Before we get into the article I want to say that I do not mean to imply that anyone’s personal opinions are not valid. People are entitled to their own opinions. It only becomes problematic when they attempt to frame their opinion as objective fact. As opposed to their own subjective beliefs. Also this article is written from an anarchist leftist perspective. For people who aren’t leftists or anarchists this might seem jarring, however this is a leftist anarchist space. So be mindful of that before engaging. Anyway with that preamble out of the way let’s get into the article

One thing that is very common among people who disdain AI is the emotional attachment to this point of view. An emotional attachment that is resistant to facts, logic, or explanation. In fact, when attempting to present evidence and reasoning to these them, they will usually attack you. They will dismiss anything you say, and if you get them very close to exhausting their arguments, they’ll just accuse you of using AI yourself, a classic ad-hominem attack. This is not the rhetoric of somebody who is thinking logically or critically, it comes from emotional attachment. Such responses are indicative of an appeal to emotion, suggesting that their primary, and likely only, real issue with AI is inherently emotional and opinionated. In other words, they just don’t like it.

Due to the fact that the internet is a place where emotions dominate discourse and where bad-faith tactics earn perceived credibility among people. These perspectives can gain popularity. At which point people will listen to them simply because the idea is popular and because challenging the popular rhetoric is risky. That combined with people being less willing to hear opinions considered unpopular creates an environment where opinionated but popular ideas flourish. This problem is not exclusive to AI discourse, it is a problem on the internet as a whole.

Of course, many people do recognize that opinions are not facts, they are subjective and able to be challenged. So naturally, they will gravitate towards whatever arguments they think they can use to support their arguments objectively, and make it seem like more than just their own opinion.

The first argument that people who are against AI use to support their opinionated position is to appeal to the capitalist artificial construct of copyright and intellectual property. As well as appealing to the capitalistic nature of society and the way that things are right now. There is specifically the claim that using images obtained without consent is stealing from artists and violating their intellectual property. This is a discussion that many people, choose to engage in and put effort into defending or into refuting. This effort will not be put forward in this article because copyright, intellectual property, and capitalism as a whole are not valid. It is a system of oppression put forth by the wealthy elites.

It does not deserve more attention than this paragraph. And the people who apologize for this while claiming to be anarchists are engaging in classic doublethink by supporting capitalist models that run counter to anarchist-leftist ideology.

The second argument that many people primarily use is to bring up real science around environmental harms related to AI industries. And the discussion about AI companies and the harm that they do to the world is one that we anarchists and leftists as a whole should definitely be having. However, when it’s talked about in most online discourse and the hate around AI, it is not being given the attention and care that it needs. It’s being used as a justification to back up these individuals’ personal opinions without consideration for what it is actually about. This is made ever more clear by the fact that people who hate AI attempt to use this as an argument against all AI. Not simply corporate AI companies or capitalism as a whole, but AI as a concept, including FOSS AI running on your own machines. Since FOSS AI models are lower power, designed for consumer hardware they don’t use anywhere near the amount of energy datacenter AI models use, and due to being open source they can be tuned to their best use-case by individual users. Such AI models do not have the environmental challenges associated with datacenters. However that often all gets ignored in these discussions, because it is not a subject of actual consideration, and instead is merely an attempt at using facts to bolster their own opinion without actually caring about the facts, then they would recognize that free and open source AI models that can be self-hosted are in fact the solution to this problem. These distinctions rarely get discussed though, because as stated. This was only about justifying personal dislike as AI.

The third argument, which is brought up to support their opinionated position, is to talk about AI psychosis. Which I should note for the purpose of this article, is not a medical term, is not a diagnosis, and is not officially recognized by the DSM or by mental clinicians in any way. In fact, the way that it is discussed and described online in these contexts is often as an insult or as an ad-hominem attack. This isn’t to say that study in this area is not worth while. It is, actual scientific studies in the department of mental health are important and need to happen. However discussions about this subject are mainly used as a convenient way to insult or demean people for the use of AI. It is essentially a roundabout way of winning an argument by just yelling at the person that they are crazy. It’s not something that’s worth listening to without more evidence. And even with evidence, clinical and mental diagnoses are sensitive subjects. It needs to be approached in a sensitive way. It is not respectable to approach it by using mental conditions as ad-hominem attacks or methods to win an argument online. In fact, these sorts of things actually discredit scientific ideas. They turn them politically charged, and they make scientists take more indirect approaches or even not actually want to study them at all. In addition, most of it isn’t even really psychosis. It’s more like religion. Now, AI religion is its own topic, and I think it does need to be seriously discussed. It’s not going to be discussed in these online arguments with any amount of respect, because, as I stated at the beginning, they don’t actually care. They’re just looking for stuff to bolster their own perceived credibility. If you are interested in a video covering the topic of AI religion check out Drew’s video on the topic.

The final most common one that I have seen online is not one of politics. It’s not one of the sciences. It is, in and of itself, ironically, an appeal to emotion. It is the appeal to nostalgia, the idea that the existence of generative AI is harming our world and poisoning my culture. Now this argument is ultimately just as opinionated as saying you don’t like it, but because it gives details, it seems more credible. In some ways, it’s right, and in some ways, I agree with it. But also, it hinges on the idea that the world could be put back exactly the way that you remember it in the past. What you considered the good old days. A world that actually has never existed. The world of your childhood was just as messy and chaotic as this one is. The fact that you remember it with fond reminiscence, as a simpler time when things were just better, is a testament to how much you were sheltered back then. Someone may consider the existence of AI-generated images to be a direct harm to our world, to be poisoning our culture. Although people may also consider television, radio, and those horseless carriages to be poisoning our world. These have varying degrees of truth. Identifying which of these aspects is actually bad and why is important. And talking about these aspects, like, for example, cars. Cars are really bad. Cars and combustion engines cause a lot of problems. They are a valid subject to discuss. But saying that they’re bad because in the good old days, people didn’t have cars as cars is not really a real argument. It’s just an appeal to nostalgia. Ultimately appeal to nostalgia is not a real argument for why AI is bad. In fact, it’s just another way of saying, “AI is bad because I don’t like it.”

In conclusion, the vast majority of anti-AI arguments you will hear on the internet, including on Lemmy, are a waste of time. They are either directly rehashing the person’s own personal opinions or attempting to piggyback off of other, more important subjects to justify themselves as more than just a personal opinion. While they do bring up good points and arguments that are worth discussing in and of themselves, they are doing these subjects a disservice, because ultimately, their purpose is to justify the person’s own personal opinion and preferences. It is not to actually have a real and serious discussion about the topics. If they were, they would not react as aggressively as they do when their positions are challenged. They would be open to hearing additional information, such as discussions about FOSS AI, instead of dishing out ad-hominem attacks and insults.