I uploaded the (near) final draft of this to NotebookLM and had it create me a podcast episode from it. I thought it was interesting and since this post is about hating AI, I thought I'd give ya one more reason to hate it. Did they say "manifesto"? I think I heard them say "Manifesto". This is NOT a manifesto. Although, now I've typed it three times in a blog post. I'm definitely on a list somewhere.
For some, the reaction is visceral. They hate it like vampires hate the sun. For some it's an annoyance. They're tired of hearing, "AI can do this! AI can do that! AI will cure cancer!", etc. Some use it every day and are equidistant between amazed and seriously pissed.
In the same way that Professor Phineas T. Swindler would hype his Amazing Elixirs(r), companies are hyping their product. When they say, "(an unnamed LLM) just rewrote the internet in a half an hour!" We should not only be skeptical, we should feel free to let out a hearty guffaw (if people from this time actually still do that). They're trying to sell a product. Technically, they were right. It did. You couldn't use it, or run it, or even compile it... but by golly it wrote it.
The arts is one place that has a seemingly visceral reaction to generative AI. The fact that Suno can create a song that's popular is infuriating to real artists. To be fair, there are very few things that aren't infuriating to a real artist. The fact is, AI music is the same kind of thing that every jamook in their basement does: they remix all the most popular parts of the history of music. That's what AI is. Predicting the next thing based on the context provided, The next thing presupposes a previous thing. All AI can do is use that history and try to make something that fits the pattern. Every crappy song in the history of ever has been written this way. Only humans can break that mold and create something new. Something truly, authentically, new. So yeah, letting AI create new music or art will put a lot of shitty-to-mediocre wanna-be rock stars out of business ...and maybe kill the idea of boy bands ...but that will force the real artists to step up and create something new.
But there are some more disturbing things happening in the arts, too. AI Actors. The late Val Kilmer starring in a new movie via AI. It gives 'The Congress' vibes. We hate it because we know all they studios see is dollar signs. How much money a new Humphrey Bogart thriller would make. And without the pesky need to pay an actual actor, or direct them. AI Bogie(tm) does exactly what the studios tell him to do. We hate him for all the reasons we loved Heath Ledger as The Dark Knight's Joker. It's okay ...we wouldn't even know we were missing one of the greatest performances ...ever.
Some people are just tired of hearing companies say, "AI". I don't need a burger made by AI. Honestly, I probably wouldn't even notice ...but then I'm pretty antisocial. My new toilet doesn't need AI built-in to it. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CAN WE MAKE JUST ONE CAR WITHOUT ANY COMPUTERS IN IT!?!!?
This irritability is just an unfortunate side effect of new stuff, and AI has been 'The New Thing(tm)' since the Pandemic, brought to you with maximum commercial interruptions. They HAVE to say it. Not because it means anything, but because if they don't, they could lose market share ...and they're not wrong. We'll just have to remember that sometimes companies say, "AI" because they have to, and move on.
Yeah. It's gonna take mine too, eventually. I'm a software developer, so it may have already happened and the AI notification just hasn't made it through the company firewall, yet. I'll receive my pink slip through "tube mail" like a million other employees of Zorg, Inc.
But as a software developer I've been the harbinger of taking other peoples' jobs for most of my career. That's the reason most old-school coders like myself, aren't panicking. Will AI take our jobs? Most certainly. Probably pretty quickly. But we've seen it before, and we've seen who survives and why. Who adapts. Who finds a way to use the skills they have to make themselves valuable in "the new economy" (sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little, saying "the new economy"). I'm learning how to run AI models and keeping an eye out for the place in this new world where my skills and my experience keep me employed. That's pretty much all I can do.
This is the group I fall into most often: those that use AI every day. Those that build stuff with AI. Build stuff for AI and study the AI landscape. We see all the amazing things that AI is capable of ...and we can't stand that bitch. The results we get are lackluster at best and completely and totally infuriating at its worst. I've built 80% of, what ended up being, really good software in record time; but I've also spent days inventing new curse-words to use to vent my frustration with a model.
To be fair, I have the same exact relationship with NVIM.
AI is not going anywhere, like it or not. I know. It's an easy cop-out, huh? You're right. So I'll have Claude write the closing to this post. I told it to generate a paragraph (two, tops) that brings all this to a cogent point that makes a salient point about AI and its place in our world.
-- The Response --
AI isn't just the villain of this story— it's the mirror. Every frustration catalogued here reflects something true about us: our hunger for novelty, our terror of obsolescence, our ability to simultaneously depend on something and despise it. We hate the hype because we've been burned by hype before. We hate the job threat because we've been the job threat. We hate the mediocre output because we can see— just barely, tantalizingly— what it could be. That gap between potential and performance is the most infuriating place in the universe to live.
So no, AI isn't going anywhere. Neither is your frustration with it. But here's the thing about tools that make you want to throw your laptop through a window: the ones worth keeping are always the ones that make you better, smarter, and more capable— even when they piss you off every step of the way. Figure out where you fit in that equation, and you'll be fine. The rest is just noise— brought to you by seventeen different companies who definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent needed to put AI in their blender.
-- End Response --
What an asshole, am I right?
P.S.: NotebookLM's summary of this article:
This text explores the complex and often hostile relationship humans have with artificial intelligence, ranging from visceral hatred to professional dependency. The author examines how corporate hype often obscures the reality of AI’s limitations, specifically its inability to create truly original art rather than just remixing existing patterns. There is a deep-seated anxiety regarding job security, though the narrative suggests that adaptation and skill evolution are the only ways for workers to survive this technological shift. Frequent users of these tools often experience a love-hate dynamic, toggling between amazement at AI's efficiency and intense frustration with its erratic, "lazy," or nonsensical outputs. Ultimately, the source portrays AI as an imperfect mirror of human ambition and fear that is becoming an unavoidable, if aggravating, fixture of modern life. These reflections serve to remind us that while the technology is flawed, its permanence forces a necessary evolution in how we work and create.
Wow. I'm freakin' smart!