I bought a datacenter GPU that doesn't fit in a normal motherboard, macgyvered the fan with jumper wires, and now I'm running a model that ties with Claude Sonnet 4.6 on benchmarks, all for £200.
You’re likely conflating the tools with the implementation or the implementers. An open source model on local hardware has next to zero ethical concerns.
There are MANY ethical concerns about the actions of the big players in AI, their data centers, and to some extent, the original, bootstrapped training data sourcing.
Many, many, many things “consume a lot of power” which is both common and benign. A whirlpool tub “consumes a lot of power” for example. So does an electric stove. And the power can be from any source, such as solar, hydro, or wind.
That’s why I specified there’s minor issues that could be argued about the original data sources. However, that bird has flown the coop. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle, and no way to undo it. You could argue the company’s responsible owe every single person on the planet some form of restitution, which I do, but I don’t think that qualifies as an ethical concern since it’s universal. No one person was harmed more than another, it was all publicly available data - so the public should benefit from the result. Refusing to use it only hampers yourself, at no detriment to those perceived as wrongdoers.
Right? Yet using AI takes less electricity than that. The concerns are being wildly exaggerated, overblown, and I suspect it’s being done intentionally as a psychological attack on societies to hinder competing nations from faster adoption.
Okay. So, imagine I’m an indie game developer. I’ve got no artistic talent, no funds, and am just making a game that I want to play, not one I think will make any money.
With me so far? I download a free, open source, open weights model on my laptop. I install the open source tools to allow the LLM to read my project files, and I give it a thorough description of the game I’m designing. I work on some aspect in the foreground, while in the background my GPU is utilized to achieve some task I’ve assigned the AI. When it’s done, I review the work, commit the changes, and assign it a new task.
What are the ethical aspects you can’t ignore in my use case?
If you don’t intend to sell or distribute that game, the only aspects left that I can think of are:
you’re not helping yourself by using AI, you’re just making yourself dumber, so if your goal is simply to make a game, fine, but if you want to maintain your coding skills, it’s a bad idea.
the extra energy consumption, which happens regardless if you’re using your GPU or someone else’s GPU. Might even be worse if everyone uses their own GPU, because there’s a whole ass PC system built around that GPU that also consumes power. But I dunno if that’s the case, actually. I guess this is moot if you’re off the power grid with your own power source, such as full solar or something.
how has the open source model been trained? On what data?
Even if I did intend to sell the game, what change is there? Everything created was something that did not exist prior my prompt to create it.
I’m making myself dumber in the same sense that learning to read & write weakens my memory skills, using a calculator weakens my math skills, or driving a car weakens my physical stamina. Everything is a trade off, and like in everything else, balance is the key consideration.
Correct, I personally have a solar array with a battery system. I typically have an overage, and feed my power back into the network. Even if I didn’t, though, using my GPU for AI uses less electricity than playing a game with it, and even that is dwarfed by microwaving food, using a hair dryer, clothes dryer, etc. Power consumption is a common concern that is shared with everything, so there’s no justification to make it an ethical one just for AI.
In my case, I’m using Qwen, and Kimi, which are both models trained by other models - essentially compressing the original training so a good analogy, if these were people, is my models were trained by professors who themselves trained themselves by reviewing the entirety of the Internet. It’s important, though, to highlight the fact that as neural networks this training is not retention of data - it’s simply adjusting the weights of simulated synapses based on the tagging of input.
So many people seem to think that training means the model has like a compressed database of source material, but that is not the case - even on the original models that trained using pirated data, at no point is the training data incorporated into the model. It informs the model, in the same way you are informed about art by watching a Disney movie. Sure, you might be able to recreate something you saw from memory if you focused on doing that, but it’s not like you can make a perfect copy from your memory. The LLM are NOT idetic.
You keep making your case around a veeeeeeeeeryyyyy specific type of user. It’s hard not to think it’s actually a specific person you’re talking about lol. Hardly a common scenario. 😆
Power consumption for AI is way higher than for games…your gpu is rarely at full usage when running a game, only really if you’re one of the few people that tries to get every single bit out of your game with the highest level graphics and even then you’re not using the full amount because the game would stutter. It doesn’t matter if an llm stutters. They use the full power of your gpu no matter what you’re doing.
And the models being trained on other models mean that local LLMs use more energy than a model like Claude. You have all the energy of multiple data centers training one model and then you go and train a model off of that.
I don’t really care what Linus Torvalds has to say, unless it’s about the Linux kernel, and I don’t think his opinions matter outside of that. Being a great programmer doesn’t mean he’s also an intelligent, socially aware person.
He did an interview with Linus Tech Tips a few months ago, and when asked about artists being “upset about the large scale theft of work” coming from AI, he said “that’s reality, deal with it” and even went on to talk about photographers that are out of work because “you can fake pictures so much better now” while, within the same breath, saying programmers wouldn’t lose their jobs because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. (Obviously I’m paraphrasing a bit)
I do agree AI can be a useful tool, and it’s a position I’ve held since OpenAI was first starting to become recognizable. But anything that’s generated by AI is slop, and I’ll continue to call it such even if nobody else will.
The movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” used AI tools to place random blemishes and marks (that the artists created) on characters faces across multiple frames. I don’t really feel like finding a source for this one, but I’m sure you could fairly easily if you’re that curious. I think that’s an actual use for AI. Streamlining and speeding up the creation process to give creative people more time to do actual creative work. I don’t think asking an LLM to generate or “create” something for you is anything but slop.
Slop isn’t about quality, it’s about the morality. The, again, large scale theft of work required to get to the point of being able to generate something of a passible quality level, plus the destruction of the environment in the process. I think it’s pointless to reject AI tools entirely due to how prominent and widespread they are, but “creating” something with AI will always be slop.
Source for the LTT interview: https://youtu.be/mfv0V1SxbNA
I’m conflicted about it too. But there is a useful software development tool in there. Its a beige mind good at regurgitating cookie-cutter work. Its pretty good at scaffold and cookie cutter unit tests.
I hate how it makes my colleages behave, but I can totally see the legitimate $500M/yr industry worth of software in there, under all the BS.
There’s a Jetbrains or Atlassian size companies worth of product here.
Totally get what you mean and I can fully respect that stance. In recent times, it was more like a “let’s bash all the people who think slightly positive about AI”, so kind of the same indoctrination, just the other way around.
It has nothing to do with the subject of the article. Are you blind? It’s the exact same bland, AI regurgitated writing style as every other AI written article.
“It’s not blah. It’s blah.”, “it’s genuinely <insert adjective of amazement>”. I can go on. As soon as you see it once you see it everywhere. When every article reads the exact same way it’s horrendous, it’s tiring, it’s the end of the internet. It’s all bots now.
Is nobody exasperatedly tired of comments calling anything remotely related to AI ‘slop??’
Yes.
Lemmy is just by default super AI-hating. I wonder what they felt when Linus Torvalds said that LLM are actually useful tools.
We felt like he’s right about it being useful tools but the ethical aspects are hard to ignore. Yes, many ethical aspects.
You’re likely conflating the tools with the implementation or the implementers. An open source model on local hardware has next to zero ethical concerns.
There are MANY ethical concerns about the actions of the big players in AI, their data centers, and to some extent, the original, bootstrapped training data sourcing.
Well, yes and no. Even open source models had to consume a lot of power for the training, including the use of non-owned data
Many, many, many things “consume a lot of power” which is both common and benign. A whirlpool tub “consumes a lot of power” for example. So does an electric stove. And the power can be from any source, such as solar, hydro, or wind.
That’s why I specified there’s minor issues that could be argued about the original data sources. However, that bird has flown the coop. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle, and no way to undo it. You could argue the company’s responsible owe every single person on the planet some form of restitution, which I do, but I don’t think that qualifies as an ethical concern since it’s universal. No one person was harmed more than another, it was all publicly available data - so the public should benefit from the result. Refusing to use it only hampers yourself, at no detriment to those perceived as wrongdoers.
I rarely see people agonize over the ethics of playing a game on high settings for hours because of the frivolous use of electricity.
Right? Yet using AI takes less electricity than that. The concerns are being wildly exaggerated, overblown, and I suspect it’s being done intentionally as a psychological attack on societies to hinder competing nations from faster adoption.
I don’t think so, no?
Okay. So, imagine I’m an indie game developer. I’ve got no artistic talent, no funds, and am just making a game that I want to play, not one I think will make any money.
With me so far? I download a free, open source, open weights model on my laptop. I install the open source tools to allow the LLM to read my project files, and I give it a thorough description of the game I’m designing. I work on some aspect in the foreground, while in the background my GPU is utilized to achieve some task I’ve assigned the AI. When it’s done, I review the work, commit the changes, and assign it a new task.
What are the ethical aspects you can’t ignore in my use case?
If you don’t intend to sell or distribute that game, the only aspects left that I can think of are:
Even if I did intend to sell the game, what change is there? Everything created was something that did not exist prior my prompt to create it.
I’m making myself dumber in the same sense that learning to read & write weakens my memory skills, using a calculator weakens my math skills, or driving a car weakens my physical stamina. Everything is a trade off, and like in everything else, balance is the key consideration.
Correct, I personally have a solar array with a battery system. I typically have an overage, and feed my power back into the network. Even if I didn’t, though, using my GPU for AI uses less electricity than playing a game with it, and even that is dwarfed by microwaving food, using a hair dryer, clothes dryer, etc. Power consumption is a common concern that is shared with everything, so there’s no justification to make it an ethical one just for AI.
In my case, I’m using Qwen, and Kimi, which are both models trained by other models - essentially compressing the original training so a good analogy, if these were people, is my models were trained by professors who themselves trained themselves by reviewing the entirety of the Internet. It’s important, though, to highlight the fact that as neural networks this training is not retention of data - it’s simply adjusting the weights of simulated synapses based on the tagging of input.
So many people seem to think that training means the model has like a compressed database of source material, but that is not the case - even on the original models that trained using pirated data, at no point is the training data incorporated into the model. It informs the model, in the same way you are informed about art by watching a Disney movie. Sure, you might be able to recreate something you saw from memory if you focused on doing that, but it’s not like you can make a perfect copy from your memory. The LLM are NOT idetic.
You keep making your case around a veeeeeeeeeryyyyy specific type of user. It’s hard not to think it’s actually a specific person you’re talking about lol. Hardly a common scenario. 😆
Power consumption for AI is way higher than for games…your gpu is rarely at full usage when running a game, only really if you’re one of the few people that tries to get every single bit out of your game with the highest level graphics and even then you’re not using the full amount because the game would stutter. It doesn’t matter if an llm stutters. They use the full power of your gpu no matter what you’re doing.
And the models being trained on other models mean that local LLMs use more energy than a model like Claude. You have all the energy of multiple data centers training one model and then you go and train a model off of that.
deleted by creator
I don’t really care what Linus Torvalds has to say, unless it’s about the Linux kernel, and I don’t think his opinions matter outside of that. Being a great programmer doesn’t mean he’s also an intelligent, socially aware person.
He did an interview with Linus Tech Tips a few months ago, and when asked about artists being “upset about the large scale theft of work” coming from AI, he said “that’s reality, deal with it” and even went on to talk about photographers that are out of work because “you can fake pictures so much better now” while, within the same breath, saying programmers wouldn’t lose their jobs because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. (Obviously I’m paraphrasing a bit)
I do agree AI can be a useful tool, and it’s a position I’ve held since OpenAI was first starting to become recognizable. But anything that’s generated by AI is slop, and I’ll continue to call it such even if nobody else will.
The movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” used AI tools to place random blemishes and marks (that the artists created) on characters faces across multiple frames. I don’t really feel like finding a source for this one, but I’m sure you could fairly easily if you’re that curious. I think that’s an actual use for AI. Streamlining and speeding up the creation process to give creative people more time to do actual creative work. I don’t think asking an LLM to generate or “create” something for you is anything but slop.
Slop isn’t about quality, it’s about the morality. The, again, large scale theft of work required to get to the point of being able to generate something of a passible quality level, plus the destruction of the environment in the process. I think it’s pointless to reject AI tools entirely due to how prominent and widespread they are, but “creating” something with AI will always be slop.
Source for the LTT interview: https://youtu.be/mfv0V1SxbNA
About 33:10
I’m conflicted about it too. But there is a useful software development tool in there. Its a beige mind good at regurgitating cookie-cutter work. Its pretty good at scaffold and cookie cutter unit tests.
I hate how it makes my colleages behave, but I can totally see the legitimate $500M/yr industry worth of software in there, under all the BS.
There’s a Jetbrains or Atlassian size companies worth of product here.
Many people are incapable of nuance.
I think it has some use cases, but it’s like religion: Don’t cram it down my throat, keep it to yourself, and I don’t mind it if it’s on my terms.
Totally get what you mean and I can fully respect that stance. In recent times, it was more like a “let’s bash all the people who think slightly positive about AI”, so kind of the same indoctrination, just the other way around.
It has nothing to do with the subject of the article. Are you blind? It’s the exact same bland, AI regurgitated writing style as every other AI written article.
Truly, it does not read like it was written using an LLM to me. Maybe you’re expecting it to, so that’s what you see?
“It’s not blah. It’s blah.”, “it’s genuinely <insert adjective of amazement>”. I can go on. As soon as you see it once you see it everywhere. When every article reads the exact same way it’s horrendous, it’s tiring, it’s the end of the internet. It’s all bots now.
You’ve got a long future ahead of you…