I’ve been very outspoken about my non-belief in intellectual property; I don’t think reading information or making a copy of it is stealing it. On the flipside, these bots are effectively performing a denial-of-service attack on public infrastructure, wasting computing resources, bandwidth, and time that is finite. The internet is for humans first and bots second; I don’t care about bots so much as long as they are well-behaved, which these are not.
My own instance went under several weeks back, then I installed Anubis and suddenly it’s usable again.
Bandwidth is incredibly cheap. The problem these sites are having is not running into bandwidth limits, it’s that providing the pages requires processing to generate them. That’s why Wikipedia’s solution works - they offer all the “raw” data in a single big archive, which takes just as much bandwidth to download but way fewer server resources to process (because there’s literally no processing - it’s just a big blob of data).
Is it okay to hire a bunch of people to check out half a library’s books, then rent them to people for money?
This analogy fails because, as I said, data can be duplicated easily. Making a copy of the data doesn’t obstruct other people from also viewing the data provided you avoid the sorts of resource bottlenecks I described above.
Is your problem really about the accessibility of this data? Or is it that you just don’t want those awful for-profit companies you hate to have access to it? I really get the impression that that’s the real problem here - people hate AI companies, and so a solution that gives everyone what they want is unacceptable because the AI companies are included in “everyone.”
Dude, my problem is that capitalism is going to ruin everything. It is a rotting sickness that cuts through every layer of society and creates systemic, ugly problems.
Do you know how excited I was when LLM tech was announced? Do you know how much it sucked to realize, so soon, that companies were going to do their best to use it to optimize profits?
The free access of information problem is just a manifestation of this dark specter on society.
You are acting as if we can approach this problem in the abstract, where you have to abide by simplistic, binary philosophical rules and not that we live in a world of constant moral compromise and complexity.
It’s not as simple as, “Oh, you say that you believe in freedom of information, but curious how you don’t want private companies to use it to make money at your expense! Guess you’re a hypocrite.”
Tell me what you actually believe, or stop cycling back to this like it’s a damning rebuttal.
It’s ironic that you’re railing against capitalism while espousing exactly the sort of scarcity mindset that capitalism is rooted in, whereas I’m the one taking the “information wants to be free” attitude that would normally be associated with anti-capitalist mindsets.
Do you know how excited I was when LLM tech was announced? Do you know how much it sucked to realize, so soon, that companies were going to do their best to use it to optimize profits?
They do that with everything. Does that mean that everything must therefore become some kind of all-or-nothing battleground wherein companies must be thwarted?
It’s not as simple as, “Oh, you say that you believe in freedom of information, but curious how you don’t want private companies to use it to make money at your expense! Guess you’re a hypocrite.”
Emphasis added. That part is where you’re in error about my view, it’s not at my expense. It doesn’t harm me any.
Tell me what you actually believe, or stop cycling back to this like it’s a damning rebuttal.
So most people build their value system upwards from foundational axioms that they accept a priori. You know, someone might begin with a moral principle like, “Happiness is good,” or “I should act with compassion.”
Then, they construct outwards from there, using their foundational moral touchstones to judge if an action, philosophy or moral principle is worth following, or what compromises must be made with it in order for it to be worth following.
Like, I wouldn’t expect someone who believes “Happiness is good,” to follow a moral law that causes suffering, because they think happiness is a good thing and should be aspired to.
If there’s a conflict between two foundational axioms on something, then you have to create a compromise on an area or subject, or create a system of priority for yourself.
In my case, I think the highest virtue is compassion for other people. Because of this, I think society should be structured to benefit people.
That’s why I support the idea of public information sources. The spread of accumulated human knowledge, culture and wisdom can benefit everyone by allowing ideas to mix, spread and be worked on by many people. It allows for an incredible richness to people’s lives and I think that it’s a wonderful example of why society should exist.
Now, there’s a compromise I have to make here, because I don’t place “Publicly available information should be universally and uniformly available to all potential patrons,” as my highest virtue. I support it because of an expression of my values, but not for its own sake.
Companies are not people. They’re build out of people, but they are not. They’re organizations that are not build with human life as a core value.
You may leap to saying that I’m calling them murderers or something, if you’re willing to not absorb or consider my words there, because I’m being very precise here- companies have an incentive to make money. Companies which fail to make money cease to exist. Therefore, the companies that are most successful and most likely to exist are those which place profit above all other values in their decision making architecture.
This is an emergent property of how they are structured, and not a product of any individual person’s desire. The system is built in a way that rewards a behavior, and so it will be organized to optimize that behavior.
Human life and happiness does not directly lead to companies being successful. It is a secondary concern- companies will pursue it if, and only if, it does not conflict with profit motives. If the cost of ignoring human suffering is below the cost of caring, they will not care. It becomes a public relations issue.
Because of this, I oppose the existence of for-profit companies because they violate my fundamental philosophical values by driving towards the creation of human suffering. It’s an inevitability of their construction, and rectifying it would require completely reworking how our economic system is built.
Now, you could say that this is a minor example of this issue, and that I am acting out of proportion. This isn’t hurting anyone in any legally actionable way, and ultimately is a transitory concern. A small restructuring of how things are organized would smooth things over and produce a satisfactory base state of affairs.
That’s, however, not the point. The point is that a corporation will push as far as they can into consuming public resources, even if this does cause real harm. Allowing them to act in this way, even on a minor issue, would be a break from my moral values. I must oppose them because they do not have the right to cause any amount of harm for the abstract notion of economic progress, especially when they are using it to feed a wrong-headed venture that is consuming other, vitally important resources which humans need to survive in direct and unquestionable ways.
Massive server farms require electricity, which we have not implemented a widespread way to acquire without causing ecological damage. They require water, which humans need to live.
LLMs have uses as tools, but they are far outstripped by the way in which corporations wish to use them, which is to reduce the amount of economic support they have to give to other humans because it doesn’t matter to them if you die. It doesn’t even matter to them if it works to replace people, so long as it allows them to increase their profits for even a infinitesimal amount of time.
They are killing people, and I do not wish to extend any benefit to them. I do not want them to have any additional power, no matter how small or insignificant.
Of course, with regards to you, there’s only two options I see.
Either you knew all of this already, and were intentionally playing the fool for, I don’t know, your amusement?
Or, you somehow entered this discussion with an awe-inspiring lack of awareness of how values and moral systems work and your only method of not being deeply embarrassed by your conduct is to cling to the notion that the simplistic binary you present is somehow relevant.
I’m not “taking their side.” I’m just not actively trying to harm them. The world is not a zero-sum game, it’s often possible for everyone to get what they want without harming each other in the process.
Unlike water, though, data can be duplicated easily.
Bandwidth can’t, though.
Is it okay to hire a bunch of people to check out half a library’s books, then rent them to people for money? Is that fine, or an obvious abuse?
Rendering this service inaccessible to actual human people in order to feed your for-profit software is only different in medium from that.
This
I’ve been very outspoken about my non-belief in intellectual property; I don’t think reading information or making a copy of it is stealing it. On the flipside, these bots are effectively performing a denial-of-service attack on public infrastructure, wasting computing resources, bandwidth, and time that is finite. The internet is for humans first and bots second; I don’t care about bots so much as long as they are well-behaved, which these are not.
My own instance went under several weeks back, then I installed Anubis and suddenly it’s usable again.
Bandwidth is incredibly cheap. The problem these sites are having is not running into bandwidth limits, it’s that providing the pages requires processing to generate them. That’s why Wikipedia’s solution works - they offer all the “raw” data in a single big archive, which takes just as much bandwidth to download but way fewer server resources to process (because there’s literally no processing - it’s just a big blob of data).
This analogy fails because, as I said, data can be duplicated easily. Making a copy of the data doesn’t obstruct other people from also viewing the data provided you avoid the sorts of resource bottlenecks I described above.
Is your problem really about the accessibility of this data? Or is it that you just don’t want those awful for-profit companies you hate to have access to it? I really get the impression that that’s the real problem here - people hate AI companies, and so a solution that gives everyone what they want is unacceptable because the AI companies are included in “everyone.”
Dude, my problem is that capitalism is going to ruin everything. It is a rotting sickness that cuts through every layer of society and creates systemic, ugly problems.
Do you know how excited I was when LLM tech was announced? Do you know how much it sucked to realize, so soon, that companies were going to do their best to use it to optimize profits?
The free access of information problem is just a manifestation of this dark specter on society.
You are acting as if we can approach this problem in the abstract, where you have to abide by simplistic, binary philosophical rules and not that we live in a world of constant moral compromise and complexity.
It’s not as simple as, “Oh, you say that you believe in freedom of information, but curious how you don’t want private companies to use it to make money at your expense! Guess you’re a hypocrite.”
Tell me what you actually believe, or stop cycling back to this like it’s a damning rebuttal.
It’s ironic that you’re railing against capitalism while espousing exactly the sort of scarcity mindset that capitalism is rooted in, whereas I’m the one taking the “information wants to be free” attitude that would normally be associated with anti-capitalist mindsets.
They do that with everything. Does that mean that everything must therefore become some kind of all-or-nothing battleground wherein companies must be thwarted?
Emphasis added. That part is where you’re in error about my view, it’s not at my expense. It doesn’t harm me any.
I have been.
Hi!
So most people build their value system upwards from foundational axioms that they accept a priori. You know, someone might begin with a moral principle like, “Happiness is good,” or “I should act with compassion.”
Then, they construct outwards from there, using their foundational moral touchstones to judge if an action, philosophy or moral principle is worth following, or what compromises must be made with it in order for it to be worth following.
Like, I wouldn’t expect someone who believes “Happiness is good,” to follow a moral law that causes suffering, because they think happiness is a good thing and should be aspired to.
If there’s a conflict between two foundational axioms on something, then you have to create a compromise on an area or subject, or create a system of priority for yourself.
In my case, I think the highest virtue is compassion for other people. Because of this, I think society should be structured to benefit people.
That’s why I support the idea of public information sources. The spread of accumulated human knowledge, culture and wisdom can benefit everyone by allowing ideas to mix, spread and be worked on by many people. It allows for an incredible richness to people’s lives and I think that it’s a wonderful example of why society should exist.
Now, there’s a compromise I have to make here, because I don’t place “Publicly available information should be universally and uniformly available to all potential patrons,” as my highest virtue. I support it because of an expression of my values, but not for its own sake.
Companies are not people. They’re build out of people, but they are not. They’re organizations that are not build with human life as a core value.
You may leap to saying that I’m calling them murderers or something, if you’re willing to not absorb or consider my words there, because I’m being very precise here- companies have an incentive to make money. Companies which fail to make money cease to exist. Therefore, the companies that are most successful and most likely to exist are those which place profit above all other values in their decision making architecture.
This is an emergent property of how they are structured, and not a product of any individual person’s desire. The system is built in a way that rewards a behavior, and so it will be organized to optimize that behavior.
Human life and happiness does not directly lead to companies being successful. It is a secondary concern- companies will pursue it if, and only if, it does not conflict with profit motives. If the cost of ignoring human suffering is below the cost of caring, they will not care. It becomes a public relations issue.
Because of this, I oppose the existence of for-profit companies because they violate my fundamental philosophical values by driving towards the creation of human suffering. It’s an inevitability of their construction, and rectifying it would require completely reworking how our economic system is built.
Now, you could say that this is a minor example of this issue, and that I am acting out of proportion. This isn’t hurting anyone in any legally actionable way, and ultimately is a transitory concern. A small restructuring of how things are organized would smooth things over and produce a satisfactory base state of affairs.
That’s, however, not the point. The point is that a corporation will push as far as they can into consuming public resources, even if this does cause real harm. Allowing them to act in this way, even on a minor issue, would be a break from my moral values. I must oppose them because they do not have the right to cause any amount of harm for the abstract notion of economic progress, especially when they are using it to feed a wrong-headed venture that is consuming other, vitally important resources which humans need to survive in direct and unquestionable ways.
Massive server farms require electricity, which we have not implemented a widespread way to acquire without causing ecological damage. They require water, which humans need to live.
LLMs have uses as tools, but they are far outstripped by the way in which corporations wish to use them, which is to reduce the amount of economic support they have to give to other humans because it doesn’t matter to them if you die. It doesn’t even matter to them if it works to replace people, so long as it allows them to increase their profits for even a infinitesimal amount of time.
They are killing people, and I do not wish to extend any benefit to them. I do not want them to have any additional power, no matter how small or insignificant.
Of course, with regards to you, there’s only two options I see.
Either you knew all of this already, and were intentionally playing the fool for, I don’t know, your amusement?
Or, you somehow entered this discussion with an awe-inspiring lack of awareness of how values and moral systems work and your only method of not being deeply embarrassed by your conduct is to cling to the notion that the simplistic binary you present is somehow relevant.
Wow, you’re beginning to understand the actual arguments and debates going on. :3
Why are you taking their side buddy?
I’m not “taking their side.” I’m just not actively trying to harm them. The world is not a zero-sum game, it’s often possible for everyone to get what they want without harming each other in the process.
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