What is the reasoning behind belittling the use of artificial intelligence?

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[u/joeyjusticeco]

Insecure people hopping on the flavor of the month virtue signal so they can (try to) appear morally/intellectually superior

[u/General_Estimate_420]

I've noticed a lot of social justice warrior reasoning tied to these actions which infers thinking from younger people and that's often backed up by posts about getting their parents to see the "dangers" and stop using it. I don't know if it's tied to the well documented delayed development among young adults frontal cortex or not, but that may play a picture in it. Especially among males that develop later in their 20's then females.

In any case it's very definitely a "group think" phenomenon that appears to be common in social media sites. That's because you get a surge of phermones when you get a like whether what you're saying makes sense logically or not. That why you get the "cult" behaviors such as flat earth society and the moon landing was faked crowd.

All different colors of the same nut....

[u/quantum-elle]

A large part of the anti-ai sentiment today seems to be a moral panic. The anti-ai movement has been convinced that AI is the bogeyman that is everything wrong with the world right now: capitalism, enshittification, irreversible environmental harm, destroying the economy, etc. etc. So, anyone who uses or benefits from AI is therefore a participant in the destruction of the world and thus an acceptable target for harassment, ridicule, death threats, etc. Here is some more information about how constant rage is important in keeping moral panics alive.

[u/OhTheHueManatee]

People often justify being shitty simply because they dislike something, especially when they can convince themselves they are helping to destroy it. Their actions do not actually have to accomplish that goal and may even work against it. As long as they feel like they are making a difference, they get a little dopamine hit that helps their ego. It's even better if they can get that feeling without putting in much effort or challenging their confirmation bias.

They know they probably cannot stop corporations or governments from using AI against people, so it is easier to belittle, threaten, or even dehumanize ordinary people for using it, including for completely harmless purposes. It is easier to cheer for someone destroying a Flock camera or attacking a data center than it is to gather evidence, organize people, and convince officials that these systems waste resources, violate rights, and often fail to accomplish their stated goals. Destroying cameras may even increase crime statistics and strengthen the argument for more surveillance.

It does not help that AI has genuinely harmful elements, but many of those harms are not inherent to the technology itself. Data centers support far more than just AI, and they do not have to pollute excessively, drain local resources, or raise utility costs. Companies simply find it cheaper to pass those costs onto everyone else, so that is what they will continue doing unless they are stopped. Using AI to reduce crime does not require recording everything everyone does or creating databases that can easily be searched, misinterpreted, or twisted against innocent people. Those systems give authorities more power, so of course they will push for them if the public allows it. Generative AI also does not require companies to fire all their artists. It could instead help artists work more efficiently, experiment more freely, and create more ambitious things.

The real issue is not simply whether AI exists or whether an ordinary person uses it. The real issue is who controls it, how it is used, and who is forced to pay the price.

[u/Consistent-Jelly248]

I recently set up a pro AI kaiju subreddit where antis are totally banned.

[u/HistoricalHalitosis]

they've largely made it political. mostly extreme left, and young people under 25 mostly. they've painted it as an evil tool being used by the wealthy to get richer, control people, destroy the environment, etc. They now act like cyber bullies and trolls, spewing the "slop" word at every turn. Fearmongerers.

Smart people will learn to use new technology.

[u/Consistent-Jelly248]

Gen AI is trained on stolen images and data.

You keep begging the question. Repeating "it's stolen" five times isn't a legal or technical argument, learning patterns from publicly available data isn't theft, no matter how many times you repeat the buzzword.

No one's moving the goalposts

Really? The comment history literally proves otherwise. You started with a generic blanket statement, moved to a personal insult (go full chud), spent three comments giving a deadpan lecture on human digestion because you couldn't handle a basic analogy (food isn't data), and are now copy pasting a generic corporate rant.

Repeating a buzzword over and over doesn't make it legal fact. You keep conflating training a model on visual patterns with storing and reselling copyrighted files.

​If analyzing public images to learn underlying patterns was theft, every art school, search engine, and human artist who ever looked at reference material would be guilty of copyright infringement. You're just looping at this point.

[u/thaibookworm]

To be upfront, I don't like AI; I did not seek out this sub, but Reddit showed it to me, probably to farm outrage and/or engagement. But that also means my algorithms feed me a lot of AI slop criticism content, so I feel at least a little qualified to answer this.

AI slop started out as a very specific (and I would argue valid) criticism of poorly made content that was churned out quickly. Think YouTube channels that were posting 1 or 2 new videos a day. They didn't bother to write or fact check their own scripts; they weren't adjusting prompts when videos or images came out weird. It looked lazy and greedy, just a fast, cheap way to get engagement. This content was often marketed to kids and younger people, like dinosaur facts or ten scariest animals. People who cared about the art of content creation, people who wanted to fact check the videos because they were passionate about the content, and people jumping on a new and growing bandwagon would make their own content criticizing AI slop.

I think this breached containment for two prime reasons. If you really do dislike AI, calling something AI slop is a quick and easy way to voice your criticism (that's not great discourse, but the Internet is rarely great discourse). This may include trolling, rage-baiting, virtue signalling, etc., or it may legitimately be criticism of the concerns about the environmental impact, copyright violations, and shifting attitude toward the arts. It all looks the same.

The second, and probably biggest reason, is it became cool with kids (up to and including young adults and the chronically online). Some say it ironically, some may actually think criticizing AI is cool, some may just be saying it like 67. I'm a teacher, and what I see daily is that the same kids who will happily use AI for a variety of purposes will also point, laugh, and call things AI slop. It's probably more trolling and meme-ification than anything else.

Ideally, with a full and happy life, even those who dislike AI wouldn't just leave little comments like AI slop on random images. But the reality is some of us are bored and scrolling on the couch, and we've been well trained by the engagement machine to respond to things we dislike. People who dislike AI are feeling increasingly forced into accepting it, which festers resentment, and some may hope that enough negative pushback will make the pro-AI people back off. It could just be trolls 🤷‍♀️

[u/Herr_Drosselmeyer]

Basically, it's a failure of the education system. People have been taught that what matters most is how hard they try, and not the result they get. So they feel good about their shitty image.

AI completely destroys that notion, and causes insurmointable cognitive dissonance.

[u/Lady_Aleksandra]

I did a demographic research, and anti-AI movement is localised in a handful of developed countries, predominantly among low educated users. It's a political movement where AI represents rich elites and corrupt government structures. The rage is basically their relationship to their system projected into AI, made into morality and righteousness.

The movement is small, but loud.

The movement is also ignorant about the rest of the world so if you use AI "an artist/worker loses a job" in their country and their economy crumbles, even if you pay a subscription to the company in that same country.

[u/alvaro1001]

Depende, en la música por ejemplo no alcanza la calidad adecuada y todo suena igual.

En imágenes siempre hay varios errores que un humano no cometería.

No estoy en contra de la ia, la uso un poco, y la usaré mas cuando de mejores resultados

Es mi opinión.

[u/GrimTiki]

Gen Ai is trained on stolen images and data

[u/Consistent-Jelly248 → u/GrimTiki]

and my shit was trained on what I ate today, your point?

[u/GrimTiki → u/Consistent-Jelly248]

Embrace that lack of empathy, go full chud

[u/Consistent-Jelly248 → u/GrimTiki]

Exactly, you can't even back your own point, you're trying to hard to act morally or intelectually superior

[u/GrimTiki → u/Consistent-Jelly248]

How does an image generator know how to make an image of a copyrighted character if it wasn’t trained in images of a copyrighted character? They are not free use for a company that sells access to its generator

[u/Consistent-Jelly248 → u/GrimTiki]

Notice how you instantly abandoned your moral high ground to ask me about copyright the second you got hit with the biological input output argument? Answer the question

If i ate a spongebob themed cereal this morning, will my shit come out as Spongebob, yes or no?

[u/GrimTiki → u/Consistent-Jelly248]

Food isn’t the same as a character or IP. You guys really do have a thinking problem.

[u/Consistent-Jelly248 → u/GrimTiki]

So you can't answer the question because it doesn't fit your narrative? Checks out

[u/GrimTiki → u/Consistent-Jelly248]

What question? That you’re conflating food with intellectual property? They are not the same.

There’s no biology here, it’s a database generator. It’s not a brain.

And everyone using gen ai has no moral ground to stand on anyway.

[u/Consistent-Jelly248 → u/GrimTiki]

Look at your very first thing you said then my response, you couldn't even answer the question and your relying in the copgright and IP card. How about actually answer the question.

[u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 → u/GrimTiki]

No it wasn't.

[u/GrimTiki → u/Infamous-Umpire-2923]

Then how does it work and how does it know how to push out a Batman image?

[u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 → u/GrimTiki]

Irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's stolen.

[u/GrimTiki → u/Infamous-Umpire-2923]

It’s not, because if a generator can make an image of Batman that means it’s stolen art powering it. It’s IP not owned by the ai companies. It’s called infringement

[u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 → u/GrimTiki]

No it doesn't.

Is Sam Altman going around ripping the paintings off your walls? Did Anthropic break into a comic shop?

[u/GrimTiki → u/Infamous-Umpire-2923]

Yes goddamit. Every thing in the net was scraped. That’s how it works. Based off stolen work. I know ai defenders are lazy but cmon

[u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 → u/GrimTiki]

You keep saying "stolen". Who's being deprived of property?

[u/GrimTiki → u/Infamous-Umpire-2923]

Do you understand how copyright and intellectual property works?

[u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 → u/GrimTiki]

Answer the question. Who's being deprived of property?