On the Ethics of Using LLMs

We are going through a large change in how we work with information and knowledge. At the risk of hyperbole, I think this change may be one of the big ones, like the invention of writing, printing, computing or the internet. I am talking about the tools we collectively call “artifical intelligence (AI)” and specifically the large language models (LLMs). There are large ethical concerns using such tools. I have enumerated some myself: Large-language-models (LLMs) have huge issues: They’ve been trained on information they shouldn’t have (disrespecting ownership and taking advantage of groups of people) They are owned, operated and pushed by some of the worst people / companies in the world Using the services have inherent privacy and confidentiality risks There are large and unsustainable environmental costs to training and using them Their use pushes us away from our direct interaction with whatever medium they produce in - and that feels like it de-values the work of humans in that…