we are conditioned, within our current social and economic systems, to believe that engaging with someone who has done wrong makes us complicit. this shifts blame from the originators of misconduct to mere bystanders. simultaneously, the state considers corporations to be people.
consider online corporate platforms: users are subjects targeted for profit. subjects are bystanders to the blameworthy. being a subject is passive. a platform's users cannot fundamentally resolve its ethical failings. their greatest agency—if they have it—is disengagement.
disengagement is radical. deleting a social media account reduces the harm of social media on free will and community resolve by a nonzero amount. mathematically, that is improvement. i believe that.
but not all platforms are easy to leave. the one i struggle with most is chatgpt. someday, i hope to disengage. i have no illusions about its ethical shortcomings or its ties to oppressive systems. i resent that my subscription contributes to that, even as i feel powerless to change it. i lack the knowledge and resources to run my own local llm. but learning never ends, and that could change.
unlike facebook or twitter/x, chatgpt does something i cannot do without immense effort: it simplifies my writing, making it more understandable to others—and to me. authors are imperfect little freaks. the god-author never existed. we are all shaped by the tangle of neurons we inherit through experience and circumstance. i am, in many ways, above-average at communication. i am also, in many ways, at my physical limits. chatgpt extends my ability to communicate beyond that threshold. i am not quick to abandon that.
none of this makes chatgpt good. at best, it is a tool. tools, existing outside of intentionality, are neutral. but chatgpt is also a revenue stream for a broadly evil corporation. that is not neutral.
as an openai user, i feel stuck. i rely on chatgpt daily, including for programming projects i couldn't complete alone. it is a crutch. but crutches allow people to walk, don't they? the idea that we should rely on no one and nothing to self-actualize is absurd individualist nonsense. (self-actualization itself may also be absurd individualist nonsense, but that's a topic for another time.) striving to make things a little better than yesterday feels universal, even if our paths are imperfect and our agency is less than we think.
but i don't feel great about any of this. and so, i am writing this, editing it in chatgpt like most of my writing, posting it to a website i built with chatgpt's help, and canonizing my discomfort. because nothing i say or do is final until i die, and because i can continue to learn and grow, i hope one day to update this with a short note. if all it says is:
as of this date, in this year, i no longer use chatgpt or any corporate-owned llm, and have therefore found my way out of this ethical miasma
i will then find relief.
until then, i acknowledge ai's role in this website, however limited and intentional that may be. if that leads you to disengage from this website, i do not blame you.
but in the meantime, these thoughts are wholly my own, even if i accepted help in expressing them. and while i like the idea of someone, not me, finding value in them, i also accept that we all judge each other for the platforms we use, just as i do. we are all here together in this bog, existing—fallibly. this is the version of myself that i can put forth for you.