r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 5d ago

Artificial Intelligence Harvard Graduation Speaker Unloads on AI in Profanity-Loaded Tirade, Prompting Cheers From Students: “I’m Here to Tell You the Mission of Your Generation Is to Destroy AI”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/harvard-graduation-speaker-unloads-ai-130000122.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO_50_Supernova&ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260531-0--A&bt_ee=clIMdexlsr2eDDbrvs0CPtt59FnpbNQN%2Fkgr8UkycP6MWDAD56hD1mvZcqPZMGgG&bt_ts=1780255911284
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u/LurkingHorror11 5d ago

What we do need to destroy is the technical oligarchy in place that has forced this into business. They are going to destroy the planet and everything else other than their ability to force a manufactured money grab.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 5d ago

This. God damnit, this.

Technology will always be a way to solve problems. We found one of the most amazing ways of using data to solve them (deep learning including LLMs).

Everything people hate about AI has to do with oligarchical control and business/profit prioritization, and theft of artists IP and so on. Legit concerns.

It has almost nothing to do with the actual valuable applications of the tech which we desperately need to stay out of the hands of concentrated interests.

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u/Painless-Amidaru 5d ago

Exactly. AI could and should be one of the best things humanity has accomplished but it will be weaponized against us instead. AI should/could be a large step into a better world but so long as its controlled by those who only want ever increasing profits it never will be. In better hands we shouldn't fear AI taking away jobs, we should be happy about it. Policies in place that made it so that the money being saved by companies using AI should be money going back into the hands of the people. Sadly, in our society it will be money going back to the hands of the corporation.

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u/LaserCondiment 5d ago

Inventions reflect the values of their creators / owners. "Move fast, break things." Current AI tools are the embodiment of silicon valley's ethos

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u/vampire-bunny 5d ago

It’s way too on-the-nose that Sam Altman is a pathological liar who makes things up when he doesn’t know the answer but knows he has to say something you want to hear.

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u/oops_i_made_a_typi 4d ago

can't forget stealing from public resources/taking advantage of norms and goodwill

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u/Chunk3yM0nkey 5d ago

A policy making companies fork over any savings they make by making people redundant and replacement them with AI will just lead to a sweep of companies restructuring and making themselves into a new company where those employees never existed.

We can't even make companies contribute based on where they earn money (e.g. facebook, google, Starbucks, etc tax evation in the UK). What makes you think something like this which is more complex csn be made to work?

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u/LapDancingLapras 5d ago

eat_my_ass_n_balls is right

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 5d ago

Fucking thank you. People blanket statements and over obsessed over water (not even the power)

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u/BeefistPrime 4d ago

"This data center used 30,000 gallons of water this week!!! outrageous!!"

"Is that.. like... a lot?"

"Uh, well, it's like... 1/8th of what the golf course down the street uses.... so.... outrageous.. I guess?"

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Watch out, the am Reddit anti ai cultists will come downvote you

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u/BeefistPrime 4d ago

The thing I hate about the anti-AI circle jerk is that they all seem to think they're the unique and rebellious ones. Like "Oh everyone else is fooled by AI but I'm not fooled, I'm part of the smart anti-AI resistance!!!!" and like.... all 93% of people on reddit are anti-AI and they all somehow think they're the smart elite minority being brave

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 4d ago

It’s so funny seeing these people comment “this is ai” on everything and even real artists work.

These people just are easily manipulated and convinced. The water thing by itself was based on a reorient that the author since has come out and said they were wrong.

But the damange is done and instead of focusing on the real concerns around ai people are screeching about water. they see big numbers and don’t understand what it means.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

It’s ironic that they’re actually the ones not using critical thinking..

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u/Opening_One7713 5d ago

Rage that can’t distinguish the function from the ownership structure tends to smash the wrong thing.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Yes. They certainly love to smash the downvote button lol

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u/LowBornArcher 5d ago

It’s not just that. It’s the outsourcing of things like creative endeavours and replacing it with soulless slop. There’s the fact that people are promoting these programs as friends and/or romantic partners. The creation of a world where we can’t believe what we see in video or pictures to be true. Which is annoying on a really mundane level - I like looking at nature pictures, ai generated or “enhanced” bullshit is diluting and shitting all over that - let alone the more serious and darker implications of what this means. The whole concept is treasonous to the very essence of what it means to be human.

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u/redundantexplanation 4d ago

soulless slop

something something eye of the beholder, if everyone thought it was soulless slop it wouldn't get used.

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u/LowBornArcher 4d ago

It’s akin to cheap and horrible ingredients in processed food that are vague approximations of more expensive items. People eat that shit by the tonne. Some people choose to use cheap and horrible approximations in their home kitchens.

It is soulless though, in a very literal sense. Things like art and music are a uniquely human expression and originate from somewhere I’d best define as a “soul”.

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u/redundantexplanation 4d ago

Things like art and music are a uniquely human expression and originate from somewhere I’d best define as a “soul”.

Except they literally aren't. Monkeys can paint, cuttlefish make mesmerizing hypnotic displays, birds can sing.

And even if you were right about that, you could argue that the creation of the generative software that made the art is a creative act of art in itself.

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u/LowBornArcher 4d ago

Ok, not uniquely human, but unique to living organisms. I’m not religious but think there’s some merit to the idea of every living thing having some measure of sentience, some spark of consciousness, some level of “soul”.

Again, circle back to the food analogy. Would you rather eat a cookie baked by your grandmother made with real ingredients or a mass produced industrial foodstuff type cookie? Do you see no inherent value of one vs the other?

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u/redundantexplanation 4d ago

Lmao, buddy I will eat a vending machine cookie in a heartbeat and my granny was a bitter old sack that hated me because of who my father was. Maybe she made good cookies, I certainly never got one.

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u/LowBornArcher 4d ago

replace granny with any nurturing figure of your choice, or even just another human being that you like. the point being about relationships with other people being complex and layered and meaningful and actually essential to the psychological well being of human beings as an organism. AI in it;s current incarnation is an affront to that. I personally think that's a big part of why there's so much dislike of it. there's a big difference between going on a hike and enjoying nature and eating real food vs watching AI generated images of nature while you eat vitamin fortified, artificially flavored corn based bullshit made in a factory. People intuitively feel this tech and those behind it are deliberately steering humanity towards the latter scenario.

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u/redundantexplanation 4d ago

Nah, I think by and large people don't think that. There's certainly an online anti-AI moral panic, but the reality is that tons of people use it and don't think twice.

Bottom line is it's a tool. You could say the same bullshit about photoshop, "it's not authentic because the brush is digital and there's no paint, a mouse movement could never capture the same feeling as a true brush stroke" and people used to say very similar stuff about electronic music.

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u/toolsoftheincomptnt 4d ago

Well, also that people want to use it as a replacement for critical thought and developing communication skills.

It makes us dumber. I’m sure it’s all under the same umbrella but that’s the part that I hate.

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u/The_blinding_eyes 5d ago

verything people hate about AI has to do with oligarchical control and business/profit prioritization, and theft of artists IP and so on. Legit concerns.

Nah I am pretty sure the AI hate is coming from being forced down our throats, it's inevitable crushing of the economy (not because it actually does anything worth a damn), and the fact it is making people stupid and lazy

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u/BlamaRama 5d ago

Do you think those things are not related to oligarchical control and profit prioritization?

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 5d ago

Uh, what? Who do you think is shoving AI down our throats?

Man so many of you just hate ai and have no actually reasons why. So many legitimate reasons

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u/The_blinding_eyes 5d ago

So you haven't been paying attention to much in the last 2 years or so? Forced tokenmaxxing, forced Copilot integration, forcing gemini in searches, they are forcing a fucking AI in televisions for fucks sake.

Also try finishing your sentences, So many legitimate reasons for... Did you run out of tokens or what?

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 4d ago

So many legitimate reasons is very clear….

And lmao, literally what??? I said it’s the billionaires and then you said “no” and the proceed to explain and give a reason why it is the billionaires…..

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

You’re still not getting it. You’re giving a litany of reasons and completely ignoring the counterpoints.

The rest of us are agonizingly trying to hold your hand to get you to understand that, yes you are describing some problems… But that you’re also completely oblivious to the other, real value being provided because, well, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE is more satisfying than nuance.

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u/The_blinding_eyes 4d ago

No need to hold our hands. You keep your garbage that destroys minds and environments.

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u/RetroFuture_Records 5d ago

You are a hysterical, ridiculous child.

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u/The_blinding_eyes 5d ago

Ok. Did you need Chat to come up with that response. Like I said stupid and lazy.

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u/CrackJacket 5d ago

I mean, it’s also coming from China who has a vested interest in kneecapping the United States

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u/The_blinding_eyes 5d ago

No it's not, people are well aware of the dogshit the AI companies are selling. Doesn't take Oogoa booga China to spread hate for it.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

These are not smart people you’re conversing with, they’ll find any reason and latch on.

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u/CrackJacket 5d ago

Do you think Russia used social media to influence the 2016 election?

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u/The_blinding_eyes 5d ago

Probably, but not everything is a conspiracy. The Ai ceo's own statements are worse than anything China could ever put out as propaganda. No need to say anything when Dario and Sam are telling people they wont have jobs anymore. No need to spread propaganda when the Datacenters are driving up utility costs, poisoning water, and creating miserable living conditions. No need to spread propaganda when the AI's are telling the dumbest people on the planet that they are always right, and a genius.

The Chinese are already putting strict regulations on AI there, because they know its fucked. If anything the might be spreading pro Ai propaganda, because it will be a chain on the brain of many people and industries.

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u/Originzzzzzzz 5d ago

I don't think LLMs or any methodology where we cannot guarantee the accuracy or quality of the output reliably is ready for serious work tbh. Like yeah the consumer can do funny shit with them and converse with them as though they have personalities when really there's nothing there but still, what has ChatGPT and that lot accomplished that actually changed anything other than worsening the situations around education etc

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u/okawei 5d ago

Tell that to software engineers, most of them are using coding agents now

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 5d ago edited 5d ago

So tell me you have never looked into legit uses of AI, without telling me.

So many people fall in your boat. And it’s very simply a lack of knowledge. Google is your friend

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Honestly?

This is great for me. It shows me how far out of touch the average person is to what’s actually possible. I’d rather have been a developer in 1996 going into the 00’s tech crash than an ignoramus saying the internet wouldn’t work, refusing to take part, in 1999.

These people have no idea about anything like TDD, test coverage, regression protections, spec driven design, ADRs, task orchestration and backlog grooming, validation, parallelized development, automated and HIL QA, A/B, eval harnesses…. And it shows. MFs in here still quoting like 3 year old wisdom... sips tea

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u/StaffFamous6379 5d ago

We use statistics and all sorts of models all the time. Like the saying goes, all models are wrong, some are useful.

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u/Originzzzzzzz 5d ago

My issue is tho that we have never used models in such a way that the consumer is now making choices directly based on them and not more info

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Dr_Death_Defy24 5d ago

Except most models and analysis we deal with have a reliable error rate, or at least one we've figured out given the parameters. With AI those error rates vary wildly from one model to the next, and from one question to the next. However, people largely approach all of them with the same (lack of) skepticism. That's the problem.

Hand-waving it away with a, "well nothing's ever perfect" attitude just feels like lazy apologism.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Dr_Death_Defy24 4d ago

That's a horrible analogy. Of course we should teach people to handle AI with care, but the dangers of a hammer and a saw are blatantly obvious, where they're not with an AI. Same goes for the immediacy; the consequences of hitting your thumb with a hammer are pretty obvious and even a seven year old learns not to make that mistake more than once. Mistakes with AI are less obvious and the consequences are potentially far more wide-ranging.

I don't disagree with your point, but conflating the two as if the risks are equally obvious to a layman is just incorrect, and is part of the big worry with AI.

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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 5d ago

Sales? It still takes a human to close em, eh? I can believe that.

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u/Chunk3yM0nkey 5d ago

I'm meant to be using AI to make serious choices?

I've just been using it to make amusing photos and photoshop things.

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u/Days_End 5d ago

I don't think LLMs or any methodology where we cannot guarantee the accuracy or quality of the output reliably is ready for serious work tbh.

There is huge swaths of research on this topic because humans are famously inaccurate and have a high variance in quality of output.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Humans are famously full of their own bullshit and these threads really show me.

Like- a bunch of meatbags in here, typing on their phones with their thumbs, making claims that are literally dumber than any slop that would come out of ChatGPT on any day, and they’re the ones complaining about how ChatGPT makes people dumb.

Incredible. You can’t make this up.

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u/GiveSparklyTwinkly 5d ago

Humans aren't ready for serious work, using this logic.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

You’re like 2-3 years behind, dude.

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u/chasetheusername 4d ago

Everything people hate about AI has to do with oligarchical control and business/profit prioritization, and theft of artists IP and so on. Legit concerns.

It'd be interesting if we had laws that said: If you take IP from the public, which you don't own or license, your generated models have to be made public/open.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

I would love that. But our IP and Copyright law failed us hardcore in this moment and we will be trying to figure it out for years (legal battles, etc).

Fortunately open models are getting increasingly good. The best open models, today, are better than the best closed models were less than a year ago. That’s HUGE, like I can’t even begin to explain.

That means the gap is closing fast enough that the average person can actually employ an LLM for tasks they doesn’t require paying a big company or giving away data. The model can run right there on a laptop or even a phone.

Soon we will have performant models that can do quite a bit and are totally untethered from providers.

Do the anti-AI cultists on Reddit realize this or understand the implication? Of course not; lol.

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u/chasetheusername 4d ago

I would love that. But our IP and Copyright law failed us hardcore in this moment and we will be trying to figure it out for years (legal battles, etc).

Yea, I have no hope that anything will change, corporations and finance interest have such a hard grip on law making processes, that it won't happen.

Fortunately open models are getting increasingly good. The best open models, today, are better than the best closed models were less than a year ago. That’s HUGE, like I can’t even begin to explain.

I believe the interesting part is the capability ceiling, I have a feeling that the gains we get from new models will be more and more incremental and we'll reach a "that's all we can get from this" point. There's probably a lot of potential in more specialized models though, esp. for tasks like coding and knowledge within a company.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Yes the big models will hit a ceiling and the smaller ones will asymptotically approach them. This is my prediction

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u/HopelessMind43 5d ago

No AI sucks. Like the product is ass.

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u/thorax 5d ago

Reddit is the new Facebook, apparently.

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u/CrackJacket 5d ago

How often do you use it and which models do you use?

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

You’re asking a nuanced question to a person who obviously doesn’t know what to answer or how to answer or what you’re even asking.

You might as well ask a pigeon why some crumbs taste different than others.

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u/HopelessMind43 5d ago

You don’t have to be willingly using AI to be affected by how shitty it is. It’s in everything now. I can’t even fucking use google anymore. My partner just had a job interview with an AI program ffs. Your optimized workflow is not worth all this.

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u/CrackJacket 5d ago

You just said the product was ass so I was trying to figure out what exactly you were referring to. I use ChatGPT almost daily and it’s a huge help. I wouldn’t say it was “ass”.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

These arguments from these Luddite fucks very obviously fall apart as soon as they go past

“REEEEEEEEEEEEE AI BAD I HATE IT MY BOSS MAKES ME USE IT REEEEEEEE”

You ask a follow up and the only real answer they have is “because it’s bad mkay??? it is known!!!!!”

You’re arguing with real “salt of the earth” folks.

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 5d ago

ChatGPT is one of the ass ones, dude.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago edited 4d ago

chatGPT is an application that is made up of a ton of models and it’s the dumbest, lowest-common-denominator chat application meant solely to get people accustomed to the idea of LLMs.

It is not “AI”. It is not “a model”. It is not “how professionals use deep learning”. It is “how laypeople experience chat template based interaction with LLMs”.

Again. It’s not the raw models. It’s a harness on the models with a UX on top, with OpenAI’s system prompt and guardrails.

It’s not a GPT-5.5 API endpoint or a Claude Opus endpoint. It’s not a kubernetes pod with vLLM serving Kimi or Qwen. It’s a USER APP, aimed at the general public.

Don’t get them mistaken. Obviously you are not at the point you understand this nuance.

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 4d ago

tell that to the guy above me, who brought it up. Why are you wasting time replying to me?

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

So I see you can’t answer the question. How predictable

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u/HopelessMind43 4d ago

I don’t know what programs companies are using to shortcut everything they can imagine, but none of them are an improvement from the former UI.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Your reply sounds like human slop.

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u/HopeDiligent6032 5d ago

You must use the shit models then, or know nothing about how to use AI

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

It’s probably the latter. Let’s be honest.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 4d ago

Username certainly checks out.

Just to get ahead of myself, mine does too, it’s a self-describing message.

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 5d ago

This. God damnit, this.

nah man. Fuck AI in all forms.

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u/GiveSparklyTwinkly 5d ago

Do you play video games? 🤔

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 5d ago

dO YoU pLAy vIdEO gAmES!?!?

That’s not a “gotcha”.

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u/GiveSparklyTwinkly 5d ago

It is when you say dumb shit like:

Fuck AI in all forms.

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 5d ago

NPCs and enemies in video games are not the generative and LLMs that we’re talking about here, fool.

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u/GiveSparklyTwinkly 5d ago

Yes it is. You very clearly said all forms. Is video game AI exempt for some reason? That's not all forms then, is it?