Extended rant/diatribe against AI

It's been feeling like AI has been trying to make a power play into my life recently. Can't go a day without hearing some idiot blathering on about how supposedly life-changing it is, or how funny the latest AI videos are, or (in what I suppose is more positive news) what the latest AI fails were, or whatever blah blah blah and such and such. It's so TIRING hearing about it. We as a society made the Torment Nexus (from hit sci-fi novel "Don't Create the Torment Nexus") a reality and are acting as if it's some revolutionary technology that will uproot how we view humanity, when it's not! All it does is make our lives worse and, on top of that, destroy the Earth faster. 

And a bunch of people spout that "AI is inevitable" nonsense too. No it isn't. You know why you think that? Because corporations are paying advertisers a LOT of money to make you think that. Maybe some Silicon Valley reject who can't talk to people sees use for AI, but your plumber sure doesn't. The whole "AI is inevitable" concept boils down to letting an obviously evil and morally repugnant thing consume your life (and the lives of those around you) because you just...don't care.

Vibe-coding's another thing that grinds my gears. This is an opinion that seemingly only I hold, but I view coding as an artform in and of itself. A perfect example is malware: when I was a kid I liked to poke around the innards of different viruses and trojans and just look at what made them tick, and one of the things that amazed me about this is how someone, a real human being, spent days if not months of their time coding something so destructive, or in some cases accidentally productive. So to see AI compromise what I believe to be this human element of coding is quite displeasing.

It's like, if I had to use an analogy, imagine going to an upscale restaurant and placing an order for a meal. After waiting for some time, the waiter brings it out, but says that he feels it is necessary to disclose that the chef shat in your food. Sensing your nausea and discomfort, he quickly adds that the chef was fired and that most of it was scraped off, and claims that you really can't taste the difference. And you may end up digging into the meal and you may enjoy it, but you still have to live with the knowledge that someone took a shit on your food. That's what using vibecoded software feels like, having to live with the fact that, even though AI involvement was minimal in most case, traces of it still linger within the code.

Oh! And another thing that pisses me off - AI writing. Rife with purple prose and em dashes and phrases being repeated three times and sentences being constructed around "...and honestly? x" or "not just x, but y". All of these add up to the long-winded sea of nonsense it spews out being one big aborted punchline when compared to real authors who tirelessly slave over their craft. What really irritates me is how there are actual people out there who - get this! - are under the genuine belief that AI slop is some sort of panacea for writing. Things like checking the dictionary, looking at a thesaurus and most importantly BEING CREATIVE are too hard, I guess!

I won't bore you with the other things about AI that also piss me off (like AI music which some people, much like AI writing, actually ENJOY; don't get me started on shit like Breaking Rust or whichever new AI band is plaguing Spotify) but just know this: I vehemently despise AI with every fibre of my being and am committed to never using it both within my work and my daily life. Now there's something you'll never catch Hank Green saying!

(Also obligatory LOL @ SpaceHey for using AI mods from what I hear. Was it really that hard to hire actual people?)