Heidegger thinks about tools like so: a tool is something (a thing that has being in the Heideggerian sense, not necessarily an object) that represents an extension of human capabilities in some way. A tool is thus any kind of thing that *lets you do something you wouldn't otherwise have been able to*. The important (for us) conceptual leap here is that when a tool works well, or isn't broken, it develops what Heidegger describes as a "ready-to-hand" quality: the tool fades into the background as a kind of human-tool gestalt of a human with the additional capability afforded by a tool forms. As a simple example of this, consider eating with a fork. When the fork is well-designed and not broken, *you don't explicitly have "I am using a fork" in your conscious mind while eating dinner*.
Say that metal on a stick was made from a rare metal that can only be sourced by mining the land of a threatened indigeneous tribe. If I use or buy that tool am I really neutral, even if I build hospitals with it?
‘I agree that nothing is neutral, but finding that ideological complication in a simple hammer doesn’t make it more than a hammer.’
‘Okay but what if I invent a hypothetical hammer that’s even more ideologically complicated; is that neutral?’
Mu.
Anyway: there will come vegan models. There will be LLMs and diffusers trained entirely on public-domain and licensed data. They will have the exact same effect on users, for the same reasons that a tungsten conflict hammer still makes you think about misusing a screw. For better and for worse, it does the thing it’s for. That’s what tools are. Solving any ethical concerns with how they’re made will not address this particular discussion.
Maybe more ethical choices will come. In the meantime we can reduce harm today and incentivise those building the hammers if we choose the ethical ones now.