I think it’s a tool, but a tool that has been weaponized. I think “AI” (I use quotes because we are really talking about LLMs primarily) have some fantastic applications for automation, things like dictation, pattern recognition, etc.

But unlike non-AI tools that can do similar tasks (linters, non ai machine translation, dictation, hell even search engines at this point) AI does the task with the confidence of an expert, speaking in a confident voice, to people who generally don’t know if the information is accurate. It’s being sold as a knowledge hub, when in reality it is a tool, one that can be wrong and does not think. And the marketing is agressive. They want you to forget how to think for yourself so you have to pay a subscription for thinking.

AI psychosis is real, I’ve seen it happen in real time with my coworkers. The quality of our new hires has gone downhill because none of them seem to know how to solve a problem. I often hear “Claude thinks this” in response to issues that are just barely above basic level. There is no longer a desire to find knowledge or puzzle out a problem when it can be cognitively offloaded to the llm. There is danger in the very service that the llm provides - reduction in friction in your daily life also equates to a reduction in learning. Which sucks because noodling out complex problems with an llm as a rubber duck can actually be a great learning experience in situations where a product expert isn’t around to bounce off of. But it comes with the caveat of knowing how to check the answers and having the curiosity to delve into those answers and dig through them yourself. Without that crucial step you are just offloading your brain to the computer to think for you and you learn nothing.

And I can’t blame the AI psychosis on stupid people. It’s being marketed as an all knowing infallible assistant. Yet tangibly many every day people find their lives made worse for it. AI has been shoved into everything when it isn’t even as good as the thing it is replacing, or it fails more often.

Then we get to the actual generative functions of ai. Generative art, be it picture or text, is trained without permission or compensation, on the work of millions of artists, with the goal of making those artists obsolete. As an artist I’ve seen every single artistic industry be hit with this, from stock photography to furry porn to high budget movies. And much like the previous use cases of AI replacing currently existing software, it’s replacing artists with less quality products. AI art is recognizable because it is homogenized by default. And sure it’s tweakable, but by default it is recognizable as this uncanny homogenized “good enough” picture to get an idea across. And much like everything else it’s being used as a way to capitalize on industries, because at the end of the day the only reason to use generative ai for art is to make it faster and cheaper. Every single person that uses it that I’ve seen has used it for the same reasons. “I don’t have time to learn x” or “I need an idea out now” or “I can make more by doing this”. Its because art has become completely monitized. People don’t create for the sake of creation now, it’s for a job, or for a deadline, or for clout. Artists who love their craft and are not bogged by deadlines or bills are overwhelming against AI in general, as artists are some of the most vocal anti generative AI crowd.

When we look at all of this, AI is a tool that has some great localized use cases, especially in pattern recognition, dictation, language, etc. but it’s been coopted as a brain subscription by the people in charge of training it and selling it to us. It’s been shoehorned into every aspect of our lives, made everything more expensive, made people dumber, collectively destroyed the lives of artists off the backs of their work, and enshittified almost every single industry.

The tradeoffs aren’t worth it.

Edit: also forgot to add the privacy nightmare that comes from AI surveillance