You ever seen something so painfully out of touch and oblivious it hurts?
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Ángela Stella Matutinareplied to Eniko | Kitsune Tails out now! last edited by
@eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs
Except plastic has real uses where other materials won't do. Problem is using it for everything once and discarding it. LLMs and other generative remixers are a solution in search of a problem.
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Actually a LLMreplied to Eniko | Kitsune Tails out now! last edited by
@eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs the difference between AI and plastic is that we at least thought plastic was a good idea when it was new
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@angelastella @eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs Plastic is not a problem.
Consumer culture is a problem.
If we replaced every plastic bottle with an aluminum can, and retained the culture of buying and discarding, it would be even _worse_.
Plastic uniquely facilitates consumer culture because it's the only material _cheap_ enough to use once and throw away.
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@cederbs But then again, if people who lived before us had used plastics in a more responsible way, we wouldn't be in the current mess.
And if people who have access to lots of money and computing power right now would use AI techniques in a more responsible way, we wouldn't get into the foreseeable AI mess.
In summary, we're screwed both ways. :blobcatsad:
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Ángela Stella Matutina last edited by
@angelastella That's not true. There is a class of problems that LLMs are a perfect fit for: bedazzling humans. LLMs generate things that can be hard, at least at the first glance, for a human not particularly familiar with the subject matter to tell apart from the genuine article. This means, LLMs will be very useful for making cromulent-sounding political arguments, convincing-sounding advertising, and confident-sounding lies in Wikipedia articles.
And guess what three areas LLMs will be most eagerly put into a good (?) use for?
For advertising LLM-friendly policies with screwy arguments that most people would find hard to push back against, including via lies on Wikipedia, of course!
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@pixx But throwing away aluminium cans after a single use would wreak way less havoc than throwing away plastic baubles after a single use.
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@me Well, for one, plastics screwed over the notoriously evil Belgian king who butchered zillions of Congo people in the pursuit of rubber, so they're not all bad.
Or they would have, had the world community not gotten its act together and very politely told the rich perpetrator of genocide to please consider doing it a little bit less, and not get caught anymore, lest Belgian Congo get nationalised.
(Spoiler: they had to nationalise Belgian Congo.)
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@riley @angelastella @eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs Maybe, but if we did it at the same scale as plastic?
Aluminium mining is _horrible_, environmentally. Whether or not it's worse than oil drilling / plastic production per bauble, I don't know and am not asserting; rather, there is _no_ material that, if used the way we use plastic, would not be an unstoppable _crisis_.
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Ángela Stella Matutinareplied to Riley S. Faelan last edited by
@riley @eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs
Well, we also devised efficient technologies for such non-problems as killing and torturing people and destroying whole cities.
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Ángela Stella Matutina last edited by
@angelastella That has never required any sort of input from an LLM.
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Ángela Stella Matutinareplied to Riley S. Faelan last edited by
@riley @eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs
Serves me well for trying to reason by analogy in public.
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to Ángela Stella Matutina last edited by
@angelastella An analogy is like a cookie: it crumbles when stretched too far.
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@pixx The damage from bauxite mining is far shorter-term than the damage from throwing plastic around. The biosphere has experience with these things, and can remediate the wasteland within a couple of centuries even if humans don't really do anything to clean up after themselves.
Also, aluminium is recyclable. The cans that don't get thrown out can be pretty much endlessly recycled, with only new energy needing to be put in. Plastic could eventually get there, but right now, it can, at best, pass through a few re-plasticisations until it will become better to burn it than to try to convert it. Carbon chains can be hairy that way.
@angelastella @eniko @gabrielesvelto @cederbs
