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I think a lot of people in tech are probably feeling something close to despair about what to do about LLMs, since it’s clear that those with power are not going to relent with their advocacy, and they have enough uses that they’ve gained critical mass, yet the harms & risks are so wildly egregious…

I think the answer has to be a multiplicity of responses. There need to be *many* alternatives, created by many entities. The answer to McDonald’s being unhealthy isn’t “make another fast food joint” — it’s getting rid of food deserts and improving nutrition overall. Give power back to the people…

If people want some of the things AI can do, have those technologies be provided by tools & platforms created by cooperatives, by unions, by universities and governments, by municipalities and by individual creators, or as open source owned by nobody. Destroy the economic value of proprietary tools.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Do you think a worker's coop could literally compete with the OpenAIs and Anthropic's on state of the art LLMs?

I don’t think state of the art LLMs are necessary to change the dynamics of the market

But you think a worker's coop LLM would change the state of the market sufficiently to eliminate OpenAI's problematic dynamics? Isn't it possible that worker's coop LLM could suffer the same problems without significant effort? I'm not trying to completely poo-poo the idea, but it is very complex...

Coming back to this thread... After deeper research I'm finding lots of people who've built LLM products who are excited about the prospect of individual software developers spending $200 a month on side projects. Sounds to me like some people are dreaming of a world where wealth builds code.

Philanthropy isn’t helping here either. It is demanding people utilize these tools and not funding anything that could compete.

And it could even be regular-ass companies! An insurance company could make an LLM that has a lot of use for a lot of folks and isn’t evil! Or a supermarket. Like… it’s not exclusive to giant evil tech tycoons!

Not really… training is still stunningly expensive and requires a ton of investment, which is why these companies want to sell a service. But I think the rest of your point is great! The bubble will burst in 6 months at the latest and AI will take a different shape.

Insurance companies have made and used AI. As for not evil, it depends on how moral you find auto-denying claims. www.ama-assn.org/press-center...

Seems like all those drawbacks are intrinsic to the technology of an LLM no matter whose hands it's in or how noble their intentions.