this is actually a really debatable argument. If you’re buying it first hand, from somebody trying to make money, yes it could arguably be unethical, but if you’re buying it second hand, i.e. someone who just doesn’t want it anymore, you could make the argument that it’s an ethically net positive transaction. Since they no longer want the diamond, and wish to have money instead, and you wish to have the diamond, and less money. Everybody wins in 2nd hand deals, weirdly enough.
Setting aside “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, which is a debatable for another time:
I don’t totally agree with your assessment of 2nd hand sales: it’s not ethical positive, at best it’s ethically neutral, because demand trickles up the market. I could go into this more, but ultimately it it’s irrelevant:
The 2nd hand LLM market doesn’t work like that because LLMs are sold as a service. The LLM producers take a cut from all LLM resellers.
You could make a case that self hosting a free open source LLM like OLlama is ok, but that’s not how most LLMs are distributed.
Setting aside “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, which is a debatable for another time:
the simple answer is yes and no, there is both ethical, and unethical consumption under capitalism. As there is in any society throughout human history.
I don’t totally agree with your assessment of 2nd hand sales: it’s not ethical positive, at best it’s ethically neutral, because demand trickles up the market. I could go into this more, but ultimately it it’s irrelevant:
if we start from a basis of ethical neutrality, ignoring the parties as a baseline, i included the parties because i would consider two parties who wish to do business, successfully doing business, to be an ethically positive thing, as two people have had their needs/wants more closely met by this deal. Therefore making it ethically positive.
If you’re starting from an ethically negative point, you need some sort of inherent negative value to exist within that relationship. Perhaps the guy who is selling was hitler for example, that would make it an ethically negative scenario. Maybe after he sold it, he would’ve donated the money or given it to someone who can do something more useful with it, making it even more ethically positive.
there’s an argument to be made for something with perceived value and static supply to have an upwards trajectory in the market going forward, for something like blood diamonds this is unlikely, but assuming it did happen, this should actually be an ethically positive thing assuming that the families of the original diamonds ended up getting their hands on them for example. If they weren’t given back to the family then it doesn’t really matter since you’re back to the baseline anyway. Prospective investments aren’t a real tangible asset, so we can’t forsee that.
although to be clear, i wasn’t talking about LLMs, this is a much harder thing to do with LLMs, although the argument here is that the training has already been done, the power has already been consumed, you can’t unconsume that power, so therefore whatever potential future consumption that could happen, is based off of the existing consumption already. Unless of course you did more training in the future, but that’s a different story. Just boycott AI or something at that point lol.
In both your examples, you seem to assume that the harm is already done and that there is no continued harm.
But in both cases the harm isn’t finished; the blood diamond mine owners use the continued sale of blood diamonds to fund their continued mining operations, and LLM providers use the sale of LLM use to fund the continued training of new LLM models.
Regardless of if you think that buying second hand blood diamonds increases overall demand in the market (which blood diamonds sellers benefit from); it is clearly the case that selling (and reselling) LLM services benefit the LLM providers, and we can trivially see that they’re training new models and not making amends.
says who? In my example i assumed that the blood mined diamonds had already ceased production, because obviously if they haven’t theres no point in talking about market forces at all. The more pressing concern would be the literal blood diamonds. I was talking about the second hand market for what were previously blood diamonds, and technically still are, just without the active cost associated.
And again, what funds, there are no funds, this is a purely second hand sale. The seller is not giving a percent back to the diamond mining company that no longer exists here.
and LLM providers use the sale of LLM use to fund the continued training of new LLM models.
i would agree with this, but it seems like we very quickly hit a new technical limitation as of the last few years. The pace has drastically slowed, the technical nature of the AIs have improved less, the broad suitability has improved more. And it’s also worth noting that this is an itemized cost. Not a whole static cost. Just saying “but but, ai consumes lots of energies” is meaningless, unless you can demonstrate that it’s significant, and actually matters. I think there is definitely an argument to be made here, but unfortunately, i have yet to see anyone actually argue it.
and we can trivially see that they’re training new models and not making amends.
what do you mean when you say amends? Carbon capture? Paying off artists so they can "steal their jobs? This is meaningless to me without an actual practical example.
this is actually a really debatable argument. If you’re buying it first hand, from somebody trying to make money, yes it could arguably be unethical, but if you’re buying it second hand, i.e. someone who just doesn’t want it anymore, you could make the argument that it’s an ethically net positive transaction. Since they no longer want the diamond, and wish to have money instead, and you wish to have the diamond, and less money. Everybody wins in 2nd hand deals, weirdly enough.
Setting aside “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, which is a debatable for another time:
I don’t totally agree with your assessment of 2nd hand sales: it’s not ethical positive, at best it’s ethically neutral, because demand trickles up the market. I could go into this more, but ultimately it it’s irrelevant:
The 2nd hand LLM market doesn’t work like that because LLMs are sold as a service. The LLM producers take a cut from all LLM resellers.
You could make a case that self hosting a free open source LLM like OLlama is ok, but that’s not how most LLMs are distributed.
the simple answer is yes and no, there is both ethical, and unethical consumption under capitalism. As there is in any society throughout human history.
if we start from a basis of ethical neutrality, ignoring the parties as a baseline, i included the parties because i would consider two parties who wish to do business, successfully doing business, to be an ethically positive thing, as two people have had their needs/wants more closely met by this deal. Therefore making it ethically positive.
If you’re starting from an ethically negative point, you need some sort of inherent negative value to exist within that relationship. Perhaps the guy who is selling was hitler for example, that would make it an ethically negative scenario. Maybe after he sold it, he would’ve donated the money or given it to someone who can do something more useful with it, making it even more ethically positive.
there’s an argument to be made for something with perceived value and static supply to have an upwards trajectory in the market going forward, for something like blood diamonds this is unlikely, but assuming it did happen, this should actually be an ethically positive thing assuming that the families of the original diamonds ended up getting their hands on them for example. If they weren’t given back to the family then it doesn’t really matter since you’re back to the baseline anyway. Prospective investments aren’t a real tangible asset, so we can’t forsee that.
although to be clear, i wasn’t talking about LLMs, this is a much harder thing to do with LLMs, although the argument here is that the training has already been done, the power has already been consumed, you can’t unconsume that power, so therefore whatever potential future consumption that could happen, is based off of the existing consumption already. Unless of course you did more training in the future, but that’s a different story. Just boycott AI or something at that point lol.
In both your examples, you seem to assume that the harm is already done and that there is no continued harm.
But in both cases the harm isn’t finished; the blood diamond mine owners use the continued sale of blood diamonds to fund their continued mining operations, and LLM providers use the sale of LLM use to fund the continued training of new LLM models.
Regardless of if you think that buying second hand blood diamonds increases overall demand in the market (which blood diamonds sellers benefit from); it is clearly the case that selling (and reselling) LLM services benefit the LLM providers, and we can trivially see that they’re training new models and not making amends.
says who? In my example i assumed that the blood mined diamonds had already ceased production, because obviously if they haven’t theres no point in talking about market forces at all. The more pressing concern would be the literal blood diamonds. I was talking about the second hand market for what were previously blood diamonds, and technically still are, just without the active cost associated.
And again, what funds, there are no funds, this is a purely second hand sale. The seller is not giving a percent back to the diamond mining company that no longer exists here.
i would agree with this, but it seems like we very quickly hit a new technical limitation as of the last few years. The pace has drastically slowed, the technical nature of the AIs have improved less, the broad suitability has improved more. And it’s also worth noting that this is an itemized cost. Not a whole static cost. Just saying “but but, ai consumes lots of energies” is meaningless, unless you can demonstrate that it’s significant, and actually matters. I think there is definitely an argument to be made here, but unfortunately, i have yet to see anyone actually argue it.
what do you mean when you say amends? Carbon capture? Paying off artists so they can "steal their jobs? This is meaningless to me without an actual practical example.