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Janne M. Korhonen
@jmkorhonen.fi

I agree with almost all of this. I too fear the currently prevailing progressive attitudes towards LLMs are a strategic mistake - and unilateral disarmament. Ignoring a technology means you can’t shape it. And swords don’t beat themselves to plowshares. www.transformernews.ai/p/the-left-i...

transformernews.aiThe left is missing out on AIAs a movement, it has largely refused to engage seriously with AI, ceding debate about a threat and opportunity to the right
Mike
@misaligned.markets

The Left is missing out on AI reads like an older Future Perfect article which is EA funded. Purpose of the piece seems to be focused on attacking Bender's "Stochastic Parrot" but applying it to every critic. They get Doctorow wrong, for example, who thinks AI could empower when workers choose.

Mike@misaligned.markets

This is legitimately a rehash of a Kelsey Piper article from last summer. But this newer piece is unique in that it just gets critics wrong. Doctorow is the funniest name to include if your argument is "the left doesn't want to use AI." Kelsey at least had the sense to not name specific people.

Mike
@misaligned.markets

This piece is coming out at a time when AI dissatisfaction is rising, not as a partisan issue, but as a social one. LLMs specifically are pissing everyone off because of how they're being rolled out. I'm saying this as someone who is in apolitical tech spaces like gaming and home networking.

Mike@misaligned.markets

This is such a good point. But beyond this LLMs are pissing in everyone’s beer. Noisy DCs, rising electricity costs, end of consumer technology, spamming open source projects, list goes on. This is not a partisan issue. Ironically a better “rollout” probably could’ve made the worst uses palatable.

1 repost14 likes

Mike
@misaligned.markets

I could list other examples of nonpolitical tech communities/people with similar criticisms. Louis Rossmann, ThePrimeagen, Carl Brown, GamersNexus. This article instead politicizes AI, claims critics don't understand LLMs, then praises Bernie Sanders for taking LLM capabilities seriously. Why?

Mike
@misaligned.markets

Presumably this article was written to make people take capabilities seriously, by framing LLMs as a partisan issue and aligning all critics with Bender's view. The Piper article alludes to it too. EA folks love hyping toward doom or utopian scenarios and are derisive to "stochastic parrot."

Mike
@misaligned.markets

The most common criticisms of LLMs I've seen aren't rooted in Bender's philosophy, even if people use "stochastic parrot." It's rooted in the way the technology was rolled out. When you take that into account I don't even know what this article is about. It's an imagined, constructed debate.