#antiai

I have to admit that for the longest time I was kinda ambiguous on the whole generative AI thing. Mostly because I majored in computational linguistics and I love the technology and maths side behind it, I maintain it's an incredibly fascinating invention. I did obviously realise the many ethical problems of using generative AI for all kinds of purposes that ended up in plagiarism, misinformation, harmful content generation and so on. I hated that large language models – being, you know, language models – were shoved into all kinds of roles they were not made for, e. g. information retrieval, programming, web searching, translation, database wrangling, maths, psychotherapy, customer support and so on and so on. On the other hand, I maintained that large language models are a really useful technology for use cases they were intended for, i. e. generating probable text sequences and working with natural language. Looking for a word that you can't quite describe but you know exists? A search engine often can't help you, but an LLM could. Rewriting a text in British English instead of American English? Worked fine. Generating soulless corporate emails to ask your boss for a deadline expansion? Why not. I still think that valid use cases for LLMs exist and that the tech is super fascinating by itself. So, what changed and why am I writing this? It started fcking pissing me off dude!! And I'm mad! Like, everywhere you go, everything's polluted by some AI-generated garbage now. Hobby communities where people used to show off their passion projects? Practically gone, everything's generated by some AI now. Icons, thumbnails, descriptions, perhaps the thing itself.Cool niche Linux programs? Everything's vibecoded or made to run AI for all kinds of nonsense. Seriously! Check out the top 5 #ArchLinux AUR packages [edit: for the keyword "terminal"]! They're ALL 'agents' and AI toolkits!Local festivals and events? Everything's an AI poster now! Gone are the days where the local school kids would design a shitty lil poster for their school summer festival. It's all creepy piss filter ChatGPT fake-Ghibli people now generated in 5 seconds by some adult. And everyone into the AI thing is incredibly insufferable, doesn't have any concept of consent, and seemingly relishes in creeping people out or upsetting them! Like, some of these "agents" seem specifically marketed at people who want to feel like they're super smart software engineers who own the libs by existing. Everything needs to come with a "hehe we're disrupting the market" wink. Where are the people genuinely excited about LLM technology? Why is everyone a grifter or a smug asshole on purpose? Seriously, I don't use and don't ever want to use LLMs for anything anymore, because it just feels so dirty. I'd rather have to find a synonym for a word myself once a month or so instead of using any of those weird-ass machines. Like seriously, every damn cool looking program I consider for my Linux installation has "Claude" as a main "contributor". Everywhere I look there are these shitty out of context rocket emoji. "Agents" files that baby talk about the repository structure pollute every Git repo now. Everyone's "building a tool" now, nobody's programming shit anymore. Minecraft modding sites are full of slop mods with marketing speak and terrible logos that don't even work. Everywhere you look everyone's sweet-talking marketing buzzwords at each other instead of talking like a normal human being. It's so hard to find passion projects now! Everything sucks! fuck! #linux #ai #antiAI #llms #llm #programming