this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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My understanding is most of you are anti AI? My only question is....why? It is the coolest invention since the Internet and it is remarkable how close it can resemble actual consciousness. No joke the AI in sci fi movies is worse than what we actually have in many ways!

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely anti "AI baked into my operating system and cell phone so that it can monitor me and sell me crap". If that's what being Anti AI is.....to that I say Amen.

But simply not liking a privacy conscious experience or utilization of AI at all? I'm not getting it?

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[โ€“] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think AI is cool, but how people use it can be problematic.

  1. Fraud. Its easy to over-represent the capabilities and sell a bullshit tool to people.

  2. Spyware. They require shedloads of data to train so AI companies are doing whatever they can to get data on people.

  3. Taking Jobs. This is an existential threat to entire professions.

  4. Spam. LLMs are a bullshit factory, so spamming and astroturfing are easier than ever.

[โ€“] rbn@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

While I get why people have an anti-AI-sentiment, I don't get at all why people downvote this thread. If someone is asking a legitimate question in an open and polite way, why downvote the question?

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[โ€“] sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have had good experiences setting up agents to do my work for me - saving me up to 10x the time on certain tasks (I own my own business, so I'm using it to extend myself). It does not replace expertise or reviewing work products. And it can take weeks to get an agent to produce usable work products. But for me, AI is a tool to help me be more efficient. ๐Ÿคท

[โ€“] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That is a very nice way to say you don't want to pay someone to do work for you.

AI greatly benefits business owners by replacing workers.

You are the future and Lemmy hates that.

[โ€“] sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

To be fair, due to rate compression, I can't afford to pay for someone to do this work. So no one was getting hired. The question is whether or not I could complete the work. I do pay several people to work for me - none of which can do the work I've assigned to my AI agents. But I for sure wouldn't hire someone who is so resistant to change that they can't even handle AI summarizing my emails for me.

[โ€“] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's a common pattern. Countless tasks don't get done because we don't have enough employees, nor the money to hire more. The current employees take care of all the crucial tasks that are basic necessities for the company to survive. The "nice to have" task list is very long, so if AI can take make some crucial tasks easier or faster, that only means that those employees can spend some of their time doing some of the "nice to have" tasks. In cases like these, AI is not taking any jobs from anyone. If your company has no entries in the "nice to have" task list, it means management has zero vision and zero chance of making the company survive the next recession.

100%. My nice to have task list is mile long. And I want to get to it because they will make a real, meaningful differences for my team and clients. So, while there are real challenges with AI, the potential to help me, my business and my team is there.

[โ€“] WaffleWarrior@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

That's fair but I think we will adapt just as we did with the Internet. At least that's what I hope anyway. I might be wrong

[โ€“] oneser@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You hit the nail on the head:

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely anti "AI baked into my operating system and cell phone so that it can monitor me and sell me crap". If that's what being Anti AI is.....to that I say Amen.

Most cases in consumer ai, it's data harvesting gone haywire and it's not being implemented to benefit society.

From what I see, very few people are stupid enough to blanket hate it, but it is overhyped and being used maliciously.

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[โ€“] spongebue@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

A few things:

  • It's baked into everything whether we like it or not. I'm so tired of that damn star emoji everywhere, especially when it replaces basic search functionality we already had (looking at you, Amazon)

  • It's dependent on other people's work (LOTS of it) which is usually acquired through sketchy means - all that to compete with those original creators

  • The slop. Oh, the slop. Slop that's often used as SEO fluff. So you have one bot working to please another. Humans are an afterthought

  • I'm legitimately afraid that it'll take away from our understanding of things and critical thinking by relying on it too much. On that same token, once we rely on it and it gets manipulated, so do we.

  • It uses a ton of energy to make it happen

Those are just the things I could think of offhand before going to bed. I'm sure there's more.

When you say it's remarkable how close it can resemble actual consciousness, what do you mean?

[โ€“] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech -4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

lol, you're getting downvoted just for asking, that should sum up the whole argument.

The hate is real here, and IMO most of it is unjustified. There are a few good points that are made:

  • Training data was not ethically sourced. Can't get around that, it just wasn't. It was legal-ish, but it wasn't moral. Image generators especially, the art was not willingly given - but IMO if you aren't taking work out of their hands I don't have a major issue with it.
  • Same as your issue, AI is being shoved everywhere embodying the "If you're a hammer everything is a nail".
  • Privacy concerns as you've talked about, and security.

That being said, I don't have any issues with using it at home, local LLMs, and I'll even say I use it daily to help with coding. I've been coding for 20 years and I have to admit it does help, if you know when to use it. It has sped me up considerably.

[โ€“] WaffleWarrior@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Ya why the hell am I being down voted ๐Ÿค”

[โ€“] jarvis@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

My guess is you're being downvoted because you claim AI is the coolest invention since the internet, but ironically you present that claim to a corner of the internet instead of inside the safety of a prompt window. Some may find this ironic because instead of asking the "almost resembling consciousness" to generate an almost resembling answer, you opted to consult a primary source instead. Some folks might see this as the behavior of someone so close to figuring it out...

[โ€“] JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago
[โ€“] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Other commenter is right, and it's exactly why I don't give much credit to Lemmy's general opinion on AI. If it's so bad that even the discussion around it has to be downvoted, then I don't think they're arguing in good faith. Personally ChatGPT has helped me immensely with my work. It's not the world-changer everyone swears it's going to be, I'm fully out of the hype train - However only a fool would say that it has no value at this point. If engineers are refusing to use it, they're going to be left behind. The real job loss will be for those who refuse to use it altogether. Solid engineers see it as a new tool in their toolbelt and use it as such.

[โ€“] JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely correct.

One random example: where I work, CVs are being filtered by an AI before they are opened by a human reducing the volume to a 20% of potentially good candidates. In that 20% there is always someone to hire, so it doesn't matter if a good candidate is lost in the AI filter. Failing to optimize the CV for AI literally means being left behind.

This reminds me of something I heard: AI isn't going to take your job. The person who knows how to use AI is going to take your job.

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