• Lionir [he/him]@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    This is just enlightened centrism. No. Nobody needs to defend the harms done by technology.

    We can accept the harm if the good is worth it - we have no need to defend it.

    LLMs can work without the harm.

    It makes sense to make technology better by reducing the harm they cause when it is possible to do so.

    • janguv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      He would have been better off not talking about harm directly but the ability to cause harm; he actually used that wording in an earlier comment in this chain. (Basically strawmanned himself lol.)

      Because as a standalone argument for encryption, it's fairly sound – hey, the ability of somebody to cause harm via encrypted messaging channels is the selfsame ability to do good [/prevent spying/protect privacy, whistleblowers/etc], and since the good outweighs the bad, we have to protect the ability to cause harm (sadly).

      The problem is it's still disanalogous – the ability to cause harm via LLM use is not the selfsame ability to do good (or to do otherwise what you want). My LLM's refusing to tell me how to make a bomb has no impact on its ability to tell me how to make a pasta bake.