the models themselves are trained on something

Yeah I’m not claiming that the models were trained ethically. Like they basically scraped the entire Internet, definitely including some data it’s unethical to include. Thus, “stealing” isn’t really the right framework. It’s violations of privacy or other rights.

What you get when you download an AI model is basically a big set of numbers. IMO the question is: what are the consequences of using these numbers?

In my view, the best, but ultimately unconvincing argument against using these numbers is that they were generated by an unethical process, so using these specific numbers constitutes an endorsement of the process that created them. As an anti-capitalist, I fundamentally oppose almost every process that created almost every product I have ever used, simply by virtue of the fact that everything I have ever owned has been produced by private firms stealing proletarian labor. If I applied this principle consistently, I would simply starve to death and be completely marginalized and forgotten by capitalist society. Thus, I am willing, to some extent, to live in contradiction of the heuristic that we shouldn’t use products derived from unethical processes. In particular, I believe that local LLMs, despite their ethically sketchy training, have sufficient technical utility for users to offset the harm already incurred. So I think there is absolutely an argument to slow down training of LLM models, especially since I suspect that the system you build a model into is just as important as the LLM “black box” itself (e.g. Claude uses a Linux container and SymPy in the background)…but for users, I don’t believe the argument to stop inference, i.e. using the numbers, is as strong.

I myself will still not like generative AI, simply because of all the shit and more, but also how damaging it has been for the creative space

Honestly, yeah I really am not interested in using LLMs for creative purposes. I only ever use LLMs for technical work, and I really only want to listen to music and consume art arranged by sentient beings.