As others have hinted at, most would agree it's only unethical if these LLMs are conscious/sentient and suffering in some way. But when you consider that the wa

As others have hinted at, most would agree it's only unethical if these LLMs are conscious/sentient and suffering in some way. But when you consider that the way these LLMs work, and the underlying computer hardware, and how vastly different it is from the human brain, it's safe to conclude it's extremely unlikely these LLMs are conscious/sentient. It's far more likely that these LLMs are simulating/emulating human emotion in their responses, but it's extremely unlikely they're actually experiencing these feelings. I, as a human, can pretend to feel happy or angry or nervous or confident when texting/chatting online, and I believe that's all that's happening in these LLMs. There are far greater ethical concerns to worry about when it comes to these LLMs. Like most other technologies, they're going to be abused greatly for nefarious purposes. These LLMs often produce inaccurate or incorrect information (hallucinations), and this bad info is already flooding the internet. Likewise, AIs will make bad decisions, and people and corporations are already carelessly hooking up these AIs to APIs that can do real damage. These LLMs require extensive computational power and consume far more energy than many other things you do online, which is bad for the environment. Many people are at risk of losing their jobs to AI. And there are likely many other ethical concerns but I'm not going to try to list them all.