This mindset is the entire problem. “Oh we don’t need to worry about ethics or morals, just efficiency” is exactly the issue with every pro-AI argument and every pro-capatalism argument. Its the issue with our governments, with investing, with corporations.
I say fuck anyone who argues ethics is not important when talking about efficacy. Fuck that mindset and fuck AI.
Efficiency is an important part of the ethics discussion, so anti-AI arguments look undeveloped when they ignore this point. Just because your ideology does not care for efficiency does not mean its an important part for others.
Ex. Many maintainers may be interested in ways to efficiently triage the increasing amount of bug reports without having to rely on AI systems
Ex. Many on Lemmy believe capitalism is an inefficient system and should be overhauled in order to more efficiently distribute goods and services.
Ex. insurance systems can lead to more unjust and widespread harm.
Its not an either-or scenario purposely avoiding efficiency in favor of other morals can result in serious negative moral consequences. Much like how sacrificing other ethical considerations in favor of efficiency can result in negative consequences. Fulfilling as many desirable ethical standards is the most optimal outcome to software.
For AI, this means that ignoring the impact it has had in the field to call them “slop clankers” looks ignorant and purposely misleading without proper nuance addressing the negative impacts it has on ethical concerns that are directly tangible to projecgs.
licensing
maintainabilty
project longevity and community growth
Asking FOSS projects to account for the more intangible ethical concerns (ex. broad sweeping and competiting concerns about culture theft, the enviroment, and capitalism) and then enforce it on the ideological diverse set of contributors just comes down to ideological policing for intangible improvement to the project, harming the long term viability of FOSS.
Much in the same way people discuss the user base of bluesky over its actual technical merits, which makes bluesky feel more ideologically isolated compared to FOSS.
This is also in addition to the fact the device this post is being viewed on is built on top of these intangible ethical conflicts, desired for their efficieny utility in the modern world. AI also has these issues at scale but then we’re introducing the problem of “a what scale is it okay to violate ethics.” It doesnt make sense to shame people for using a device deeply integrated into the operation of the world, or at least readily used by a non-negligible amount of people.
People who are concerned about the big ethical concerns of AI should really be working to make and learn about ethical ways to use and develop AI as well as holding techconglomerates and billionaires accountable (ex call your reps). Not harassing volunteer developers and disparaging their projects for consequences that have not played out (yet) in these historically well maintained projects. Saying established projects like Linux have gone ‘full slop’ and slandering maintainers as bootlickers just reeks of FUD, fragments the community, foster ill will in FOSS, and is unproductive to the development of FOSS when it is needed now more than ever.
I think the point is that it actually hurts an ethics-based anti-AI argument to also claim that it has no utility, because the no-utility argument is weak and therefore makes the rest of the stance (i.e., the ethics-based argument) look weak by association.
Exactly, if you say that AI is ethically bad and doesn’t work, to someone who uses it and clearly sees it works well for them, it just invalidates your argument.
If you just stick to the ethics your argument can’t be dismissed in that way.
Yes! Another problem is, not everyone is using AI in the sense that people think of.
AI is a large field, it studies many different methodologies and aspects of automation, prediction, generation and observation, yet today most people outside the field use it for LLMs and image generation, which throws the baby out with the bath water.
In addition to that, there are publicly available LLMs, some have datasets obtained entirely from consenting parties and public domain works. You don’t have to pay billionaire technocratic fascist a single dime to use such marvelous tools computer scientists worked decades to bring forth.
A machine can never create art, it can never take responsibility and should never be allowed to make decisions, it’s a tool.
And you can also have at home your own LLM that you can supply your own power.
I feel like everyone here would like the same overall: not killing the planet, not build more data-centres in the middle of communities, and last but not least having a tool to assist and not to generate unreviewed slop.
We do need to develop now a way to protect the human curated content, that is the part that we want and care about.
Neocities is an interesting subject in this matter, most people there reject LLMs and have their own hand crafted page and content:
This mindset is the entire problem. “Oh we don’t need to worry about ethics or morals, just efficiency” is exactly the issue with every pro-AI argument and every pro-capatalism argument. Its the issue with our governments, with investing, with corporations.
I say fuck anyone who argues ethics is not important when talking about efficacy. Fuck that mindset and fuck AI.
Efficiency is an important part of the ethics discussion, so anti-AI arguments look undeveloped when they ignore this point. Just because your ideology does not care for efficiency does not mean its an important part for others.
Ex. Many maintainers may be interested in ways to efficiently triage the increasing amount of bug reports without having to rely on AI systems Ex. Many on Lemmy believe capitalism is an inefficient system and should be overhauled in order to more efficiently distribute goods and services. Ex. insurance systems can lead to more unjust and widespread harm.
Its not an either-or scenario purposely avoiding efficiency in favor of other morals can result in serious negative moral consequences. Much like how sacrificing other ethical considerations in favor of efficiency can result in negative consequences. Fulfilling as many desirable ethical standards is the most optimal outcome to software.
For AI, this means that ignoring the impact it has had in the field to call them “slop clankers” looks ignorant and purposely misleading without proper nuance addressing the negative impacts it has on ethical concerns that are directly tangible to projecgs.
Asking FOSS projects to account for the more intangible ethical concerns (ex. broad sweeping and competiting concerns about culture theft, the enviroment, and capitalism) and then enforce it on the ideological diverse set of contributors just comes down to ideological policing for intangible improvement to the project, harming the long term viability of FOSS.
Much in the same way people discuss the user base of bluesky over its actual technical merits, which makes bluesky feel more ideologically isolated compared to FOSS.
This is also in addition to the fact the device this post is being viewed on is built on top of these intangible ethical conflicts, desired for their efficieny utility in the modern world. AI also has these issues at scale but then we’re introducing the problem of “a what scale is it okay to violate ethics.” It doesnt make sense to shame people for using a device deeply integrated into the operation of the world, or at least readily used by a non-negligible amount of people.
Relevant article: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/jun/02/ethical-use-proprietary-develop-free-software-foss
People who are concerned about the big ethical concerns of AI should really be working to make and learn about ethical ways to use and develop AI as well as holding techconglomerates and billionaires accountable (ex call your reps). Not harassing volunteer developers and disparaging their projects for consequences that have not played out (yet) in these historically well maintained projects. Saying established projects like Linux have gone ‘full slop’ and slandering maintainers as bootlickers just reeks of FUD, fragments the community, foster ill will in FOSS, and is unproductive to the development of FOSS when it is needed now more than ever.
I think the point is that it actually hurts an ethics-based anti-AI argument to also claim that it has no utility, because the no-utility argument is weak and therefore makes the rest of the stance (i.e., the ethics-based argument) look weak by association.
Exactly, if you say that AI is ethically bad and doesn’t work, to someone who uses it and clearly sees it works well for them, it just invalidates your argument.
If you just stick to the ethics your argument can’t be dismissed in that way.
Yes! Another problem is, not everyone is using AI in the sense that people think of.
AI is a large field, it studies many different methodologies and aspects of automation, prediction, generation and observation, yet today most people outside the field use it for LLMs and image generation, which throws the baby out with the bath water.
In addition to that, there are publicly available LLMs, some have datasets obtained entirely from consenting parties and public domain works. You don’t have to pay billionaire technocratic fascist a single dime to use such marvelous tools computer scientists worked decades to bring forth.
A machine can never create art, it can never take responsibility and should never be allowed to make decisions, it’s a tool.
And you can also have at home your own LLM that you can supply your own power.
I feel like everyone here would like the same overall: not killing the planet, not build more data-centres in the middle of communities, and last but not least having a tool to assist and not to generate unreviewed slop.
We do need to develop now a way to protect the human curated content, that is the part that we want and care about.
Neocities is an interesting subject in this matter, most people there reject LLMs and have their own hand crafted page and content:
https://neocities.org/