I spent a lot of time in ethics classes back when I studied philosophy. We ended up having a lot of deontological ethics vs utilitarians sort of debates.
At the tisk of dangerously over simplifying:
Utilitarians are a specific kind of consequentialist. They believe the morality (or lack there of) of an action should be judged based on the consequences of the action; and with specifically how much UTILITY is generated by the action.
Deontological ethical philosophy, is a broader family of thought; which in general believes the action is moral or immoral independent of the consequences. That there is a way of judging morality by the action in and of itself.
The vast majority of my peers and professors heavily favored utilitarian ethics. I was always very wary of them.
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Judging things by the amount of utility they offered always felt off to me. My gut always told me it could often lead to situations where that kind of calculus was misaligned with our day to day moral intuitions.
AND today; im dwelling on the fact that virtually all the justifications about LLMs are utilitarian.
There are certainly utilitarian critiques of LLMs too, don't get me wrong.
BUT I feel like waging that kind of debate in that utilitarian calculus is likely unwinnable.
When what we risk loosing is a creative spark, in many fields; a reason d'etre. Which is much more a deontological sort of thing.
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#philosophy #ethics #llm #genAI #NoAI #AntiAI