Reply To: [unofficial weekender] Springtime 2026

March 22, 2026 at 9:07 am #1968255

12936xp

that’s what forums are for

Indeed it is 🙂 This is why we like OTT because it hasn’t instantly descended into ad hominem but is an open exchange of information and opinion. He’s my two-penneth:

AI usage is an interesting debate and well informed by the posts here – thanks to all. As a few of you have said the boat appears to have already sailed in terms of reigning it in or limiting how LLM were used to steal things to create it. The issue for us humans is that we much prefer to do something new than think about whether we should.

I’m not a fan of AI for commercial purposes and wouldn’t use it to make a product for sale when it is replacing work a person could have done, including my own. That said, as an human existing in modern society it is impossible to avoid or boycott it, so for me personal usage is fine. Why no absolute boycott if I think commercial AI is wrong? Well…

Every time I google something I get an AI answer first. So to boycott that I can’t use Google which means no gmail. The same is true of using Microsoft products so now no Word or Excel. It is hard to find any commercial software that doesn’t openly force AI onto users, and I bet every one has used it in the background to write code so there is no escape – no AI clean product in contemporary IT. OTT uses WordPress architecture which is actively developed using AI processes and coding. That new update to image upload for projects and forums that we’ve all benefited from, definitely produced with AI assistance. So no OTT either? As has been said, the genie is out of the bottle and we can’t go back, regardless of how bad many developers’ practices were to get us here. We’re here now.

So what to do with our moral compass? Throw it out of the window? Or try to find a position that reflects how we feel?

As an historian the AI debate is interesting as its the early stages of a process that has happened so many times before. There’s justifiable moral outrage at the way commercial cotton was developed; the inconceivable horror of the slave trade, appalling working conditions and child labour exploitation from the industrial revolution through to today, and pollution caused by seemingly harmless and everyday products like a pair of jeans. To this day people are fighting for reparations from those who benefited. So does that mean I don’t use cotton products. No. How can I avoid them? Cotton is fundamental to so many industrialised processes. If you don’t accept the argument on cotton then you can do pretty much the same thing for cane sugar, rubber, palm oil or indeed almost any cash crop. So no processed food, fizzy drinks, coffee/tea, bicycles/cars/busses. We’d need to go to subsistence living in a cave somewhere.

So where the moral compass then? I choose to make a stand in some areas but not all. Personally I don’t wear jeans and I don’t buy new denim. I still wear cotton clothing and am aware of, but content with, my moral hypocrisy. Fortunately humans are good at cognitive dissonance (holding two or more seemingly exclusive opinions at once). The key to a strong ethical position is to be conscious of your own cognitive dissonances. So stay open-minded, learn and you can be an ethical consumer.

And now I’m off to paint some miniatures 🙂