This seems to conceptualize “AI” as somehow apart from human intention in its vastness. It doesn’t touch on questions of access or bias. Let’s be honest: it’s not really Everything, and certainly not all sources on an equal footing. The “trellis” matters quite a bit. It promotes some things and suppresses others, and when deployed, it takes as it gives. All Big Tech has been doing this, since the beginning. It is essentially exploitative and manipulative, but it provides order, which is… you know, Foucault wrote a book about that.
The deployed technology is not autonomous. It both amplifies and shapes human effort and intention. The simple question, “is it OK”, is much too broad, which is why the author ends up with both Yes and No. Better ask when and why are specific instantiations of the scrape-and-trellis pipeline and specific applications of its products morally justifiable, or not.
This seems to conceptualize “AI” as somehow apart from human intention in its vastness. It doesn’t touch on questions of access or bias. Let’s be honest: it’s not really Everything, and certainly not all sources on an equal footing. The “trellis” matters quite a bit. It promotes some things and suppresses others, and when deployed, it takes as it gives. All Big Tech has been doing this, since the beginning. It is essentially exploitative and manipulative, but it provides order, which is… you know, Foucault wrote a book about that.
The deployed technology is not autonomous. It both amplifies and shapes human effort and intention. The simple question, “is it OK”, is much too broad, which is why the author ends up with both Yes and No. Better ask when and why are specific instantiations of the scrape-and-trellis pipeline and specific applications of its products morally justifiable, or not.