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I think a lot of people in tech are probably feeling something close to despair about what to do about LLMs, since it’s clear that those with power are not going to relent with their advocacy, and they have enough uses that they’ve gained critical mass, yet the harms & risks are so wildly egregious…

I think the answer has to be a multiplicity of responses. There need to be *many* alternatives, created by many entities. The answer to McDonald’s being unhealthy isn’t “make another fast food joint” — it’s getting rid of food deserts and improving nutrition overall. Give power back to the people…

If people want some of the things AI can do, have those technologies be provided by tools & platforms created by cooperatives, by unions, by universities and governments, by municipalities and by individual creators, or as open source owned by nobody. Destroy the economic value of proprietary tools.

There has been a forty year effort to make this sort of thing happen in software that has been basically ignored by the organized political left for aesthetic / vibe reasons (this is the reason I despise the political left). I'm not holding my breath I expect vibes will once again carry the day.

Hard agree here because I’m a Canadian watching the US careen off into extreme RW chaos and accept so many awful things, while every individual American I know is kind and decent. Most worldwide don’t have education to understand tech like this, but we expect our Governments to take precautions.

My point is that the willful ignorance of the political left to tech movements based on shared values, like the free software movement, has left us all poorer and in more danger than otherwise. Tbf the liberal centre also is hostile/doesn’t give a shit.

It’s not willful ignorance when people have no way to figure it out. Transportation safety, like planes and cars and say, pharma and food safety are comparable. No one person can know how all planes, trains, cars, drugs, food, and tech work—we need experts to help protect us.