alt Hacker NewsThe difference I was referring to was economic; I was not making an ethical judgment. So many people seem to be reading my comment as making an ethical judgment (based on their reactions); maybe I should edit it to clarify.
Nope, seems I'm past the edit window. Oh well.
> The difference I was referring to was economic; I was not making an ethical judgment
What is the economic difference? LLMs have been trained on the results of billions of dollars worth of time, research, investment and expenditure. When you ask an LLM a question, they are giving you the results of those billions, or hundreds of billions, effort.
Those things weren't free; they cost money to produce! If anything, the OpenAI and Anthropics of the world got more economic value for free than the people distilling them did.