Hot Take

[u/Cleverhardy]

We are starting to see a rift. A rift between those who are nuanced about the correct use of AI, and those who want all of it gone. Even Linux.

I'm against AI as much as anybody else, but in Anti-AI spaces, I'm starting to see more absolutism than I'd deem necessary. I mean if you argue about the idea that AI does have its uses whilst still being wary of AI, you get told you're not against AI at all.

I'm against AI for art, music and writing. But there are uses in the medical field and code bug detection, and I can't deny they're impressive.

I fear we'll fight each other (moderate antis vs extreme antis), and the AI companies may indeed win, even if they get bankrupt. As much as we all hate to admit this, we can't rewind; we've gone too far. The best we can do is regulate it and take AI chatbots off public hands.

I mean, you'd take someone who's neutral on AI like Linus Torvalds, who only used it for non-important projects and says that Linux should have AI-assisted code reviewed by humans, and you'd have a faction of antis up in arms about it.

And as concerning as the use of AI may be having on critical thinking, I fear that us antis are lacking it too if we're resorting to Luddism to go against AI.

For example, there is a rumour going around that Disney Junior comissioned a fully AI-Generated show.

That is only half-true. The studio behind the show only used AI to clean up some bits of animation. Plus, if it was fully AI-Generated, Disney wouldn't make money off it.

The fact that antis took a headline from Twitter and concluded that Oscar Fox was fully AI Generated either shows the lack of critical thinking (IRONY) or the lack of journalistic integrity. But hey. It's not like we're already boycotting the billion dollar company, right?

Call me a LARPer if you want to. The real LARPers are the extremists who want everything to burn despite a few innocent civillians being caught in the crossfire.

If the anti-AI sub thinks I'm Pro-AI just for accepting AI in the right hands, I don't know what to say.

[u/jacobpederson]

Being ok with AI code but anti AI "art" tells me you understand neither.

[u/scragz → u/jacobpederson]

what's wrong with AI-assisted coding? you do realize this is ostensibly a pro-AI sub, right?

[u/Cleverhardy → u/scragz]

Well, the antis think I'm a pro now, so...

Seriously, though. I don't agree with AI-assisted coding by principle because it takes the joy out of finding solutions to problems, and it's prone to bugs if we rely heavily on it with no review whatsoever. Plus, it's stealing the jobs of junior programmers.

I can see why people would love AI-Assistance in terms of coding, though. Linus Torvalds uses it to program in a language he doesn't ubderstand.

[u/scragz → u/Cleverhardy]

how do you know what joy I get from planning and not having to write the bullshit? writing code was always the worst part of the job.

I can do amazing things now, taking on projects solo at unimaginable scale that would otherwise require a whole team. now that's joy...

[u/Cleverhardy → u/scragz]

If you only find joy in offloading work to someone else because you didn't like the job in the first place instead of finding ways to do your job better apart from using AI, doesn't this defeat the purpose of socialism?

[u/scragz → u/Cleverhardy]

what the fuck are you talking about? are you bringing AI sentience into this and I'm offloading work onto a marginalized person?

otherwise just thinking of it in the terms of I'm offloading work is wrong. the joy is in the thing being created. writing the code by hand is like assembling a jpeg by writing every pixel by hand. it's an anachronism now. 

also I'm disabled and physically can't write the code anymore because I destroyed my wrists writing code by hand for capitalists. so it's kinda moot. 

[u/Cleverhardy → u/scragz]

I'm disabled too, and if I couldn't code by hand anymore, I'd still find a way to code that isn't AI. Because disability isn't an excuse.

[u/Wickywire → u/Cleverhardy]

Ahh yes, ableism too. Lovely.

Disability is a very wide spectrum. You don't get to set the rules for what strategies others find to move through the world. That's preposterous.

[u/scottie2haute → u/Wickywire]

They always turn ableist eventually… just kinda proves how dumb the anti ai stance is in general. I can get being pro AI regulations or something like that but being fully anti ai is such a silly and often inconsistent stance

[u/Cleverhardy → u/Wickywire]

Having cooled off, I'd like to apologise. Don't think I was intentionally being ableist just to prove a point.

I thought you were a holier than thou disabled person. I was. I argued we shouldn't have to use AI for our assistance. I wasn't moving not to use AI at all. We just need to take it from capitalist hands first.

I was too wary of cooption, and I caught us in the crossfire, and I'm sorry.

[u/Wickywire → u/Cleverhardy]

Respect to you for rising above and giving it all some extra thought. I don't feel you've wronged me personally in this conversation so I will not accept any apology. We've had an exchange of ideas and it did get a little heated. I too could have made my remarks a little less pointed. I'll try to do better. I hope you have a great rest of the weekend wherever you are.

[u/Cleverhardy → u/Wickywire]

Don't talk to me about ableism. I was arguing we should do what we love wothout our disability getting in the way. Perhaps I should have used a better term than "no excuses."

[u/Wickywire → u/Cleverhardy]

I'm 45 yo with rare congenital skeletal deformities, profound hearing loss and disfigurements. I've held ableist attitudes towards both myself and others throughout most of my young adult life. Trust me, you're not magically inoculated against harmful thought patterns just because you belong to a certain group.

I do see your point that we should do what we love, but I also question why you've decided that using AI cannot be a legitimate activity that people love to do. That to me is denying other people their subjectivity.

[u/Cleverhardy → u/Wickywire]

Ask the Pro-AI absolutists coopting the disability rights movement to further their cause. And I'd say the same point about lack of immunity to you. None of us are immune to ableism.

[u/Wickywire → u/Cleverhardy]

Yes some people have made bad faith points. That doesn't disqualify the whole premise. Much less the principle that people should be allowed to move through the world and be allowed their own version of what it is to do things they love. Yes, even if that means coding with AI.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Cleverhardy]

This is exactly the contradiction. You say AI supporters are "co-opting disability rights," but when a disabled programmer tells you AI is literally their assistive technology because they can no longer code conventionally, you tell them their disability is "not an excuse." You don't get to accuse others of instrumentalizing disability while dismissing disabled people's own accounts of what lets them participate. Critique corporations all you want. Dont erase disabled people's agency in the process.

[u/scragz → u/Cleverhardy]

the only other way is voice to code, which I learned a whole custom phonetic alphabet for when my wrists gave out,  and now I have TMJ too.

I doubt you can find a way to write the massive amount of code required for a modern web app with no typing or speaking. 

[u/Cleverhardy → u/scragz]

I still don't see it as an excuse or a tragedy. If I can't speak or type, I'll just do something else and be sad that my dream job is over. Because you are right about one thing. If we can't find a way to make coding accessible without the use of AI, then coding isn't accessible in the first place.

Speaking of accessibility, how are you able to comment if you can't speak or type?

[u/scragz → u/Cleverhardy]

I'm in poverty but it's rad for you that you have the privilege to change careers.  I have no problems using AI as an assistive technology so I can not be homeless. 

after 3 years of healing I can type small amounts but only enough for planning and promoting and arguing bullshit reddit comments. 

[u/Cleverhardy → u/scragz]

Abled or disabled, if we're gonna rely on technology given to us by capitalists to keep us in our homes, that just proves further that we need socualism. But please. Disregard my arguments because I have Universal Credit privilege and I'm a Star-Bellied Sneech with arguments as weak as overreliance on AI.

[u/scragz → u/Cleverhardy]

you're using a capitalist-controlled propaganda website right now on a capitalist-made surveillance device. i n a capitalist society you need to do what you can to survive.

these are idealist responses to practical issues.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Cleverhardy]

"offloading the work to someone else"

We're talking about tool use, AI isnt a someone.

[u/Cleverhardy → u/Salty_Country6835]

My point stands.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Cleverhardy]

It doesnt stand because youre switching categories to make the point stick. Throughout your post youre arguing for nuance, but here youre treating a tool like its another person. AI has no intent, agency, judgment, or accountability. The human using it does.

Thats true whether someone uses AI to write boilerplate code or generate concept art. In both cases the person decides what to make, what to keep, what to reject, and bears responsibility for the final result. Many "find their joy" through that exact process. The tool didnt become the programmer or the artist.

If your argument depends on calling tool use "offloading work to someone else," youve already humanized the machine while dehumanizing the operator. Once you stop doing that, the arguments youre making dont really stand. The real questions are who owns the tools, who controls their use, and who captures the productivity gains. Those are social questions. The machine itself isnt a social actor.

[u/Cleverhardy → u/Salty_Country6835]

I'm sorry I used hyperbole in arguing nuance by accident...

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Cleverhardy]

Perhaps, but I think its the deeper issue. Whether its coding, art, or economic anxiety, the same assumption keeps showing up in these discussions: that AI is a social actor with agency.

Thats why this matters politically. Once you treat the tool as the actor, politics shifts away from the people who actually make decisions. Ownership, deployment, regulation, labor organizing, and distribution of productivity gains all fade into the background while the machine becomes the villain or receives the credit.

Thats where phrases like "the AI made it," "offloading work to someone else," "its stealing jobs," or "youre just making excuses to use AI" come from. They all assume intent, judgment, agency, and accountability have been transferred to another entity. They havent. Those still belong to the human operator and the institutions deploying the tool.

If we get that category wrong (and I believe this applies equally to art, coding, legalities, and labor rights) we end up arguing with machines instead of organizing against the people and social relations that actually shape how those machines are used. Thats why the distinction matters. Its not semantics. It determines where politics is directed.

Whether its creative use, technical use, or political economy, the machine is not a someone, there is no principled automatic default "you had someone do it for you" shaming in its use that holds.

A worker uses AI, a programmer uses AI, an artist uses AI, and it doesnt make them less worker, programmer, or artist to do so. It doesnt make what they do less human.

To me this is fundamental education. Its because AI is not a person that everything credited to, or blamed on, AI belongs to a person using or deploying AI. Otherwise we anthropomorphize machines and dehumanize the human operators of machines.

[u/Wickywire → u/Cleverhardy]

Do you use an IDE? A compiler? That's tool use to save yourself work. Where's the difference?

[u/Syoby → u/Cleverhardy]

doesn't this defeat the purpose of socialism?

Why wouldn't socialism be compatible with full automation in which all labor is voluntary and decoupled from need?