I’ve been sharing this link to some of my fellow tech-workers. Some have agreed, some have challenged, some have rejected. I guess that makes it art?

The anger in the piece mirrors mine. I’m not at the stage of constant swearing, but I’m nowhere near accepting that I’ll just have to learn AI (LLM) to stay in this space.

Ethics

You flat out can’t say "ignoring the ethics..." and expect me to treat you seriously. Ethics is part of the problem. If we could just ignore all the problems with things we wanted to use; well there’d be no problems anywhere until they broke us.

Damage

It damages so many people.

• The exploited having to train the AI out of CSAM and other heinous activities1
• The juniors being shut out of learning and experience2
• The seniors being shut out of strategy, instead having to debug nonsense3
• The artists having their creations stolen, warped, regurgitated without consent or reparation4
• The users forced to use software that can’t be trusted5
• The humans having their images manipulated and shared in ways that denigrate, disrespect, abuse, and humiliate. For fun.6
• The bloggers having their sites DDoSed by a million scrapers ignoring robots.txt and all the conventions that created the communal web in the first place7
• The future having their environment destroyed8

Hype

If it could do what it was hyped as being able to do, then we should be replacing the CEOs of AI companies with their own AI and let them reap their own rewards. They’re paying upteen squillions of dollars to their own AI developers to squeeze the value out of them and further distance themselves from the peonic masses.

So what

I refuse to use AI. I’ve distanced myself from incredibly talented developer communities I’ve loved because AI takes focus over collaborative learning and growing. All I can do is live with myself as best I can until the CEOs government buddies send in the military9.

Caveat: Machine Learning is cool. Non LLM/LIM/LxM AI is freaking great, with so many wonderful applications. Spicy autocomplete is not cool.

https://peopledaily.digital/insights/the-hidden-cost-of-ai-africas-invisible-workforce-and-digital-servitude ↩︎ 1.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/16/why-replacing-junior-staff-with-ai-will-backfire-.html ↩︎ 1.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/study-finds-ai-tools-made-open-source-software-developers-19-percent-slower/ ↩︎ 1.

https://www.artslaw.com.au/information-sheet/artificial-intelligence-ai-and-copyright/ ↩︎ 1.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07/ai-coding-assistants-chase-phantoms-destroy-real-user-data/ ↩︎ 1.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166827 ↩︎ 1.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs-say-ai-crawlers-dominate-traffic-forcing-blocks-on-entire-countries/ ↩︎ 1.

https://green.org/2025/01/09/ai-water-and-electricity-usage-truths-and-myths/ ↩︎ 1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite "Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites." Also https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/new-luddites-ai-protest/677327/ ↩︎