[Diogenesian]

Many graduate students view themselves as ethical beings, not machines that "produce meaningful output," and everybody here knows (useful) LLMs are indefensibly evil because of stolen training data and enormous environmental impact.

[noslenwerdna]

This is a very close minded definition of evil. What is the threshold of environmental impact before something is evil and its use indefensible?

What level of copyright violation will send us to hell?

[Diogenesian]

I didn't give a definition of evil, so "close-minded definition" is just a dishonest way of expressing that you subjectively disagree with me.

Likewise with trying to make me judge an objective threshold for pollution. It really should be that any polluter needs to morally justify their actions. I find "mostly illusory productivity improvements in white-collar employment" to be an especially indefensible reason for firing up new natural gas generators. Let alone the real motivation being "billionaires want more money." The level of pollution from training and deploying generative AI is simply evil.

And your last question is just pure cynicism. The real sin you're committing here is contemptuously dismissing ethical concerns out of hand.

I assume you use LLMs. I don't. It truly seems like using LLMs makes people stupider and more unethical. Some cognitive work should not be outsourced, especially not to a mindless stochastic parrot.

[noslenwerdna]

Obviously I mean the definition of evil implied by your statement that they are indefensibly evil...

Again, what level of copyright violation is evil? Downloading music without paying for it? Apparently using images/text that artists have made public is evil, so I'm curious what the bar is here for evil.

Using electricity to improve white collar efficiency is also evil. Good to know

[dTal]

Thank you for using the phrase "stochastic parrot". I only request that you use it at the beginning of your long comments, rather than the end. It saves time.

[Diogenesian]

"LLMs are stochastic parrots" and "stochastic parroting is a powerful medium for computation" are not contradictory statements. [Lisp is a mindless symbolic list processor.] The inability of certain people to accept this speaks to a decades-old contempt for scientific thinking in AI.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981271

[JCharante]

I wonder what the tipping point is where machines require less energy than humans to accomplish the same tasks.