I don't care how well your "AI" works
The other day I was sitting on the doorstep of a hackerspace, eating a falafel sandwich while listening to the conversation inside. The topic shifted to the use of “AI” for everyday tasks, people casually started elaborating on how they use “chat assistants” to let them write pieces of code or annoying emails. The situation is a blueprint for many conversations I had in recent months. What followed in most of them, almost like a reflex, was a self-justification of why the way they use these tools is fine, while other approaches were reckless.
I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles.
the grind
I encountered friends who got fully sucked into the belly of the vibecoding grind. Proficient, talented coders who seem to experience some sort of existential crisis. Staring at the screen in disbelief, unable to let go of Cursor, or whatever tool is the shit right now. Soaking in an unconscious state of harmful coping. Seeing that felt terrifyingly close to witnessing a friend developing a drinking problem.
And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. A fate that designers, writers, translators, tailors or book-binders lived through before us. Not that their craft would die out, but it would be mutilated — condemned to the grueling task of cleaning up what the machines messed up. Unsurprisingly, some of us are not handling the new realities well.
new realities
I personally don’t touch LLMs with a stick. I don’t let them near my brain. Many of my friends share that sentiment.
But I think it’s important to acknowledge that we’re in a priviliged situation to be able to do so. People are forced to use these systems — by UI patterns, bosses expectations, knowledge polution making it increasingly hard to learn things, or just peer pressure. The world adapts to these technologies, and not using them can be a substantial disadvantage in school, university, or anywhere.
A lot of the public debate about AI focuses on the quality of its output. Calling out biases, bullshit marketing pledges, making fun of the fascinating ways in which they fail, and so on. Of course, the practical issues are important to discuss, but we shouldn’t lean too much on that aspect in our philosophy and activisim, or we risk missing the actual agenda of AI.
No matter how well “AI” works, it has some deeply fundamental problems, that won’t go away with technical progress. I’d even go as far and say they are intentional.
on control
Our ability to use tools is an integral part of the human experience. They allow us to do things that we otherwise couldn’t do. They shape how we think, and consequently who we are.
When we use a tool, it becomes part of us1. That’s not just the case for hammers, pens, or cars, but also for a notebook used to organize thoughts. It becomes part of our cognitive process. Computer are not different. While I’m typing this text, my fingers are flying over the keyboard, switching windows, opening notes, looking up words in a dictionary. All while I’m fully focused on the meta-task of getting my thoughts out, unaware of all the tiny miracles happening.
Our minds are susceptible to outside cues. When we read news articles we tend to believe what seems plausible. When we review code we generally expect it to behave the way it looks, even when we don’t have the context to assess that. The same is true for text: When we let a model transform notes into a blog post, a lot of context and nuance is added. We read it and believe the output to be what we thought. It’s subtle.
on a deeper level, writing is more than just the process by which you obtain a piece of text, right? it’s also about finding out what you wanted to say in the first place, and how you wanted to say it. this post existed in my head first as a thought, then it started to gel into words, and then i tried pulling those words out to arrange them in a way that (hopefully) gets my point across. there is nothing extra there, no filler. i alone can get the thought out and writing is how i do that.
Excerpt of a post by @thekla@mystical.garden
on power
In a world where fascists redefine truth, where surveillance capitalist companies, more powerful than democratically elected leaders, exert control over our desires, do we really want their machines to become part of our thought process? To share our most intimate thoughts and connections with them?
AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. They are the wet dream of capitalists and fascists. Enormous physical infrastructure designed to convert capital into power, and back into capital. Those who control the infrastructure, control the people subject to it.
AI systems being egregiously resource intensive is not a side effect — it’s the point.
Craft, expression and skilled labor is what produces value, and that gives us control over ourselves. In order to further centralize power, craft and expression need to be destroyed2. And they sure are trying.
what’s left
How can we be ourselves in this world? What we’re dealing with here are not questions about AI, but about survival under metastatic capitalism. Shit’s dire, but there are things we can do. I’m working on a post about that.
Until then, here are some starting points:
- Be there for the people around you. Message friends and show them that they matter to you
- Organize in a union. Together we are stronger.
- Take care of your mind. Spend less time on social media. Use the freed capacity to educate yourself, go read a book
- Bring something into existence that wouldn’t otherwise exist
The most disobedient thing we can do is to thrive.