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cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world/p/1758477/using-fascist-technology-to-fight-fascism-still-promotes-fascist-technology
Using fascist technology to fight fascism still promotes fascist technology.
Fine i'll steal code the old fashioned way
Fascists don't create, they corrupt. Technology is neither fascist nor antifascist, those labels only make sense in the context of humans.
Be thoughtful about the services you use, the money you spend, and the data you entrust to others. Do your best to understand your tools as fully as you can. Strive to help others and do no harm, in your immediate impact and in your downstream effects. Don't trust to heuristics like labeling certain technologies "fascist"; they are not and the more non-fascists there are who understand technology, the better equipped we will be to fight fascism.
This is why I like capitalism. It turns choice into value, a vote if you will. Just needs guard rails for edge cases.
I can see the argument for local or at least open source models, but most people who use LLMs are using ChatGPT and other Big Tech LLM services, which are clearly run by fascists.
Yes, but it is very important to distinguish between LLMs, which are amoral math, and OpenAI et al, which are corporations run by fascists that offer LLM-based public surveillance / disinformation platforms. There is no technology on earth that cannot be bent to malign purpose if malicious people are inclined to do so. LLMs are just the popular useful technology du jour.
Thank you. I just wrote this in another comment:
I've been an AI researcher for 12 years now. I work primarily in climate and environment, and right now I'm using AI for super resolution of wind field predictions, to better forecast wildfire spread. Prior to this project I was using AI and remote sensing to monitor and predict wheat crop health in northern India to feed into various food security monitoring systems (e.g. FEWSNET). There are millions of AI use cases that tangibly improve the world.
At the same time, those same underlying principles of AI are being used to develop tools to better surveil people, control them, and profit off of them so the tech fascists can gain even more control. Both things can be true. It's the billionaires who are funding these massive investments that are evil. It's always the billionaires.
Steel can be used to construct buildings and can also be used to construct weapons. You wouldn't say steel is evil right?
I don't know man, surveillance tech seems pretty fascist to me.
surveillance networks are made of computers and sensors, which are made of chips and wires. I don't think chips and wires are fascist, I don't think sensors and computers are fascist. I think the purpose to which they are put is the fascist part, and the purpose is pure human.
The individual components are no more fascist than the individual organs that put fascists together. What matters is the function of the end product. Flock cameras for example is surveillance tech and that's their only purpose.
There are definitely fascist technologies out there, that's why we can say don't build the fucking torment nexus.
Mass surveillance, torture devices, hostile architecture, the slanted toilet, the panopticon, those can only be used for evil.
The torment nexus isn't a discrete thing. You can't make thumbscrews without screws. Are the screws evil? If not, when does the composition of components become evil? I don't think LLMs are evil for the same reason I don't think thumbscrews are evil in and of themselves. Thumbscrews, like LLMs, lack the capacity for evil. It's the people who turn technology against their fellow humans that I hold as my enemy, not the trappings of their mischief. Remove them from the equation, and the torment nexus becomes so much harmless scrap, ready to be beaten into plowshares.
AI is not evil. AI is being used to find cancer cures, fusion research, climate and environment research, materials science, literally every possible industry. It's also being used to control and surveil people, and profit more from every corner of life. Both are true of AI.
The part that's evil is that the people with the most money who are funding the large AI investments want to use AI to support their tech fascist desires. As usual, it's not the thing itself, it's the billionaires. It's ALWAYS the billionaires. They are the evil.
Agree, AI is just a computer.
LLMs don't cure cancer. That's the kind of AI everyone refers to these days. Not ML projects.
No, but I believe machine translation is now powered mainly by LLMs, which is a damn useful application of the technology.
I was surprised to learn recently that a few of my friends pay for Claude to help with personal projects and things like that. This particular AI tech is quite new so it's surely too early to declare axiomatically that it has no uses. That sounds like an emotional reaction to me.
My fucking company mailed me a flyer today to remind that I got access to a AI fitness trainer that is totally free just download an app to my phone. I so fucking pissed ripped in tiny fucking pieces. I fucking loath how they just blatantly assume we want use AI for everything. The very thing that if they could would replace us with it.
Batman uses AI too (Alfred Intelligence)
That is a very good point, Master Wayne. Thank you for calling me out. Going forward, I will try to avoid such mistakes.
This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it.
-Batman, imaginary cartoon
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
-Mao Zedong, founder of the country eating everyone's lunch.
Also, what the fuck does AI even mean in this context? LLM's? Stable Diffusion Models? Yeah, they're not great, they may get more accurate, but the evidence is currently pointing to them running out of road. Their uses are limited, that's why most people don't really use them, not because they're "the weapon of the enemy".
I imagine any historic materialist seeing this meme cringing so hard. Thanks for this comment so I can feel less insane about, you know, not swallowing idealistic imaginary nonsense.
Always glad to help. And yes, the cringe was palpable and something needed to be said.
Stupid af take tbh, especially the commentary. Tools are just tools. Stop stupidly turning them into your boogeymen. Technology, scientific advancement, and evolving knowledge do not care for who contributed to them. Otherwise just get off your programmable computer brother because the first one was made by literal nazis (Konrad Z3) along with a huge laundry list of other technologies fascists have developed. Political ideology and tech do not go hand and hand just because the tech is being used as a tool to facilitate the former.
As much as I hate "AI" myself, rhetoric like this does more harm to movements resisting "AI" than to help them.