Designed to Benefit the Most Privileged

LLMs are designed to benefit those already with the most power and privilege in the world. This can be seen in their business investment models, their marketing strategies, and their commercialization. Their design and development has not prioritized ethical engagement with historically marginalized communities, and their operationalization is not seeking their support, even though LLM future legacies disproportionately most affects those it further marginalizes.

“…most language technology is built to serve the needs of those who already have the most privilege in society. Consider, for example, who is likely to both have the financial resources to purchase a Google Home, Amazon Alexa or an Apple device with Siri installed and comfortably speak a variety of a language which they are prepared to handle. Furthermore, when [LLMs] encode and reinforce hegemonic biases, the harms that follow are most likely to fall on marginalized populations who, even in rich nations, are most likely to experience environmental racism.” (Source)

Read more: 

• Investors are going nuts for ChatGPT-ish artificial intelligence
• Atlas of AI
• Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Models
• On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?
• AI Now Institute
• The Steep Cost Of Capture
• Rachel Thomas – Ethical Artificial Intelligence
• AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, and Scale
• As A.I. Booms, Lawmakers Struggle to Understand the Technology