Acting ethically in an imperfect world (or: why Cory Doctorow is wrong on AI)

People do not believe that “not using LLMs” will solve the issue of OpenAI etc all existing. They do no want to build on, use products with so clearly defined harms and negative externalities. Because they believe it to be wrong. Sure, there might be a utilitarian argument for “the thing exists anyways and if it saves you time, that’s good, right” but many people are not utilitarians. They want to lead a life where they feel their actions align with their values. (...)

(Cory argues) that we need to “liberate” technology. What a strange idea: Technology doesn’t need liberation, people do. Technologies are tools not what we actually care about. Sure, sometimes technologies can play a role in liberating people but just as often “freeing” a technology does quite the opposite to people: Ask the women who have massive amounts of nonconsensually created sexualized images and videos created of them whether they think that the “liberation” of stochastic images generators is liberating them? Technology doesn’t need to be free. It cannot be free because freedom as a concept applies to people.