Arwa Mahdawi introduced me to a new term, or maybe a new concept: “AI vegans,” which is to say, people whose attitude and actions in relationship to so-called “AI” parallels the way vegans deal with animal products.
Mahdawi cited an article by a professor who directs online education at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, David Joyner – someone who’s clearly not a tech-phobe.
I like this concept quite a lot. While I am not vegan, I respect the vegan approach, and often think that they’re likely right on all points, especially with respect to the effect on the environment.
The criticisms by the “AI vegans” go like this:
- “AI” is immoral and unethical – particularly because the materials used to develop it were stolen from people (including me and others here in the Treehouse).
- Using “AI” is bad for your health – recent studies have shown harm to the critical thinking faculties of those who use a lot of chatbots to do their intellectual work for them.
- The “AI” industry is very destructive to the environment, requiring massive amounts of water and electricity – which includes building new coal and other fossil fuel powered power plants despite the fact that we’re at the tipping point for renewables.
Those ideas directly parallel the vegan attitude toward animal products. I’d add a fourth one: Most “AI” products being sold don’t work very well. This is particularly true of writing programs, but also true of many of the ones aimed at employers who want to fire their workers.
I do my damnedest to avoid any use of “AI.” I try to disable it in writing programs – it gets in my way – and I’ve reached the point where I assume any feel-good story on social media is “AI” generated. I suspect it’s in the spell-check programs now, because they don’t work as well as they used to. I’m sure it’s in the grammar programs, but since I don’t use that crap – my command of grammar is certainly better than any fucking programmer’s, much less “AI’s” – I don’t worry about those.
I hope the “AI vegan” movement catches on, because this slop is out of control.
We keep being told that some chatbot can pass the multiple guess part of the bar exam with flying colors. As someone who has taken that exam, I don’t find that difficult to believe. A bot that has incorporated previous tests and other prep materials for that exam or any similar exam can probably do a great job on it, especially since the bots can’t think and are only making the statistical best guess in any situation.
I mean, the biggest problem with multiple guess exams – yeah, I know they’re technically called multiple choice and probably have some fancy new name these days that I’m not familiar with since thank all that’s holy I haven’t had to take one in years, but you know what I mean by multiple guess – is that they don’t reward thinking.
Despite the fact that every time I’m faced with four choices for an answer I always want to go with a fifth one, I used to be pretty good at those tests. I had a gut understanding of them. I do not think this is one of my best traits, though it was useful. Continue reading “Becoming an “AI Vegan””…