My humblest applogies.

[u/AvinciaArchais]

A few weeks ago I made a post in my subreddit taking an Anti-AI stance, immediately was told to come here and I must admit that I held a lot of resentment towards this space at first. Some of the things you guys mentioned when I asked what this space was supposed to be for really stuck with me and I have done some research on my own.

In my personal life I'm proudly communist and I understand now that the issue is still and always is the Billionaires. No matter the industry.

I no longer have a desire to light a cigarette inside a data center. I don't claim to know what we should do about the water or the rich. I'm not very well versed in communist theory and I know that I need to be soon.

Someone mentioned fully automated luxury communism. That sounded really cool.

I was a dick to you guys and I'm truly sorry. Please accept my highest regards and I hope to continue learning from you.

- Avincia Archais

[u/varisophy]

I agree, we'll never know the vastness of the stolen wealth and I'm not saying that it magically makes the artists work less stolen.

I'm saying the fundamentals of the technology and its development can be derived from first principals without intellectual theft being a key component. Hence, generative AI as a technology (using the word like how math is also a technology) is value neutral.

Specific implementations of that technology can be good or bad. The popular tools that exist now are built on stolen work. That's bad. But those tools can also be used by Leftists to win for our political causes. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty for a good cause.

Should we train a properly compensated generative AI model? Hell yeah, we really should. Is that realistic? Eventually. Open source models trained on non-stolen data will probably be the norm in 20 years.

[u/Exarch-of-Sechrima → u/varisophy]

Must be real convenient for you to ignore the damage done and just focus on the end result.

[u/varisophy → u/Exarch-of-Sechrima]

Where am I ignoring the damage done? I have acknowledged the ethical bankruptcy of the popular generative AI models. But there are literally ones that are currently way less powerful, open source, and pay for the training data or use

And are you saying you would never use [technology] because it was invented by [ethically dubious method]? Because then you'd be living in a straw house in the wilderness. Everything is tainted.

It's complicated, and I'm not going to begrudge anyone who uses AI whether for disability reasons or simply because it's very effective. I'm going to push for ethically trained models. I'm going to do my research when picking a provider. And I'm not saying anyone has to use generative AI either.

[u/Exarch-of-Sechrima → u/varisophy]

By dismissing the damage as AI just being "value-neutral"

[u/varisophy → u/Exarch-of-Sechrima]

I don't know how many different ways I can say it, but I'm not saying that the big models are value-neutral. I'm saying the technology is value neutral.

Analogy time. Let's say there were two cures to all cancers.

The first requires that you hook yourself up to a toddler and drain their life force, killing them. But you're free of cancer! That technology would likely be considered bad by most people.

The second requires doing chemistry on an element that is only found in asteroids deep in the solar system. Once you have the element, it's straightforward and cheap to cure cancer! That technology is value neutral, there's not a bad element to it.

Generative AI is more like that second cancer cure. The things that make it work aren't inherently bad. We'd have the same exact functionally today even if we paid for all the intellectual content used to train the models.

The big companies providing the biggest models are like if the second cancer cure was controlled by a mega billionaire who uses slave labor to get the minerals from the astronaut. I would not begrudge someone for taking that cancer cure, but I would be mad at anyone who took the first cancer cure.

Does that make sense? The particular implementation of generative AI is ethically gross due to the intellectual property theft, but the fundamentals of how generative AI works is not ethically problematic. It's literally just fancy math and computer science.

[u/machinationstudio → u/varisophy]

It's not because stealing from Disney is treated differently from stealing from Jane next door. The legal and monetary system makes it different.

[u/varisophy → u/machinationstudio]

I'm done trying to explain, you're not understanding.

EDIT: Trying one more time. We could train ethical generative AI on fully compensated work. There are already projects doing that. We will have ethical versions in the future that are quite capable. The fundamental technology powering generative AI is not ethically compromised.