After I made this unrelated post, I was informed by @MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro-genAI instance.
It was honestly shocking for me to hear that these two things can coexist and I would like to share the discussion which was correctly moved for being off topic from the above linked post.
I think we owe it to ourselves to discuss topics like this with an open mind.
Here is my statements in reply to MysticMushroom1776, I wasn't able to record their reply before it was removed for being off topic bit I hope they can come here and we can continue the discussion.
Others, please also feel free to discuss with us.
'Wow, I didn't know [that lemmy.dbzer0.com was a pro genAI instance] As an anarchist myself I have to say that is really disappointing.
Anarchist communities [especially in real life] need humans otherwise there is no community. GenAl is a stolen facsimile of a human who can never understand morals or praxis. It can never understand freedom or control. It will however poison our communities (look at what SpaceX/Anthropic is doing in Memphis, TN) make us more predictable (and thus easier to control) and isolate us from other humans within the community which is so important to us.
Even with the most moral genAl you can possibly have, one that is totally FOSS and self hosted on a single gaming GPU, a lot of this is still true.
~~Obviously, this is the wrong place but I have to ask,~~ [prior to moving the discussion to this thread] what makes you think the extreme negatives of genAl (specifically to the anarchist community) can be excused?
... [I do not have a copy of mushroom's reply]
I pirate and seed. I'm also a fan of the megathread And for the most part, I think data is data. However there is a big difference between my pirating a book like the Lord of the Rings (which is credited and I can see the title of) and how Meta scraped Anna's archive and funneled all that data into an approximation of all combined work.
If I pirate the book, the Lord of the Rings to read it. I might enjoy it, I might talk about it to others, quote it, share it with my daughter, I might use the ring of power an an allegory for authoritarian control with a powerful technology, I might even decide to buy my own copies of the book.
What Meta did and then released as open source, won't allow a person the freedom to do any of that. The works were consumed and are used in silence to camouflage as human thought. No credit will ever be contributed. And so no one can even hope to appreciate the original works that was used in training.
The other concerns I have with (local) genAI that I think are deeply important to anarchists specifically.
- Isolation of humanity
- severing of our ties to community
- increasing predictability
- method of control
Photo is genAI made and sourced from the following article:
I don’t use genAI basically at all, but I have experience with machine learning in general. Here’s my take:
Generative AI itself is literally just statistical modeling. Very complicated statistical modeling/prediction but still the same idea as any other method for prediction/classification.
The only problem is how certain models are trained and/or used.
You can (and imo should because it’s fun/interesting) create your own generative AI using responsibly sourced training data and open source code. Is that a crime? Does that hurt anyone? Does that harm society as a whole? No.
The concept of “GenAI” is not the problem. In fact, utilizing it for protien/drug discovery is pretty fucking cool, as is the fact it makes language translation significantly more accessible and accurate.
The problems you listed mostly apply to strictly corporate GenAI models. They are problematic not because they are generative statistical models but because they are built, maintained, controlled, and used by capitalist institutions in a capitalist society which allows them to do any damage they want as long as they can continue ~~bribing politicians~~lining the pockets of investors
I mostly agree with you in threory.
However, I do think the issues I've brought up exist even if it is not a corporate model. That is because most people will not be making their own llm.
Just like in theory people could make their own operating system for their computer, the same way that Linus did. Most people will not go that route, they will use the kernel, maybe they might make a distro, but they aren't willing to make it entirely from scratch.
So when it comes to using genAI, you are going to have a lot of people (including leftists) just using a corporate model, then you have a smaller subset trying out "open" models like deepseek, then a smaller subset locally hosting a distilled model, and a smaller subset fine tuning a model or using RAG, and smaller and smaller subsets of people maybe try to build something on their own.
So in reality, most of these users will be making predictable and easily influenced output using these tools.
Also, I think the basic function of these tools, which will be true for open or corporate models, makes us less dependent on eachother, which I think will lead to even more self centered societies then we currently have and not the community centric goal that I think a lot of us share.
Pretend you're vegan for me, and that people eating meat in front of you physically grosses you out.
Are you going to be the militant fundamentalist vegan who wants ALL animal products banned? Or are you going to be more pragmatic, understand that some people have more reach for meat-independence than others?
Because the Vegans I know and respect will celebrate a barbecue bro enjoying meatless Mondays.
But even this neglects some fascinating phenomena: deepseek has captured a LARGE part of the American LLM market on price alone. The inability to build a Data Mine that respects the neighbors is stalling the US chud-companies. Deepseek and Kimi K3 now outperform Claude in some tests for less than 20% of the price.
If I didn't know better, I'd say China is trying to pop the AI bubble that's propping up the US stock market. They're doing it with superior engineering on "inferior" (read: accessible, less bitcoin-mining-right-turned cancer-for-a-building) hardware. China is doing it by rescuing us from sky high memory prices by Xmas 2027, and GPUs by xmas 2028.
Collapse the price of the hardware, suddenly those absurdly large investments become shitty deals. The balance sheets on all the corpos involved? Collapse with it.
I have my critiques of China, I'm a fucking Anarchist. The fact remains that they are the ally we have and need in this specific fight.
Omg I need to rig my browser to translate Chinese better, because there's Communities with models for ANYTHING. And they're given away freely, as is right and just.
I just wanna nerd out and be able to build cool shit for my comrades, with my comrades.
Chinese tech workers get to build drones for actual disaster relief. Any time I'm about to get a job in that here, in the US? Its a weapons platform and the boss isn't allowed to even say it.
The Chinese "market" for AI is stronger, healthier, more robust, and more useful for things that aren't violence. Meanwhile, the US government has drafted every US corpo-LLM into being digital soldiers that drive weapon drones. I am okay leaving Pwlantir in the garbage can of history.
I hope my sleep deprived rambling adds to the convo.
The db0 instance’s official stance is against using corpo AI, so you’re talking to the smaller subset already. So any arguments based on “most people” aren’t really relevant to the complaint you’ve made about this instance.
If you’re talking about the AI output, predictability is kinda the point. If you’re talking about the “influence” effect it has on certain people, watching youtubers or consuming any media can also influence people significantly. Does this mean listening to or creating podcasts is unethical and shouldn’t be tolerated? No, it means you should be careful what kind of media you consume regardless of its source. I am reasonably certain everyone on this instance knows genAI is quite fallible and biased.
First, there is a difference between dependence and dependability.
Secondly, one could make this argument about any information sharing system ever. Youtube tutorials have made people less dependent on repair-men. Does that mean tutorials on how to fix an air conditioner are unethical?
Furthermore, genAI is a hobby for some people (especially those on this instance who use it). People like sharing cool things they made with/about their hobbies, and finding people with shared interests is a great way to build a sense of community. However, if an instance were to assert that no use of genAI is ethical ever, that would alienate people who use it in an ethical way, preventing/discouraging them from sharing/creating and/or participating in communities that they would have otherwise. I’d argue that is literally, directly against the “community centric goal” which “a lot of us share.”
All fair points, thanks.
Great write-up!