Do techbros that complain on the Fediverse about people hating on AI realize it isn't just here that hates AI?
Everyone pretty much hates it, its just here is one of the few places online where money and stupidity can't be waved around frantically to hide that.
134
Comments73
Lemmy is unusual in that it has a large portion of users who actually understand the underlying technologies in “AI” branded products. Most forums with a more typical audience do not have that.
We are a self-selected group of tech-savvy ideological refugees. That’s why I stay, I can learn things every day from lemmy. So i think the only thing different here is that many fuckai posts/comments have a factual and germane basis.
"self selected group of ideological refugees" describes the Fedis really well.
I hate the greedy cynical corporations behind LLMs, and I hate the hype bubble, and I hate my stupid bosses and their AI FOMO. But I don't hate AI. It's a broad concept much bigger than chat bots. Hurricane modeling AI is damned good, for one example.
Pressure to shove LLMs into everything because it convinced a bunch of vapid know-nothing middle managers and C-suite knobs it was “alive” and that their stock options would skyrocket has unfortunately poisoned the well of “AI”.
But yes, purpose-built ML models that are amazing and useful. And almost no one, in the grand scheme of things, is using them.
They are being used in science and medicine. We just don't hear about them as often.
Because they don't talk to you, so you can't be "vibe coding on the edge of reality" or whatever stupid shit it was that one of the AI CEOs said.
The funny thing is, LLMs can be useful for exactly one thing: certain kinds of linguistic tasks. For example, if you were inventing a fictional language, it's probably pretty good for that.
But using it as a general-purpose problem solving tool is beyond stupid.
They used them to play chess on kaggle, then the press reported the winner 😂
The obsession is so baffling to anyone who's worked in ML (including language model researchers!)
They are in fact everywhere. We just don't advertise their presence because no one cares. This stuff also goes by different names in different fields because people keep reinventing the wheel.
Do you have a source on that? Because I personally doubt that's really the case. Most people probably have mild feelings about it one way or the other, but I doubt it extends as strongly as hate for the vast majority.
Everybody hates it but like 40 million people are paying for ChatGPT which can be used for free.
I dislike the implementation of a lot of AI.
I pretty much only come across them when I need support for something, and I'm good at searching the sites for info before I go to the support. This means that the AI only gives me answers that I've already seen and that doesn't work - they always waste my time.
I am also a frequent visitor of subreddits like r/askphysics, and the amount of nonsense that comes up because the AI that people asked doesn't understand what it is saying isn't helping with my perception either. I much prefer using a search engine instead, because they don't hallucinate answers and I can validate the content of the page based on a lot of leads that you don't get if an AI copies the answer and rephrases it.
There are a lot of places where AI can be a very good tool to implement, but those are not LLM related. It can for instance be used for getting CNC machines to better correct for thermal expansion in different parts of the machine, based on the temperature and humidity of the environment, runtime, and other info like that, so more accurate machining can be achieved.
I really don't need AI in my coffee machine or toaster though. I strongly suspect that those are just data harvesters.
Does “everyone” hate AI? I am regularly baffled by people apparently feeding every question that pops into their minds to ChatGPT.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-consumers-turned-off-products-ai
https://medium.com/enrique-dans/why-ai-powered-products-are-backfiring-with-consumers-a868bff518b0
...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/only-8-of-americans-would-pay-extra-for-ai-according-to-zdnet-aberdeen-research/
...I would say yes that is a reasonable generalization, not everybody hates AI but to say it is majority popular is a massive stretch.
You are describing AI integrated into other products. Pretty sure lots of people like using chatgpt to answer their questions or AI inage generators to make extremely niche porn.
Every time at work "I asked Gemini and here's what it said..." No. Shut the fuck up.
Do you realize that social media is a bubble, and whenever you see that "everyone thinks the way I do" it's likely a result of you having become isolated among a self-selected group of like-minded individuals?
If "everyone pretty much hates it", why did chatgpt.com become the fifth-most-visited website in existence?
AI bot traffic.
Yeah I've never been there. I've been to others, but I've never been there.
Is that a song? It feels quite close to the song.
Kinda got that "I would do anything for love but I won't do that" from Meatloaf vibe.
Side note; it really sucks watching him become a hateful bigot considering his audience is like 80% lbgtqia peeps
And does that AI bot traffic not hit all the other sites too? Not trying to be a dick. Occams razer. Sometimes it's not a conspiracy and things really are as they seem.
Using bots to drive up the traffic of your site is stupidly common, has been a thing even before LLMs, and does not require driving up traffic to every site on the internet. 🤦♂️
Very true but if you look at the top 10 sites online I bet they're all propping up their traffic metrics with bots which means to some extent it becomes a moot point. Anecdotally in the real world I see the use of AI very prevalent which lends to the fact that it is widespread and universally adopted despite what the bubble here says.
pfft.🤭 You are aware Colleges are sponsoring the bubble too, right?
Because unbelievable amounts of money have been devoted to making AI seem inveitable while these same companies have deeply enshittified traditional search engines?
Because people used to really buy into the hype of computers and a Silicon Valley sense of excitement about possibility?
Big tech is currently brutally strip mining our optimism with one of these earth strippers as if it didn't leave a barren wasteland behind and wasn't utterly unsustainable.
It isn't because ChatGPT is making money that is for sure.
We can be anticapitalists, and still comprehend people love the idea of an extortionist sycophant that answers your every whim and curiosity.
Tis why djinns, fae, and Dolus exists in folklore.
Maybe get off your personal bubble, touch grass, and talk to normies.
Far fewer people hate AI in the general population as a percentage than on Lemmy. Your average person either doesn't care or has found it useful in some way.
Almost all of the people I know hold it in disdain. It's not good at doing anything and the costs are very high.
"Everyone I know" is a very selective group. People tend to gravitate toward other people who share their beliefs and interests.
Ok, where is your quantified (not anecdotal) data backing that up?
Where's yours? You just claimed that EVERYONE hates AI. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. There's use cases where it makes some sense, some where it doesn't. There's people who use it for everything, people who use it occasionally and people who avoid it like the plague.
Ok I already posted some elsewhere in this thread but here is some more evidence.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11564086/#%3A%7E%3Atext=source+of+this+advice+%2Cimportant+objective+of+future+research
This is evidence for a different message. Sorry, but that's neither a proof for 'everbody' nor 'hates AI'.
Ok where is your evidence?
My only claim was that it's not black and white. And even the chart you posted yourself proofs me right with that. It lists four disciplines. Some of them seem to resonate better with AI than others and while the participants overall see higher negative effects, there are also those who see it as an improvement. And in case of those who stated that AI will make certain things worse, it doesn't mean that they hate it. There are many things I dislike, but much fewer things I actually hate.
Espcially if you argue with scientific studies, you should be as precise as possible. My advise to you would be to be a bit more nuanced and differentiated with your claims. But up to you of course.
OP posted this on an instance that supports AI. It really doesn't get more cognitive dissonant than that. If e doesn't want to address the community instance supports for AI, I am afraid e won't read nuance and shades of opinions. I gave mines out as an anarchist 🧵, and OP downvoted without reflecting.
Ignore that person. He randomly goes around yelping 'misinformation' and posting completely off-topic data on posts. (Check my history. He/She has a reading impediment or something.)
I mentioned once that i had ripped that shit out of my laptop in passing at work and my boss not only had me delouse all the work machines, the next day SIX cowokers showed up with their personal computers and hopeful looks.
I only have seven coworkers. The last one is a mac runner.
I dislike that the conversation seems to feel like an echo chamber. I'm not saying that it is, just that it has some traits of one.
Commenters who use nuance about how they see AI being used positively get highly downvoted, discouraging further engagement.
Commenters who contribute with name calling or ad hominem get wildly upvoted.
Since I follow other places outside the Fediverse, I agree that the disapproval of genAi in Lemmy is monolithic and repetitive. Mastodon also has a lot of AI-criticism, but perhaps it is more sophisticated, backed up by articles and the like. In other places, there is active research and adoption. For instance, a cybersecurity firm showed that hypnotic suggestion is a very effective jaibreaking tactic against Language Models. https://www.securityweek.com/red-teams-breach-gpt-5-with-ease-warn-its-nearly-unusable-for-enterprise/ Try explaining this to an ML user. Ai-enhanced code editors are big right now, and I have met lots of tech people that are virtually inseparable from their chatbots.
But I rarely use it, unless I have a specific type of situation where search engines are a dead end, I need to provide more context etc. This is a recent post I think provides a more informed view https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/an-ai-premortem/ . More broadly, every single time I read sth about AI on Lemmy, I feel I am witnessing the birth of anti-android rhetoric depicted in Detroit Becoming Human or even Bladerunner. It seems to me like a form of bigotry, and it was a thing that convinced me that the userbase of Lemmy is not exactly healthy. Especially ML. There must be a few of them with multiple socket puppet accounts, or they are all just parroting the same points. Ironic how they are the biggest fans of a (poorly understood) stochastic parrot theory, when they are the same people who have been persuaded that Signal is not a "really private" messenger. There is a couple topics where you see how brain dead these people are, AI is one.
You can't be bigoted against technology. AI is not human, or alive.
Are you serious right now? What?
I know how it sounds. I am half serious though. If androids are to be in the future, people denying them rights will use this exact set of arguments. The stubbornness over a small set of ill-understood premises also resembles transphobia quite a lot. So yes, under a certain perspective, the belief structure of Lemmy's anti-ai sentiment does resemble some form of bigotries.
The difference here that makes this comparison tenuous and potentially hurtful is that victims of bigotry are victims of structurally enforced power imbalances, AI itself IS a structurally enforced power imbalance.
Theoretically you are right in your point, but in practice you sound like asshole.
I don't disagree. But since you decide to cut short the discussion by calling me:
I don't feel particularly obliged to word how this also stands true. I never said sth to the effect you seem to be projecting here. In fact, I enjoy the notion that "AI is fascism". But at the same time, I think that those parroting the statistical more likely response for an ML user have the exact brain structure I see daily in bigots.
Congratulations on curtailing a possibly interesting discussion because my idea was shocking for your synapse.
Then don't make casual comparisons to extremely serious topics like bigotry without thinking it through first.
Wow, you keep acting like you have the high ground in this pitiful position you are. Are you chastising me for allegedly making light of bigotry? This is ridiculous. I know bigotry first hand, and I wouldn't think the same of you based on your attitude on this topic. Should I have you in front of me right now I would kick you all the way down a cliff, because you are a sad little bastard. Now, if you want me to clarify things, for anyone following this that is not at your level of bad faith and self-righteousness:
The pattern of thinking resembles that of bigots. Specifically transphobic bigots.
Did I call anti-ai sentiment a bigotry? No. I said in a HYPOTHETICAL FUTURE where artificial sentient being are around, these arguments would be the exact belief set that transphobes have now.
Does this make light of here-and-now bigotry? No.
Does the rest of my rhetoric amount to anything less than subverting oppression be it class, race, or gender? Also no.
So I don't know what the fuck you are trying to accomplish here you little troll, but if you know all the ways I could doxx you and fuck you up in real life you just wouldn't, so shut the fuck up right now asshole. Is that clear to you mf?
The echo chamber part is what gets me. I've gotten downvoted and had people argue that I must be pro-ai because I disagreed on details of how AI works, the difference between AI and LLMs, or exactly how we address the issues it's causing.
I think most of our current generative AI isn't fit for purpose for most of what people are saying it can do.
I think it's unfortunate that generative AI has entirely coopeted the term AI, which is a much broader field.
I think labeling LLMs as plagiarism machines and trying to stop them under current copyright law is destined to failure because there isn't enough difference between what's clearly acceptable and what people are unhappy about. We need a new, deliberately thought out way of addressing "you can download my stuff and mush it about with a computer if that's what you need to perceive it as a human. If you're mushing it about to analyze and make a copy cat, then you can't have it". The function of copyright is to promote innovation, and while generative AI isn't violating our rules for copyright, it's clearly working contrary to the intent of our current system.
I remember trying really hard to learn to draw for like 10 years and just not being able to. Now I can make fun visuals :)
Yet, simultaneously, I will never get a windows 12 or let my windows 11 connect to the internet because I don't want microsoft forcing it's ai on me, eating my data, stealing my info, and controlling my system against my will for their own clearly profitbased predatory motives.
Also I have made 100s of songs without ai, and now I have some beautiful ai songs and ALSO many songs that have both ai and my own stuff. For me it's an absolutely beautiful symbiosis resulting in lovely things. But I'm not a struggling artist trying to live on streaming revenue fighting ai dilution of the market for streams and being filled with hate from it. I just make music for myself, those who i want to hear it, and because it's beautiful.
I don't use chatGPT at all cuz I think SamAltman is worthless predatory trash.
So idk. There are many ai I think are terrible and avoid. There are some ai I genuinely enjoy and selectively use. I know I wouldn't have the cool pics and songs I do without ai.
intermission
I subconsciously look down on people using ai to code who then have to ask a 'real coder' to fix the scripts; because I really know code. And yet, I have a friend who was unable to learn coding for 20 years who can now make what he always wanted because of ai coding. I think, what sets me apart from haters of ai coding, is that I value the empowerment of people and, instead of laugh at the person who doesnt really know how to code who uses ai, I am very happy for them since they can finally do what they want.
Related:
The majority user base in the comments are anti-ai. But every other week or so I find myself having to block some "ai_porn" this or that community. I dont think I've seen a lot of engagement with those communities (like, I think its just the creator trying to make it happen).
Are they just unaffiliated gooners? Is it techbros trying to normalize it by porn exposure? I dont know, I just know I've had to block several communities for being AI and it's weird.
You're actively blocking exposure to communities that are using AI, and then noticing "the majority userbase seems to be anti-AI."
Do you think perhaps there's a lot of people out there who are not anti-AI, but that you're not seeing them because you've found an anti-AI bubble you're more comfortable in?
Instead of pretending to teach someone about social media bubbles, go and find your counter point yourself. There should be plenty of references you can find on the fediverse to refute their point.
He literally said he was filtering out AI-positive communities.
You took one piece of information and made assumptions off of it. Instead of doing that, you could just prove that there are ai positive communities. I would argue that AI porn communities aren't an example of AI positivity. The point of those communities is to create pornography that was unable to be created before. I dont think they much care about the tools.
Go ahead and prove us wrong smart guy. You took the trouble to argue this point multiple times in this thread but have no proof of your own position.
Let's ask some research, then.
Seems pretty unpopular.
Time step off your local instance, and smell the pro-side.
I am anarchist, copyright shouldn't exist. But harassment via “nude generation” shouldn't. I feel those generators should keep it to themselves, and not harass people or sue generators. Defamation needs nuance.
What we have now is fascists generating propaganda, which I am 100% against.
My co worker loves it and it’s driving me crazy.
I've had three different co-workers hounding me about how great it is. One guy showed me how he had it write an email for him. It took him longer to enter the prompt than it would've taken to just write the email himself.
more of an ask than a thought, really
While in the shower, one might think of a question. Is that not a shower thought?
Well there's no "showerasks" community
It is more of a rhetorical question to me, an observation rather than a direct question but yeah I can see that.
Well, they'll figure it out if/when the bubble pops, won't they?
I mean I think people on average here are more mature, immaturity stands out here more than Reddit, even if there is the same relative amount or more arguing.
I've studied NNs and GANs in formal education. I do see some promise in AI, but like most people here it is wayyy overhyped for general use.
Edit: clarification
They are fantastic pattern matching tools that express the power of carefully curated structured or semi-structured datasets. They, like functional programming (which I find WAY more interesting than most of the common technologies called "AI") point to the philosophy that the work of a librarian is vital to intelligence in some mysteriously fundamental way, far more than any of the bruteforced fruits the AI industry is constantly announcing as proof of their climate destroying snakeoil.
Dismissing current tech as pattern matching is silly. The models can clearly reason, just nowhere as well as humans can. Humans are just advanced pattern matchers, we're much less special than we sometimes like to think
I hate the people that push AI. I hate corporate controlled AI and robots. I will create my own and destroy them all.
Do it!
There are techbros on the fediverse?
A techbro is "someone who likes a technology that I, personally, dislike." Since everyone has different likes and dislikes, yeah, there'll be techbros around. Who exactly those techbros are will vary from person to person.
Many people in my irl circle hate it. I know like 2 people obsessed with it because its shiny and new. But its let them down so much I think they are seeing it for the scam it is.