I’ve been on Lemmy for about 2 weeks now, and I’ve noticed a trend:
The VAST majority of posts that mention AI in any manner are some dig or criticism or some other negative commentary, and the rare ones that have anything positive to say about it almost always have negative whatever-Lemmy’s-version-of-karma-is.
I get that AI isn’t without its problems, especially Grok with that “Mechahitler” nonsense a bit ago, but there seems to be particular vitriol here. I’m genuinely curious to know why people hate it so much here.
I genuinely thought Blockchain technology was the worst thing to happen for Earth’s climate, and then techbros grifters and capitalists came out with a technology with an even less favourable use case to environmental destruction ratio.
The planet is already fucked and you bastards have just found yet one more way to stick the boot in and hasten the end.
You know, the more i use AI and the more i’m convinced that without human interaction that drives it, it is basically useless. AI must be used with distrust at your heart, rather than with reverence.
Platforms themselves are self-selecting. I’m speaking for myself here. I am on Lemmy because I dislike the power that big tech has gotten to control content, policy, news, and global perceptions. As such, I self host and use federated technologies where possible. The vast majority of AI tools are controlled by the same centrally controlled big tech companies that I’m here to avoid. There are self-hosted AI tools or there, but basically every AI tool was trained using scraped data, and, for instance, my Searx-ng instance was flooded by so many bots that I had to make it harder to use for myself just to keep the bots out. My blog? Constantly scraped, killing my bandwidth. A lot of foss projects used to have bug bounty programs and accepted code from any contributor to wander in, but are now closing off due to AI slop code contributions. So, the type of person you’ll find here probably hates AI if they’re like me. Also, I work in tech and have to bite my tongue every time a co-worker “helpfully” sends me a Copilot Slop answer to a question when I was asking for a judgment call or an opinion.
Someone else can give a more comprehensive answer, but here are a couple bullet points:
- Models trained by violating copyright
- AI data centers using tons of water and power, driving up costs for local residents
- AI data center noise pollution
- “Slop” results (uncanny valley pictures, incorrect answers given confidently, etc)
- Companies using AI as an excuse for anti-worker actions (notably massive layoffs)
- Concern over how much of the largest companies valuation is tied to AI hype (because it affects everyone’s retirement accounts)
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Trained by the same thing humans are.
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Video games are worse and get worse as they run 100% constant and are constantly evolving, not short bursts or getting more efficient over time like AI
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Localized
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More accurate than humans -especially humans on social media
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AI is replacing shitty jobs; just like machines did in the industrial revolution
I think you’re lost here. Maybe you skipped reading the post?
This isn’t a debate over whether AI is useful or not. It’s not a conversation about whether people are right/wrong if they dislike AI. The point of this thread is to help OP understand why some people have strong, negative feelings about AI.
Delusional
Thanks for being one of the few other sane and intelligent people here.
Trained by the same thing humans are.
This is at best, misleading and completely wrong at worst. An LLM is completely different from a human mind. It’s a mathmatical model that finds the average of any given input against a massive dataset.
Video games are worse and get worse as they run 100% constant and are constantly evolving, not short bursts or getting more efficient over time like AI.
This is a completely made up statistic dreamed up from the thought of “people use computers at home, so why is that different than a datacenter?” The thing is, those datacenters dont run in short bursts, they run constantly, as long as there is money to be made. And while the hardware does get more efficient as new developments are made, that improvement doesn’t offset the resource usage, it just improves density of compute.
Localized
Absolutely unhinged opinion that could only come from someone incapable of empathy. There is a worldwide cost of living crisis happening right now. Anything that makes life worse for a regular person, while offering almost no benefit to anyone outside the top of this boondoggle is to be hated.
More accurate than humans -especially humans on social media
Another completely made up statistic based on nothing. Yes, misinformation on social media is a problem in modern society, but those people are not being treated as subject matter experts. AI is often being treated that way, despite working from flawed data that distills assumption into fact by way of some reddit comment or retracted paper.
AI is replacing shitty jobs; just like machines did in the industrial revolution
What’s the weather like under that rock where you live? AI is not replacing the backbreaking labor of harvesting vegetables, it’s not clearing sewer pipes, or pumping septic tanks. It’s being used to (poorly) replace artists, engineers, and writers. The work that people actually want to do.
Gonna ignore the sad attempts at rebuttal by someone that appears to be out of touch with reality (shunning social interactions?).
Where I live? -It’s replacing depressed and lonely artists and writers. -That shit often isn’t healthy or a good way to get human interaction / attention. Engineer? -Can be high stress with lives on the line, it will also be a waste of time / schooling for many. (You’re also arguing for their accuracy here). Enter productivity sooner: retire sooner. The other jobs you mention are high pay that grunt and migrant workers can profit from.
People that compare their wealth against a billionaire don’t realize that the billionaire is inspired and the wealth benefits all in capitalism. Neither pure capitalism nor communism succeed. China isn’t pure communism.
I really just hope you’re trolling at this point.
Wow, assuming you’re being genuine, I’m pretty surprised. It’s rare to encounter a true AI cultist.
It’s no surprise when a come-back from you is only an attempt to insult rather than add anything of substance.
You’re definitely a troll, and a bad one at that. You literally insulted them in the comment they replied to, in a much more childish and shitty way. And no matter if you’re a troll or not, you need professional help, you have some major issues.
Yeah, because calling someone a cultist is very professional and mature. Get bent and stop gaslighting people.
If they ain’t a troll they are one of the weirdest humans I’ve encountered
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I don’t “hate” it universally. I see its positives and how it can make certain things easier. My own negative feelings towards it just outweigh the positives at the moment.
If they can figure it out where:
- AI isn’t being developed for autonomous armed military combat
- isn’t sucking up heinous amounts of power and water, especially in places that can’t support it.
- isn’t readily available to the criminal masses to do great harm with.
- isn’t being completely untruthful about the harm it is doing.
- isn’t being forced down the throats of everyone in the business world.
- Isn’t used by, from, around, or even remotely involving children.
The main problems aren’t with the technology, but with governments slow response to properly regulate it and protect society. I guess.
I use it now and then to spot bugs in my code and it is super handy for that. Coming up with code all by itself can be wonky. If non-programmer vibe coding becomes the norm, we are all going back to paper.
Lemmy despite having major advantages over Reddit, appeals more to conspiracy theorists, or contrarians. -People who read click-bait headlines and not the actual articles. People that like simplified explanations for things: “AI is bad for the environment”: **not ** "AI is getting more efficient and uses short bursts of processing (for simple questions or images), while computer gaming gets worse and runs 100% constant, and has the same toll on ram scarcity and environmental issues.
So, they gobble up all the negative headlines and parrot the anti-AI propaganda they’re fed.
yea, everyone here is so afraid of different perspectives; unlike you, of course. you just ban people on sight.
Brilliant observation. You must prefer the old ‘arguing with idiots’ approach.
at least we can all agree that you’re an idiot, that’s something I suppose.
Spot on. Ignore the haters; you’re correct in all claims and it angers them to have a mirror held up to their behavior.
I’m well aware of the anti-work, loud vocal minority, dunning Krüger’s, and Lemmy at least shows the upvotes along with the cope votes.
Thanks for the support!
Me, personally, a couple of reasons:
Without wanting to sound like a pretentious twat I think art made without a soul is the antithesis of art.
People ask dumb questions that a quick web search would answer.
The blurring between what is real and what isn’t.
Capitalism suggesting that there might only be two or three “non-human entities” controlling the entire internet soon.
The fear of another economic bubble.
It making people stupider.
The fokken poes that is an anagram of my user name being involved. Plus all the other bros too.
Fear of something that has the power to potentially go beyond thought.
The absolute ease of facilitating surveillance.
Terminator franchise
Etc
It’s an exploitation tool with no benefit to actual people.
Most commercial models were trained without permission via stolen artwork, copyrighted materials, etc…
Copyright - which the vast majority of people on Lemmy must care deeply about, outside of this topic.
Right? The hypocrisy is scathing.
dbzer0 at least takes an instance-wide fists-on-hips stance. Like, you can be against this… that can’t seriously be why.
for every reason.
Someone asked this 2 days ago so I’ll just paste what I wrote there.
It’s being pushed into situations where having a black box of probability is not what you want. Support bots as an example, you want the same outcome for the same problem. Not a different outcome because someone didn’t put a question mark.
You don’t want the bot being able to hijack an account because it was asked in the specific way. See Facebook support bot.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/metas-ai-support-bot-instagram/You don’t want a chat bot to tell airline customers they can do something when the airline has a FAQ section specifically saying no you can’t.
See Air Canada support bot.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-knowYou don’t want AI bots hallucinating court cases to justify a case. Many news articles on this.
It’s used as a workforce reduction mask.
Businesses are using AI rollouts to lower the number of front line employees. Only for the tool to fail.
See Oracle firing 21,000 people to boost ai numbers.
https://www.theregister.com/databases/2026/06/23/21000-oracle-jobs-vanish-amid-big-reds-big-bets-on-ai/5260086It’s oversold:
When Gardner says only 30% of AI deployments work as sold after asking over 700 IT executives. Why are people still treating it as anything but a broken tool?
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/07/only-28-of-ai-infrastructure-projects-fully-pay-off/5221652For a black box of probability it is terrible at maths. There has been instances of AIs failing high school math tests.
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-ai-struggle-math-problems.htmledit: sources as I grab them on mobile.
People here are privy to the many downsides of rapid AI adoption vs Facebook grandmas who use it to make memes and identify weird bugs in their house.
I don’t hate AI. I use AI. I criticize AI, because it’s a tool and it’s being misused.
I criticize how people and specially companies use AI…
So true
I agree with this take. It’s a tool, used terribly for the most part, but I wouldn’t have expected the world to make great films with cameras 3 years in either.
Lots of good answers, but I’ll throw another in: pollution of the Internet with slop. I’ll search for e.g. what good flashlights with ‘n’ features are and there will be hundreds of near-identical listicles that are clearly hallucinated. I’ll try to look at a local restaurant’s menu and it will bring me to a fabricated webpage with ai generated images of food (with Wonder brand Hont Doug bundts yesterday!) and a menu that is very obviously factually incorrectly.
There have always been low-effort fake listicles and bad information, but it used to be easy to avoid the couple links per search or to refine the search to be specific enough to rule them out. Now I’m not convinced there aren’t websites that generate poor quality content on the fly based on whatever I just searched.
Absolutely this. AI slop is ruining everything I used to love about the internet. Easy access to information was its greatest strength, but it becomes useless, when you have to dig through heaps of AI generated bullshit, that is completely unreliable.
Can’t even google cooking recipes anymore.
Because the endgame of the way we are developing the technology is not Star Trek but I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
It’s an existential threat, a Great Filter.
There are some basic responsibilities they need to meet like not violating copyright and licensing on source material creating a double standard where corp slop can pirate without charges but individuals can’t and building and running data centers that aren’t in conflict with the community they are running in
As usually it’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s the dumbass way it’s implemented in a profit motive
