this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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-59
The reason Lemmy hates AI with a passion is because of the uncanny valley experienced by its older audience, not because of AI having no potential at all. (lemmy.world)
submitted 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) by TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world
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Let me preface that I hate AI on what it could do to arts, especially I hate its bland writing style. A third of the music on Spotify is AI and majority can't tell if it's AI. But LLM/AI or however one calls it, only in Lemmy do I see seething hate and refuse to acknowledge its potential. Most people I spoke to outside of the platform also dislike AI but see its potential and agree that the current models are overrated. Many agree it will probably take years or decades to see bigger improvement.

Lemmy, on the other hand, as much as I love the community, is an echo chamber of pure dismissal and rage on AI believing it will amount to nothing. It's only in Lemmy I see this behaviour. One person even said bacteria has more consciousness than AI, which is ridiculous because bacteria clearly don't have the same level of consciousness and context as AI, however the latter has little of. I see many dismissive scoff and straw man arguments that it will never improve; but the same was told of automobiles, planes and renewable energy. Their initial models were terribly bad because of the limitations of the time but now huge strides of improvements are made despite taking years. The AI also clearly has limits but don't see any reason why the same hurdles won't be surmounted in years to come.

Again, I hate AI on what negative impact it could do to human society, especially because many of the models are owned by select few. But it's burying in the head not to see its potential. Because if there isn't any, techbros or not, governments across the world would not be racing to adopt them. AI had been effectively used in the war in Ukraine. And governments would not want race to implement AI surveillance. So, if there is no potential, why are the big wigs wasting time and energy on AI at all?

I'm convinced that many Lemmy is experiencing the uncanny valley on AI and doesn't realise it. Plus, and I'm going to be blunt, a huge portion of Lemmy are of older demographics so there is probably a disdain on novelty that many Lemmy folks are not self-aware of.

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[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 2 points 15 hours ago

The best way to show the problems of LLMs now is to explore an alternative timeline where the technology was developed not for profitability, but for efficiency, usefulness, and the science itself. This means they used properly obtained data to train on. They looked at the steps along the way to try and improve the output's validity, not how well it appeals to the public. They measured the cost of growth vs. the energy use and resource exploitations to find a balance. There's certainly more that could have been done better.

We wouldn't have what we have though. Throwing money at it and ignoring the effects and ethics got us a lot more, faster. But at what price? It's also tainted the original AI field and label.

One positive thing. It's demonstrated that the dangers of AGI and how we'd behave in its emergence are real. That should be frightening. All the fiction writers were right. And LLMs, while not AGI, can in the right hands and application cause disasters. Hell, we've already seen it in small scale as companies threw out the old to bring in the AI and (some) realized it was a mistake.