idea @pluralistic
AI and LLM output is 90% bullshit, and most people don't have the time nor the patience to work out which 10% might actually be useful.
That's completely ignoring the environmental and human impacts of the AI bubble.
Try buying DDR memory, a GPU or an SSD / HDD at the moment.
@simonzerafa @tante @pluralistic
At best 40% junk, but unless you are so expert you don't need it, you can't know which is plausible rubbish.
Would you play Russian Roulette every day for hours? -
What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?
As to "90% bullshit" - as I wrote, the false positive rate for punctuation errors and typos from Ollama/Llama2 is about 50%, which is substantially better than, say, Google Docs' grammar checker.
@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante
But Google Docs anything is rubbish. -
Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]
Smashing Frames (tante.cc)
@tante Use of the word "neoliberal" in earnest in an essay is an almost infallible sign of nonsense. Certainly it works here.
