For those unaware, Linus Torvalds this year has deeply cast his lot with the hyperscale LLMs for development of Linux code, dismissing arguments that this is an abdication of responsibility over that code base.

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[–] 19 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

A tool cannot in and of itself be political.

I disagree, and I'm not alone: https://gomakethings.com/articles/all-tech-is-political/

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  • [–] 9 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (4 children)

    I wouldn't dare do the disservice of judging the article (in full) purely on title, but "technology" includes the hammer, the wheel, and all the way around to sticks and fire.

    Again, I am willing to debate the ethics of use of any given technology all day as that is absolutely a conversation worth having, especially with some technologies like spy satellites and permanently-connected IOT devices alongside LLMs.

    But technology itself isn't inherently political.

    Now I'm clicking the link.

    Edit: Upon reading, I fully take their point, but my own lens of it is more that everything is within the realm of politics rather than innately political itself. Tractors aren't inherently political, but John Deere managed to make them so. Actors using, to my earlier point, any technology as a lever for politics doesn't inherently make that technology political.

    I appreciate that viewpoint immensely however, even though I don't fully align with it myself.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago* (2 children)

    Get out of here with your nuanced takes and reading entire articles!

    This is Lemmy good sir, and we crucify people based on general vibes and extreme positions!

    Off to the downvotes!

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  • [–] 6 points 5 hours ago

    Obviously there is a spectrum between sewing needles and nuclear weapons.. But I think it's clear that even e.g. stone axes have had meaningful impacts on the structure of society and also on politics as a subset of that (e.g. their use had implications for power relationships, perhaps as a weapon, perhaps as a way to increase socioeconomic status, etc.)

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