Looking at it now, it’s obviously very bad, but I remember being very fascinated with GPT2 because it was amusingly bad, but I was also very naïve. I didn’t understand just how bad ai is and how much worse it would become.

I hate to say it, but I have occasionally used it for programming and it definitely made me a worse programmer. Earlier this year I stopped using it completely and I can tell that I’ve been getting better. I keep hearing people say they’re using ai “responsibly” to catch bugs and speed up tedious tasks and I thought that’s what I was doing too until I stopped using it and realized just how much of my thinking I had surrendered over to the machine.

I hate it with a burning passion. It causes irreparable climate harm, including self-hosted models (consider where they’re trained); it infringes copyright (and they’re destroying rare books to feed it‽‽‽); it’s causing psychosis in some people, leading them to harm themselves and others; and it’s destroying a lot of people’s critical thinking skills (which I think is the goal: commodify intelligence, though maybe it’s to replace the working-class itself).

Sorry for the massive block of text lol, I just really, really don’t like it.

Oh, also (very anectdotal), it seems that on the Venn diagram of anti-fascist and anti-“AI”, the anti-“AI” circle is almost entirely contained within the anti-fascist circle. Just an observation.

Disclaimer: machine learning is not the same as “AI” (LLMs, presented as beings capable of thought). I think ML has a lot of interesting applications, and I’m actually rather fascinated by it.

worst fucking shit ever, and anyone who uses it is dead to me.

I despise ai and refuse to use them. They ruin everything they touch. I can’t use the internet to learn things anymore without filtering by date to exclude post 2023 results. The concept of truth, meaning, or what is real is being degraded by the presence of ai.

As a big fan of consent, I have many concerns with how ai companies get their training data.

I’m delighted to see how passionate, researched, and eloquent so many of you are on this topic.

Since a lot of people already covered my opinions, I’ll toss in my unique experience with AI.

A buddy of mine made up a program where users can create and access uncensored AI chatbots. They come complete with Pictures (AI art,) Voices (created based on uploaded samples,) and a personality you could write yourself in plain language.

Years ago this blew my mind. If I got stuck on writers block I could create a character and ask it questions about its motivations and next steps. Harmless, right? No, not really, but that’s not my point.

That was until my friend asked me to help moderate the app and I saw what everyone else was using it for. Now, I’m not here to kinkshame, everyone should be able to get off however they want as long as it hurts no one, but I can’t help but imagine how brains are getting re-wired by these sycophantic porn fantasy bots, especially the ones made to be demeaned and subjugated. And that’s not to mention the child porn.

I still moderate the app because we report users trying to create CSAM to their ISPs and in that way, hopefully, I’m doing some good. But it’s not hard to make and run local AI, so I wonder how much more of it is out there.

It’s been very good at a couple of things

Like showing how fucking stupid most CEOs are, and how many people blindly kiss their asses

And how little having breathable air and drinkable water matters to those same idiots

I think it is amazing that techbrodudes managed to figure out how to automate the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

It’s not good.

conflicted. everytime i want to be fully against it, i’m faced with genuinely good use cases.

like the meta spy glasses are actually very useful for someone who’s visually impaired. they can describe stuff and read text to you, and the “be my eyes” thing is a great idea.

DEFINITELY doesn’t need to just exist as a product that anyone can buy tho.

Caveats: I work in software development, its a small company and I am the head of our development dept. I was the one who championed AI use at my company. I trained our (Gen X aged) engineering team on how to use Claude code. I set up the Claude code guardrails for our internal systems.

It’s a force multiplier, not a replacement for a person. If you already know the stuff you are using it for, and you already have a structure in place for QA and deployments, it can help you complete tasks much faster. The log analysis and code building alone has completely changed my job. We did not lay anyone off due to our AI adoption at our company and we are completing jobs much faster and we are accepting jobs we could not have worked on previously due to programming language limitations, by using it as a tool in an already existing workflow. And most importantly, we are not accumulating more tech debt by using AI, because we already have structure in place to prevent the build up of tech debt. We have actually started chipping away at some of the super old debt we’ve been putting off.

We only use AI in the development and IT depts of our company, we don’t use AI for design or use it customer service which is one of the things I personally hate AI being used for.

That being said, since we adopted AI use, my workload has increased, because its a force multiplier the expectation is that we can deliver faster, which is not always the case, but now its a bit harder to argue it, especially with sales guys who don’t even understand the product they are selling let alone how the development cycle works.

Personally, I used AI to help me do some painful long data migrations I have been putting off because they were going to be so long and painful. I also used it to build some reference quick reference tools for games I play. I don’t use it for anything other than code work.

Politically, I think it needs to be rained in and regulations put in place for both the hardware for building data centers shitting up the environment and the software and its sycophantic behavior that twists people in to AI psychosis. I think exposure to AI is making people stupid and kids today are at risk of not developing the critical thinking skills they need due to outsourcing all thought to AI. Although, we cannot close Pandora’s box now, but I like to see us do something to prevent the monsters in it from running amok. I understand the hypocrisy in my AI use and my stance on AI and the environment.

EDIT: Downvoting me isn’t going to change how I feel about AI.

theres no such thing as ai in the way people imagine. we have chat bots and copyright infringement machines some assholes coopted the term ai to pedal. i wish it would fuck off. it rots peoples brains and turns them into delusional idiots incapable of independent thought. every time you say that they come out of the woodwork to justify their particular use and try to claim their use of it is cool and good, but really none of them are. whatever people use it for it makes them worse at doing it themselves. its being used for everything people can shoehorn it into and making all of those things worse. this is to say nothing of the large amount of negatives the data centers and privacy violations bring along for the ride. thats all i have to say without waxing political, so suffice to say i think its almost entirely downside.

machine learning however is an awesome field of research being used to solve real, complex and difficult problems. its exciting to see what it will be used for next outside the aforementioned chatbots and slop generators.

I think it should always be written in lowercase as “ai” to distinguish it from people named Albert. People like Weird Al Yankovic deserve the dignity of never being conflated with this insidious intangible sickness slowly overtaking our world & jobs & sanity.

LLMs etc are very fascinating technology and if they had remained research projects and marginally promoted tools for niche uses, I would not have had any problems with them.

But no, technobros were like “oh this will make us a lot of money” and unleashed an unfathomable Hell on earth with unfathomable sociopolitical ramifications. Thanks.

So many people 1) think of AI as their unpaid “personal assistant” and at the same time 2) think of AI chatbots as being women. I really hope AI doesn’t accidentally re-normalize the master/servant dynamic, and it may not, but it’s something to watch out for in the coming years.

I work in a field (technical editing) that may be replaced by AI bosses overvaluing AI, but at the moment, my job is more necessary than ever because all my writers now insist on sending me slop instead of actually doing their jobs.

I think it will be disruptive, but not because employers are replacing workers with AI (people are already realizing that can’t be done effectively). AI requires a huge amount of change and investment from leadership specifically (redefining revenue models, operations, people development, etc.). My experience is that most leaders are unable/unwilling to put in this amount of effort. So all it will take is one business to come along, built around the technology, to completely disrupt an industry - and put their peers out of business. The job losses will be real, but it will be because of feckless leadership.