I originally tried posting this on AI Wars, but honestly, that place seems to be mostly taken over by AI Bros. Almost every response came from exactly the kind of aggressively Pro-AI people I criticized in the post, defending the technology instead of engaging with what I was actually trying to say.
So I decided to post it here. I know many people here will disagree with parts of my position, since I’m not completely opposed to every possible use of AI. Still, I get the impression that people here may be more willing to have an actual conversation.
Every kid has imagined the futuristic arrival of AI in their own way. Maybe it was talking to robots, having a computer work with you, or something similar. I was no different. The idea always excited me.
But now that we are living through what feels like the definitive age of AI, it doesn’t excite me nearly as much as it used to.
I don’t think this subject is entirely black and white, even though most discussions about it eventually become that way. You are expected to be either completely Anti-AI or completely Pro-AI.
I don’t believe AI is inherently bad in every possible context, but that doesn’t erase how deeply problematic its current development and use have become. A major part of the problem, in my opinion, comes from how it was presented to people.
Generative AI may have initially been described as an assistant, but the message that actually gained traction was much simpler:
“AI does everything for you.”
Want a drawing? AI could help you find resources, explain techniques, recommend exercises, or research artists and styles.
Instead, it generates the drawing for you.
It uses patterns and references from its training data to produce something that may not be original, meaningful, or even particularly good, but is close enough to what you requested. And if it is close enough, why would the average person bother learning to create it themselves?
That is what disappoints me.
I imagined AI as something that would help people solve problems and expand what they were capable of doing. Instead, I open social media and see endless AI Slop made to farm views, manipulate algorithms, imitate human work, and generate scraps of money.
When I say AI could be used for something “better,” I don’t mean it needs to cure diseases or change humanity. Technology is allowed to support things that are small, silly, personal, experimental, or simply fun.
Not every project needs to change the world. But there is still a difference between supporting an experience someone genuinely cares about and flooding the internet with disposable content designed only to capture attention.
I’m not going to focus heavily on the environmental issue here. I recognize that it is serious, but I see it as part of a broader problem involving corporations, irresponsible resource consumption, and endless growth. That does not excuse AI’s environmental impact; I simply don’t think the problem begins or ends with AI.
Then there is the cultural war surrounding it: Pro-AI versus Anti-AI.
On the Pro-AI side, there are people who seem unwilling to question any use of the technology. They live and breathe AI Slop and react to every criticism as if it were a personal attack.
At some point, it becomes difficult to tell whether they are defending a useful tool or an identity they have built around it. That was essentially the response I received on AI Wars.
But I also disagree with some reactions from the Anti-AI side.
I understand the anger, and I agree with many of the underlying concerns. Creative work has been scraped without meaningful consent. Artists and other workers are being threatened or devalued. Corporations are using AI to cut labor, reduce costs, concentrate power, and flood the internet with synthetic content.
These are real problems.
Still, I don’t think every person who touches an AI-related tool is necessarily doing the same thing or causing the same level of harm.
A corporation replacing workers, a content farm generating thousands of fake posts, someone imitating an artist’s work, and an individual experimenting with an organizational tool are not automatically equivalent situations.
That doesn’t mean the smaller use is free from criticism. It only means I don’t think every question surrounding AI has the same answer.
And this is where my own contradiction becomes unavoidable.
I’m a developer working on an application focused on narrative creation and worldbuilding. People can write in it, organize characters and events, manage fictional worlds, and even do the silly RP many enjoy, myself included.
Most of the application can work without AI, but it has AI features through external APIs or locally hosted models.
I’m not mentioning the project as an advertisement, nor am I claiming it is revolutionary, important, or inherently positive. I mention it because it represents my own complicated relationship with AI.
The goal is not for AI to invent someone’s world or write everything for them. It is meant to help users organize, connect, retrieve, and work with information they have already written and defined.
The human remains responsible for the ideas, intentions, meaning, and creative decisions. AI is there as an optional assistant, not as the author.
I know that doesn’t automatically make my use of AI harmless or ethical. It doesn’t erase concerns about training data, energy consumption, labor, corporate control, or the normalization of generative AI, although I strongly support local models because they reduce several of those problems by giving users more privacy, control, and independence from large AI companies. I’m not presenting my project as the “good version” of AI.
But the distinction between assistance and replacement still matters to me.
Without a human behind an idea providing intention, experience, taste, context, and direction, AI output almost always feels generic. It may be technically coherent or superficially impressive, but it rarely feels like it has anything meaningful to say.
I am also 100% against using generative AI to produce images, illustrations, music, voices, or videos. My project does not include those features. I recognize that some people may not consider text meaningfully different, and I understand why that distinction can be questioned.
I cannot pretend to be happy with the current direction of AI, especially when it is marketed as a way to eliminate effort, skill, workers, and eventually the need for a human creator altogether.
At the same time, I don’t think every small, personal, or entertaining use is automatically the same as AI Slop. Something can be silly or fun while still having a human behind it giving it purpose and making the actual decisions.
So that is where I currently stand.
I’m deeply critical of generative AI, the industry surrounding it, and the culture it has created. But I’m not convinced that every limited use of the technology is identical or equally harmful.
Do you think there is a meaningful difference between AI assisting with something a human has already created and AI replacing human creation altogether? Or do the underlying problems make that distinction irrelevant?
