Alright, don't take this diatribe personally, but it just set off a chain of thoughts for me I'm gonna post now because loudly hating on AI at all times is the morally correct thing. You don't seem like a person looking to be convinced.

In a capitalist society our only real power is as consumers. I know even that's not really terribly true these days as they largely dictate the markets at us but it's all we've got. An overwhelmingly negative public sentiment does still erode value and makes it harder to support the illusion, we've seen that recently with the DLSS5 stuff. It also fortifies community opinion by creating a unifying front. It can slowly shame susceptible targets into changing their stance and help convince people who may be falling for it when they see their friends and respected individuals take a firm stance. Anyone who says armchair warriors can't accomplish anything just wants you to shut up so you don't accomplish anything. Ideally you do more, but what other options do we have against this currently?

I understand how AI works and what its legitimate intended use cases are (largely referring to the current crop of LLMs/GenAI here and not broader ML) and that's exactly why I don't use it. People who say that they have figured it out and that their specific use cases are legitimate are practically indistinguishable from those who have drunk the Kool aid. Are you one of those rare people I don't even fully believe exist who has a valid use case or are you another mark who's fallen prey to the lying machine that lies, was built off plagiarism, destroys the environment, and was purpose built to devalue labor? One of these things seems slightly more likely than the other.

Fuck AI.