alt Hacker NewsIf LLMs were simply a niche but somewhat useful technology people could choose to use or avoid, then sure, such an absolutist stance seems excessive. But this technology is being aggressively pushed into every aspect of our lives and integrated into society so deeply that it can't be avoided, and companies are pushing AI-first and AI-only strategies with the express goal of undermining and replacing artists (and eventually programmers) with low quality generic imitations of their work with models trained on stolen data.
To give even an inch under these circumstances seems like suicide. Every use of LLMs, however minor, is a concession to our destruction. It gives them money, it gives them power, it normalizes them and their influence.
I find the technology fascinating. I can think of numerous use cases I'd like to explore. It is useful and it can provide value. Unfortunately it's been deployed and weaponized against us in a way that makes it unacceptable under any circumstances. The tech bros and oligarchs have poisoned the well.
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> To give even an inch under these circumstances seems like suicide.
Seems like a histrionic take.
It’s like banning any and all uses of chainsaws for any kind of work ever just because some bros juggle with them and have chainsaw juggling conventions.
It’s just a tool, but like any tool it can be used the right way or wrong way. We as a society are still learning which is which.
I mean, I share some of the concerns you expressed, but at the same time there is no chance at all that working programmers and artists won't be using LLMs (and whatever "AI" comes next).
I'm a programmer, and I enjoyed the sort of "craftsman" aspect of writing code, from the 1990s until... maybe last year. But it's over. Writing code manually is already the exception, not the rule. I am not an artist, and I also really do understand that artists have a more legitimate grievance (about stealing prior art) than we programmers do.
As a practical matter, though, that's irrelevant. I suspect being an "artist" working in games, movies, ads, etc will become much like coding already is: you produce some great work manually, as an example, and then tell the bots "Now do it like this ... all 100 of you."