I’ve been on Lemmy for about 2 weeks now, and I’ve noticed a trend:
The VAST majority of posts that mention AI in any manner are some dig or criticism or some other negative commentary, and the rare ones that have anything positive to say about it almost always have negative whatever-Lemmy’s-version-of-karma-is.
I get that AI isn’t without its problems, especially Grok with that “Mechahitler” nonsense a bit ago, but there seems to be particular vitriol here. I’m genuinely curious to know why people hate it so much here.
A question to the OP: After reading all of these comments, varying from emotional reaction to well reasoned assessment, all valid whether positive or negative, has this experiment helped you answer your question or changed your views on AI at all in retrospect? There’s nothing I can add that hasn’t already been said in one way or another by someone else, but I’m cruious if this is just a bait thread or you’re actually posing this question in good faith with a mind open to change… If it’s the latter I want to know your nuanced opinion.
You know. I could have asked the same question as OP,
so from my perspective, I’m getting a better insight.But the conclusion remain the same,
the only two things that’s bad about it is one,how much more we need communism,
in order to have a functional state.So while that’s a good thing,
it’s not when you’re still experiencing
life in a capitalist country.And two, how much more we need solar panels.
And while that’s also a good thing,
it’s not when the world is still producing
electricity mostly from fossil fuels.Me, too
Because it’s trendy and it’s a new thing people can feel outraged about together. And when you really drill down into the arguments, the problem is invariably with the way technology is used under capitalism rather than technology itself.
I somewhat agree with you, the tech is amazing. But I also think that the current shape of “AI” is what it is due to a massive unsustainable investment directed in the vast majority by ill intent. The technology would not be what it is today without it being used for what is hated for. If you “fix” the hated parts then it becomes something entirely different to what it is today, if anything at all.
I think that the perspective that the tech is is hated because its trendy looses weight very rapidly when you realize that it would probably just not exist if not for the insane power-hungry assholes that are shoving it down our throats every damn day.
I don’t really agree. I use this tech for coding, doing translations, speech to text transcriptions, extracting data from PDF documents, and none of these use cases would be different if the tech wasn’t commercially driven. I also disagree that it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t developed under our current dominant economic system. AI research has been around for a long time, and has been done extensively in socialist countries like USSR.
Its not that it wouldn’t exist, its that the current form is shaped by the profit incentive. The fact that is a useful technology doesn’t mean that the AI we are being forced to use is like that due to a capitalist mode of production. Coding help may be useful to a point, but its only so thanks to a massive level of compute power that wouldn’t be available under a reasonable mode of production.
I wholeheartedly diasagree with the idea that a socialst world would have gone with this as a priority to the point of making it something like what we see know. Would it be developing it? For sure! Would it have anything related to its current most extended use cases? No way.
The whole trope that LLMs need absurd levels of energy use has not been true for a while now. People latched on to this idea because early models were hideously inefficient, as is the case with pretty much any new technology. Today, you can run local coding models on your laptop that surpass the capabilities of frontier models needing whole data centres to run just a year ago. You no longer need an inordinate amount of computing power to run any of this stuff, and performance gains haven’t stopped. There’s no indication that we’re close to any sort of a limit here.
Also, nowhere did I say that a socialist world would have developed it in the same fashion. I’m merely pointing out that it would have been developed, and there would have been many existing use cases which I listed which have little to do with commercial incentives. I get the impression that you’re conflating hype with the actual legitimate use of which there are plenty already.
Finally, there is really nothing stopping people from developing this technology in open source fashion. And that’s the way to decouple this tech from commercial incentives going forward. There are already open models to build on, and that should be leveraged to develop completely open alternatives which are community driven.
Nailed it in one! 👏
Well hardly anyone here would claim that LLMs and machine learning are bad tech.
I think you would be surprised. Read on and be astounded.
It’s a hammer being sold as a replacement for builders. I don’t hate AI, rather than all of stuff that’s called “AI” these days is being sold as something more than it is.
Just listen to Jensen, the token salesman, of Nvidias fame.
If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I am going to be deeply alarmed
This is what I hate. The mad greed of these companies; the blatant disregard of everyone that these CEOs are displaying; the blind rush without a thought about consequences. “AI” is just the latest fad that got ruined by good old capitalism.
There’s a variety of reasons, but the biggest is that Lemmy as a whole is FAR more class-conscious than the average populace, or even that average internet user, and generative AI has been developed by the wealthy and powerful, as a tool to oppress everyone else.
This is not a direct answer to your question.
I’ve heard 2 really great takes about LLMs & GenAI, that have stayed with me - though I don’t have the best wording for them anymore.
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As AI is trained on previously created data, it fundamentally looks backwards. Human creativity creates new things and inherently looks to the future.
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AI is trained on the vast corpus of human works and synthesizes that info into a median response. You will never get exciting and bold insights, just bland and inoffensive responses.
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Nuclear power can make energy.
Nuclear power can eradicate the planet and leave areas uninhabitable for untold years, and those it doesn’t vaporize are altered for the rest of their lives. And sometimes they aren’t aware until years after.
AI has good uses when applied carefully, such as in medical research.
AI is also being used as a reason to replace workers, it consumes massive amounts of energy, it creates sound and infrasound destroying environments around it, it consumes massive quantities of drinking water from surrounding areas, and is ultimately spurring on a society of wealthy ruling class who view humans as cattle, out in the open, and no one is stopping them.
Is it any wonder why people hate these things? But yes, a tool is a tool. It’s the people using it that hate should be properly directed towards. Unfortunately, those same ruling class epstein elites dismantled education over decades, so it’s harder for people in this day and age to think dialectically. It’s easier to think in black and white, in extremes, just like media would have you believe, just as the culture wars have taught us for decades.
Those detriments listed can also be mitigated. AI can be powered with clean energy, and cooled with closed loops. They’re not, but they could be. AI isn’t to blame, it’s greedy, negligent corporations that are using AI.
Bro didn’t make it to the last paragraph. Those attention spans though.
I’m not sure what you mean. I read the last paragraph, then read it two more times to be sure I didn’t miss anything. What are you insinuating?Nevermind. I get it, you’re criticizing me for reiterating the conclusions.
Until there’s an energy surplus, any clean energy used for AI could could be used for something else that displaces fossil fuel use. If someone wanted to make a data center that sat on the ocean floor and uses the heat differential from thermal vents and ocean water, that would be an exception, but no one is proposing that.
You’re right. We should ban AI, video games, Christmas lights, television, and anything else that uses energy in a way you don’t approve of until there’s an energy surplus. No argument here.
Given the direction AI is headed—more personalized, able to reason and solve complex problems on our behalf, and everywhere we look—it’s likely that our AI footprint today is the smallest it will ever be. According to new projections published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in December, by 2028 more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for AI. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/
And for what? Not having to hire artists? A chat bot that will tell you to kill yourself? What problem of mine does AI solve?
The same problem Christmas lights and video games solve: none. It’s totally useless! Ban them all.
I’ve learned there’s no good that can come from admitting you use AI - you’ll only get an angry mob after you. That’s why I’ve never used AI and never will. It’s evil! Evil I tell you! Hit it with a banhammer, quick, before it gets away! Don’t let it lay it’s eggs!
Leaded gas, asbestos, DDT, freon… all technologies who’s advantages did not out weight their disadvantages. AI falls into the same category. What exactly does AI do for you? Does it outweigh the energy cost and health cost for the people living near the datacenters?
Yep, you’re right. It’s toxic and no one should use it.
Me? Nothing. I’ve never used it and I never will use it. I’ve heard the angry mob comes after you with insults and argument if you even admit to thinking about using it, and I have no need of all that hate in my life. So I’ve never used it, and will never use it.
Game communities I used to love browsing have become inundated with low-effort, vibe-coded crapware. It’s now 20 times harder to find anything good. Hardware is 20 times more expensive. My insurance company is using AI to deny me medical help. A skill I spent 25 years developing suddenly is full of morons who think they know as much as I do because they can have Claude vomit out something resembling software.
There is A LOT to hate.
very confident morons with fucking hammers
A skill I spent 25 years developing suddenly is full of morons who think they know as much as I do because they can have Claude vomit out something resembling software.
Gosh yes.
I dont hate AI, I hate the people who are pushing it on us. I hate thier ultimate goal.
Because it’s not really ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. It’s basically fast computing. And stealing data from other websites.
Under capitalism, LLMs are used purely for the benefits of the capitalist class, spying on all of the working classes and enabling immense repressions. It isn’t a tool without any and all merit, but under capitalism it will always be used against our best interests.
There’s a lot of anti-AI propaganda coming from the same AI corporations and governments trying to push for regulations that will grant them a monopoly on this tech and limit the development and usage for people. Many brought up multiple reasons why they dislike AI, the same arguments could be used for other technologies and services but personally i’ve never seen anyone here on lemmy picking a fight against military data centers or videogames industry for causing pollution.
The most upvoted comments hint at big techs being a problem but seem to fail to acknowledge that issues caused by “AI” are mostly caused by the corporations and evil characters behind these.
I don’t hate AI, I hate how much it’s shoved down my throat every day. If it was used in appropriate use cases and not injected into everything because profits then I wouldn’t care so much.
I like computers and now can’t easily afford to do the projects I’m interested in. I get very little value from AI and it destroyed my hobby. It also is a massive bubble that will hurt the majority of the world once it pops. It’s dumb.
You’re describing the effects of data centers, not AI. AI doesn’t change the prices on computer components, nor is it in any way a bubble. I think you’re describing corporations buying up components for their data centers, which they intend to use for AI, but that isn’t attributable to AI itself. It’s like saying authors are to blame for trees being cut down to make paper - completely ignoring that books can be digital.
AI training needs data centers. The companies wouldn’t be buying up components without this gold rush.
And books need paper. Trees wouldn’t be cut down if authors quit writing. Therefore, AI and authors are evil.
(You can train AI without data centers and you can write books without printing them.)
Why are there so many people on Lemmy asking this same question over and over again. This has got to get over ten now in the last week.
Because /fuck_ai exists
Because we’d rather have national forests, clean water, job opportunities, a sustainable future and liberty than live in morodor with the eye of Sauron staring at us all the time
