Oof ouch

Chiming in here:

Most of the arguments against ai - the most common ones being plagiarism, the ecological impact - are not things people making the arguments give a flying fuck about in any other area.

Having issues with the material the model is trained on isn’t an issue with ai - it’s an issue with unethical training practices, copyright law, capitalism. These are all valid complaints, by the way, but they have nothing to do with the underlying technology. Merely with the way it’s been developed.

For the ecological side of things, sure, ai uses a lot of power. Lots of data enters. So does the internet. Do you use that? So does the stock market. Do you use that? So do cars. Do you drive?

I’ve never heard anyone say “we need less data centers” until ai came along. What, all the other data centers are totally fine but the ones being used for ai are evil? If you have an issue with the drastically increased power consumption for ai you should be able to argue a stance that is inclusive of all data centers - assuming it’s something you give a fuck about. Which you don’t.

If a model, once trained, is being used entirely locally on someone’s personal pc - do you have an issue with the ecological footprint of that? The power has been used. The model is trained.

It’s absolutely valid to have an issue with the increased power consumption used to train ai models and everything else but these are all issues with HOW and not the ontological arguments against the tech that people think they are.

It doesn’t make any of these criticisms invalid, but if you refuse to understand the nuance at work then you aren’t arguing in good faith.

If you enslave children to build a house then the issue isn’t that youre building a house, and it doesn’t mean houses are evil, the issue is that YOURE ENSLAVING CHILDREN.

Like any complicated topic there’s nuance to it and anyone that refuses to engage with that and instead relies on dogmatic thinking isn’t being intellectually honest.

Exactly.

Being exposed to people that believe differently than you challenges your own beliefs, and theirs.

When women started opening about the bullshit they dealt with, a lot of people listened. Some didn’t, but a lot of people did. Some men said “hey, you know, now that you mention it, there’s some kind of fucked up shit about being a guy, too”.

Anyone that had ever engaged with any real feminist theory or any facet of gender studies said: you’re absolutely right. Everyone else completely drowned them out.

The internet around that time largely had the response of “shut up, the women are talking”. Not all of it, not everyone, but it was very common.

Some men kept patiently listening, others stopped listening and started talking, others stopped listening, got angry, and started yelling. Some were never listening at all.

Now we have hordes of young misogynistic racist shitheels who may have been receptive to other points of view once but are now so firmly entrenched in their shiftiness it may never change. And they’ve found nice cozy places to whip their impotent rage into a society-destroying frenzy. It festered in critical mass, quietly, until it built up a level where it could burst open like a cyst.

The lesson here has nothing to do with gender, but highlights the importance of LISTENING TO PEOPLE, and being exposed to their viewpoints while exposing them to yours. Even the most vocal, selfish, pigheaded, racist conservative has legitimate concerns driving some of their shittiness: fear of uncertainty over the future, economic uncertainty, poverty, lack of education, fear of death. None of these things validate the shittiness but they do explain and they’re the levers by which these views change.

“Why can’t everyone just be nice to each other all the time” is what lead us to where we are.

I’m not arguing for being an asshole but when you force everyone to be kind all the time online you get people that are empowered to and motivated to wrap up abhorrent shit in a pleasing package. Racist dog whistles, selfish political propaganda, etc.

I’m not saying that applies here but I DO think it’s important that people are allowed to be assholes online. The internet really started its descent when people started putting bubble wrap on everything.

You’re free to engage or not to.

People have become so used to echo chambers and safe spaces that they forget what things were like when they didn’t exist. And it was better.

You SHOULD be encountering assholes online and encountering opinions you disagree with regularly, because that is the real the world.