Hi, disclaimer: I have no problem with the technology itself. I can use the same knife to cut bread or to hurt somebody. My problem is how 99% of this technology is being used right now: how it is strengthening monopolies, making very few people richer at the expense of the public, that the data is in closed silos, the scraping/stealing of data without consent and the environmental impact of it all.
Quoting Christian Kastner (2026-02-19 11:08:19) > I think that as with any other revolutionary technology, we should actively > contribute and thus help shape it. For example, I was so happy to see this at > DebConf25 [2]. I do think that it is possible to use this technology responsibly and I do welcome people working towards models trained on data that was gathered consentually, can be reproduced, modified, distributed and used ethically and run on machines owned by the many rather than the very few rich enough to afford the gigantic datacenters. > What saddens me the most though is your argument as if this is Capitalism > just exploiting everyone, because you've clearly not yet experienced how > transformative LLMs can be to the average person, especially to the > computer-illiterate who (by no fault of their own) do not possess the skills > to do anything technical. I too have yet to experience this myself. I do have an account with OpenAI and sometimes, when I'm really lost I give ChatGPT a go to check whether maybe it finally can be an improvement to my life rather than a drain. I have yet to find a single problem I have which ChatGPT was able to solve for me. Maybe I'm just too specialized but I doubt it. Maybe my prompts are just bad. Instead, my time is drained by noobs trying to be smart and making me waste time on pages of output which a machine generated for them within minutes. The technology is currently a drain for me personally. On the other hand, I see my students, the "average person" you may be speaking of who (by no fault of their own) now do everything via a prompt, be it what I would solve by "browsing the internet", choosing which pizza place to go to or do syntax highlighting and indentation for their source code. When I asked the student who told me about the last bit, they were surprised when I told them that syntax highlighting and indentation can also be done without an LLM. The "average person" is currently moving their whole interaction with the world into the closed silos guarded by few very rich companies and they stop learning the skills necessary to navigate the world without the aid of a prompt. So maybe this is transformative to the average person who does not possess the skills to do anything technical but it is also taking away most of the motivation for the average person to gain skill in an area and grow because why would they if it's so comfortable when the prompt gives them all the answers? A prompt which is driven by very few actors interested in shareholder value on machines which are mostly not run on renewable energy. So yes, this makes me very upset at the current state of the world. When I teach my class I fight an uphill battle against 100+ students who come into my class thinking that they don't have to learn what I teach them because why would they if some prompt by OpenAI can give them any answer they want without them having to put any effort first? This is my last mail to this thread. Sorry if I wasted anybodies time. cheers, josch
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