• @[email protected]
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    114 hours ago

    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.

    • KillingTimeItself
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      14 hours ago

      But in both cases the harm isn’t finished;

      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.