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YouTuber Hank Green Is Facing a Fan Revolt Over His AI Use (gizmodo.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 360 points 3 months ago (66 children)

I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.

I think this is very honest and we shouldn't give someone shit for speaking up.

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  • [–] 149 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don't hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn't understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.

    I don't judge him for wrestling with it. I'm sad for him. I'm sad for a lot of us. We're all working in a system that's slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.

    I don't think that we should lose hope, but the future can't look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn't be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.

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  • [+] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Yes. He doesn't want to admit, he's gone as far down this path as he responsibly can. He doesn't want to transition to the "producer" role, where he becomes a resource for a new generation that's seeking a future away from the old platforms.

    It's a bit like the oil man who knows his work enabled so much good, unable to also admit his product has a dark side, and it's time for us all to move on from it. That times changed and a new world is struggling to be born.

    I disagree about "edutainment" in a qualified way. We still need communicators and domain experts sharing their knowledge, and there's still a great deal of knowledge to share, but I don't think it's on YouTube (or TikTok). People talking out of turn on matters so far outside their expertise and experience they're effectively neophytes, and just as vulnerable to Dunning-Kruger impulses certainly doesn't help. I don't think that AI or better algorithms are going to save them either, that's a good way to end up lost in a psychotic hallucination. I don't know what it will look like yet but it isn't going to come from the tech giants. Unless Wikipedia wants to take a crack at it, they might be the only ones that could pull it off.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    But this is the first time there's been this significant of an impact on one's mental health(?) I'm unsure. It's so easy to get caught up in that dopamine hit where you feel like you did something. Its even more frustrating when you're forced to use it in work regularly, whether directly or indirectly (if you're coworkers are using it there is an indirect force to use it if you need to stay competitive and keep your job and feed yourself and your loved ones especially if your workspace is not healthy)

    Thought experiment: is it better to treat the AI as a contractor (fivver etc) who is doing the task you're asking rather than thinking of it as something you're doing? From a mental health perspective A contractor because you are only to talk a out the task and nothing else really. That way it's work could be more distant and you're less likely to associate it to your work and boost in productivity?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    No. This is a line we cannot cross and if it destroys us, so be it. I'm not against AI, or automation. But not these tools. Not these companies. Not these models. The question is death or death. So we learn to live without, or we die. There is no synthesis possible with this paradigm.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    The cats out of the bag, so what are we gonna do now. Like replace that but not this with any other tech you should stop using, say social media, good luck. So what are we going to do now?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    What do we do? We're doing it. We're asking questions, we're building communities IRL and in digital paces outside the bounds of the major corps. We use poison pills to make corpos that embrace these systems pay dearly. We give grace to those who sincerely pull back and we move on.

    Cocaine exists and it can be a major boost to productivity. But we don't have to use it. We don't have to live with its downsides slowly killing us and robbing us of our humanity.

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Agreed, this is new technology for everybody, we're allowed growing pains.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (15 children)

    Its pretty fucking simple to not use it.

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  • [–] 35 points 3 months ago

    I understand where you're coming from, but you could almost always say this about every kind of mistake every person has ever made, and then sit there wondering why humans ever make mistakes, you know?

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    Then you're not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology. And that's fine, we all can't do all the things but we can listen to the people around us without being pretentious tools who would say I told you so.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Then you’re not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology.

    I've been examining and thinking about artificial neural networks since ~2010.

    It is pretty fucking simple to not use an LLM.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Good job you've literally not reflected on the adoption of tech.

    Its pretty fucking simple not to be an unempathetic prick, but here we are.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    There was a point where it was pretty simple not to use the internet, too. This analogy drives a question: were those people who rejected the internet at the beginning better off in the long run, when compared to people who embraced it?

    Generative AI can be a very useful productivity tool. Choosing not to use an available tool is "easy", but is it wise?

    I find myself agreeing with the person you responded to; you don't appear to be thinking critically about the implications of LLMs/generative AI. That, or you are speaking more literally than it seems, and you mean, literally, that it's easy not to use AI, without commenting on how wise that decision may or may not be.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    you don’t appear to be thinking critically about the implications of LLMs/generative AI

    You don't appear to have a functioning brain.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Hyperbolic insults don't help your case. If you did think critically about this, feel free to show your work and talk through your thought process.

    Generative AI is just a tool. Using it is not much different than using a thesaurus while writing. You can quickly tell when someone has over-used the thesaurus, and it affects the quality of the output, but that doesn't make it bad to use a thesaurus.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    And people could simply not work for major corps.

    And they could simply not buy plastic clothes from Walmart.

    And they could simply grow their own food.

    Etc etc.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (37 children)

    Hank Green has earned the right, with me anyway, to have his point of view heard. And frankly he has more credibility with me than the garden variety pitchfork-wielding anti-AI mob. I think Hank is a person who finds AI interesting and sees upsides as well as downsides. But the aforementioned mob is not interested in anything other than the emotional catharsis of railing against something they hate.

    Now ask me if the mob is in the room with us, because it probably is.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 months ago (29 children)

    His AI use caused him so many problems in his private life that his family had to intervene. His point of view is “This technology has had a negative impact on my life and the lives of the people I care about”.

    Your pro-AI spiel is a bit tone deaf here

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    There wasn't an intervention, he asked them about his AI use in response to the outrage and they agreed he'd been using it unhealthy.

    Seemed to me more along the lines of "do I have too much salt?" , "yeah you should cut back" ; Then "your coke problem is tearing this family apart"

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    He said they “did not pull any punches” which implies it was a more blunt conversation than you’re suggesting.

    Hank Green himself describes his relationship with AI the same way you would an addiction, and specifically mentions the dopamine reaction driving his use of it to a point where he became overwhelmed by it.

    He’s not describing a casual discussion about table salt, he’s literally describing a drug/alcohol addiction.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (22 children)

    But they didn't say anything pro-AI. At most they were anti-anti-AI mob, which is just reasonable, as is with any "mob". And I read mob here as mindless parrots that keep repeating talking points and hating for the sake of conformity.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Okay but why would anyone be anything but over-the-top against anything on your list?

    I mean, like, everything you listed is dog shit.

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  • [+] -15 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    Being anti-anti something is being pro-something. That’s the beauty of the double negative.

    Also that’s just a very pro-AI user, so the intent can be inferred

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago*

    You're conflating two different somethings. Anti-AI mob is not the same as AI. Being against mob mentality doesn't make you inherently pro AI.

    It's possible to be pro or anti mob mentality and AI in various different combinations.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I’m anti anything mob. The fucking groupthink on certain issues is real.

    I’m also anti people who make shit up and then try to sell it as a long strings of “inferences.”

    And after having AI shoved down my throat at work for two years while my teammates get laid off, I’m pretty anti AI too. At most I have direct experience with it that teaches me it has some uses, like summarization.

    You’re full of shit. You’ve been told. And you know it by now. But you’ll probably bleat on with more of the same because it’s all you know how to do. Proceed, I guess.

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  • [+] 6 points 3 months ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    anti-anti-AI ≠ pro-AI, it assumes there's only anti-AI and pro-AI and nothing in between.
    And the wording was clearly about the anti-AI mob as opposed to people who understand the dangers and benefits of AI. It's similar to the difference between a Gamer™ and a gamer.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    You think that a persons established pro-ai bias is not related to the inference of the bias of their ai-related comment?

    I… disagree. That would be directly related.

    And it’s of course not ad hominem in the slightest because an ad hominem is an attack on a person instead of an argument. That’s not happening here.

    Your comment reads like a high schooler who just had their first class on argument and logic and hasn’t quite got a firm understanding of either yet.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Being anti-anti something is being pro-something.

    Blatantly reductive. "Anti anti AI mob" means to be against the mob that is against AI, not to be for AI. Regardless of whether or not AI is a net harm, moral panics certainly are. You can oppose the moral panic while being for, against, or neutral towards AI generally.

    If you need to fuck around and misrepresent your opponents' arguments, you're not doing it right.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I said nothing pro-AI. But by accusing me of that, you reveal where your own bias (and defensiveness) lies. So thanks for that.

    You’re also exaggerating the facts. They didn’t stage an intervention. He turned to his wife and brother and said “do you think my AI use is unhealthy?”

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago*

    You’ve said plenty pro-AI lol. You don’t have to get so defensive about it, just own your position.

    I’ve exaggerated nothing. Hank himself said he’s spoken to both his wife and brother about his AI use and said they “didn’t pull any punches”, which implies there was a blunt conversation about it, if not two.

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