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.
I’m not completely against it. I do recognise its threats to privacy, the planet, and intellect though. The average person trusts it too much.
Personally, I do not use it that much. I do however use it to help with research. I find being able to ask a question quite useful as a jumping off point for further research. I do not rely on it to answer correctly, simply to aid in pointing me in the right direction. Then I go off and do more specific research.
I have been moving from windows 10 to linux mint recently, it was quite useful in aiding with this at times. Not all the time, just at the right times. If there were a particular issue I was struggling with it could help point me in the right direction, though I would not trust it to simply spit out the right advise and commands to type to fix an issue without researching exactly what those commands did, how that would potentially help fix the issue and how to revert if it messed something up. I have seen many examples where the advise it gave was terrible and potentially destructive because I researched the advise it gave, had I of not it would have really messed things up. It must be used responsibly.
People are all to quick to talk into their phones, get a response and trust it to be all knowing. Their queries are forever recorded and logged to their personal identity without and option to opt out. I use privacy orientated search engines with ai functionality such as duckduckgo and ecosia. Ecosia makes it very easy to verify the sources of information given from their ai, also they put in efforts to be as green as possible. Very respectable.
So no, I am not against ai. I am against the usual way in which the average person uses it and the way the majority of companies are using it to exploit people and the planet to turn a profit.
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.
Because it is a massive financial scam built on a lame cult.
I think most of the hate is because of it being touted as better than humans and shoved down everyone’s throats.
As for AI itself , it’s just a tool like any other. Use it wisely.
I really don’t understand how people can be so blinded by hopium that they cannot see the blindingly obvious consequences of allowing this insane tech to co-opt our planet, at the behest of the most powerful and evil people to ever live.
There may be use cases for this tech but it not worth it to sacrifice the entirety of our natural world to be ground up and processed to feed this behemoth. It is purely wishful thinking that this will solve everything and they are willing to pay ANYTHING to try it. They are gambling with the planet and it’s like 2% chance they win, otherwise life dies.
We were told 15 years ago, that we had a decade to change course to prevent CATASTROPHIC heating of the planet and degradation of the environment. Instead of doing really anything about that, we have exponentially increased out energy needs and fuel/water usage. Now with ai, we are doing it all over again in the span of a few years. Please explain with mathematics, how we get out of this trap of thermodynamics and not all die from heat? How does ai save us? Does it get us closer in any way? Or is it so that the elites can goon a little harder and try to fill the void inside them with yet more money?
When people say “AI,” I assume they are talking about the large corporate Neural Networks that get branded as “AI” for marketing purposes.
I hate these because they’re a grift. They’re funded and maintained by a handful of ultra-rich idiots who saw no value in learning social sciences nor the humanities, and thus have failed to learn from history. The people pushing for mass adoption believe in a variety of unscientific pseudo-religious conspiracy beliefs about AI gods and devils leading humanity.
I hate that the cost of these cults are being foisted onto the rest of society by way of government and corporate contracts.
I hate that mass media is rapidly degrading in quality in order to justify the purchase of said contracts.
I hate that the people making important decisions that affect my life and well-being — doctors, the people who develop my software, my government representatives, news reporters, lawyers — are not just willing, but actively excited at the prospect of turning off their brains and letting black boxes controlled by opaque corporations make the decisions for them.
I hate that despite 3+ years of hype and 10+ years of public access, the only people who have demonstrably benefitted from it are Nvidia, scammers, and people who don’t want to use their brain.
But mostly, and this is the clincher, I hate that we are literally destroying the earth to run these machines. Even if every other problem disappeared overnight, this should be an argument killer. We only get one home, and we are setting fire to it. I don’t care if it improves the lives of millions of humans, because it is hastening the death of hundreds of billions of lifeforms.
I hate that people ignore this or conveniently forget it or are just apathetic about it. I hate that this argument just carries little to no weight for most fence-sitters. I hate that people treat feeling emotional about the destruction of our only home as being irrational. I hate ecoterrorism being excused by marketing babble and shitty faux-skeptical wishy-washiness.
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 built on the creative collective works of everything that’s ever been put on the Internet with no attribution or compensation for people who’s authored works were stolen. Maybe that’s why?
I don’t see why that’s an issue. Creatives won’t even have to make anything creative anymore, AI can just be used to make things the they would have. That will save them so much time, enough that they can go do cheap labor for 18 hours of the day, like a good slave.
Ask yourself, what value does it add?
Better medicine and healthcare in general.
At the expense of most people’s income of course because that’s what it’s mainly used for and electricity and their health directly and indirectly.
Machine learning in medicine and healthcare has been around for decades, and has basically nothing to do with the LLM and image generation garbage that has now colloquially become known as “AI”.
Half the problem with “AI hate” is how goddamned nebulous of a term it’s become. When people say they hate AI, they’re almost certainly talking about specifically all the new generative commercialized stuff from just the past few years, but so many people hear that and assume something a LOT broader.
Most of the time they’re not even talking about AI, they’re instead talking about ancillaries like data centers, but they can’t fathom the distinction.
Hmmmm I wonder what all these data centers are being used for.
Yeah, and authors are to blame for trees being cut down. It doesn’t matter that books don’t necessarily to be printed on paper, it’s a clear line from authors writing to trees being cut down, so we should all hate authors.
Right?
I don’t know about value but certainly a lot of cost to hardware.
No, AI does not. Data centers do, and they’re being used for AI, but AI can be used without data centers. You’re mis-attributing the blame. Blame negligent corporations making unnecessary data centers, not the technology they aim to use.
Because we’re mostly not bots.
Not yet, but I’m sure AI bros will find a way to mass register bots here. I already reported lots of people who had a distinct AI writing style. Over time it will be harder to distinguish those from real users 😓
Techbros ruin everything.
I have no problem with AI use for science, health, and uplifting humanity like figuring out optimal ways of doing things, minimizing waste.
Currently, it’s just another disingenuous ploy to make rich people even richer forcing it on everyone at an expense of climate and human livelihoods.
And finally, are consumer AI really “intelligent” like its touted or is it
marketinglies for making the lines go up?I don’t necessarily think that’s even techbros, it’s CEOs/management ruining it. They’re trying to bleed water from a stone, and they’re killing the planet to do it without giving a snigle fuck.
that is who is usually referred to as tech bros imo. It’s the elon musks, the people that are in charge and seem to have a superficial understanding of the technology (more than what tou can say about most CEOs unfortunately) but are actually only interested in money. The people that actually innovate and work on the technologies are often smarter than that.
Unfortunately someone needs to pay the bills and those people are passionate enough about the technology that they end up working for the tech bros and ultimately contribute to the problems
The heads of the AI companies have been saying how many jobs their products will replace.
If you tell most people that there was an exciting new technology that would replace them at their company and every other company and make their experience and qualifications obsolete I’m guessing most people wouldn’t be very happy about that.
Your posts needs a: “Not in a capitalist country anyway.”
AI is very harmful to the environment, it destroys communities because of data centers, it killed the price of gaming and consumer computing, and it’s being used to layoff a shit ton of people.
I use AI daily for my job because it’s required, and I do use it outside of work too, but it’s too powerful, too dangerous, and I wish it didn’t exist. The way companies abuse it in the name of profit is too damaging for our world.
Platforms themselves are self-selecting. I’m speaking for myself here. I am on Lemmy because I dislike the power that big tech has gotten to control content, policy, news, and global perceptions. As such, I self host and use federated technologies where possible. The vast majority of AI tools are controlled by the same centrally controlled big tech companies that I’m here to avoid. There are self-hosted AI tools or there, but basically every AI tool was trained using scraped data, and, for instance, my Searx-ng instance was flooded by so many bots that I had to make it harder to use for myself just to keep the bots out. My blog? Constantly scraped, killing my bandwidth. A lot of foss projects used to have bug bounty programs and accepted code from any contributor to wander in, but are now closing off due to AI slop code contributions. So, the type of person you’ll find here probably hates AI if they’re like me. Also, I work in tech and have to bite my tongue every time a co-worker “helpfully” sends me a Copilot Slop answer to a question when I was asking for a judgment call or an opinion.
I have ADHD and OCD, which means writing reports, proposals, and even simple emails is very difficult for me in a number of ways. For the last year or so, I tell ChatGPT what I want to say and I work to polish or complete what it gives me, and out comes exactly what I wanted.
I’m not able to do that stuff myself. I’m just not mentally able to do it by myself. I strongly support ChatGPT and will continue to use it as long as I can.
I agree, though, that the data centres are helping destroy the Earth. I don’t know how to reconcile that.
you could use an open weight model like Kimi or Deepseek so you’re not supporting a company that hoards information
AI as an accessibility tool can be prettt cool.
If it was being sold as an accessibility tool, I would champion it.
But the greedy fucks are selling it as a replacement for expertise.
I’ve spent decades teaching everyone who will listen “the computer can help, but it does so without any understanding”.
But all the tech bros had to do was secretly pass one call in 100 to some random human worker in the 3rd world, and half of everyone is convinced that computers are smarter than humans, now.
The real source of my frustration is that most people are idiots, lol. And I should know that by now.
Anyway, I’m glad you have a tool that helps, and that you aren’t attributing godlike properties to it, or selling it hard to idiots as something it isn’t.



