The rhetoric that limiting or banning AI/generative AI/LLM/diffusion model use is "ableist" or "gatekeeping" is the latest desperate attempt to find an angle through which to force this technology into our lives against our collective will. We need to reject this narrative. Common as it is it simply doesn't scan. It reads to me as an attempt to co-opt the language of social justice to shame people into accepting an unjust and largely failing technology that they are rightfully rejecting.
Think it through. If you don't accept the use of climate-destroying, electricity-and-fresh-water-sapping, job-destroying, economy-thrashing--and yet mediocre or poorly performing!--technology created by multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities, then you are preventing people with less privilege than you have from living their best lives. You are preventing them from learning how to code. You are preventing them from obtaining coveted jobs in the tech sector. You are preventing them from having access to information. You, personally, are responsible for all this. Not the multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities who've not only created this technology and forced it on us but contributed to creating the less-privileged conditions of the people you are supposedly responsible for with your individual choices. Not the governments that neglected to enforce existing laws that would have prevented such multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities from forming in the first place, let alone creating such a technology--while also creating the conditions that led to people being less privileged. No, they are not responsible. You are. I am.
That doesn't make any sense.
Neoliberalism's greatest trick has been to shift responsibility for any problems away from the powerful and onto individuals who are not empowered to fix anything, all while convincing everyone that this is right and proper. Large corporations do not cause a plastic pollution problem; you and I do, by not separating our recycling. Large corporations, governments and militaries do not cause CO2 pollution and climate damage; you and I do, by using incandescent lightbulbs and non-electric/non-hybrid cars or eating meat. Lack of regulation and large agribusiness practices are not to blame for poor food quality; you and I are, for buying what they sell instead of going organic and joining a CSA. Etc. ad infinitum. Large, powerful entities routinely generate a problem, then tell you and me that we are responsible for the problem as well as for fixing it. Never mind that these entities could nudge their own behavior a bit and move the needle on the problem far more than masses of people could no matter how organized they were. Never mind that these entities could be constrained from causing such problems in the first place.
We are watching a new variation of this pattern come into being right in front of our eyes with AI. We should stop accepting these fictions. You are neither ableist nor a gatekeeper for resisting AI. You are, instead, attempting to forestall the further degradation of conditions for everyone, which starts this same cycle anew.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #DiffusionModels #neoliberalism #depoliticization
