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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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I think this is very honest and we shouldn't give someone shit for speaking up.
This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don't hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn't understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.
I don't judge him for wrestling with it. I'm sad for him. I'm sad for a lot of us. We're all working in a system that's slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.
I don't think that we should lose hope, but the future can't look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn't be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.
Well said
Yes. He doesn't want to admit, he's gone as far down this path as he responsibly can. He doesn't want to transition to the "producer" role, where he becomes a resource for a new generation that's seeking a future away from the old platforms.
It's a bit like the oil man who knows his work enabled so much good, unable to also admit his product has a dark side, and it's time for us all to move on from it. That times changed and a new world is struggling to be born.
I disagree about "edutainment" in a qualified way. We still need communicators and domain experts sharing their knowledge, and there's still a great deal of knowledge to share, but I don't think it's on YouTube (or TikTok). People talking out of turn on matters so far outside their expertise and experience they're effectively neophytes, and just as vulnerable to Dunning-Kruger impulses certainly doesn't help. I don't think that AI or better algorithms are going to save them either, that's a good way to end up lost in a psychotic hallucination. I don't know what it will look like yet but it isn't going to come from the tech giants. Unless Wikipedia wants to take a crack at it, they might be the only ones that could pull it off.
But this is the first time there's been this significant of an impact on one's mental health(?) I'm unsure. It's so easy to get caught up in that dopamine hit where you feel like you did something. Its even more frustrating when you're forced to use it in work regularly, whether directly or indirectly (if you're coworkers are using it there is an indirect force to use it if you need to stay competitive and keep your job and feed yourself and your loved ones especially if your workspace is not healthy)
Thought experiment: is it better to treat the AI as a contractor (fivver etc) who is doing the task you're asking rather than thinking of it as something you're doing? From a mental health perspective A contractor because you are only to talk a out the task and nothing else really. That way it's work could be more distant and you're less likely to associate it to your work and boost in productivity?
No. This is a line we cannot cross and if it destroys us, so be it. I'm not against AI, or automation. But not these tools. Not these companies. Not these models. The question is death or death. So we learn to live without, or we die. There is no synthesis possible with this paradigm.
The cats out of the bag, so what are we gonna do now. Like replace that but not this with any other tech you should stop using, say social media, good luck. So what are we going to do now?
What do we do? We're doing it. We're asking questions, we're building communities IRL and in digital paces outside the bounds of the major corps. We use poison pills to make corpos that embrace these systems pay dearly. We give grace to those who sincerely pull back and we move on.
Cocaine exists and it can be a major boost to productivity. But we don't have to use it. We don't have to live with its downsides slowly killing us and robbing us of our humanity.
I mean, we are all going to die. In fact it’s the fear of that that built these AI systems. If you want to go against them then accept death and extinction as our future.
No. I refuse. We may die, but I refuse to surrender. Where there is life, there is hope, and we're not dead yet.
Hank Green has earned the right, with me anyway, to have his point of view heard. And frankly he has more credibility with me than the garden variety pitchfork-wielding anti-AI mob. I think Hank is a person who finds AI interesting and sees upsides as well as downsides. But the aforementioned mob is not interested in anything other than the emotional catharsis of railing against something they hate.
Now ask me if the mob is in the room with us, because it probably is.
His AI use caused him so many problems in his private life that his family had to intervene. His point of view is “This technology has had a negative impact on my life and the lives of the people I care about”.
Your pro-AI spiel is a bit tone deaf here
But they didn't say anything pro-AI. At most they were anti-anti-AI mob, which is just reasonable, as is with any "mob". And I read mob here as mindless parrots that keep repeating talking points and hating for the sake of conformity.
Being anti-anti something is being pro-something. That’s the beauty of the double negative.
Also that’s just a very pro-AI user, so the intent can be inferred
You're conflating two different somethings. Anti-AI mob is not the same as AI. Being against mob mentality doesn't make you inherently pro AI.
It's possible to be pro or anti mob mentality and AI in various different combinations.
I’m anti anything mob. The fucking groupthink on certain issues is real.
I’m also anti people who make shit up and then try to sell it as a long strings of “inferences.”
And after having AI shoved down my throat at work for two years while my teammates get laid off, I’m pretty anti AI too. At most I have direct experience with it that teaches me it has some uses, like summarization.
You’re full of shit. You’ve been told. And you know it by now. But you’ll probably bleat on with more of the same because it’s all you know how to do. Proceed, I guess.
You're on Lemmy... any statements about AI, Musk, trump, McConnell, etc that aren't over-the-top against them will be met with downvotes.
Okay but why would anyone be anything but over-the-top against anything on your list?
I mean, like, everything you listed is dog shit.
That's what I keep fucking asking, Like how can anyone with half a brain be okay with any of them?
Because sometimes in life there are nuances and it is possible to mention one of those topics in a neutral manner, but the absolute hostility held here against anyone who tries to have a conversation beyond "_____ sucks ass!" is exhausting.
This is not one of those times. I don’t want to have a conversation with someone who thinks neutrally about any of those topics.
The adults are talking
i have the exact opposite experience about AI, at least on lemmy.ml
I said nothing pro-AI. But by accusing me of that, you reveal where your own bias (and defensiveness) lies. So thanks for that.
You’re also exaggerating the facts. They didn’t stage an intervention. He turned to his wife and brother and said “do you think my AI use is unhealthy?”
You’ve said plenty pro-AI lol. You don’t have to get so defensive about it, just own your position.
I’ve exaggerated nothing. Hank himself said he’s spoken to both his wife and brother about his AI use and said they “didn’t pull any punches”, which implies there was a blunt conversation about it, if not two.
There wasn't an intervention, he asked them about his AI use in response to the outrage and they agreed he'd been using it unhealthy.
Seemed to me more along the lines of "do I have too much salt?" , "yeah you should cut back" ; Then "your coke problem is tearing this family apart"
He said they “did not pull any punches” which implies it was a more blunt conversation than you’re suggesting.
Hank Green himself describes his relationship with AI the same way you would an addiction, and specifically mentions the dopamine reaction driving his use of it to a point where he became overwhelmed by it.
He’s not describing a casual discussion about table salt, he’s literally describing a drug/alcohol addiction.
You sound like you lick Grok and Gippitys silicon balls.
I don’t even know what that second one is, and I wouldn’t touch Xitter with a ten foot turd.
That's fair. It's a new technology, we need trusted people to explore it and tell us what their experience was. I don't think we have very many trusted people left
Agreed, this is new technology for everybody, we're allowed growing pains.
Its pretty fucking simple to not use it.
I mean, not smoking is also pretty simple. Or not using social media.
Then you're not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology. And that's fine, we all can't do all the things but we can listen to the people around us without being pretentious tools who would say I told you so.
I've been examining and thinking about artificial neural networks since ~2010.
It is pretty fucking simple to not use an LLM.
Good job you've literally not reflected on the adoption of tech.
Its pretty fucking simple not to be an unempathetic prick, but here we are.
There was a point where it was pretty simple not to use the internet, too. This analogy drives a question: were those people who rejected the internet at the beginning better off in the long run, when compared to people who embraced it?
Generative AI can be a very useful productivity tool. Choosing not to use an available tool is "easy", but is it wise?
I find myself agreeing with the person you responded to; you don't appear to be thinking critically about the implications of LLMs/generative AI. That, or you are speaking more literally than it seems, and you mean, literally, that it's easy not to use AI, without commenting on how wise that decision may or may not be.
You don't appear to have a functioning brain.
Hyperbolic insults don't help your case. If you did think critically about this, feel free to show your work and talk through your thought process.
Generative AI is just a tool. Using it is not much different than using a thesaurus while writing. You can quickly tell when someone has over-used the thesaurus, and it affects the quality of the output, but that doesn't make it bad to use a thesaurus.
And people could simply not work for major corps.
And they could simply not buy plastic clothes from Walmart.
And they could simply grow their own food.
Etc etc.
i don't understand why you guys are making it seem like not using LLMs is like some impossible task
like they pretty much didn't even exist until like a few years ago lol
it's ridiculous to me, how did people even do stuff before LLMs? the same way they have always done it! (and yeah I work w code and are expected to use them but even then I know this is bullshit)
For me it’s just another disconnected millionaire Youtuber. But he‘s kind of blaming AI or rather his relationship with LLMs for this dilemma instead of actually reflecting on himself. If he thinks simply abstaining from using LLMs will establish a connection to the people he‘s dead wrong and will likely fall back on AI in no time.
Yeah, part of what I appreciate about him is that he does consistently acknowledge when he fucks up and tries to change.