Tootfinder

Thinking about some things that @… said in another thread, and as someone who advocates against AI hype and against the use of most generative AI in most circumstances, I feel it's important to say: many of the ethical issues with using generative AI mirror almost directly the ethical issues with living/working on land stolen by colonists, except that they're less harmful.
Arguments like "well we don't really know whose work it's ripping off this time" and "artists that post their art online know it's going to be looked at; this is the same thing" and "well it's inevitable and everyone's doing it so it's unreasonable to make a big deal about it" directly echo arguments like "well now we don't know whose land it was any more exactly" (yes, we do; you can literally go look up the website of their descendants), or "the natives weren't really using the land anyways", or "it's all in the past now, and it's unavoidable." That unavoidable one is actually somewhat true of using stolen land, at least compared to LLM usage.
If you can see through those lies in the case of AI hype but choose not to do so in the case of colonialism, that says something about your priorities and allegiances.
This is not at all a call for people to talk less about AI; rather it's a call for those who take opposing AI hype seriously to look around and make some noise about other injustices too (I realize many of you already do this).
#AI #LLMs #LandBack #GenAI