Maybe trying to be objective is the wrong choice here? After all, it might sound preachy to those who are ignorant to the dangers of AI. Instead, it could be better to stay subjective in hopes to trigger self-reflection.

Here are some arguments I would use for my own personal 'defense':

• I like to do the work by myself because the challenge of doing it by my own is part of the fun, especially when I finally get that 'Eureka!' moment after especially tough ones. When I use AI, it just feels halfhearted because I just handed it to someone else, which doesn't sit right with me.
• when I work without AI, I tend to stumble over things that aren't really relevant to what I'm doing, but are still fun to learn about and might be helpful sometimes else. With AI, I'm way too focused on the end result to even notice that stuff, which makes the work feel even more annoying.
• when I decide to give up or realize I can't be arsed with it, I usually seek out communities or professionals, because that way it's either done professionally or I get a better sense of community, but overall feel like I'm supporting someone. With AI, I don't get that feeling, but rather I only feel either inferior for not coming up with a result as fast as the AI does or frustrated because it either spews out bullshit or doesn't get the point I'm aiming for.

I'm just honest about it… "I don't find it useful enough and do find it too harmful for the environment and society to use it"

Very simple.

It's imprecise, and for your work, you'd like to be sure the work product you're producing is top quality.

A discussion in good faith means treating the person you are speaking to with respect. It means not having ulterior motives. If you are having the discussion with the explicit purpose of changing their minds or, in your words, "alarming them to take action" then that is by default a bad faith discussion.

If you want to discuss with a pro-AI person in good faith, you HAVE to be open to changing your own mind. That is the whole point of a good faith discussion - but rather, you already believe you are correct, and are wanting to enter these discussions with objective ammunition to defeat somebody.

How do you actually discuss in good faith? You ask for their opinions and are open to them, then you share your own in a respectful manner. You aren't trying to 'win' you are just trying to understand and in turn, help others to understand your own POV.

If it's real life, just talk to them.

If it's online, especially here on lemmy, there's a lot of AI brain rotted people who are just going to copy/paste your comments into a chatbot and you're wasting time.

They also tend to follow you around.

They've lost so much of their brains to AI, that even valid criticism of AI feel like personal insults to them.

If you want to explain your reasons 'in good faith' you should be honest, and not adopt other people's reasons to argue the position you've already assumed.

and also alarming enough for them to take action.

Is this really an intent to explain in good faith? Sounds like you're trying to manipulate their opinion and actions rather than simply explaining yourself.

If someone was to tell me that they simply don't want to use generative AI, that they prefer to do writing or drawing by hand and don't want suggestions about how to use various AI tools for it, then I just shrug and say "okay, suit yourself."

The most reasonable explanation I’ve heard/read is that generative AI is based on stealing content from human creators. Just don’t use the word “slop” and you’ll be good.

“It’s a machine made to bullshit. It sounds confident and it’s right enough of the time that it tricks people into not questioning when it is completely wrong and has just wholly made something up to appease the querent.”

"There are emerging studies about AI induced psychosis[1], and there is a possibility to go psychotic even if one doesn't have pre-conditions to become one. I would like to be cautious with the danger, like with cigaretes or Thalidomide. You never know how it might be dangerous."

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19218

I want my creations to be precisely what I intend to create. Generative Ai makes it easier to make something at the expense of building skills and seeing their results

What do you normally say that you're worried sounds like an "Ai vegan"?

What is your viewpoint?
Mine, for example, is that not only I don't need it at all but it doesn't offer anything of value to me so I can't think of any use for it.

Depending on how hardcore you are about it, you can't.

Are you getting up in people's face to tell them not to use it, or are you answering why you choose not to use it?
Are you extremely strict in your adherence? Or are you more forgiving based on the application or user?

There are two general points I like to make:

1. Big companies are using it to steal the work of the powerless, en masse. It is making copyright strictly the tool of the powerful to use against the powerless.
2. If these companies aren't lying and will actually deliver what they say they're going to deliver in the timeline they stated, then it's going to cause mass unemployment, because even if (IF) this creates new jobs for every job it destroys, the market can't move fast enough to invent these new careers in the timeline described. So either they're lying or they're going to cause great suffering, and a massive increase in wealth inequality.

Energy usage honestly never seems to be a concern for people, so I don't even try to make that argument.

Here’s a piece I wrote to explain my apprehensive stance on AI to friends and colleagues: https://blog.erlend.sh/non-consensual-technology

"it looks like shit from a butt and sounds like shit from a butt, and if I wanted to look at a shit from a butt, I would do that for free"

at work mgmt always brings it up. "we need to use it more!".

I say nothing. I smile and nod. I ignore AI prompts. I ignore emails written by AI. I ignore requests coming in to integrate AI into the product.

nobody has asked me about any of the inaction for the last year so I don't plan on drawing any attention to it by outing myself.

edit: I suppose if anybody does I can just say the AI agent I used failed to alert me to the thing they wanted. 🤣

All current AIs are based on stolen content.

You'd rather make your own painting than fill in a coloring book?

What is an “extremist view” in this context? Kill sam Altman? Lmao

Welcome to the world of being an activist buddy. Vegans are doing it for a living being with consciousness. Your cause is just too, imo, but just like the vegan who feels motivated and justified in bringing up their views because, to them, it’s a matter of life and death you will be belittled and mocked by those who either genuinely disagree or who do recognize the issues you describe but do not have the courage or self control to change

Start with speaking when it’s relevant. Note that this will not always win you fans. I recently spoke to my physician on this issue, who asked for consent for LLM transcription of audio session notes and automatic summarization. I am not morally opposed to such a thing for health care providers but I had many questions: how are records transmitted, stored, destroyed, does the model use any data fed into it or resultant summaries for seeding/reinforcement learning/refinement/updating internal embeddings/continual learning (this point is key bc the language I’ve seen about this shifts a lot, but basically do they feed your data back into the model to refine it further or do they have separate training and production models that allow for one to be “sanitary”), does the AI model come from the EMR provider (often Epic) or a 3rd party and if so is there a BAA, etc

In my case my provider could answer exactly 0 (zero) of these so I refused consent and am actively monitoring to ensure they are continuing to not use it at subsequent appointments. They are a professional so they’ve remained professional but it’s created some tension. I get it; I work in healthcare myself and I’ve seen these tools demoed and have colleagues that use them. They save a fairly substantial amount of time and in some cases they even guarantee against insurance clawbacks, which is a tremendous security advantage for a healthcare provider. But you gotta know what you’re doing and even then you gotta accept that some people simply will be against it on principle, thems the breaks

You are an AI vegan though. Why try not to sound like one?

"Its not my cup of tea".

Youre over thinking this

Is this a work requirement? If not, who cares.

If it's a decision you make out of conviction and value it is 100% like veganism so I would say embrace it

Live your truth and people will follow. Or not and that's ok too

Maybe part of the answer is to not be so strictly against it. AI is starting to be used in a variety of tools and not all your criticisms are valid for all of them. Being able to see where it is useful and maybe you even find it desirable helps explain that you’re not against the technology per se.

For example Zoom has an ai tool that can generate meeting summaries. It’s pretty accurate with discussions although sometimes gets confused about who said what. That ai likely used much less power, might not have been trained on copyrighted content