A commons approach to LLMs

Yesterday, two of my favourite bloggers go into a spat on Mastodon: @tante accused Cory Doctrow of 'straw-manning' the anti-slop/Luddite movement in a blog.  Later that day, after a 'that escalated quickly' argument that is usually reserved for x.com, tante published another blog to address the reactions to the original piece.  

At first glance, this looks like a 'straw-motte' discussion - a bait-and-switch tactic that content creators use to capture attention: accusing an offside remark of being a straw man, then building an stone-clad counter argument (a motte), which is then accused by the original party of being a straw man, countered with a motte, which is a straw man, etc. ad-infinitum.  But on closer inspection, it turned out that there was quite a nuanced discussion going on - that is, beside the usual flame war.  

The discussion went as follows:

• Doctrow mentioned in a blog that he uses an LLM to clean up his content.  In the blog and in later discussions he reveals that he uses an ollama, self-hosted model, on a laptop using as much power as say, watching a video stream. 
• Doctrow makes the implicit argument that using a self-hosted model is ok - it uses little energy and just because Sam Altman is a creep, that doesn't make the tech bad.  
• Tante writes that this is a straw man argument, the real discussion being the other ethical downsides of LLMs: 
  

  People criticise LLMs for their structural properties, their material impacts, for the way they make it harder to learn and grow, for the way they make products worse while creating massive negative externalities in the form of emissions, water use and e-waste. For the way these systems can only be build[i.d.] by taking every piece of data – regardless of whether the authors consent or even explicitly refuse and how the training needs ungodly amounts of harmful, exploitative labor done mostly by people in countries from the global majority. How it materially harms the commons.

• Various commentators prove both tante's and Doctrow's points - there are arguments along all of the reasons mentioned, including 'over my dead body' puritan arguments and ad-hominems against both.  

• Tante concedes this in the second blog post and calls for an alliance between the two.

I would like to make these additions to the discussion:

It's capitalism baby!

For two commentators claiming to be communist, both make rather liberal arguments.  In his book Enshittification, Doctrow argues for regulatory control over big tech using  antitrust and privacy regulation.  Not that I disagree, but this is a distinctly state-capitalist approach, a truly communist approach would be to seize the means of production.  In digital terms - hack and steal big tech's intellectual property and nationalise social media and AI.  Just like you have a right to work and a right to a dwelling, you have a right to internet access and hosting.  The revolution would be the tech workers' donation of all corporate assets to state-controlled communes.  

 Tante in turn argues for living according to your values, implying that if we all have complementary values and everyone stuck to them then this would result in 'an Internet and a world that is more inclusive, fairer, freer'.  Again, this sounds fantastic to me but it really is a very individualist argument, focussed on personal liberty.  Communism values labour collectively owning the means of production, the abolition of social class and redistributing from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.  

The reason that state-capitalism works (and don't get me wrong, I believe in the free market as much as I believe in the Easter bunny) is that it leaves space for self-organisation in the form of markets.   However, market rules heavily favour ownership by the few, and economies of scale.  What the people inside that system value, really has very little impact on outcomes. But how they act does have an impact on their values.  

 If instead of being consumers of AI slop machines, we are the collective owners of the tech we design and use, that will cause us to value our collectives, collectively.  Personal liberty, inclusiveness and freedom to choose may emerge as individual values but the power of both worker-owned coops and federated servers is that a large diversity of individual values can co-exist.  

Schismogenesis

One of my favourite concepts from anthropology, is the process by which tribes or groups form their culture by contrasting their values with their neighbours.  In Europe we value solidarity, not like those corrupt, individualist Americans.  A bit of conflict in the fediverse among some communists, especially when resolved fairly eloquently, will not result in the polarized views that currently hold the US in their grip. 

My secret hope is that the federation will start encouraging de-polarisation - not by turning everyone into a communist (or a capitalist, or a fascist) - but by allowing for a large number of different value systems to co-exist.  But perhaps it is more realistic to start contrasting my European values against the hicks and the hill-billies across the ocean, accelerating the schism between our continents whilst strengthening the cohesion of my in-group.  The current division between the libtards and the Nazis doesn't seem very productive.  

To LLM or not to LLM?

We use llama, whisper and libre translate at Fonetic for translating and transcribing texts for deaf people and migrants to be able to be included in society.  I see that as labour seizing the means of production and although I'd prefer to use only Free, Libre, Open models, I also know that this personal value makes very little difference.  That is neither utilitarian nor pragmatic - I don't believe my values cause my actions, I believe my actions cause my values.  

What will help the world is if we accept our own hypocrisy and focus on forming our collective values through action: banishing corporatism, strengthening de-central democracy and if not guillotining-, then at least taxing billionaires to death.  Start or join a worker-owned coop or a union, earn your money with labour not with property.