On LLMs: Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
There's a rather common sentiment (on the internet anyway) that the utility of LLMs always usurps any negative criticisms. Built on stolen data? Oh well, the technology is here to stay. Energy use? Water? Cost of computing hardware? Bah, don't be such a luddite! This is game changing stuff right here.
For an overview of the detractors, see here, with some more in the footnotes1. In short, moral and ethical concerns unrelated to the effectiveness of the "tool."
As for the benefits…
- faster coding? Maybe that’s a benefit. In my experience what to build was always the blocker over actually building a thing.
- More code... Faster? Are we counting LoC again?
- Faster PRs…
Actually why is faster a benefit? Why are we all so short of time!? Have we not already amassed capabilities unlike any other time in history? Is our progress not already outpacing the limits of physical reality? Of our earth?2
Are LLMs not just a continuation of an ideological view detached from the material world? AKA Exponential economic growth.
That’s the prevailing ideology we all live under, right? And it is an ideology. It is not a material or psychological fact nor a Law of the Universe. It’s a social construct that has persisted for some hundreds of years, I'm sure evolving over hundreds prior.
Faster! Faster! Faster! More! More! More!
If only we reached some imagined threshold would all our problems vanish and we’d enter into an age of bliss and utopia! Thousands (millions, billions??) of lowly believers kneeling and praying for their sweet trickle-down to alleviate their pain and suffering… Keep enduring today for the prophecy of a better future will soon come! Or will it?
Do people not know they are living this ideology?
We can either consciously recognize that our collective behavior is in contradiction to a well-functioning planet, or we can keep our heads in the fantasy-land in which we’ll somehow create something smarter than us (despite being built on our own words) that ushers in a new age where we’re no longer beholden to silly restrictions like the physical limits of the one known planet harbouring life... any life at all mind you...
The former sounds like rational behavior, at least to me. The latter sounds like the behavior of religious zealots: ignore actual, pressing issues of the day and put all faith into some outside entity and future salvation!
Note that if you question the prevailing ideology, you'll be labeled a commie, leftie, socialist, luddite, whatever, and derided as an enemy of all that is good and holy. Sorta like back when the church would call you a heretic when you questioned burning women alive.
One of the biggest (and rightfully so) critiques of socialism/communism is the concentration of power. Yet, is techno-fascism and the absolute units of money going into LLMs not also leading to a concentration of power? I mean can any of us (at least as individuals and small groups) have even the slightest impact on the prevailing culture that a billionaire can?
Scientists have been warning us of our planetary degradations for decades… yet even that group can’t compete with the Cult of More.
So, fuck it, make your little app. Generate those images. Automate your own clanker-hosted podcast! It’s neat! It’s cool. Whatever keeps us happy and compliant within the Religion of Infinite Growth!
It’s “inevitable” anyway. AGI, economic growth, progress. There’s no stopping what’s “inevitable.” Or, what did zealots of yore used to say? It’s the Will of God? Okie-doke.
Well, at least we don't have prophets CEOs predicting the End of the World... Oh... I see.
How could we ever have seen this coming? Oh? They told us they were out to create a religion. Well, o.k. then.
Are you sure you’re not living in the fantasy of religious extremists? Are you sure you’re not in a cult?
...
Oh yeah, so, do the benefits outweight the costs? Look. I don't know what's best for you. But, I believe the following to both be true:
- LLMs and the primary companies behind them are artifacts of a broken idealogy. Creating new things is wonderful. Creating things guided largely by a single belief that more profit is all that matters is troubling.
- LLMs are, or can be, useful.
Evolving our culture to care more about people and—hold on to your granola—the planet seems more prudent than anything else. And, like, not just a select few scientists, activists, and tree huggers... but, you know, the majority of us.
Humanity probably needs a culture shift if we want to continue to thrive.
🤷
Footnotes
- Old, polluting Jet Engines to power Data Centers (no paywall link), Anthropic strikes $3.4bn deal to generate gas-fired power for data centres (no paywall link), Can I ethically use LLMs?, mapping the hidden labor behind AI.. oh look we can actually go to Dario himself to find some concerns or is this just marketing babble? ↩
- See Humans are using more resources than the planet can restore, though economic growth doesn't need to be lockstep with resource usage, we would, ya know, have to consciously choose that, as a collective. ↩