There Is No Ethical Way to Use Algorithmic Slop

This week I refused to renew a subscription I have been paying for since last century. It wasn't expensive. And I still enjoyed the content.

I cancelled for one reason and one reason only. The newsletter author has decided that using ChaptGPT (and other so-called "A.I." tools) is acceptable.

There is no "acceptable" or ethical way to use any of the machine learning algorithms being erroneously labeled as artificial intelligence^* and shoveled into every software application in an attempt to keep the grift going. (The most popular searches for those applications are now invariably how to turn off the slop.)

I don't expect everyone to go to the lengths I do (as I described in Why I Am a Tech Luddite almost a year ago). But, I will not support, subscribe to, read, watch, listen to, or otherwise consume content created with the "assistance" of any algorithmic slop.

ChaptGPT, Sora, Claude, and various algorithmic plagiarism produced by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other gibberish generators are built on stolen works (written, audio, video). They cause horrific air, water, and noise pollution in mostly Black, Indigenous, and poor rural communities. Data centers' power and water demands are escalating household electricity prices beyond many people's ability to pay and causing massive droughts. All for:

search engines with abysmal odds of producing accurate responses that consistently deliver erroneous information and phishing URLs;

technology that "invents" research papers, books, medical treatments, etc.;

software that facilitates spreading misinformation and harms both workers and consumers;

so-called "A.I." therapists/confidants that enable psychosis and encourage murder and suicide; etc.

The only real value offered by the algorithmic plagiarism applications is for the billionaires who are sucking up all venture capital in the world so they can get richer. No business model for ever earning back the billions of dollars wasted on the algorithmic generator grift exists. Sam Altman, OpenAI overlord CEO, admits as much, stating on video: "We have no current plans to make revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we've built this sort of generally intelligent system basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you."

The only people who think gibberish generators are cost-effective are overpaid CEOs who (rarely understanding the work that goes into actual production of their companies' products/services) want to use them to displace workers and depress wages. As long as it's just good enough, they believe they'll see additional profit by not paying humans to do the work. (Many have already had to hire back human staff after discovering how many, sometimes very expensive, mistakes so-called "A.I." makes.) Meanwhile:

UnitedHealth used algorithmic slop to deny claims, with a 90 percent error rate;

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Thread, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Xwitter, TikTok, etc. exploit overseas workers by assigning unreasonable quotas, paying pittance wages, forcing them to sign egregious NDAs, and causing serious mental health harm;

at least one murder and numerous suicides have been attributed to gibberish generators such as ChatGPT;

content theft is robbing creators and freelancers of income;

deepfake scams created using algorithmic slop enable contractor and landlord fraud, destroy lives, undermine political campaigns, and steal billions each year.

In addition to devastating individuals' existence directly, algorithmic plagiarism enables police state governments (the U.S., Israel, the U.K., China, etc.) to spy on their citizens for such "terrorist" activities as supporting Palestinians', other Indigenous peoples', and Trans folks' right to live or protesting masked goons kidnaping and transporting non-white people to other countries.

Large Language Models and other algorithmic indiscretions are nothing but the latest tech grift/pyramid scheme designed to take money out of the pockets of the 90 percent and further enrich billinoaire oligarchs. Just like the gig economy. Just like blockchains. Just like crypto. Just like NFTs.

How anyone can justify using unethical, environmentally disastrous, billionaire-enriching, unscrupulous, unreliable algorithmic inanity is beyond me. Most of the work users claim benefitted from gibberish slop could have been done with tech that existed long before OpenAI was founded (e.g. reliable search engines such as DuckDuckGo; any one of a dozen graphics editor, many of which are available free; basic spreadsheets, etc.).

Those who entrust creativity, analysis, thinking, etc. to algorithmic slop are reducing their own ability to do any of those things. As Baldur Bjarnason so succincly put it, "Delegating your decision-making, ranking, assessment, strategising, analysis, or any other form of reasoning to a chatbot becomes the functional equivalent to phoning a psychic for advice." (Although some would say that phone psychics generate more accurate responses.)

We refuse to participate in the grift. Fantastic Worlds doesn't buy games for the channel if they replace voice actors and designers with machine learning garbage. And we do not purchase or consume any content that used any form of algorithmic slop in its production.

This is not the first time I've abandoned a platform, subscription, or service because of someone's decision to use algorithmic indiscretions. Unfortunately, I'm sure it won't be the last.

^*Note: So-called "A.I." is not "artificial intelligence" because it is neither artificial (since it relies on humans forced to work for slave wages) nor "intelligent" (an algorithm cannot by definition be self-aware and thus "intelligent").