Are There Generative AI Tools I Can Use That Are Perhaps Slightly More Ethical Than Others?
—Better Choices
No, I don’t think any one generative AI tool from the major players is more ethical than any other. Here’s why.
The Ethics of Generative AI
For me, the ethics of generative AI use can be broken down to issues with how the models are developed—specifically, how the data used to train them was accessed—as well as ongoing concerns about their environmental impact.
Data Collection and Consent
In order to power a chatbot or image generator, an obscene amount of data is required, and the decisions developers have made in the past—and continue to make—to obtain this repository of data are questionable and shrouded in secrecy. Even what people in Silicon Valley call “open source” models hide the training datasets inside.
Environmental Impact
The current environmental impact of generative AI usage is similarly outsized across the major options. While generative AI still represents a small slice of humanity’s aggregate stress on the environment, gen-AI software tools require vastly more energy to create and run than their non-generative counterparts. Using a chatbot for research assistance is contributing much more to the climate crisis than just searching the web in Google.
A More Ethical Approach
It’s possible the amount of energy required to run the tools could be lowered—new approaches like DeepSeek’s latest model sip precious energy resources rather than chug them—but the big AI companies appear more interested in accelerating development than pausing to consider approaches less harmful to the planet.
How Do We Make AI Wiser and More Ethical Rather Than Smarter and More Powerful?
—Galaxy Brain
Thank you for your wise question, fellow human. This predicament may be more of a common topic of discussion among those building generative AI tools than you might expect. For example, Anthropic’s “constitutional” approach to its Claude chatbot attempts to instill a sense of core values into the machine.
Conclusion
The ethical aspects of AI outputs will always circle back to our human inputs. What are the intentions of the user’s prompts when interacting with a chatbot? What were the biases in the training data? How did the devs teach the bot to respond to controversial queries? Rather than focusing on making the AI itself wiser, the real task at hand is cultivating more ethical development practices and user interactions.
FAQs
Q: Are there any generative AI tools that are more ethical than others?
A: No, I don’t think any one generative AI tool from the major players is more ethical than any other.
Q: What are the concerns about data collection and consent in AI development?
A: The decisions developers have made in the past—and continue to make—to obtain the repository of data are questionable and shrouded in secrecy, and obtaining consent from creators is not a priority.
Q: What are the environmental concerns surrounding generative AI?
A: Gen-AI software tools require vastly more energy to create and run than their non-generative counterparts, contributing to the climate crisis.
Q: How can we make AI more ethical?
A: By cultivating more ethical development practices and user interactions, focusing on the user’s intentions, biases in training data, and how the AI responds to controversial queries.
