Yeah, Lemmy is a bit over-the-top anti-AI, but most of it is based in reality.
There are a bunch of problems with AI. And they outbnumer any good ones by a mile.
The main cause of that fact is the entire AI bubble.
AI wastes a fuckton of energy. Of course, this energy isn’t free: communities pay. Electricity demand goes up, and so does price. Then, most electricity isn’t green. And on top of that, the rise in demand causes more electricity peaks, which almost exclusively get “fixed” through fossil fuel-based methods.
From another angle, AI disrupts markets. And not in a good way. Companies dump millions into AI while neglecting their employees (who get laid off because AI “can replace” them), and their customers as well (since instead of doing useful stuff for consumers they pump out AI-branded bullshit no one wants or needs).
Then, big AI companies spit in the face of copyright and have the audacity to turn around and claim copyright on their models’ outputs. If inputs are free game, so are the outputs. Copyright is a very vague, misunderstood and misused term, and no argument I’ve heard claiming feeding stuff into AI is fair use was grounded in reality.
That all veing said, AI is here to stay. I’ve been thinking long and hard about similar fundamental changes to how human society functions, and I think i found one. Photography.
Way back when, you had to do things painstakibgly by hand. Drawing, copying books by hand, etc.
Then the printing press came. Revolutionary? Sure. But not as revolutionary as photography. Instead of writing by hand, you had to typeset by hand before printing. This made the process scalable, but it was still painstaking work.
But photography is a different matter. You just have to make (or buy) a camera and other required supplies (film, developing media, etc), and then you merely have to set up the camera, take the photo, develop the film, and make the photo.
Even in the early days of photography, while these processes took some time, it wasn’t painstaking. To take a photo, you set up the camera, and wait. To develop film, you dunk the film into a chemical bath, and wait. To transfer the image onto paper - a similar ordeal. Set, forget.
Photography fundamentally changed how the entirety of society works. Painters complained and lost jobs and livelihoods - like the “jobs stolen” by AI. Instead of drawing stuff, which required a lot of skill, taking a photo is much simpler (abd faster).
Yesterday, instead of having to paint stuff, you’d take a photo. Today, instead of taking a photo, you ask AI.
On the copyright front, the paralels are obvious: Taking a photo of a book is fair use. But photocopying a book isn’t. The problem with AI is that it does some transformations to the original, so it’s obfuscated inside the model. But the obfuscation can be undone, as AI often happily spits out certain inputs verbatim when asked. Take a photo of a page - okay. Photocopy the entire book? Not okay.
The situation is the same when we look at artwork instead of books. Taking a photo of an artwork in a museum is okay. Scanning an artwork (duplicating it verbatim) - isn’t. Same for movies. A frame is probably gonna be okay. The entire movie - won’t.
Going by the closest analogue, there is absolutely no justification to indiscriminately feed everything and anything into AI, for indiscriminately photocopying and vervatim copying the same material is clearly protected.
Yup looks like AI
I’m pissed at how its able to license wash Foss code and peoples IP. But it seems there are no rules for American or Chinese tech companies because they refuse to legislate so ip should be completely removed. There is no way any of their IP should be respected.
Considering the username, I’m just sitting here wondering if we’re just arguing against an LLM.
Looking at history… Yeah. I think so.
Even for people who generally like the function of AI (which seem to be fairly rare here) the absolutely obscene climate impact and implications for peopes jobs and livelihoods, privacy breaches, and general internet enshittification is surely reason enough to be against it.
The jobs thing i don’t understand, its the distribution of productivity gains that’s the issue, why we keep voting for the same politicians ensuring it goes to the wealthy is the real mystery.
Oh, I absolutely agree. But currently, the people in charge of making those decisions have demonstrated moral bankruptcy and will absolutely ensure the productivity gains funnel to the top. Until that changes, AI impact on jobs will likely be devastating.
And I’m all for changing it. It’s just going to be a long and/or violent process.
Productivity gains are not across the board, and is a subject of scrutiny and debate.
But what AI really has done is basically redistributed American wealth to a smaller group of people, and therefore a smaller pool for the US politicians to focus on satisfying. If there is an AI bubble pop, what market watchers suspect is there’s actually no other American sector to mitigate what is otherwise a recession.
It has its uses but it feels like more of a 10-20% productivity boost when used effectively, not the 500%, “lets have openclaw replace my whole company!” kind of BS being pushed by AI companies.
If it is a productivity boost for you, it is at the cost of someone else who will have to proofread and test everything you do. LLMs (and genAI) are useless.
It’s no more work than proofreading any other code I write. Sounds like someone just slopped out code with an LLM and didn’t do the due diligence of checking it themselves. Using an LLM doesn’t mean no work. I think that’s when people get in trouble.
That I why I like small, specialized, locally hosted AI. Runs acceptably fast and quite on my gaming PC, it’s private, and I can give it knowledge is small doses in specific topics and projects.
Which model do you use and what are your specs? I ran a couple using an RTX5060 with 16gb and it’s too slow to be usable for larger models while the smaller ones are mostly useless.
I also have a 5060 (ti) with 16GB of RAM. I tend to use GPT-OSS:20B or Qwen3:14B with a context of ~30k. I have custom system prompt for my style of reponse I like on open web ui. That takes up about 14GB of my 16GB VRAM
But yeah it is slower and not as “smart” as the cloud based models, but I think the inconvenience of the speed and having to fact check/test code is worth the privacy and environmental trade offs
Ive had good success on similar hardware (5070 + more ram) with GLM-4.7-Flash, using llama.cpp’s
--cpu-moeflag - I can get up to 150k context with it at 20ish tok/sec. I’ve found it to be a lot better for agentic use than GPT-OSS as well, it seems to do a much more in depth reasoning effort, so while it spends more tokens it seems worth it for the end result.
Reality as an artist dictates that all my work was datamined without my consent and anything I post in the future, should I choose to do so, will. And the end result of this data mining is to drive artists like me out of business. I don’t mind the average Joe getting their anime girl with three titties in five minutes, but company owners are making money out of this and paying nobody for their source material.
wait, you can ask for three titties…?..?
You can ask for four!
Too many tiddies.
A lot of people even outside, who are not techbros and corporate out of touch zealots, don’t like AI. It is being treated as a solve-all solution for everyday problems. When, it is horribly doing its job, gets in the way, artificially messes up anything in reach.
Yup. I suspect on other social media that some of the positive sentiment towards AI is just astroturfing.
There a strong amount of astroturfing even over on Mastodon. I imagine it’s worse on the billionaire owned socials.
If John Mastodon can’t stop the astroturfing, there’s no way those lesser founders can.
I am not “against” AI. I am against unfettered capitalism and how it is poisoning humanity. AI can hold the same kind of promise that Internet v1 had before the first eternal September. But because of the “success” of the capitalization of the web, folks are flocking to AI on the assumption that something similar will happen to it. I see it as a gold rush. Some boom towns may happen along the way. Some may endure. But it’s still very early to know that.
I have been working with LLMs for decades. I know what they can do and what they can’t. I admit they have grown in leaps and bounds in the last few years because of the hype, but therein lies the issue: there is still way too much hype, it’s not the end all solution some think it is, it’s driving up hardware prices, the environmental impact is horrendous, and it’s a new bullshit business marketing term that serves only to artificially inflate stock prices. “Agentic” is the new “data driven”.
A tool becomes “good” or “bad” based on its implementation.
The current trend towards massive unsustainable data centers is pretty objectively “bad” for humans and other creatures for questionable benefit.
Localized AI, on the other hand, would be less harmful, and more useful. This would move the needle towards a more objective “good”.
There’s usually a sub argument here of what the models are trained on - local or not.
Yeah it’s like gmos. The biggest companies in the game are well documented as ill-intentioned profiteers. The technology isn’t inherently bad.
Then be an activist. Never pay for AI, I don’t. Maybe 30 dollars a year for tools I can’t do without, but take everything for free. Make the unsustainability fall due to its own weight. That doesn’t mean I don’t use AI every day for work, spirituality, and learning. Take advantage of what you have available. Group think sucks.
…you use AI for spirituality? what are you even talking about
Not op, but i assume they just mean talking to an llm about spiritual topics. Especially local ai, if you pick a less censored model so it doesnt constantly spit refusals, they can hold conversations on difficult topics pretty well now. Whether that is politics, religion, law, finance, medicine, or roleplaying porn, doesnt really matter to the llm.
There are AI tools you can’t live without? That’s really sad for you
Who said that? You’re imagining things.
This you?
Never pay for AI, I don’t. Maybe 30 dollars a year for tools I can’t do without, but take everything for free.
Maybe you were referring to non-AI tools, though the mention of that here would be unusual, so the most likely reading of this is that you were saying something like “I don’t pay for AI, except when I do”.
I see where you’re coming from… When there is no way of doing something without AI I take on a job and pay peanuts for AI. I choose to earn money over not paying for AI. I can totally live without it, it’s just work is preferrable than a tantrum.
I believe"Big AI" will collapse.
People come to Lemmy precisely because they’re tired of big algorithmic corporate platforms. They come here precisely to get away from AI slop on platforms like Facebook. Hell, half the people here have been banned from reddit based on comically flawed algorithmic AI moderation tools. This platform is heavily selected for people who dislike AI and AI content.
Although I agree with the algorithmic abuses with AI, I didn’t expect a group think to be so prevalent, especially in a tech-leaning group. I don’t mind being popular, I guess the lack of AI might work to my advantage here.
Just because you have an unpopular opinion in actual tech leaning groups doesn’t mean it’s group think. It means your opinion sucks
Being tech-leaning is exactly why we are against AI. We are just much more aware of the resource it’s consuming, the privacy it’s infringing, and the content it’s stealing.
No disrespect, but with that attitude you won’t be tech-leaning for long. I understand where you’re coming from, just the “We are” sounds a bit culty and I really dislike cults.
The issue with “tech-leaning” people who believe AI is the future is that they’re in the “peak of mount stupid” part of the Dunning-Kruger curve. Once you get past that, you realize AI was never good at anything and it’s harmful to everyone in a million different ways. Most of lemmy’s tech-leaning people have already realized that, and are actively trying to avoid AI.
I’ll admit “we are” is a bit of an exaggeration. That is only based on my observation of the community.
I think there is a lot of misdirected frustration. The technology isn’t the issue, the way it’s been implemented is the issue. There are some useful use cases for AI.
Completely agree.
There was a post on Mastodon that I sadly cannot find right now that really articulated the fact that there’s not necessarily a single problem with LLMs and generative AI - the issue is that there’s an entire stack of potential dangers associated with them. To paraphrase:
Use of and reliance on LLMs for certain tasks has shown to have deleterious effects on critical thinking skills.
Even if that isn’t true or I weren’t concerned about it, I’d be concerned about its effects on my psychological wellbeing.
Even if I weren’t concerned about that, I’d be concerned about the ethical issues of how their training data was and is acquired.
Even if I weren’t concerned about that, I’d be concerned about its effects on the job market and the further upward concentration of wealth.
Even if I weren’t concerned about that, I’d be concerned about the massive energy costs and the associated effects on utility bills and greenhouse gas emissions.
Even if I weren’t concerned about that, I’d be concerned about the massive cooling requirements and its effects on the global availability of clean water.
Even if certain approaches to or implementations of GAI solve one or a couple of these concerns, I’d have to overcome all of them (and likely others I’ve forgotten to list) to feel comfortable using GAI in any serious capacity, and even then it looks like I would end up with a tool that I’d have to constantly double-check to avoid hallucinations. It’s just not worth it.
And nearly all of these arguments also to apply to others using GAI, so I’m forced to advocate against it.
I hear you man. I agree, if I could disappear it, I would, but I can’t and it’s here. I think resisting it is just wasting energy. There is definitely a bubble of hype around it. Who knows, I don’t.
It sounds like you continue to use it, though. How do you justify it in the face of what I laid out above? “Waste of energy” is a shitty excuse for engaging in bad behavior.
I don’t excuse it. It was born unethically stealing all of the internet. But like I said, it’s here, I sure as hell am not going to become amish and make cheese. I like living in the modern world. Maybe some day I’ll retire to the woods, but for now I got to live in this world, so I might as well take it in the chin and accept the damn thing.
I totally respect people not using it, it’s just I’ve found people on Lemmy kind of don’t respect people using it. I’m not here to change the world, though, I’m happy I opened this discussion.
Many people here know that “AI” as a term is pure snake oil. You aren’t actually talking about anything until you say what you think it means, or specific examples.
AI research goes back to the early 1950s. Being “against” all of that old research is kinda meaningless… So it’s your job to clarify what you mean, or not, and other users will respond accordingly.
Group thing? No.
Does it seem like the majority are against it? Yes.
I’ve leaned pretty heavily into using LLMs personally and professionally.
Good to know, I do too. It has its ugly dangerous extinction of humanity risks for sure, kind of exciting too, but it’s here to stay for bad or good.
I get a strong impression that the whole extinction of humanity narrative is really just an astroturf marketing campaign by AI companies. They’re basically scaremongering because it gets in the news, and the goal is to convince investors how smart these things are. It’s the whole OpenAI claiming they’re on the verge of AGI right before pivoting to doing horny chatbots. These are useful tools, and I also use them day to day, but the hype around them is absolutely incredible.
I think we have plenty of real risks to humanity to worry about, like the US starting a nuclear holocaust. We don’t need to waste time worrying about imaginary risks like AGI here.
I’d also argue the whole energy consumption argument is very myopic. The reality is that these things have been getting more and more efficient, and there is little reason to think that’s not going to be continue being the case going forward. It’s completely new tech, and it’s basically just moved past proof of concept stages. There’s going to be a lot of optimization happening down the road. And even when you contextualize current energy usage, it’s not as crazy as people seem to think https://www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/
We’re also starting to see stuff like this happening https://www.anuragk.com/blog/posts/Taalas.html
The biggest risk in terms of human extinction is a government allowing an AI to make unchecked military (e.g. nuclear) decisions.
At this point, I’d trust the AI over the clowns running the Burger Reich.
It doesn’t look like that energy consumption blog post account for the cost of training the model. Otherwise, it should be telling us how many queries/sessions are assumed to be run over the course of the lifetime of a model.
Models training is a one off effort. Model usage is what matters because that’s where energy is used continuously. Also, practically nobody trains models from scratch right now. People use existing base models to tune and extend them.
Training is a continuous expenditure. We’re nearly ten years into this craze and we’re still continuously pumping out new models. Whether they’re trained from scratch or not is immaterial. Both processes still consume energy. If you want to justify the claim that training cost is negligible, you would have to show that this cost is actually going down over time and that it’s going down sufficiently quickly.
Whether they’re trained from scratch or not is very much material because it takes far more energy to do that. Meanwhile, we consume energy as a civilization in general. And frankly, a lot of energy is consumed on far dumber things like advertisements. If you count all the energy that goes into producing and displaying ads, that dwarfs AI energy use. So, it’s kind of weird t0 single AI energy use out here as some form of exceptional evil.
You know what else takes far less energy than training a single model? One query. Yet, you argue that it’s the main contributor to the energy consumption. Why is that? It’s because there’s a very high volume of them, thus bringing up the total energy consumption. At the end of the day, it’s this total energy consumption that matters, not the cost of doing it once. Look at the total energy expenditure of training, not just the cost of doing it once.
So, it’s kind of weird t0 single AI energy use out here as some form of exceptional evil.
We’re talking about AI here because that’s the topic of this thread. I’ve never seen anyone say that it’s the only problem worth addressing. Plus, if you want to compare energy usage of ads (or anything else) compared to AI, you would first need to know how much energy AI is actually using.
Two points
- Living with a knife to your throat is also highly dangerous and exciting. I don’t recommend it.
- The tech can’t be un-invented, but it’s still very much up for discussion wether society puts significant resources into the data centres to run this. Regulations on responsible use are also up for discussion.
It’s not a forgone conclusion by any means.
