General Discussion

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2025, 03:12 PM - Edit history (1)

read and heard about AI for years - thousands of articles, tens of thousands of social media posts, private correspondence with some of the experts whose public statements I've quoted on DU - all I can do is post about a small percentage of the articles and social media posts to inform people, repeat warnings when it's relevant...and get blunter if it seems a blunter message might be necessary to get through. I can't introduce people here to the despairing artists I've met who hint or talk more openly about feeling suicidal because of the harm done by generative AI. Or introduce them to the exasperated and demoralized teachers I've met who are at wit's end trying to cope with what's far and away the worst level of school cheating we've ever seen, and who in some cases are talking about quitting teaching entirely because genAI has made a mockery of it.

I was able yesterday, thanks to the American Federation of Teachers president foolishly posting AI slop on Bluesky, to point people to the hundreds of replies in that thread expressing outrage over her treating that example of the serious harm done by AI as "fun" - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220895856 . But I don't know if the people here who think it's fun to create or share AI slop were willing to read their messages, either.

I talk a lot about ethics because it's not only the bedrock of liberal values, but because keeping ethics in mind, including for technology, is the only safe way to.navigate the future and advances in technology. I first got online in the mid-1980s, before there was a world wide web, and for two years then I ran a forum on technology and society and foreign affairs. I brought in as my comod a new friend who was a spokesperson for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a worldwide organization that unfortunately no longer exists, but that we could really use now. If there's anything that needs more emphasis in the debate about AI, it's social responsibility - which the AI bros seem almost entirely unconcerned with, though they sometimes pay it lip service.

I expect DUers to be concerned about social responsibility, too, and I have been stunned at times here when some DUers seem to have little or no concern for the intellectual property theft and all the other harms from generative AI that are obvious and have been documented in news articles and studies for years. And that FAR outweigh the benefits of generative AI.

We're in real trouble if we're fine with those harms because AI might amuse or flatter us, or if we think we're somehow smarter or more talented and creative using AI tools that only work because the AI companies stole all that intellectual property.

Too many people are sleepwalking into a dystopia the AI bros are peddling as utopia.

And I can't watch them doing that without trying to wake them up.

The threat posed by genAI is just as serious as the threat posed by Trump and those aligned with him - who now include the AI bros, even though that wasn't as obvious a few years ago. Not as obvious to me, anyway. Some people, like journalist Gil Duran, did see this nightmare alliance of tech lords and right wing authoritarianism coming.

People have to wake up.