Post B51pOWbKjjmMHnJMWG by crazyeddie@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by crazyeddie@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #B3W222HRp5KMQFNqBE by tante@tldr.nettime.org
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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.EDIT: Diskussions under this are fine, but I do not want this to turn into an ad hominem attack to Cory. Be fucking respectful https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/
(DIR) Post #B51n86WhiL7gsKBjbk by hzulla@infosec.exchange
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@tante It's also annoying tone policing: Sure, you can protest against it, but not like *that*, not in a way that inconvenes *me*.
(DIR) Post #B51nJDP4UDPROAurrs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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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.
(DIR) Post #B51nKETrxxgH1Ie5aq by herrLorenz@chaos.social
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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.
(DIR) Post #B51nKElEvNZjtAlxfU by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@herrLorenz @tante > Cory shows his libertarian leanings here...> Many people criticizing LLMs come from a somewhat leftist (in contrast to Cory’s libertarian) background.
(DIR) Post #B51nKFUcCfs69u0COW by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@herrLorenz @tante This falls into the "you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts" territory.
(DIR) Post #B51nL7Zn7e67taq5xY by herrLorenz@chaos.social
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@pluralistic @tante I just spoke about my impression, but didn't lay claim to objective truth. I'll keep reading along. ✌️
(DIR) Post #B51nNSrsvljAVhQ5nE by CJPaloma@mstdn.social
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@pluralistic @herrLorenz @tante that second example goes well into overreach territory, and I can see why you'd be not happy with it. And/but a big part of libertarian appeal is that it does muddy how being "individually free from regulation" can be cast as liberatory. As if individual freedom is all that's needed. "I'm free when there are no regulations" is obviously shallow to lefties, but it (individual freedom) is also a component of why people are lefties, there's real overlap.
(DIR) Post #B51nNTFzU90fiShLMm by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@CJPaloma @herrLorenz @tante There is no virtue in being constrained or regulated per se.Regulation isn't a good unto itself.Regulation that is itself good - drawn up for a good purpose, designed to be administrable, and then competently administered - is good.
(DIR) Post #B51nhzY38XFteovj72 by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@pluralisticFair enough, but that's not the core of the argument @tante made. He had the same complaint for starters (your argument was heavily drenched in 'you ppl are purists' ), but he also makes the valid argument that technology isn't neutral in itself. Open weights based on intellectual theft and forced labor is still a problem. Until we have a discussion on how the weights come to fruitition, LLM's are objectively problematic from an ethical view. That has nothing to do with purism.
(DIR) Post #B51njdwiQLanErFrii by simonzerafa@infosec.exchange
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@tante 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.
(DIR) Post #B51njeFrHAuACED9Ye by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@simonzerafa @tante 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.
(DIR) Post #B51njeTgRlxot6gC6i by simonzerafa@infosec.exchange
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@pluralistic @tante 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.
(DIR) Post #B51njedbqru5NtK7Zw by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@simonzerafa @tante As I wrote (and it seems you haven't read what I wrote, which is weird, because that seems like a good first step if you're going to criticize my conduct), I'm running Ollama on a laptop that doesn't even have a GPU.Its power consumption is comparable to, say, watching a Youtube video.I know this because my laptop is running free software that lets me accurately monitor its activity, and because the model is also free software.
(DIR) Post #B51njf1iPFBaaebN9U by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@simonzerafa @tante Checking for punctuation errors is does not discourage critical thinking. It's weird to laud "critical thinking" and also make this claim.
(DIR) Post #B51noIA8qFSN7tkedE by tante@tldr.nettime.org
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa on this one for example I fully agree with Cory. This is not him having a genAI system write or anything like that.
(DIR) Post #B51oGna7cV9ugAUqwq by dhd6@jasette.facil.services
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@tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa I agree in principle with Cory, but I really wish that he had clarified that:1. Ollama is not an LLM, it's a server for various models, of varying degrees of openness.2. Open weights is not open source, the model is still a black box. We should support projects like OLMO, which are completely open, down to the training data set and checkpoints.3. It's quite difficult to "seize that technology" without using Someone Else's Computer to do so (a.k.a clown/cloud)
(DIR) Post #B51oGnlSwKEVFLnud6 by dhd6@jasette.facil.services
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@tante @pluralistic @simonzerafa But ALSO: using a multi-billion-parameter synthetic text extruding machine to find spelling and syntax errors is a blatant example of "doing everything the least efficient way possible" and that's why we are living on an overheating planet buried under toxic e-waste.If I think about it harder I could probably come up with a more clever metaphor than killing a mosquito with a flamethrower, but you get the idea.
(DIR) Post #B51oGnzI6vI9wEGxBA by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa No. It's like killing a mosquito with a bug zapper whose history includes thousands of years of metallurgy, hundreds of years of electrical engineering, and decades of plastics manufacture.There is literally no contemporary manufactured good that doesn't sit atop a vast mountain of extraneous (to that purpose) labor, energy expenditure and capital.
(DIR) Post #B51oVbi02sv6CRF6g4 by dhd6@jasette.facil.services
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@pluralistic @tante @simonzerafa As always, yes and no. A bug zapper is designed to zap bugs, it is a simple mechanism that does that one thing, and does it well. An LLM is designed to read text and generate more text.That we have decided that the best way to do NLP is to use massively overparameterized word predictors that we have trained using RL to respond to prompts, rather than just, like, doing NLP, is just crazy from an engineering standpoint.Rube Goldberg is spinning in his grave!
(DIR) Post #B51oVbxb6tOeyoXYzQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa Remember when Usenet's backbone cabal worried about someone in Congress discovering that the giant, packet-switched research network that had been constructed at enormous public expense was being used for idle chit chat?The nature of general purpose technologies is that they will be used for lots of purposes.
(DIR) Post #B51oX6jeAuUqiTjEem by dhd6@jasette.facil.services
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@pluralistic @tante @simonzerafa indeed, I guess the question is whether the scale of the *ahem* waste, fraud and abuse *ahem* of resources that LLMs seem to imply, even in benign use cases like yours, is out of line with historical precedent or not.Am I an old man yelling at a cloud?No, it's the children who are wrong!
(DIR) Post #B51oX6tZa0R7DGNA80 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa Rockets were literally perfected in Nazi slave labor camps.
(DIR) Post #B51oXPQ8hfBKfTkQO8 by elle@weathered-steel.social
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@pluralistic @dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa what a shit take dude. rockets being perfected by nazis, project paperclip, and now a neonazi in charge of one of the largest space tech programs on the planet, along with a bullshit generating LLM.so yeah, maybe this is all fash tech, and maybe taking a stand of "I'm not touching that shit with a thousand-meter pole" is not "neoliberal purity culture". and ollama of all things? the shit pumped out by fucking Meta? are you shitting me?
(DIR) Post #B51oXPbU1UFvEf3U4O by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@elle @dhd6 @tante @simonzerafa "You used the wrong open model because I don't like the company that made it" is the actual definition of nonsense purity culture.
(DIR) Post #B51oj08cWrNxjM55P6 by clintruin@mastodon.social
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante "What is the incremental environmental damage created by running an existing LLM locally on your own laptop?"I dunno. But how about a couple of million people? The person who coins the term 'enshittification' defends LLM. Just...wow. We truly are fucked. Let's all do what Cory does!☠️ Meanwhile:https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20737314952&gbraid=0AAAAADgO_miNIDzn-BdCIXzZ6r87g94-L&gclid=Cj0KCQiA49XMBhDRARIsAOOKJHbvIzPACe0EdEyWK86TnS7rNlnUaePKc5y22qT0ZsfqUeGDe72zzc0aAhFFEALw_wcB#doomed #ClimateChange
(DIR) Post #B51oj0Mng8jCRKiPVQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@clintruin @simonzerafa @tante Which "couple million people" suffer harm when I run a model on my laptop?
(DIR) Post #B51ok6wGjHVJ71phEO by clintruin@mastodon.social
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante Missed the point, sir.When one person does it...no big deal.When a couple of million people do it...well, see the MIT article above.
(DIR) Post #B51ok758CKapYVym2q by clintruin@mastodon.social
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante Subhead quote from the article:"The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next."
(DIR) Post #B51ok7FPa6og4Omz4K by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@clintruin @simonzerafa @tante You are laboring under a misapprehension.I will reiterate my question, with all caps for emphasis.Which "couple million people" suffer harm when I run a model ON MY LAPTOP?
(DIR) Post #B51okr6770iAGsnCxk by clintruin@mastodon.social
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante I'll reiterate my response.When you *alone* do it...no big deal.When a couple of million do it ON THEIR OWN LAPTOPS...problem.
(DIR) Post #B51okrG2W6eQlfR8Qy by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@clintruin @simonzerafa @tante OK, sorry, i was under the impression that I was having a discussion with someone who understands this issue.You are completely, empirically, technically wrong.Checking the punctuation on a document on your laptop uses less electricity than watching a Youtube video.
(DIR) Post #B51omcId6OUMxGUF6W by clintruin@mastodon.social
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@pluralistic @simonzerafa @tante Fair enough, Cory. You're gonna do what you want regardless of my accuracy or inaccuracy anyway. And maybe I've misunderstood this. The same way many many will.But visualize this:"Hey...I just read Cory Doctrow uses an LLM to check his writing.""Really?""Yeah, it's true.""Cool, maybe what I've read about ChatGPT is wrong too..."
(DIR) Post #B51omcXWD2OlhRS8JM by pluralistic@mamot.fr
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@clintruin @simonzerafa @tante This is an absurd argument."I just read about a thing that is fine, but I wasn't paying close attention, so maybe something bad is good?"Come.On.
(DIR) Post #B51p89QF9CoRlTJfoe by algernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club
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@pluralistic @clintruin @simonzerafa @tanteWhich "couple million people" suffer harm when I run a model ON MY LAPTOP?Anyone who's hosting a website, and is getting hammered by the bots that seek content to train the models on. Those of us are the ones who continue getting hurt.Whether you run it locally or not, makes little difference. The models were trained, and training very likely involved scraping, and that continues to be a problem to this day. Not because of ethical concerns, but technical ones: a constant 100req/sec 24/7, with over 2.5k req/sec waves may sound little in this day and age, but at around 2.5k req/sec (sustained for about a week!), my cheap VPS's two vCPUs are bogged down trying to deal with all the TLS handshakes, let alone serving anything.That is a cost many seem to forget. It costs bandwidth, CPU, and human effort to keep things online under the crawler DDoS - which often will require cold, hard cash too, to survive.Ask Codeberg or LWN how they fare under crawler load, and imagine someone who just wants to have their stuff online having to deal with similar abuse.That is the suffering you enable when using any LLM model, even locally.
(DIR) Post #B51pJwXyqKLhJ9Yfrc by osma@mas.to
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Good critique. And I say this, as well as like your arguments, while also believing there are certain domains where LLMs do have reasonable utility value - nowhere near the value required to make OpenAI, Antrophic or the rest profitable, but some value nonetheless. @tante
(DIR) Post #B51pOWbKjjmMHnJMWG by crazyeddie@mastodon.social
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@tante Frankly, I don't think there are any ethical concerns with how he's using it.The reason AI is a violation when it trains on openly available data and then outputs similar stuff is that it's creating derivative works. Something that reads everything produced by man and then uses that information to score similar output does NOT. It's completely fair use and it's a GOOD application of AI.IFF all the evil crap that the people who made it are up to wasn't a concern there'd be none.
(DIR) Post #B51pVvxspjXwyeOLtQ by endolexi@vivaldi.net
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@tante I completely agree with your view on us being messy, imperfect beings. And while many take such a realization as a free ticket to shrug themselves into deep cynicism, I deeply appreciate people who tend to try a little harder than most to do the right thing, and own every compromise they decide to make as what it is.Once we start warping our analysis and critical thinking to match our actions instead of trying our best to make our actions fit the former, we'll quickly start losing any ability to act with accountability.
(DIR) Post #B51pYZ60JftUv2RdgG by geniodiabolico@mastodon.geniodiabolico.synology.me
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@tante I am pursuing what I am calling my "AI Tea Party". It's origin was in putting family birth certificates in a self-hosted tool and realizing I didn't know if that meant they would end up in a training set somewhere. That began a process of me purging direct links to any LLM. Next step is switching to tools that do not use any LLM in their operation. After that is switching from suppliers of anything that use LLMs to operate.This is a Sisyphean task since these round to **fucking everything** but I'm motivated to pursue it anyway.
(DIR) Post #B5FlIKEo6w1SbJ0CRs by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@jeffcliff I never said that copying is intellectual theft. Not abiding licenses is. Says legal experts.If forced labour is a problem on its own, it's also a problem when used to generate mathematical constants."Until we have a discussion on HOW the weights etc" is an integral and important part of my post. You'd make more sense when you'd reply to the point instead of trying to contradict things I never said in the first place.https://jskfellows.stanford.edu/theft-is-not-fair-use-474e11f0d063@pluralistic @tante
(DIR) Post #B5HlIoCz4N2lrwIeDA by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@jeffcliff I hope you do understand the difference between learning and downloading content for the purpose of building deep neural networks with transformers aimed at creating derived works for commercial purposes. You don't have to call it theft if that rubs your sensitive soul the wrong way. It is what it is, and comparing that with being part of a bittorrent swarm is ridiculous. As you know.
(DIR) Post #B5K7rKRoIXvx0i1Iqe by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@jeffcliff I reckon you're not a native English speaker, but "learning" using your brain cells and "training a neural network" are not the same thing. The "neural" in NN is not refering to actual neurons. BTW: if I learn a song by heart and I play a derived work in public, I have to pay for the rights to use it. Not when I sing it in my own home I don't. Surprising you have strong opinions yet no sense of nuance.
(DIR) Post #B5M5bF68bnmEC40LE8 by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@jeffcliff define "permission culture"
(DIR) Post #B5OEP1jjkQ3PBOhFHU by JorisMeys@mstdn.social
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@jeffcliff oh wait, that's the CC guy. So yeah, I've read his stuff. That's why I refer time and again to "commercial use". Ever read the licenses of the organisation he founded?You know what the NC stand for? The SA? How do you think your "learning"(as in copying stuff to train big collections of logistic regression to sell back) complies to that stuff? Asking for a friend.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/