Meet the AI vegans. They are refusing to use artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons
Meet the AI vegans | Arwa Mahdawi
Im also a gun vegan, a car vegan, a facebook vegan, an exercise vegan (unfortunately), a windows vegan, ... just not actual vegan.
I feel like thats a bad way to use the word vegan.
Missed opportunity to coin the term “Aitheist” Fools.
There has to be a catchier name than AI vegans...
People who use the term "vegan" for somebody they consider extremist, ascetic, or annoying are really telling on themselves.
Side note: one of the most genius rebrands of all time was the way fake leather (which is often made from polyurethane, a type of plastic) suddenly became aspirational “vegan leather”.
Most vegan leathers are made from compostable materials, because (surprise, surprise!) many vegans are also environmentalists.
ha so I'm a double vegan
"Newspaper which uses AI to write its articles concocts derogatory term for people who doesn't use AI"
Wow, thank you so much for sharing this. What a major blow to the Guardian's credibility
Imo vegan shouldn't be seen as derogatory. I'm not one, but got a lot of respect for most of em.
it shouldn't, but years of lobbying and demonization online certainly have made it so
This makes about as much sense as calling Linux users "Windows vegans".
Choosing to not use AI isn't some wacky contrarian position, it's a tame position that can easily be justified. (Don't want to use AI? Then don't.) If anything, trying to assert that constantly using AI for everything would be the new normal is the wacky position.
Imagine thinking that veganism is "wacky".
Not eating animals is not a wacky contrarian position either, and I'm not even vegan
So I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and say that it is. Look at your teeth, humans are omnivores. Cutting out half the diet you evolved to consume is in fact a contriarian position. Not that I have any issues with vegans or vegetarians, just from an anatomical point of view we were designed to eat some meat! I do think calling people who don't use AI "AI vegans" is absurd though, as diet has absolutely nothing to do with use of AI. Would be more accurate to say their AI fasting if we're gonna use food related terms.
In terms of office work, the technology pretty much already exists to cause a change akin to the change that happened from pre-photocopier (so typing pools), only the odd phone line per office building, no fax, obviously no computers/email/internet/mobile phones era office work to the office work of today.
The energy use is unconscionable. The people currently owning the tech that runs large language models are awful, but it is possible for companies and individuals to run their own llm's.
Anyway, the point is, would it be daft for anyone to insist on working in a typing pool in a 1950s office today? I get why people dislike ai. I am not really trying to defend it, I'm just saying that it really is a mistake for anyone to just try and ignore it.
The better term would be "LLM gobbling fuckheads" for those who use that stuff and believe it has anything to do with "AI"
sloppers
Perfect
Journalists constantly trying to be the origin of a term.
"refuse" lol as if there were a general requirement to use this shit
This caught my eye as well. Haha. Some people are constantly looking for a machine to rage against.
We don't need to invent new terms, like 'AI Vegan', when we have a perfectly good term already: Butlerian Jihadist.
No an Image generation is not ten times the impact pf a Google search, a ChatGPT query is. Image generation is probably a lot more.
"AI vegans"? I knew guardian was already bought by tech bros, but wtf is that phrasing lmao I dont use AI either, simply because it is wrong more often than not and I am still capable of googling myself, but being cautious equals to being vegan in tech bro eyes?
I don't agree with the framing, either, but they're drawing parallels between people not using something due to a principled moral stance. (As well as some not-so-subtle implication that these people are holier-than-thou, too.)
Seems like it. Because vegan is already seen as a ridiculouse thing and "the enemy" by the average person
I don’t use ai either. But because it’s fuckin stupid. It’s not even ai. It’s a glorified sorting algorithm.
Let's not call it that
That's a weird way to spell luddite
Can we please stop coming up with words that describe that we do not do a thing like it is not normal? Just like having to call yourself an atheist because you do not believe. You should call yourself a theist if you believe, because you actively do it. Call yourself what you are, do, or see fit, not what you are not.
Part of becoming socially acceptable is being visible so that people understand that atheists aren't some kind of scary monster. We are your doctors, scientists, fire fighters, etc. You might even be friends with one! There might be one (or more!) in your own family! And the only way that is going to happen is if atheists identify as such.
While billionaires keep using their private jets.
Im a proud jet vegan myself, not that i have a choice, but still
"AI vegans" media trying to put an enemy up again. Smh
how to belittle and minimize a very serious thing: call any protesters of it a " ___ vegan"
They are "journalism vegans". They are choosing to abstain from actual journalism for clickbaiting, herd mentality, and personal lack of skill reasons.
Why are you dissing on vegans? Veganism is legit, bro.
I'm not dissing on them. I am simply aware of how they are perceived in society.
Its neither for me, i just dont like getting wrong information and AI is giving tons of it.
Also its not intelligent it just fucking sounds so
I agree. AI would be way more useful if it gave some kind of indicator of accuracy, or even just saying "I don't know."
Right now, AI only doesn't have an answer when the goons who programmed it told it not to give one.
Whithout a clear definition of intelligence, such a discussion is somewhat pointless. The closest thing I would use to describe artificial "intelligence" is: Mimicking human/natural thought and decision processes, without the necessity of being identical.
Secondly, regarding your first paragraph:
Humans excel at providing wrong information. Sometimes they are right. In that regard there are similarities between an LLM and a human.
By the way: LLMs are part of the field of AI. But AI consists of a plethora of methods and algorithms, where LLMs are just a tiny fraction that is currently very popular.
We let environmentalism become an individual issue, and that was a mistake. Can we not do this for AI? It's a society-wide problem, not something you can solve by measuring your own personal AI footprint.
We let environmentalism become an individual issue, and that was a mistake.
Everyone knows it's not an individual issue, corporations are constantly buying up political shielding and support, as well as media opinions, to ensure that "the economy" remains more important than the environment and that they, the ones responsible for all the shit, don't get regulated or properly fined and blamed.
I don't really agree that "everyone knows this" when everyone I know talks about environmentalism almost exclusively in terms of individual impact.
I played around on an AI image generating website for a while. Eventually got bored with it.
Wow, so just like humans eating animal products throughout our early existence as beings, AI is the default position? What kind of bullsh*t is this? Just because billionaires are forcing these llms down our throats?
The propaganda is unreal.
AI isn't the meat, jack. It's slop.
That's really stupid.
Why does this use of the "vegan" word sound so condescending?
LOL gen z kids are fucking hysterical. AI will save the world, it has already started.
Not AI vegans. More like LLM deniers. They know how to use it, they know what it does, they know how to trick it, they know how to abuse it.
I refuse to use it because it's shit.
We are not the same.
Yup, these things are still garbage for >90% of all applications people are jamming them into. Breathed a sigh of relief when my company CEO said he doesn't see us using AI for more than can center routing for at least the next several years.
*because you don't know how to use it
Every last bit of it? What is your stance on use of AI for tasks such as data analysis of massive sets for scientific research, or procedural automation of massive operations?
AI doesn't exist, machine learning algorithms can be useful and are used with no controversy, generative bullshit is basically useless.
Yes, I am also frequently accosted by Google's data analysis of massive sets for scientific research. I can't tell you how many times they've forcefully inserted research analysis of large data sets into my search results.
So normal decent human beings
Abstaining from a thing does not make one a vegan. That's not how any of this works.
It's like how they put the word gate after something to say that it is a scandal involving the former word.
Somesort of political scandal involving road maintenance? Oh yes well that's roadgate then. Even though the Watergate scandal was in fact it scandal in the watergate hotel, rather than a scandal about water.
Someday we'll have Gate gate, or maybe even another scandal at the Watergate complex, so Watergate gate.
I can't wait!
Awe so the article author has a vendetta against vegans got it.
But it makes people come off as extremely annoying. So that's working.
I mean, abstaining from animal products makes someone a vegan, right? If you abstain from AI products then it would follow that you’re an “AI vegan”.
It follows, but it is also feels like click bait.
A definition of vegan is:
A vegetarian who eats plant products only, especially one who uses no products derived from animals, as fur or leather.
There is an environmental parallel, and it made me read the article to see what they were on about -- so I guess it worked.
To be clear, I am very pro environment (I live in it); I just feel like this is crossing the streams of related, but completely different movements, isn't particularly helpful.
Abstaining from animal products is just vegetarian. Veganism requires an extremely strict adherence to a very specific set of rules concerning animals.
AI vegan is not a thing and shall never be.
The correct term is Technophile. Anyone obsessed with tech would never hand it off to a third party to do when they can go through the joy of learning themselves.
That's a completely different reason to not use AI.
You're a technophile - you don't use AI because you enjoy finding information on your own and learning. Great. That ignores the vast majority of people using AI to write emails/posts (which is not looking up information nor learning anything related to tech).
The people the article is about don't want to use AI due to environmental reasons - the amounts of water and energy it uses for every prompt is stupid high and they don't want to contribute to that waste.
I'm technophobic. Fucking clankers
I see. Another one to serve the gloriouse republik!! Long live chanclor palpatine!
i wonder if they came up with such term to mock those who dont want to use ai and possibly actual vegans on the side.
They use to mock us with “Luddite” but the Technologists looked into that actual movement (rather than the caricature) and agreed, “yeah sure, like them”. That took the sting out of the pejorative, so they picked another mocked group to connect it with.
Maybe we should be more like the luddites, starting with data centers.
Dafuq Do they forgot to teach AI how to read two column text AGAIN?!
Calling them after a maligned (if harmless) group seems like a choice to paint refusing to use AI as being annoying, preachy and scorn-worthy.
They seem very determined to pressure people into using AI regardless of it's practicality, environmental impact, or anything. Fuck this shit.
yeah, this is 1000% deliberate manufacturing consent
There’s been recent pushes in that regard, investment in AI shit has been enormous but the financial payoff for anyone besides hardware manufacturers remains nonexistent. So investors and corporations have recently redoubled their efforts into trying to get everyone to use it in the hopes that this somehow will make them profitable.
I want to avoid it but with google making sure that search results get worse and worse I'm in a bit of a pickle. Other search engines still feel lile they're a bit behind though
I use my boyfriends own browser. Boyfriend, please explain it:
Soooo, it's called searXNG. It's a metasearch engine I host locally. It searches across multiple search engines, like duck duck go and others. And then shows the results as a normal webpage. It also changes your "fingerprint" per every search, and every search/result is proxied through the server. If you wanna try it out, you can use (public instance): searx.bndkt.io But you can easily host it locally from the source or with docker.
Have you tried Ecosia?
Not OP. I've been using Ecosia for years and was glad they didn't do the AI summary shit so far... But a few days ago I got an AI summary on Ecosia as well. I fear they're also hopping on this train and in that case I'll look for another search engine.
You can also get a search extension in firefox (probably others as well but I haven't looked)
It essentially strips the bullshit out and just shows you search results.
If you're willing to pay money then Kagi is a great alternative. They claim they don't collect or share your data. Though, Kagi isn't very good for local search results and probably never will be.
You've probably heard this before but do consider alternatives like Startpage and Qwant. It's not flawless but I've found it's definitely better.
I'm gonna go a step further and recommend searx :)
This is the dumbest shit I've ever read. Refusing to submit to corpo ratfuckery isn't a lifestyle choice. It's common sense.
It is though
Someone should launch a Project Poison which offers information to websites to protect themselves from scrapers and to poison and devalue AIs and companies that ignore their restrictions. I'm sure there are plenty of ways it could be done - nonsense about niche subjects, libelous facts about celebrities and people with money, false attribution for quotes & art, images captioned with things they do not contain, offensive slurs. Just feed AIs with sufficient trash and it will output trash.
Make a bunch of sites whose opinion on any topic eventually devolves into "and that's why billionaires should be hanged and their possessions destroyed"
Best way to make an espresso? Boil water, prepare the coffee grounds then execute a mob lynching on the nearest rich villa
I just don’t have a use for it. I already am generative AI.
you aren't artificial tho lol
Maybe they were artificially inseminated?
[citation needed]
I hate this timeline
I don't use A.I. because I've had nothing but negative interactions with A.I. Customer service bots that fail to give adequate responses, unhelpful and incorrect search result summaries, and, "art," that looks like shit hasn't made me want to sign up for ChatGPT or Gemini. For most people, this isn't a moral stance, it's just that the product isn't worth paying for. Stop framing people that don't use A.I. as luddites with an ax to grind just because tech bros spent billions on a product that isn't good yet.
It's fair to say that the environmental and ethical concerns are significant and I wouldn't look down in anyone refusing to use AI for those reasons. I don't look down on vegetarians or vegans either - I don't have to agree with someone's moral stance or choices to respect them.
But you're right, LLMs are full of crap.
LLMs definitely are full of crap. But that isn't the point of them (even if some corporations make it seem like it is)
They are supposed to be used for text generation. And you are supposed to read through everything afterwards to correct any hallucinations.
It can't work on its own, and make mistakes about 30% of the time.
But there are use cases where that isn't a problem. Use them as inspiration for creative writing prompts for example. They are crazy good at that.
Customer service AI sucks, I think we can all agree to this
But if you really believe that ChatGPT and Gemini is mainly for generating art, then you're completely wrong
For most people, this isn’t a moral stance, it’s just that the product isn’t worth paying for.
Wait till you see the price of a burger in another five years.
Yea, it's often really fucking cheap for the value, just like streaming services to an extent
You only notice AI-generated content when it’s bad/obvious, but you’d never notice the AI-generated content that’s so good it’s indistinguishable from something generated by a human.
I don’t know what percentage of the “good” content we see is AI-generated, but it’s probably more than 0 and will probably go up over time.
Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that it was trained on stolen artwork and is being used to put artists out of work. I think that, and the environmental effect, are better arguments against AI than some subjective statement about whether or not it's good.
Shit take, the more AI-made media is online, the harder it is for AI developing companies to improve on previous models.
It won't be indistinguishable from media made with human effort, unless you enjoy wasting your time on cheap uninteresting manmade slop then you won't be fooled by cheap uninteresting and untrue AI-made slop.
This is such a stupid name for this.
I find it hilarious that most people in this thread are complaining about being called a "something vegan", like I can understand not being happy with the current AI trend, but it seems like the word "vegan" is what makes everyone ticks, it's NOT an insult, the "normal" vegan are very happy to be called like that, because what it refers too is something that they agree and identify with. If you agree and identify yourself with what those journalist are calling "AI vegans", the name doesn't matter, embrace it, call yourself that to easily express what you believe about AI.
Vegan is not an insult, it is a compliment.
I don't use it because I have no trust in it.
Don't use it for things you need trust in then.
Inspiration for creative writing prompts for example. Things that make you double check every word that has been generated or where it doesn't matter they hallucinate.
Reading this thread, I wonder if the term is intended to divide a largely environmentalist opposition.
Makes "nocoiner" seem tame by comparison.
There's a huge push right now to salvage the AI hype bubble as people realize the tech can't live up to the promises. They are also trying to prevent regulation.
This includes the pushes to humanize the tool, like saying it deserves rights or that there may be some kind of racism against the tool.
like saying it deserves rights or that there may be some kind of racism against the tool.
Wait, who's saying this?!
They're trying to pretend it's real AI rather than extremely complicated text prediction. Hell, the less knowledgeable among them might even believe it. LLMs are a sort of language pareidolia.
The possibilities are infinite if you are a netaphor vegan.
Recycling: waste vegans.
The Germans are probably upset with this comparison
What for a nonsense. Do these other countries not sort their waste or what? Do they not know about efficiency? Next thing you're going to tell me they don't sort their white, green and brown glass separately.
Carnivores: vegetable vegans.
And jus lik that we come full circle 😂
Brilliant lol
This works so well specially for those people that refuse to touch anything "not cooked" in their plate or that is green.
netaphor vegan
Found an autocorrect vegan!
In my most upvoted comment. I'm hating that typo so much.
I interpreted that as techno, as in the genre, for too long.
Incels: sexual vegans
I keep trying to eat meat but it just won't cooperate!
You're hereby invited to /c/vegan, as you appear to be a Northern Hemisphere vegan.
I mean "Straight edgers" is on the same level already
No, I didn’t make it up. Although I rather wish I did, because it’s quite catchy, isn’t it?
No, it isn't, it's fucking stupid. The author was kind enough to link the source of that shitty idea, and the AI/vegan parallels are, per said article: ethical, environmental and wellness concerns.
Gee wiz, I sure never saw people with those 3 concerns in regards to anything other than veganism!!!
What bullshif us this?
A. I vegan is a nonesence title.
How about " people who don't want the world to end even faster tell corps to fuck off"
It's a lead. Because they've already made vegans mockworthy
You kind of summarized being vegan
I am a AI Freedom Fighter.
I'm one too!
Thats 99% lemmy users
Less but yea, many are anti AI here
The irony of environmental activists using the word "veganism" while not being vegan 😒 (being vegan is one of the most significant reduction to greenhouse emissions that is within your personal choice)
They aren't using the word. Other people are using it and applying it to them.
Eh. Factory farming is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases, particularly through methane released by large livestock herds.
But the industry is so saturated with subsidies and shielded from liabilities and exempted from taxes and so comically wasteful in its surplus production that there hasn't been any material benefit to veganism as a social movement. You can take a moral position (and you should, eating meat is awful for a variety of reasons). But there's no actual correlation between an increase in vegan eating habits and a decrease in agricultural emissions. All we ever get is more meat shipped abroad or thrown in the trash.
The real curb to agricultural production has been raw materials constraints - limits on arable land, potable water, and slaughterhouse workers - that have (directly or indirectly) emerged from a changed climate. Outside these limits, all we've really achieved is "Grapes of Wrath" style surplus destruction to keep retail prices up.
If a factory farm can produce another dead cow, it does, even if it can't reliably bring the carcass to market. The profit margins are set so artificially high that they'd be fools not to do so. Only herd die-offs resulting from heat waves, water shortages, and a lack of below-market migrant labor seem to dissuade them from trying to expand.
thank you. no matter how many times I point out the inefficacy of consumer choices or how I word it, I end up with bad faith and fact-avoidant responses like you got.
20 years ago you could have said "Well, solar panels might be great for sustainability in theory, but the fossil fuel industry is so overwhelmingly powerful and solar panels so bad and expensive, it's absolutely futile."
Now, over 90% of added power plants are renewable, because there was at least some pressure to implement alternatives, and now they have matured enough to become economically viable on their own.
I think there are certain parallels to factory farming and plant-based alternatives + cultivated meat. We know that factory farming is very unsustainable, especially in terms of climate impact, resource use and zoonotic diseases (like bird flu and swine flu). These issues become ever more pressing as factory farming continues. We just won't have a choice at some point but to switch to alternatives that are more sustainable, or everything goes to shit.
Creating demand for the alternatives funds their R&D and furthers their availability, which in turn leads to better products for lower prices, which makes further adoption much easier. Advancing the alternatives might have a much bigger impact than the mere reduction in meat consumption.
The more early adopters, the faster new technologies can advance. That's true for every sustainable industry like solar energy, wind energy, battery storage, electric cars, and also meat alternatives.
So just the "Appeal to futility" logical fallacy? I'm convinced!
Every change starts somewhere. Yes, 0.001% of the population can be vegan and it most likely won't save a single slaughterhouse animal. But 1%? That's already significant enough to make at least some change, and 10%? That's already setting market trends and modifying industries, 50%?
You get my point. You joining the current vegan population is significant! The vegan population is estimated to be 9% in india and mexico, 5% in Israel, 2% in the UK, 1.5% in the US, and estimated to be a total of 1%-3% of the global population. This is a movement that has probably saved more lives and more gas emissions than many others have.
Incorrect, get the guillotine
It's not cool to use "vegan" like this.
It's like vegangate or something.
Got a good chuckle out of me tho
"AI vegans"
ffs, just publish an article with a single clownemoji for the same effect.
It’s quite common for me to be annoyed, angry, or upset at a headline writer. Then there’s the feeling I got reading “Meet the AI vegans.”
Whole new level.
That's because the author seems to be a journalism vegan, writing vegan and self-awareness vegan.
Its so wacky out there. When I read something like this I'm sure its The Onion. And its not. Then I read a headline about US politics and its totally believable , alas its The Onion.
Seems to me you‘re a BS vegan.
I refuse to believe this title is anything other than engagement-bait, personally.
Yeah, pretty disappointing to see from the Guardian.
You'd be surprised how much more serene your headspace can become if you stop expecting anything beyond stupidity, incompetence and negligence as the default human behavior.
Aigen or Aibstenant something for a term. Vegan is not right.
I applaud folks like this - they make a choice and stick with it. No "I'll never use AI to generate art but I vibe code to save time" hypocrisy. No "I use it to help me with maths, but I'd never use it to steal artistic work".
Just straight up "it is an environmental hazard, it is unethical, not engaging". Should be called "AI Ethicists" rather than "AI Vegans".
Yeah, I too hate those hypcrites who complain about the massive environmental impact of AI, then drive a 10 mile round trip to buy a burger made from a cow raised on soy.
Starting it with "AI" is already misleading. Whatever the noun is should be preceded by "Anti-AI."
I dunno, the use of AI Ethicist fits as they're not against the concept of generative AI as a whole, they're against unethical generative AI (in terms of stolen training data and environmental harm).
If the world transitioned to a post-IP (intellectual property) society (as we need to), with AI eating less power, then AI Ethicists are unlikely to object.
I've personally sworn off writing code with any if statements or static values, my webpages hallucinate differently on each refresh 💟
My desktop is a bit allergic to any art made my humans
— A.I. Vegan
So I'm not the only one who refuses ro touch it?
Around me and everywhere it's getting insane that it feels like there's literally no one who hasn't used it or use regularly for all kinds of shit.
Search sucks and the AI is faster for tech questions. Try searching a Linux cli question or obscure error. Lots of stuff from over a decade ago that are no longer relevant. And you have to wade through so much to find the right one. Or type in AI wait a minute and get the answer.
Can you give an example?
And you have to wade through so much to find the right one. Or type in AI wait a minute and get the answer.
Uhhh, type in AI, wait a minute and get an answer. How are you checking it? rm - f / isn't the only filesystem footgun.
I'm finding AI to be right roughly only 60% of the time, and it's as bad and hallucinatory about shell scripts as it is about everything else.
It will happily admit its mistakes and give you another answer when you call it out, but it's no more likely to be right that time.
"Have you ever been called an AI vegan?"
"No... Shit no! I believe saying something like that'd get your ass kicked!"
People just going about their business living their lives as they have for many years...
Silicon Valley: Hey fuck you. Also I came up with a dumb nickname for you.
I'd rather be called a Luddite than ai vegan
luddaite?
This deserves more votes
I try not to use AI at all. I am not missing out on anything.
I also try, but it is invoked on my behalf. For instance, at work if I make a pull request now multiple AI bots are summoned to give an analysis of my code changes. It's extremely verbose and annoying, and I think basically nobody reads it because all it does is just spam the comments section with way too much text.
I vehemently hate OpenAI, ChatGPT, et al. At least it's funny when it summarizes my changes as significant improvements that improve code maintainability. I guess getting glazed by the bot in a way my manager can see is helpful to my career? Though honestly he probably also doesn't read that shit. So glad all this energy is wasted for nothing.
It is sickening how much slop is created that will never even be looked at.
I hate this attitude from people who don’t even try things before saying they are not missing out. Try AI! You have to experience the head bashing, head scratching time sink, after which you do a manual search anyways. It is a marvellous wonder how bad modern "cutting edge" tech can be.
They may have come to this decision through experience.
Having used it a bit, I find it's like someone a bit stupid with a lot of time on their hands, but no knowledge, saying "I'll learn everything you need to know from Google and write you an answer", just speeded up a lot. And just as frustrating.
Just wait until you have an employer tell you that you need to write up a summary of how you used AI in your every day activities to save 25% of your day to work on other activities.
You'll use AI to write the summary and then soon discover that your employer is a tool and is paying more than double your salary to keep that AI around to do literally nothinf 98% of the time it exists.
Shitty click baity title
The only AI I'd ever want is something like a VI from Mass Effect. Runs locally and harvests absolutely zero data.
I wouldn't mind a Geth or two, for jolly cooperation
Also for destroying the occasional organics, as a little treat
I’ll just stick with calling myself “old man yelling at clouds” for the double meaning and so I’m not a vegan of any kind, thanks.
If anyone says the words "AI Vegan" to my face, I'm throwing shit.
Make sure to wash your hands after.
Or use a sling for higher velocity
'AI vegan'....
Where I come from, saying something that stupid will get you killed.
And here i am not using it because I'm old and cranky.
I just don't use it because it's shit and doesn't do anything I need any better than I can do myself in the same time.
"Hey why don't you use this tool you don't need? It does the thing worse than you do and also fucks up the planet in the process!"
I'm choosing to abstain because it's shit. The ethical things are just a bonus. It produces inaccurate information and bland soulless images.
It doesn't produce information, it produces text. Expecting that text to contain information is a fools errand
Yo
propaganda like this is so fucking sad
colonizers don't have anything to value in their culture and they don't have a future so they want to rip on people who aren't buying their garbage
Hi. That's me.
If at any point I'm required to use it for a job I'll learn. Till then I can do my own googling, reading, math, etc.
I just don't need it. And the push to put it in literally everything makes me not want it at all. Corps don't do good things. Always seeking a rent. Always digging for a profit. And always at our expense.
Stupid-ass title.
Stupid ass-title
AI is the new crypto. It will appear to die off but the aspects that work will be integrated into everything.
What aspects of crypto have been integrated into everything?
techbros graced everyone else with disruptive, innovative methods of money laundering
I think it's scam. Before crypto scam was in couple of places but now it's everywhere.
The US government.
so.... you're refusing AI, but you are using AI? isnt the point of the story that people are not using because ethics? its not a discussion on how good they are, which is somewhat irrelevant.
Guys it's fine, you're overreacting. I only use local instances of AI and I always ask it for consent before using it to deepfake porn of my favorite celebrities in their debut roles. You vegans are overreacting and taking it too far. Humanity has been using AI for like 6 months now and our bodies aren't biologically ready to go back to writing our own homework. You really need to check your privilege; we can't all afford fancy tools like GIMP to make our own art.
I can only imagine someone came up with AI vegan after they decided to eat steak that evening while thinking they're the ones who are pressed by vegans...
Nothing wrong with being a Luddite
When the technology really gets beyond human comprehension and people are just guessing and throwing shit at the wall (or billions and billions of dollars), I think it's a sensible position to be a luddite.
There literally is. It's a mentality that prevents vaccine adoption rates and such. That said, being slow to adopt a technology like Boomers to the Internet is okay. Not adopting a technology because it has no inherent value and is being foisted on us by the ruling class is solid bro behavior.
Hear me out: what i, this is a plot to boost vegan numbers. Given latest stats huge portion of population does not use or see any use in AI - i.e. can be claimed AI vegans so in aggregation reports those could be viewed as a subset of Vegans... resulting in undeniable truth that 90%+ of population are vegan now
Come on Guardian... why frame it like that? Folks using AI should be called out as strange.
I prefer Neo-Luddite. There's a few aspects of modern tech I eschew - AI/LLM bring one of them.
Why neo?
Why not?
(It's not really something I've ever thought about since I started using the term. It kinda just is.)
There it is. The stupidest headline I've read all week.
I refuse ever touching an AI-driven app or feature, having seen too much slop.
I'd rather call myself a rejectionist than something called fancy.
I've interacted with AI. Once.
My employer enabled it on my laptop. It introduced itself to me and asked how it could be helpful. I asked it how to disable it. It responded HAL style.
Never reached out to it again.
What a terrible choice of words. They’re immediately assigning political placement and party to the idea of avoiding AI use instead of appealing to all of humanity on this topic.
Plus, it’s a silly metaphor.
Which is the vegan party?
I have local self hosted AI that runs in my solar system. I don’t use AI because it ROTS your brain. We are not the same.
Terrible choice of words, veganism deserves better than that.
It's honestly not even the worst way I've even seen it used.
I used to watch some League of Legends (I know, I know) streams from time to time, and there's a meta where your mid laner, who is supposed to be a strong carry, gives up all their farm to the roaming jungler roll so they become the super-carry.
In any case this somehow got termed to be the "vegan mid" strategy. Ugh. Veganism is when you starve, apparently.
I've never used AI, even when wanting to give it a try. There was either a queue or a fee, or must click-wrap agree to terms and conditions for free two months and I wasn't going to do those.
I never did an NFT either.
Eh, you can download and run them locally now, and they don't even phone home.
"the dark souls of" vibes
I'm a soulslike vegan.
I only eat non-sentient AIs too.
How about we don't call that being an AI vegan and just call it a model objection. That's fucking ridiculous, that's a term designed to make not using AI for that reason look bad and preachy.
Count me in
I feel like I should be annoyed at the headline, but honestly it's clever. Veganism isn't just a diet, but an ethical framework on minimizing harm so this fits all three aspects in the articles.
Neat concept.
Well shit, I didn't know they had a name for us. That's cool.
I can't say I'm a (normal) vegan, but I'm definitely an AI vegan. I was turned off by the ethical considerations, and the few "bites" I have tried leave a bad taste in my mouth. I avoid using it because much of the training data was (and is) stolen, the power costs are far too high compared to the utility, and it's basically worthless to me, having a screwed up response to nearly every prompt I tried.
Exactly the same as me.
Love me a good steak, never even tried AI.
I've stood by while my colleagues have used it. I ask them a question they might know, just to check before I start spending time reading documentation. They'll go "just ask Bing!" (Company endorsed AI.)
They'll keep prompting and prompting and discussing the results, meanwhile I just go directly to the docs and find the information right there written on the screen.
I won't subject myself to the dumbification. I don't even use copilot to auto-complete as much as a for loop. I know how it's written, damnit.
People who care*
Now we wait for article “meet genocide vegans: people who are against Israel’s genocide against Palestinians based on ethical reasons”
today I was trying to find how to manipulate a trunk on an aruba switch and JFK the internet search results were fucking shit on a platter! I tried to reword it in ways that might give me a better result but it never happened. None of the commands the AI suggested would have worked.
I FUCKING HATE AI results in the web searching tools
HEre's a tip, paste the chapter index from the manual in it, ask "which chapter are relevant to " $question Then paste the chapter it asks, then formulate your question The AI search result though, useless because they're contextless, it's like a car without a steering wheel.
If we go this route, there is also from for AI Crossfitters
TIL I'm a lot of thing vegan... also, not a vegan.
I installed it locally on my computer to help me with resolving some coding issues if I’m stuck, write cover letters for jobs, and help me organize ppt decks. No information is shared, I’m only using local computing resources, and I’m not propping up a failing business model.
What model and UI are you using?
Qwen 2.5 coder. Running on LLM studio.
I'm an LLM freegan, I guess. But I'm cutting back too, the usefulness peaked.
freegan
If they had come up with something original like that, it would have been better. But creating constructive neologisms takes work, I guess.
I think some AI use is clearly worth the costs (like helping with scientific research or accessibility), some clearly isn't (like generating spam), and much falls in a gray area where reasonable people can disagree. So do I think it's ethical to use me? In many cases, yes - but I understand why thoughtful people might conclude otherwise, and I don't think they're wrong to avoid AI if they've weighed the considerations and found the costs too high.
On my list of "dont's", inspired by Luke Smith, I do not use AI.
Guess i'm vegan now
Thought it was gonna be about Rationalists.
This is someone more obnoxious than ai tech bros
I think this IS an AI tech bro. Or at least an AI tech bro dick-rider.
I selective use AI for low risk applications.
I can use it to reskin a picture to a water painting or whatever for the purpose of using it as an icon in a smart home app or similar.
i also use it to clean audio for memes with friends.
At the moment its not reliable to solve actual problems. I simply don't use to for those purposes because it sucks.
Ai vegans are people who only use ai generated porn.
Can you pick them out if crowd by their furled brows?
Just hold up a picture, they'll show up to tell you why they think it's generated
I can not wait, until the time of the perpetually seeking attention moron ends. Its always something with these fucking people. If you dont wanna use AI, just dont use it. Theres no fucking gun to your head. And we dont need to know youre not using, much less, find out youve got a dumb fucking name for yourselves.
"Theres no fucking gun to your head." Bosses: 🦜🤖 🟰💹, 👨💼🔫🤓
Not just bosses. Tech companies have leveraged a good portion of the world's economy on AI, and are shoveling money directly into the ovens to shove it down our throats.
No one asked for any of this. Not a goddamn soul asked for AI order takers at McDonald's. Because it's not about choice. The choice to abstain is going to get more and more painful to make as time goes on. By design.
If it gets you talking about it, even in the context of telling them to shut the fuck up, it's working :)
Luddites
Corporate simp
Y'know, as long as we're childishly name-calling
You're not wrong. I am skeptical of AI, and I worry if that makes me a Luddite. I think refusing to use it for anything probably does qualify one as a Luddite. Using it for limited purpose with oversight is the correct approach.
I don't. If it makes me a Luddite, I'm a Luddite.
What doesn't change is that this is a train heading toward a derailment at highspeed while on fire.
Just today I had to walk through why GitHub copilot should not be used for security purposes. I explicitly told the engineer that a constructed url would be detected as a potential XSS vector by our vulnerability scans. They implemented several things, most of which did nothing. Finally, I grabbed the documentation on how to fix it, gave them the line number, gave them the function, and let them build and test it. It ran through the scans and of course it passed.
I get the desire from leadership. I really do. But I'm more interested in our products not costing us more, especially when the LLMs are going to fail the economy on a wide scale.
I think it depends on the reason you do not use it. The Luddites were primarily frustrated over automation displacing their high-skill job with low-skilled ones that produced worse quality goods. It's a 2 for 1: we are losing the jobs we need to survive, but also we lose the personal touch from the work of artisans + lose appreciation for their talent.
I am not carte blanche against AI as a concept, but it really does seem like a technology that makes interactions worse quality, more depersonalized, and on top of that it has a horrible externalized environmental cost which benefits nobody in the long run.
Addendum: I believe technology has the power to be liberating when it provides for all of us, and oppressive when it concentrates wealth+power into the hands of moguls and tyrants.
Get out of here with your nuanced take. This is Lemmy, we hate AI it uses up 1bazinga gigalitres of water each time you look at it.
Now excuse me while I go play some video games and search Google, those things use zero electricity.
Stupid title, but in all honesty, now would be the time to create a new religion where there are restrictions on hyper modern things like AI, robotics, etc.
We must not create a machine to counterfeit human thinking. That could be the most important phrase in the entire thing.
Almost like there might already be a text or novels out there that warn on the dangers of mankind's hubris.
I hate the term AI vegan. I prefer mistechnitinoimosyne. More classy.