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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • I simply want to know if machines like this can exist in Solarpunk with it remaining Solarpunk

    I think this question is a great prompt for an actual Solarpunk story.

    Forget AGI, even creating ‘AI’ seems to require human exploitation on a global scale. All current Large Language Models’ (LLM) existence relies on denying intellectual ‘property’ norms and erasing the authorship of millions of small human authors, artists, and creators, while those same norms are enforced brutally against them in the interest of rich creators and corporations.

    I know anarchists take many stances on the use of LLM technology, but I don’t think anyone denies these technologies are powerful and world-changing. Like not driving a car or living a strictly vegan lifestyle, some anarchists have measured the harm with the benefit, and decided to accept that boycotting LLM technology is an ethical stance they can’t individually afford.

    But what would an anti-capitalist ‘AI’ look like? Is it possible to build an alternative to the LAION Dataset that respects the human authorship upon which it depends? How would such a system survive against its capitalist competitors? How would tools built on the dataset differ from the ones currently available? How would abuse of the system be prevented or mitigated? How would the world react to an anarchist LLM?

    I think answering these questions could be the basis of a solarpunk version of the cypherpunk Cryptonomicon. It would be the kind of well-written story I would like to read.