Links #166
This time I have a handful of links all about AI, so if you need a break from that right now (and I wouldn’t blame you), might want to skip this one. After this we’ll return to our regular — by which I mean irregular — bundles of non-AI links.
Eamon Caddigan on hating AI in 2026. “Some people find chatbots useful and I can’t argue with their opinion, but nobody is doing anything with them that remotely justifies their socialized costs.”
Johannes Link and Jakob Schnell on the ethical use of generative AI. “Convenience, speed and entertainment are then weighed against numerous damages and risks to the environment, the state and humanity. In this sense, the ethical use and further expansion of GenAI in its current form is not possible.”
L. M. Sacasas on how AI is not a tool. “But AI is not a tool in this sense, it is an environment which envelops the user and works on us from the inside out while we naively think that we remain unchanged by our use so long as we are using it carefully and intentionally. The care and intentionality is beside the point, and our confidence in such vigilance probably works against us in the long run.”
Samis Talwar on how LLMs can’t program. “At no point have I ever met something generated by one of these tools that I didn’t detest. Articles are obsequious, vacuous, and typically boring. Length is a virtue (Pascal would have cried). Poetry reads like the stuff I wrote when I was 14. (I didn’t get better, I stopped.) Ask an LLM to generate short fiction, and you’ll quickly learn it was trained on the worst of internet fanfic.”
Tante on AI as a fascist artifact. “Modern ‘AI’ systems of any relevant capability exist because of violence, are based on violence. Violence is more than just hitting people. Taking away people’s agency is violence, exposing people to suffering is violence. Violence has many shapes and forms. And ‘AI’ needs an acceptance of endless amounts of violence (I will not be able to list all forms of it, this is just a selection).”
HMMZ on AI. “I have no idea how to manage AI at present except by curtailing use, because a tool producing a cheap reward with minimal input and no friction can only be a liability, and achieving that realisation is probably the only real contribution of AI to date.”
Henry on how it doesn’t matter if it works. “The widespread deployment of AI/LLMs constitutes an existential threat to labor whether or not it is an adept move by the adoptive industries. Thus it is essential for workers to stop asking whether or not AI works and start asking who ultimately benefits from its deployment.”
W. Evan Sheehan on how AI is everywhere foisted upon us. “This is not to say that I think that the environmental harms from resource extraction associated with computer chips and battery technology, nor the exploitation of labor in countries like China is in any way acceptable or excusable simply because some electronics have infiltrated our lives to the extent that they are practically indispensable. We can do better — and we should. My point is that we have not yet reached the point with ‘AI’ that we must continue to use it as we demand better. We can instead refuse to use it until it is ethical to do so.”
Dave Karpf on how data center activism is a bankshot. “It can trigger a reset of the status quo, and has the potential to make a lasting impact on the digital future.”
Matthew Butterick on extinction-level capitalism. “AI is inherently political technology. If AI works as intended, it will gradually corrode our liberal democracy, risking an irreversible shift into another political and economic configuration. Among AI risks, this one deserves more consideration, because it requires no additional conditions like malign actors or AI malfunction. AI only needs to amplify existing trends, especially around concentration of capital. This damage will occur even assuming that in the near term, AI will broadly improve material well-being.”
Sylvia quoting Dave Eggers on AI. “This is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine write for them. You are one of one, unprecedented in the history of human evolution. There’s only one of you. So to give your voice to a machine to say speak for me, I’m going to be silent, and I’m going to tell a machine to express myself or to tell my narrative, is such a crime against yourself. It’s so dystopian, beyond anything I could do in a dystopian novel, and I did a lot.”
Ky Decker on burnout. “AI had hooked its tendrils into every corner of my work life. Even if I, personally, abstained from most AI usage, I was steeped in an environment which made it impossible to avoid. Pushing back felt futile.”
Tom MacWright on accidental anonymity. “If you want people to connect with you as a person, you can’t hide behind a machine.”
Nolen Royalty on legibility of effort. “What software (and writing, to an extent) is missing now is legibility of effort — the ability to tell at a glance whether something took a human meaningful work.”
Benjamin Hollon on people asking what he thinks about AI. “I’m really, really tired of having the conversation. Because it’s the same conversation over and over and over again, usually with no actual signs that the person I’m talking to cares enough to change their mind.”
James Zhan on no-AI statements. “You’re never expected to be able to tell handmade ceramics from machine-made ones, so why should anyone be expected to be able to tell human-made content from AI-generated ones?”
Simon Sarris on resisting AI. “I suspect careful thinkers do not gain a mastery of mystery, or attention to detail, by scrolling Reddit or listening to current event podcasts or asking ‘AI’ to summarize anything. Instead I imagine they spend their time with primary sources, correspondence, stories, engaging with their own senses in one way or another, or some other form of exploring the world in detail.” And: “It is an interesting feature of stories and fiction that they resist summary. You cannot read a summary of Anna Karenina and somehow stockpile its pleasures and charms. Narrative resists compression.”
Rutherford Craze on using our human hands. “When we turn design over to generative AI, we remove the human element from the process. When we ask Midjourney to draw an ox, it does not think of home. ChatGPT will never invent a new calligraphy technique, because it has no wrists to feel uncomfortable. A tool that shields us from the friction of the work is compelling, but if we don’t experience the friction, we will never change the work.”