I keep gnawing on this trend I see in anti AI spaces that I dont like. And let me clarify - I am anti-AI in its current state.
But I see a lot of takes from anti-AI people that regard LLMs as like. An actual intelligence. I see regular posts on tumblr and Bluesky that go something like "you didnt write this, AI WROTE IT FOR YOU". I went to a webinar for work that was supposedly about how to train library patrons about the misinformation that AI can spread - and the presenter went off on a 10 minute tangent about how these evil chat bots must have sentience because they made a teen kill themselves.
I feel like this is an incredibly harmful and reductive line of reasoning bc it shields the discussion about how these LLMs are coded by developers to behave in these ways, based on specific input and learning data. This is not some evil robot usurper that can be defeated by us just not using its evil robot powers. AI is a symptom of a larger disease in which the sexism, venture capital economy, lack of ethics in STEM education and training, and profitization of personal data of the field of tech metastasized. But these issues will still exist if ChatGPT closes tomorrow. Data centers will still exist - bc while AI uses a lot of power and water, so does most of the things we do online - and the panopticon of government surveillance wants to keep all of this information, AI or not.
I need people to have more in-depth conversations about AI usage and to expand their reasoning for it being bad beyond just "bad information" and "hurts environment". If AI goes away due to an economic bubble popping, all of these problems will still exist in the tech world and they will make a new Torment Nexus that has the same problems. AI is not an evil robot with sentience - its a tool that has been created, implemented and championed by horrible people that have too much money, time and power than anyone should realistically have.
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