To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

> The idea has always been met with negativity, IMO because people want to feel that they have a part of themselves that is beyond nature and has a "special" place in the universe.

This is actually a big part of why being pro-AI is met with negativity today.

As someone who's using and building with AI and also experiences the "anti" movement, you've chosen a pretty condescending minority of the reasons why they dislike AI and painted it as the default.

"They never liked AI because they don't like the idea maybe they're not such special snowflakes in the universe"... really?

They didn't "always hate AI". Most people didn't even think of AI outside of niche things like self-driving. Instead their hatred is from LLMs and generative AI which (as far as they're concerned) didn't exist until November 30, 2022.

Actual reasons they readily share for not liking it are things like:

- it was built by abusing copyright (true with nuance)

- it's used to generate massive amounts of low value content that's overwhelming their spaces (very true)

- it's having an environmental impact (true with more nuance)

- it's making the things they want to buy more expensive (true, even things unrelated to AI)

- the loudest voices in the room have spent years telling them this could destroy humanity and/or take all their jobs (completely true)

- it's behind major layoffs (true with nuance around stated reasons vs actual)

- people who are pro-AI have a strong tendency to minimize their reasons for hating it (... obviously true)

I mean even if you like AI, it's clear we're at a place with so many reasons for people to be anti-AI that it's honestly an own goal at this point.

People didn't have opinions about generative AI as it exists today 20 years ago. The idea of a computer being able to turn any topic into a haiku would have been contentious for if it was possible, not if it was good: that sounds great!

But now we got it and it came with way more baggage than any of them ever imagined. They didn't think it'd learn to write haikus by ripping through every written word. And they didn't think it'd be used to write lots of spam instead of haikus once it could. And they didn't think the same capability would generalize to typing in an artist's name and spitting out infinitely remixed copies of their work.

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I think moving forward in a less negative direction starts with being real about why people hate AI, and it's a lot less "it makes me feel less special" than it is "it's actively reducing my quality of life" for people outside of the bubble.

Is it not? You can talk to it in plain English and it can do things for you and respond back in a synthesized voice. I was reading an old Asimov short story about a guy who comes across a lost robot and has to trick it into staying put, and it felt weirdly prescient. (The story is “Robot AL-76 Goes Astray”)

It's not that simple, some principles are more principled than others.

Would you be friend with Goebbels, knowing he has some different stances than you on some subjects?

People are never ever ever allowed to realize maybe sometimes bad things are bad once the chickens come home to roost. An antisocial belief they held fifteen years ago needs to define them forever, because people are just machines for receiving guilt and wrath, they can’t learn anything from suffering personally, or if they can here’s why it’s bad anyway.

Also engineers building stuff to spec are exactly the same thing as venture capitalists

This article is representative of what's wrong in internet culture. It's fine to take a moral stance, but it's not reasonable to expect others to agree with and align with your personal morals.

I've been vegetarian for over 30 years, on moral (environmental) grounds. It does put me in the minority. But I don't expect others to change their behavior.

If you want to avoid AI, avoid AI. If you feel strongly enough that you want to avoid entire companies or corners of the internet, great. These are just the side effects of having a strong opinion.