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this is the really ineffective head-in-the-sand reaction a lot of folks on Bluesky tend to have if you talk about any harm reduction-based approach to the reality that millions of people are using AI tools today. The current approach to critiquing AI is obviously not working, but they don't care.

Bluesky itself *exists* because people broadly understood that social media then, as with AI now, was having a wide variety of negative effects on society. So teaching people about less damaging approaches had a lot of value and has been effective in giving millions of people better alternatives.

By contrast, scolding people with moralizing about their choices, especially when *all of us are using tech from companies that have already carried out harms as serious as genocide* is ineffective, and pushes them to the welcoming arms of fascist tech companies who will be nice to them instead.

I agree with the intellectual substance of virtually every common critique of AI. And it's very clear that turning those critiques into a competition about who can frame them in the most scathing way online has done *zero* to slow down adoption, even if much of that is due to default bundling.

Show me when we have harm reduction for social media and maybe I will believe that this is an argument that deserves any acknowledgment.

You're using one now

I also drink alcohol and eat unhealthy foods. My use Of something habit forming doesn’t mean it’s safe. Social media was a major contributor to the breakdown in American culture & the backslide of our democracy. We need to to put a stop to the risks of AI before wide spread adoption not after.

Could you elaborate on the tactics that would replace condescending rants? Explained for a hypothetical someone who might not know any. I think maybe part of the problem is some folks don't know other paths.

Firebombing data centers? As far as I can tell, that’s it. He said it himself: these are the top apps on the app stores! Joining hands and singing kumbaya is not going to convince people to stop using LLMs. Nor will rants. It’s getting pretty hard to see how to stop this except by force.

That’s weird, Jeff. Consider that TALKING to people respectfully might work?

LLMs and codegen are pretty central to my job, these days. Seems central to most other semi-relevant jobs I've looked at lately, too. Responding to condescending rants doesn't pay my mortgage, so I'm just more careful and less enthusiastic about where I try to talk about what I'm doing these days.

What the hell are we supposed to do, then? You keep saying we should try some other tactic. There is no other tactic available to us! Most of us aren’t friend with power brokers in Silicon Valley. We do not have the levers that you have. What should we do?

By doing the thing I suggested in the post that is literally how this entire conversation began — engaging with the people in your life who are using these tools today, and talking to them about digital literacy.

Man, I have been trying that. It’s painful and fruitless and it does not move the needle. And the people who are the absolute WORST about LLMs are people in tech, like me. They understand it less than anybody! Which is maddening. I’m sorry - I really respect you. And I agree, you’re right…

Even without LLMs, teaching digital literacy has always been an uphill battle. There are a many people committed to making money off of the ignorance of others, and they do everything they can to push it. You should still make an effort, of course, but it's fine if someone calls a spade a space.

In my job, I am the lone anti-ai voice in what we develop for our business. I demand ROIs, and call out when benchmarks aren't met for the next project that wants to add it. All for our devs using the free tools, but so far nothing that was promised when we signed a check has paid off

I think that's a smart and useful tactic in a professional environment.

People who want to see *less* LLM use are not going to join you in encouraging *more* LLM use, and repeatedly using the word "condescending" as you do is very much a pot/kettle situation. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and getting all stroppy just because you got ratio'd.

I’m not encouraging more LLM use, but you are a stupid person, so you can’t actually see that. The reason you lash out is because you must regularly run into these kinds of inescapable examples of your inadequacies.

You say you’re not encouraging more LLM use. And I guess that’s true. But every time it comes up, you (a) tell all of us who are upset about LLMs to stop yelling about it, and (b) point out that millions of people are happy using LLMs, and we can’t stop them. You don’t really say anything else.

This is fair enough, I agree scolding is not the answer, but I don't see how harm reduction education will get through to individual users who, as you point out, are often experiencing LLMs through bundling by established providers.

Other tactics that folks are trying include: * Lawsuits; * databases of AI harms; * pushing for regulation; * sharing info about AI harms, lack of ROI, plagiarism, etc; * sharing how-tos and resources I cover this sort of thing in my newsletter if you're interested buttondown.com/aiweek

It’s not for lack of criticism. It’s the total lack of information about what any tech actually does. People think LLMs are just more of the same; unaware that it’s explicitly not, explicitly incapable of fulfilling the label “AI”. The tech info sphere is dominated by corporations & grifters.

This is not helped by the fact that LLMs are perhaps the first technology that you become LESS acquainted with the more you use it. People who have used LLMs more than a little bit have insane theories about them - ESPECIALLY people in tech! The only way to understand them is to never use them.

I think I get what you’re going for here, but what it‘s doing is demonstrating humans have an implicit bias to assume anything appearing to use language is intelligent. It’s especially bad for credulous people, those without critical thinking skills, or those w/a financial incentive to believe.

I don't buy the wokescold idea; if this was any other social issue, this thread would be quite gross. It's quite clear at this point you can't talk people out of doing harmful things, but there's also no other form of action that seems to work either.