Yes, but it is very important to distinguish between LLMs, which are amoral math, and OpenAI et al, which are corporations run by fascists that offer LLM-based public surveillance / disinformation platforms. There is no technology on earth that cannot be bent to malign purpose if malicious people are inclined to do so. LLMs are just the popular useful technology du jour.

I got called unethical today for using a small-scale locally hosted open model trained on Wikipedia and Stack Exchange. A LOT of the anti-AI people are universalists that have decided carte blanche that it is an evil technology and everyone who uses it is bad.

Even most of of the local and "open" models are exploiting the work of others by training off unethically sourced data without even so much as consent.

There is such a thing as ethical AI, but damn near zero people are doing it that way.

The torment nexus isn't a discrete thing. You can't make thumbscrews without screws. Are the screws evil? If not, when does the composition of components become evil? I don't think LLMs are evil for the same reason I don't think thumbscrews are evil in and of themselves. Thumbscrews, like LLMs, lack the capacity for evil. It's the people who turn technology against their fellow humans that I hold as my enemy, not the trappings of their mischief. Remove them from the equation, and the torment nexus becomes so much harmless scrap, ready to be beaten into plowshares.

surveillance networks are made of computers and sensors, which are made of chips and wires. I don't think chips and wires are fascist, I don't think sensors and computers are fascist. I think the purpose to which they are put is the fascist part, and the purpose is pure human.

I wonder if it isn't at least partially a psy op. This whole business of giving anyone who even looks at an LLM a scarlet letter, and refusing to participate in any critical evaluation of LLMs or other AI tools, plays right into the hands of those who would use LLMs to pollute, isolate, and destroy the free internet. The willfully ignorant will be the easiest to trap.

If you can read this: beware the day that internet discussions of mass manipulation go quiet. That silence is the death knell of freedom.