Would you really give up ChatGPT to shut down data centers? Tech CEO highlights the hypocrisy of some AI critics

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

https://www.techspot.com/news/114234-would-you-really-give-up-chatgpt-shut-down.html

[u/big-red-aus]

His company, Verb, is a US data marketplace that lets people earn money by selling access to their personal data to companies. It connects buyers seeking data for AI training and other uses with individuals willing to share it. Users choose what information to share and set a minimum selling price.

Beschloss says Verb currently has around 25,000 users

Fuck me, that's really not a lot of people, we have more users than that for our crazy expensive ultra niche industrial software we develop. Why the fuck is anyone listening to this nobody?

[u/WideHuckleberry1 → u/big-red-aus]

1. Say some rage bait nonsense

2. Bloggers pick up on it 

3. Everybody is clowning you for saying the stupid thing 

4. People know your tiny company exists and you've got your company name in a popular topic boosting your SEO discoverability 

[u/AltairLSAM → u/WideHuckleberry1]

That's how it'd work if the economy was still real. What's really happening is that AI stockbrokers will pick up on his AI company's existence, buy millions worth of stock, and he'll become insanely rich in the process. That's all that anything is anymore.

[u/CryoWaveSurfer → u/big-red-aus]

Instagram follower body count of a bullshit company

[u/BlatantConservative → u/CryoWaveSurfer]

Yeah maybe 25,000 pageviews on their site per month.

[u/calidriel → u/big-red-aus]

what a disgusting business model, preying on desperate people to sell their personal info. what kind of bottom feeding creep comes up with something like that

[u/NightSpaghetti]

"You say you are against drugs, but would you be able stop taking heroin?" --Heroin addict

[u/_DrDigital_ → u/NightSpaghetti]

* street pusher

[u/IllllIIIllllIl → u/_DrDigital_]

In this case I think it’s one of those dealers who also gets ripped on their own supply

[u/notforpoern → u/IllllIIIllllIl]

But also like- we don't have to give up chatgpt? 99% of people are using it for the most basic shit like help with writing emails.

But honestly even the most basic offline local model can handle most of what people need now. Hell I can run gemma 4 locally on my phone with pocketpal or qwen 3.8 on my i5 school computer with lm studio or jan ai, and it easily replaces chatgpt.

So to the assholes saying "Yet you participate in society": no we don't want or need your fucking data centers. We can have chatgpt and not burn down the fucking planet.

YOU need data centers to build your eye of sauron flock of palantir skynet bullshit. WE barely tolerate your existence.

[u/Daztur → u/NightSpaghetti]

Yeah the idea that not using AI would be some sort of life changing sacrifice is just confusing to me.

[u/Mahoganytooth → u/Daztur]

I once had a guy say to me "If you hate AI so much I'd like to see you get through a day without using it at all" and that's like addict language to me

I do not "use ai" as a rule. The last time I sought out AI was in the infancy of the technology with those websites that generated people that don't exist.

[u/Takkarro → u/Mahoganytooth]

I've seen that kind of mentality from people before and I agree with you it's almost always addict mentality. There's no way you can go an entire day without vaping or without having a drink after work, when I don't smoke anything at all and I drink alcohol maybe once a year if that

The issue is for these people whatever it is that they are using or in this case abusing, they use it so much that they cannot fathom other people not also using it and that's the issue. Still their own fault at the end of the day because they are using or doing something that is actively harmful to them despite knowing that it is actively harmful.

[u/Xytak → u/Takkarro]

And then the gaslighting! Just yesterday I encountered a Redditor saying, and I quote the relevant parts:

You’re getting at the part that matters most: accountability erodes when a party learns it can turn misconduct into a loyalty test. That’s the dangerous shift: the defense is no longer about behavior. It’s about belonging. That’s not a healthy democracy. That’s loyalty outranking principle.

I work in technology. That text is clearly LLM output and he didn't even try to disguise it. My God, it's so obvious. But when called on it, how did he respond?

"Well maybe I just learned proper English."

It's like... dude. I'm not yelling at you because you used proper English, I'm yelling at you because the comment is literally a perfect example of LLM output. You're not fooling anyone.

[u/TopTittyBardown → u/Daztur]

It’s like they forgot that a couple years ago nobody used any of this shit and we were totally fine

[u/arachnophilia → u/TopTittyBardown]

the issue is that things can get so ingrained in society that it's hard to go back. like, in 1980 we were all fine without the internet. but what happens if the internet just vanishes tomorrow? how much of our commerce and day to day lives just... shut down?

AI bros imagine a present where AI is like that. but they're jumping the gun. like, if my youtube algorithm just reverted to people i'm subscribed to, my phone photos required manual editing, and spellcheck broke... i'd be okay, ya know?

[u/Hautamaki → u/arachnophilia]

We've had spell check since at least 1994, we don't need ai for that

[u/grahamalondis → u/Daztur]

They think, or at least hope, that we're all already completely dependent on it and have forgotten how to do everything.

[u/lonevine → u/NightSpaghetti]

In this case, it's the dealer, the chemist and druglord all rolled into one evil cloud.

[u/locoyt]

Id not only give up AI, I'd happily get rid of the ceos as well.

[u/t3nsi0n_ → u/locoyt]

yeah - they went about it all wrong. Here let me shove this down your throat in every which way, on top of it, gonna destroy parts of the country even when 90% of the community vote against it, steal your water, jack up your prices…. ohh what do you mean you don’t want it???! —— like really?

[u/mrtrololo27 → u/t3nsi0n_]

They all act like such rapists and abusers with it too, it's sick. "This is happening whether you like it or not" "there's nothing you can do to stop it" "ai is here and its not going away" fuck every one of these creeps, lock em up

[u/Sweetwill62 → u/mrtrololo27]

"Copy and paste machine, I can no longer do my job without you even though 4 years ago I was more than capable of doing so. Please copy and paste machine, don't go away." Pathetic.

[u/zerodollarart → u/t3nsi0n_]

That's what is so absurd about this statement, they baked it into everything as a default and are now saying "Oh but will you stop using it?"

[u/mxzf → u/zerodollarart]

Yeah, it's laughable because I've been fighting to disable it in so many places. I'm begging you to let me stop using it in general. Like, I don't mind using it when I go looking for AI to use because I have a specific problem I want to give it, but I don't need Google Slides trying to offer to spice up my three bullet points for an internal meeting with AI.

[u/3-DMan → u/mxzf]

Yeah when I view a pdf it now has three fucking popups about AI I have to close. I just want to read the fucking pdf.

[u/EamonBrennan → u/zerodollarart]

I want to stop using it. I really do. It is impossible for me to stop because it's baked into every fucking program I use with no way to disable it.

• Google: Every search has an AI result. I'm using DuckDuckGo now.

• Windows 11: You have Copilot. You have to edit your registry in order to disable it, along with Microsoft continuing to remove any way to disable it. I use Windows 10 at home and my work uses Windows 11 without AI for security reasons.

• Internet Browsers: They put AI in the fucking browser. Using Firefox at work, but haven't switched from Chrome at home because I'm trying to find extensions similar to the ones I already have.

• My phone: Has AI installed by default, turning off "smart features" removes a majority, but not all, of the AI. Have to root it to actually remove the AI fully.

Thank god Steam makes games report if they use AI.

[u/TeTrodoToxin4 → u/zerodollarart]

They also make it so to not use it, you have to jump through some extra hoops.

I don’t need an AI summary for every google search. I’m not going to trust it anyway.

It’s also something I can’t really use for work emails because I need to give actual details.

[u/DJayLeno → u/t3nsi0n_]

Plus it's gonna steal your job and replace all the media you enjoy with souless slop. Honestly it's wild to me that any non-billionare non-sociopath is on board with the current trajectory.

Yeah it can do some cool stuff, but it's not worth the cost. (Unless you are one of the billionaire tech moguls, in which case you will get all the future benefits. All the painful long-term costs are paid by the public)

[u/waits5 → u/t3nsi0n_]

The constant talk of 90% unemployment did not help their PR.

[u/CosmopolitanIdiot → u/waits5]

When they admit that there is a non zero chance it could kill us all in 10 years probably didn't help either.

[u/lampcouchfireplace → u/locoyt]

Tech people really over estimate how much other people rely on AI.

Im an electrician. In my day to do life the only time I use AI is when a google search gives me an AI overview answer for a low stakes query that I don't need to depend on being totally accurate.

I'm not sure what i should be using it for otherwise. I dont need it for work. I dont want a chatbot friend or girlfriend. I dont want to make porn deepfakes of people I know. I find writing, drawing and playing my guitar enjoyable and don't want to offload the work.

I get that there are useful applications for the technology, but acting like it has immediately become indispensable to all humans is stupid.

Some people have really centered their lives around it. Lots of us see it as a bit of a novelty.

[u/usrlibshare → u/lampcouchfireplace]

Tech person here. Most of us don't rely on AI nearly as much as the ai bros would make people believe.

[u/Strange_Airships → u/usrlibshare]

Another tech person here. It’s wild how hard the c-suite tries to push AI on us. Like, we were all doing just fine without it less than five years ago. We’ll continue to do just fine without it.

[u/CyberHippy → u/Strange_Airships]

I'm so fucking happy that our management is anti-AI (I'm on the management team) - our industry (print management software) is absolutely FLOODED with AI marketing by our competitors.

Some customers want us to add AI, but can't give us a real explanation of WHY.

Others are very happy that we're not going down that path because they like predictability.

For us, it's a matter of dependability and accuracy, but also security! We have municipal and college print-shops using our software, security is a top concern for them and honestly with all the rumors of AI "breaking free" of it's constraints we just can't imagine incorporating any into our workflows.

But more importantly: we can't find a problem that it solves, that we can't solve with good programming.

[u/paklab → u/CyberHippy]

As a librarian who uses print management software THANK YOU for not throwing in AI bullshit. Every time a vendor sends me a survey or a sales call I tell them "I will think your product is worse and you're not developing the features we really need if you're promoting a bunch of AI stuff in it."

[u/TheTacoInquisition → u/paklab]

Keep doing that, please. I'm a software engineer and when *customers* are demanding work on features that help them, rather than stuff that sounds cool, it can change the conversation for the business.

I will HAPPILY add some AI features if it's going to solve a real customer problem and there's not a decent way to do it without. I will NOT be happy shoving AI into a product just because marketing want to add "now with fooAI!" into their material. Customers have a lot of power in smaller companies to help shape the direction

[u/CyberHippy → u/TheTacoInquisition]

Fucking bingo.

It's a tool, we're evaluating whether that tool will be useful.

So far, we haven't found a purpose beyond marketing that we have AI.

[u/Peeeeeps → u/Strange_Airships]

Also in tech and I hate how much it's being pushed on us. We had an innovation day recently and we were told that we have to use AI for our idea.

It can also be quite dumb. At the beginning of the year I was struggling to figure something out so I figured I'd see what AI said. It told me about some open source project on Github that sounded perfect for what I needed. Well, it turns out that the project was completely deleted a couple years ago and wasn't actually available.

[u/Unlucky-Candidate198 → u/Peeeeeps]

Pushed on your for propaganda reasons. Basically, be good little piggies and train your future replacements, like they want.

Because see, the AI CEOs have already voiced their opinions on the peasant class and AI, in that, they’re trying to basically eradicate said class. We get replaced with AI for nearly everything, while the remainder fight for the scraps that’re left.

If you don’t believe me, go look up interviews with Sam Altman or Peter Thiel to figure out just how far those ghouls will go in their extermination of the peasant class. Trim the fat while keeping their own group intact. Exactly like fascism, except now via technological means.

[u/greiton → u/Peeeeeps]

We had an innovation day recently and we were told that we have to use AI for our idea

This Screams CEO sank way too much money into AI development and is now desperate for someone to actually come up with an economically viable use case for it.

[u/Azuras_Star8 → u/Strange_Airships]

Yes, but the investors will be happy and they are who you truly work for.

Now quit thinking and do your job.

[u/brainmusic → u/usrlibshare]

Another Tech Person here. I hate how it has empowered the dumbest employees. Not because, people are trying to better themselves / learn more. It's because they won't do the bare minimum when using AI. They treat the result set as gospel. There's no validation or even questioning the results.

[u/GrenHamblett → u/usrlibshare]

It was more of a hindrance and security hole at my last job. From our end, we could ask the proprietary AI to authorize things that would just go unnoticed by our oh-so-busy superiors. But like, it would just go ahead and authorize us. If I was in charge I would have been concerned about a rogue digital manager going over my head, but it just bypassed that nonsensical middle-management position to let us actually do our job.

So idk, make of that what you will. It was really stupid.

[u/Sirsalley23 → u/GrenHamblett]

So basically AI proved that middle management wasn’t needed lol.

Management typically protects and looks after itself first and foremost, but when push comes to shove, there’s no more lower-level or entry level roles to automate away to AI, next they’re going to start purging from the bottom rungs of middle management.

I was just at a fortune 100 company, and watched it happen in the year I was there. First it started with the pre-canned HR/legal approved blanket statements by upper management and the C-suite, then people in the call center type roles started “using” AI to “maximize workflow” and make their roles easier/efficient, when in reality they were basically implementing it, training it, giving feedback, and overseeing it as the company began to expand and fine tune their proprietary AI tools. Now almost half or more of the call center people are all sitting around handcuffed to their workstations waiting while being actively threatened with performance management plans if they go yellow in teams for more than 5 mins (don’t forget they have nothing to do for up to an hour or more at a time). All while they wait for a handful of pissed off calls from people arguing with the AI until it transferred them to live agent.

Anybody that had the skills/experience/education to post out to a different department already have or are given priority for new internal openings vs other roles, which killed chances for internal transfers for people in roles not being automated like mine. Then the company’s whole promise of “give us 6 months to a year” in your roles then you can post out to try something else are non-existent right now, and its their typical hiring season and internal openings season, and there’s like 1/3 of the usual jobs opening up and same goes for outside hiring for the year.

[u/Ok_Astronomer_6501 → u/usrlibshare]

The thing is they want you to rely on it more so their useless invention has some use finally, but it'll never be as useful as they think and it definitely won't make back the trillions invested into ai so these companies will crash hard in the near future

[u/awkward___silence → u/usrlibshare]

But every Reddit post tells me all programmers use ai all the time!

Forgot the /s

[u/AwesomeNinja77 → u/lampcouchfireplace]

Tech person here.

My experienced team members use it sparingly. It's a useful tool for aggregating information and getting an overview, occasionally for automation. Some of our junior team members need to be monitored for relying on it. They think it helps them produce better code faster.

The rest of us think it causes rewrites and or wasted time poking at the Skinner box hoping for good results. Plus we notice very low skill growth for those that over use it.

Sample set of 1, but that's my experience.

[u/mxzf → u/AwesomeNinja77]

Some of our junior team members need to be monitored for relying on it. They think it helps them produce better code faster.

I'm struggling with this with some junior devs too. They keep saying stuff like "we could be more productive" and "we're too risk-adverse, sometimes things need to break to move faster" and I'm over here pushing back because I've seen what happens when you rush the code base and create a lot of tech debt and it's miserable to work with. I get that they just see structure and code review as speed bumps in the way of getting work done, but they exist for a reason.

I feel like the grumpy old man, but I really have been where they are and done what they've done and felt it bite me in the ass along the way. No, I didn't have AI to lean on in the process, but that's why I learned from my mistakes and became a senior dev through the process.

[u/nonotan → u/mxzf]

"we could be more productive" and "we're too risk-adverse, sometimes things need to break to move faster"

... do real people talk like this? I'm also a software engineer with plenty of juniors around me who are clearly not learning a single thing because they use LLMs as a crutch, but I guess I should be glad at least they don't talk like corporate drone caricatures.

[u/Cemckenna → u/AwesomeNinja77]

I worked at a company that was pushing it for everything. I replaced a guy who AI-answered his way through the interview and was fired after 3 weeks because he had no idea what he was doing. 

I quit after 7 months because AI was everywhere to the point I no longer had any sort of respect for my coworkers. I worked in tech for 15 years, even led engineering at an ai-focused startup, but it was machine learning and filtering, not an LLM. LLMs just suck.

[u/rotervogel1231 → u/Cemckenna]

I have a colleague who runs a department that is severely short-staffed, and upper management keeps piling on more work than the team can handle. This person seems to believe they can AI their way out of everything.

Yeah, good luck with that.

They're the type of individual who will answer a question with, "My research says that..." and then copies and pastes a wall of text that clearly came from a chatbot.

[u/Cemckenna → u/rotervogel1231]

Yeah, I can’t with those people. 

I almost had a menty b last week when I found out my beloved cousin is all in on AI. I offered to build him an app as a present for the business he’s starting, and he told me he’d “just have one of his agents do it.”

Oh okay, cool. Well I guess I’ll take my unconditional love and support and shove it up my ass, then. 

[u/Time-Box128 → u/lampcouchfireplace]

yeah i enjoy writing and design and research and human connection. ai sucks balls

[u/npsimons → u/locoyt]

That exploding billionaire comic didn't go far enough.

[u/sloanesquared → u/locoyt]

Exactly. Not only would I be more than happy to give it up, I think humanity would arguably be better off without it. The brain rot it is causing, especially in kids, is terrifying.

[u/Antique-Quantity-608 → u/locoyt]

BURN IT ALL DOWN BABY.

[u/YouSmellLikeHospitol → u/Antique-Quantity-608]

Recycle it into renewable energy!

[u/Training_Mistake_760 → u/locoyt]

And all of politicians they bribed

[u/ShujaaWaDunia → u/locoyt]

Throw in the reps that took donations from these companies and proceeded to vote against their constituents' best interests by approving massive data centers in the middle of residential communities....

[u/OrigamiMarie → u/locoyt]

If I could stop seeing "AI Overview" (and get the old, good search results back", get rid of the new data centers (old ones are fine, they're what runs the Internet), and lose the political influence and other unfortunate effects of billionaires all at once . . . I mean, I wouldn't ask for Christmas or birthday gifts for multiple years.

[u/barejokez → u/locoyt]

All of my ai usage has been against my will.

[u/2hurd → u/locoyt]

Was about to write exactly that. CEOs, techbros and billionaires, get rid of them all.

[u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

In a minute

[u/Color_Me_Softly → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

Easiest decision ever

[u/not_right → u/Color_Me_Softly]

Yeah what's the downside?

[u/Unusual_Sherbert_809 → u/not_right]

Seriously, what do the CEOs expect people to reply to that with?

99% of people in the planet: "Oooh nooo, I have to write my own emails again? The horror!!"

Trust us, we'll live.

Honestly the amount of justifications tech CEOs use to push AI down our collective throats is ridiculous. I've no idea if/when the AI bubble will pop, but I will gladly use their AI (if still available) to read about it while enjoying a nice, seasonal drink.

[u/trashmoneyxyz → u/Unusual_Sherbert_809]

Tech CEOs are trying to make us forget chatgpt has only been around in force for like, a couple years. I'm pretty sure people will survive by doing the thing they did a couple years ago, before the AI wave was everywhere

[u/Sa0t0me → u/trashmoneyxyz]

Just bring back stackexchange to its former glory , fix Reddit’s search and that would easily replace AI for coding stuff . Also Google without Ad slop would be nice .

[u/BC_Sativa → u/Sa0t0me]

Google has gone downhill faster than any company/service I can recall.

From the best search by far, to nearly unusable slop, in like two years. I set my browser's default search to Wikipedia now.

Even Bing is better.

[u/justaddwhiskey → u/Unusual_Sherbert_809]

I wasn’t writing my own emails anyway, half of them are just lightly modified templates I copy paste from a word doc.

[u/Bart_Yellowbeard → u/not_right]

My coworkers have to learn to do their jobs again?

[u/guardianz → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

In less than a minute.

[u/Cjkrythos → u/guardianz]

It's almost like most people already gave up on AI and the push for ai is entirely driven by billionaire investor circlejerks

[u/Illustrious_Donkey61 → u/guardianz]

Humanity lived without it for thousands of years. I'm sure we could live without it for thousands more

[u/VeraStrange → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

Super easy, barely an inconvenience.

[u/Bon-Bon-Boo → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

Why so long?

[u/Xamonir → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

Already done it.

[u/ninjiple → u/Xamonir]

Never had it

[u/Claptown420 → u/VirtualAmoeba3017]

Millisecond

[u/RainWorldWitcher]

"give up" implies it was ever useful to me in the first place. Get rid of it, thanks

[u/mini_apple → u/RainWorldWitcher]

Seriously. I have never once used ChatGPT, and on the rare occasion that I use Google search, I always append -ai. This shit isn’t useful to me in any way, shape, or form. 

[u/RainWorldWitcher → u/mini_apple]

It's hilarious how many AI companies are saying anti-ai people are dependent on ai. As if anything I do in my life ever needed AI and I actively avoid the random-wrong-machine.

[u/brufleth → u/RainWorldWitcher]

Because they've shoved AI into everything and now every time people use it (usually without actually caring to use it) they count it as a successful use. They're aggressively padding their numbers. Most people were fine without it and only use it bec ause it is shoved into things they were fine without it being part of.

Plenty of us would actively like it to get out of things they've shoved it into too. It has made Google Maps worse. Google search results are worse for having the AI trash tacked on the front of them. Our phones are constantly trying to make us use AI features we didn't ask for and don't want. Etc.

[u/machine4891 → u/brufleth]

Half of the software I use, I need to debloat from AI "features" first. There is no helpful tech-support anymore, just "Ask our AI consultant" and you feel like idiot afterwards. AI is policing me with stupid puzzle games to check if I'm, god forbid, not another AI.

And don't get me even started with human-like AI voices that phone me with offers 10 times more frequently now. My parents had really hard time distinguishing these machines from actual humans. Bots are now dominating discussion forums made for humans. pushing radical political ideas to human own detriment Such life changing improvements...

[u/Will_I_Are → u/RainWorldWitcher]

It's a little scary/sad too.

[u/mini_apple → u/RainWorldWitcher]

The AI “industry” has been propping up the US economy for a couple years now, with their shell game of imaginary dollars. None of them can afford for us all to realize what a sham it is. 

[u/pushingdaiseez → u/RainWorldWitcher]

It implies I even use it at all. The only time I technically use it is when I do a Google search and Google posts their bullshit ai summary at the top of the page without my asking for it. I just scroll past because it's not what I want

[u/DJBudGreen]

Absolutely. Give us back the original Boolean search algorithm Google used to use 10 years ago when their motto was still do no harm and we can find all the answers ourselves.

I don't need to have a conversation with an AI bot. I don't use ChatGPT that much anyways so yeah, shut down the data centers. I won't mind at all.

[u/ObsidianBlk → u/DJBudGreen]

Just wanted to point out, Google's motto used to be "Don't be Evil". The "Do No Harm" motto is actually part of the hippocratic oath for doctors. :)

[u/anothersadtransgirl → u/ObsidianBlk]

Having a Scrubs moment where JD confuses the two and imagines walking in on his interns in black robes sacrificing a patient to Satan and he passively admonishes them.

[u/M_V_Agrippa → u/DJBudGreen]

Remember ~1999-2014 when Google search returned the results you expected and not just multiple pages of e-commerce? Pepperidge farm remembers

[u/Bencetown → u/M_V_Agrippa]

It actually returned multiple results for you to peruse through too. Now, it gives 20 different pages, all with the same copy/pasted article that was obviously written by AI 🙄

[u/geryon84 → u/Bencetown]

For the past 10 years I've worked for several companies as an engineer on marketing teams. It's been such a surreal eye-opening experience learning how much effort goes in to gaming google search placement.

In all the places I've worked, they've ignored the recommendations from the engineers who build the software and have access to diagnostic tools in favor of paying SEO consulting companies 6-figure contracts to run the same reports. Then they push out a bunch of "keyword-targeted landing pages". If any number trends positively, the consultant says "see how great this new strategy is working?" and if any number trends downwards, they say "the market is really shifting and our competitors are having an impact on our campaign performance."

Then google updates its algorithm every 6 months and they re-up the contract to help guide us to success with the update. It's so dumb.

[u/medforddad → u/Bencetown]

Now, it gives 20 different pages, all with the same copy/pasted article that was obviously written by AI

This is what I absolutely hate. Google used to talk all the time about how they'd punish low quality, obviously copy/pasted garbage. Your pagerank would go down if you were caught using underhanded techniques to get higher in the results. Now they've just decided to give up on all that? Let all the slop in that you possibly can?

Google used to be great for finding the diamonds in the rough, mailing list archives where the topic you were researching was discussed, personal pages where a professor had done a really good write up on the topic, newspaper articles written by a real person that wasn't just a poorly disguised advertisement, etc. They were so good at it that they encouraged that kind of content. Now they seem to just be encouraging "the rough" and letting it completely overwhelm "the diamonds".

[u/MyDickIs3cm → u/DJBudGreen]

Google search started down the path of enshittification in 2018 when they fired the guy that had been head of search since founding because he wouldn't make search worse to keep people on the page longer. They replaced him with the guy who ran yahoo! search from #1 to being a bing wrapper. The AI just made it worse from there.

[u/lacunadelaluna → u/DJBudGreen]

Removing the "do no harm" is so disturbing, moreso than never saying it in the first place. I've also never used chat gpt, go to actual Web results, and don't use it in emails etc. I tried out Night Cafe for fun to my great shame, but didn't use it again but the time I realized what it was doing (poorly). I started off avoiding AI because I value and appreciate the use of my brain, then many more reasons became apparent to avoid it.

[u/barrosoOso → u/DJBudGreen]

Google used to be fucking amazing. You could type in half a word and as long as you added the word lyrics, you were gonna find that song. Now you can copy and paste the entire song verbatim and still not get the right answer.

[u/buckleyschance]

I use LLMs regularly, given the current circumstances. I'd delete them from the Earth in a second if I had the power.

[u/southflhitnrun → u/buckleyschance]

I use 3 regularly and would welcome their destruction.

[u/psioniclizard]

Do people not remember the world existed before 2020?

Also there is a difference between regular data centers and what they are building.

[u/Bromlife → u/psioniclizard]

I miss that world.

Am I doing more?

Sure. But I would happily go back to doing less.

[u/Pilot-Wrangler → u/psioniclizard]

Yeah, every time I say we don't need these data centres, some mouth breather/bot/Russian troll comes back almost immediately with "you say while posting on the internet" or " Stop using the internet then and go touch grass"...

[u/bonwerk → u/psioniclizard]

Corporations creating AI models want people to think that they cannot function without them.

[u/GlitteringRate6296 → u/psioniclizard]

Yes! And it was a hell of a lot better than today!

[u/DarkAlatreon]

So, return to life as it was like 5 years ago? Bro wants to make it sound like we'll be reverting to the 1800's.

edit: Yes yes I do realise I overshot the timeline, it's much less than 5 years.

[u/Ulysses502 → u/DarkAlatreon]

It hasn't even been 5 years, the general populace isn't even into widespread adoption yet. That baby isn't even old enough to roll over yet

[u/jt004c → u/DarkAlatreon]

Every keeps saying it was five years ago like we've all been using AI for 5 years on the regular. It's been like 2 years since it's actually been on anyone's radar.

[u/cmkn → u/jt004c]

It’s been a looooong 2 years. 😅😫

[u/S-Clair]

I'd shut down data centres specifically to get rid of ChatGPT

[u/Medical_Birthday2893]

CEO addicted to managing his digital agents confused why others don’t care about having the tech

I get why managers and expects are addicted to this crap. It’s in line with their work flow. Demand results. Do none of the work. Inflate ego. Take all of the credit.

[u/Thr0w_It_4ll_Away → u/Medical_Birthday2893]

For real, that’s exactly how it is.

This CEO sounds like that one comic “you want to improve society and yet you participate in it” with the insufferably smug character.

[u/ByTheHammerOfThor → u/Medical_Birthday2893]

And don’t pay anyone*

Some time later:

“Why is no one buying our product? Why is there an angry, hungry mob outside? Is that smoke I smell?”

[u/Catseye_Nebula]

...Yes???

THey are overestimating how dependent we are on this shit. I never even downloaded any of it.

[u/ByTheHammerOfThor → u/Catseye_Nebula]

This is one of the most out of touch headlines I have ever read.

The VAST majority of people do not use AI for anything more than a few fun inquires before losing interest.

And among those who use it, I bet, again, the VAST majority would, if they could press a button, erase it from existence.

It makes people dumber. It provides incorrect information. It feeds into people’s own feedback loops and drives them further into madness.

It requires everyone, all the time, to question if the things we see and hear are even real. Not enough people are reckoning with that reality.

It drives up the cost of computer components —which are now in everything, making everything from appliances to cars to children’s toys more expensive.

That’s not even mentioning the cost in water and electricity bills.

It takes up land that could be HOUSING. Something we ACTUALLY FUCKING NEED AND USE EVERY DAY.

I could go fucking on but god fucking damn it ALMOST EVERYONE WOULD LOVE FOR IT TO NOT TO EXIST.

I can’t wait for this bubble to fucking burst.

[u/TheDeadlyDonut → u/ByTheHammerOfThor]

Yes it’s not ChatGPT those data centers are being built for. I wish someone would get that straight for the public

[u/WillyGoat2000 → u/ByTheHammerOfThor]

User here- it all the time at work- I’m practically required to.

To be honest, it’s pretty good- I can do more now than I could a year ago because I can make a robot build my workflows, and I can build in the ability to audit and double check things. Note I don’t save lives or build rockets or heart monitors, I wouldn’t trust the technology to do that.

But, as you say, if I could push a button and delete it from existence, and that would stop families from having their drinking water sucked up or forcing them to live next 1000 jet turbines, I’m pushing the button. We’re simply doing more harm than good at this point, across the globe. Also, do I get to delete social media with this same button? Because also yes.

[u/Precarious3145 → u/Catseye_Nebula]

Exactly. It's like asking if I would really give up smoking if it means shutting down the smoking industry; never used it and it offers nothing to society. Shut it down.

[u/michiganstrange]

Can we make that happen or

[u/blolfighter → u/michiganstrange]

The Ukrainians have shown us what to do with unwanted data centers.

[u/TheRealCuriousWombat]

"Could you imagine not smoking crack?", asked the crack dealer to those that never took crack.

[u/Slight_Double9751 → u/TheRealCuriousWombat]

This is such a good analogy. It feels like watching people develop mental illness in real time.

[u/HBreckel]

I’ve never used it ever, so yes. The only AI I’ve ever touched was against my will because of google search.

[u/ihavea_purplenurple → u/HBreckel]

I’ve used it and it ruined my writing so I had to rewrite my reports. Never used it again 🤷‍♂️ plus I need practice in writing and I’m not going to learn if AI does it for me.

[u/RunningPath → u/ihavea_purplenurple]

I've never used it but I have reviewed scientific manuscripts that used it and the writing is bland and uncanny. Some journals now allow authors to use ChatGPT as long as they acknowledge it at the end, but I am very opposed, partly on principle but also because the result is just bad.

[u/BlueFeathered1 → u/HBreckel]

If you put -ai after your search phrase it's supposed to bypass those results.

[u/MickCollins]

Can't give up something I already don't fucking use. Yes, fuck your data center.

[u/berael]

Would you really give up ChatGPT to shut down data centers?

"Yes"

Next difficult question?

[u/ajpinton]

Yes, without a second thought.

[u/eggstinked]

I would give up all current technologies and go back to 1991 and be perfectly content and I'm pretty sure the world would be a better place in general.

[u/Scarpheel → u/eggstinked]

I'd still like to keep the medical tho

[u/BungleBums → u/Scarpheel]

Definitely keep the AI where it actually belongs, for sure. ChatGPT can go hang out with everyone's forgotten Neopets tho.

[u/TheSadBantha]

Yes, without even looking back for a second

[u/Puntley]

Would you really give up Meth to shut down meth houses?? Meth cook highlights the hypocrisy of some meth critics.

[u/geomouse]

I don't use chaltgpt so yeah, no problem at all

[u/Keskers]

Can't give up something I never started using.

[u/ElvgrenGil]

Has it really been long enough for LLMs to have become so ubiquitous? Have people used them so frequently that they’re already intrinsically tied to habits and routines? I doubt it. Anyone who “can’t function” without LLM chatbots has bigger problems with their personality and skill sets. Jeebus Murphy

[u/SippinOnHatorade → u/ElvgrenGil]

For some, yes. I have a friend who is a bit slow, for lack of a better term, and doesn’t know much about processes and isn’t good at writing. So he’s using ChatGPT to spit out business plans, travel plans, shoot, chapters of a book that is supposed to be his memoir.

He got visibly angry the other day when he learned the “ChatGPT” app he paid $5 for and downloaded had additional paywalls. And also that the app only used Chat as the model and wasn’t linked to his web browser account on desktop. Honestly, I’m pretty sure he’s running work emails he receives through Chat to draft his responses.

The worst of it was when he used it to make a social media post for a nonprofit we both work with. The post was about a recent event we held, and Chat got all the speakers wrong, and he was like “how was I supposed to know?” And I replied, by proofreading and looking at our event page?

Like I was fine with his incessant usage until it started affecting the projects I am a part of

[u/amstrumpet → u/ElvgrenGil]

Yeah the most I ever used AI for was before I switched default search engines away from Google so I don’t get the AI summary of my searches.

[u/southpaytechie → u/ElvgrenGil]

I know a guy who really enjoys fantasy football and just had AI draft all his teams this year. I can't fathom it. Also regularly asks it things like where he should eat. Why the fuck are you asking a math problem where you should eat?

[u/this_curain_buzzez → u/southpaytechie]

What’s even the fun of fantasy football at that point? How quickly people decided to outsource thinking when given the chance has been extremely alarming to me.

[u/Murder_Bird_ → u/this_curain_buzzez]

Because you probably enjoy the thought process, research and effort it takes to build a team and see how it does. People like that just enjoy the dopamine of having something riding on a game. So…. Gambling.

[u/kevihaa → u/ElvgrenGil]

It’s Meth Heads declaring that they don’t understand how anyone could possibly function without Meth.

Also worth emphasizing that the handful of areas where LLM use has become ubiquitous, such as coding, don’t require giant data center absorb-all-human-knowledge styles of LLMs. Like, Claude being trained on every book ever written offers no benefit to Claude Code.

[u/TunaBlub → u/ElvgrenGil]

This

If anything I try to actively avoid AI, even with my searches.

It would make my life EASIER if it was gone, because it is so annoying sometimes to not get it pushed on you online.

[u/Baxtru]

I would go back to a landline, no internet and trips to an arcade to play games if all the AI broligarchs yeeted themselves immediately into the sun. Society would be better off.

[u/RLLCCR]

Yes, because I'm capable of reading and thinking.

[u/FataLombardi]

I never used GPT or any AI feature voluntarily, so yeah just get rid of them thanks

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

I'd pull the plug myself if given the option

[u/mrwafu]

Yes? My life is no different than it was before AI came in…. Except for technology being way more expensive. Fuck AI

[u/TheRealGlutenbob]

id rather the entire world go back to pre AI days. I work in IT

[u/gregorydgraham]

I don’t even use ChatGPT but Google’s stupid AI summary get forced on me every-time I try to learn something!

This is just hopium from people that have bet BIG and are about to fail miserably

[u/PangolinMandolin → u/gregorydgraham]

Add "-ai" to the end of your search and it won't show. Yes, it's annoying to add each time.

[u/stetslustig → u/gregorydgraham]

my favorite is whatsapp offering to summarize everytime someone texts me. Literally a text will be "ok" and whatsapp will offer to summarize it for me.

[u/porcelain_elephant]

I just want old fashioned search again. The stuff that didn't need the data centers.

[u/itsbenactually → u/porcelain_elephant]

I've been forcing my kids to scroll past the AI answer and learn how to actually search for the information they want.

Supports the website and the creator, saves resources if you can turn it off, and teaches them HOW to find information so that it's harder to lie to them.

[u/AstroEngineer314]

One cannot give up what one does not use.

[u/Wotmate01]

Don't threaten me with a good time.

I'm yet to see how ANY AI has made my life better.

[u/SciFi_Wasabi999 → u/Wotmate01]

Half my job is now explaining why someone's AI generated answer entirely misunderstands the very niche technical field I work in. It all sounds math-y when you don't know any better, but it's always wrong. So yeah, not having to read and respond to 3 pages of garbage talking points would be a net positive in my life. 

[u/MintyFresh771 → u/SciFi_Wasabi999]

I solved this by calling people who send me that crap and playing dumb. I make them explain it. In detail. And I do not let them off the hook, they have to talk to it. Even more so if they out rank me, I don’t want to misinterpret their meanings and verbiage after all.

[u/Alklazaris]

Why are they saying it like it's been around for years and is now so integrated in our infrastructure that we can't go without it?

[u/shmelse → u/Alklazaris]

Because they have sunk a lot of money into this, they are desperate to sell us on their bullshit, and people are resisting for some reason! Who can say why…

[u/WhenTheLightHits30]

I genuinely want to meet in the flesh a person who WOULDNT agree to that offer.

I know there are some pretty AI-brained people out there but I need to at least witness the tangible evidence of what kind of person would wholeheartedly say as much.

(Note; such person must also not have any financial ties to AI for justification)

[u/YourFriendNoo → u/WhenTheLightHits30]

I think it's a false dichotomy anyway.

I just don't believe the world will move on from AI if we don't let them build their data centers in the middle of our communities.

Ask your AI where tf to put it or how to build them so they aren't horrible neighbors. If it's the sorcerer you claim, it'll have a better answer than, "Ram it down their throats."

[u/ARobertNotABob]

checks notes In a fucking heartbeat.

What ChatGPT LLMs offer is definitely not worth the non-financial costs, and the financials are beginning to look awry, too.

And embedding "AI" in daily-used products to surreptitiously force engagement and then claiming we're using it, is the kind of underhandedness we have come to expect from tech CEOs.

EDIT: Grammar

[u/Wheat_Grinder]

If AI disappeared tomorrow I'd celebrate.

[u/Tolkien-Minority]

What the hell kind of question is that I don’t want the fucking thing in the first place lol

[u/jinreeko]

would you really give up ChatGPT

buddy I don't know how to tell you this, but I don't use ChatGPT

[u/frank_the_tank69]

To keep AI doing what it does now should not require more data centers. You want more data centers for your own ambitions. 

[u/Fl0riduh_Man]

Local meth addict confident that you can't do without meth. News at 11

[u/gnark → u/Fl0riduh_Man]

Meth dealer...

[u/TheGreatTimmyAT]

You don't have to sell it to me!

[u/SnakeJG]

Occasionally I use Google AI but that's only because they made normal Google so bad.  Like I used to be able to find answers in normal Google faster than I currently get them in AI Google (added bonus of no hallucinations) but their normal search is now so bad and polluted with ads that the AI is sometimes better. 

But yeah, if I could go back to Google without LLM attached, that'd be great.  I never used chat GTP, but my understanding is that people mostly use it like they used to use a Google search, so again, Google enshitified is the real driver of AI traffic

[u/Jayypoc → u/SnakeJG]

More often than not Im using AI because its forced on me. I have never once gone out of my way to specifically ask google ai/chatgpt/claude anything.

The access to information is great for some, but in my (secondhand) experience the information provided by AI summaries needs to be vetted for accuracy and those who are inclined to use it at all are probably the least likely to consider it might be incorrect.

The AI plug-ins that exist everywhere now within corporate workspace programs, etc is also a huge (and completely unnecessary) addition to the traffic inflation for AI. Nobody asked for this shit, I don't need AI to rephrase every single email I send. It's crazy how many people that I have been interacting with for years now all of a sudden have very professionally drafted emails. Most of them couldnt even be bothered to use punctuation before.

[u/Gh0st_Pirate_LeChuck]

It’s not even life-changing. It’s a faster search engine. Pull the fucking plug already.

[u/ConstableAssButt → u/Gh0st_Pirate_LeChuck]

They have changed my life. Not in a good way, and I don't even use them.

I run a programming community focused on gamedev in a niche language. Before LLMs, I was being asked questions by other users almost constantly, and getting a lot of offers to go into other peoples' projects and fix major problems for reasonable pay when the user couldn't understand / didn't have the tools to do the work themselves.

Since LLMs have become better at programming, more users are starting to rely on them for the questions I would have fielded. But here's the problem: The LLMs are easily made to do things wrong, and I'm not. These users that would have come to me and gotten a reality check about an approach that wasn't going to work are instead pushing back against the LLM and being reassured that approaches that won't work or are deeply flawed are fine or fixable. Worse, our niche language is VERY niche and poorly documented. So the LLMS frequently give good programming advice, but bad advice about our language and runtime environment. LLMs frequently recommend unnecessary "fixes" to functional code based on hallucinated problems (race conditions that don't exist due to the LLM fundamentally not understanding how time or execution context works).

There are fewer and fewer conversations between living users in my community because of it, and I completely understand why: Users don't like publicly risking asking dumb questions. Users don't like struggling to understand concepts or sometimes being told what they don't want to hear. Users don't like the interpersonal friction of other engineers and the delay of natural conversation. LLMs don't have any of these problems, so my community is the same size, but much lower activity as a result.

And it is hurting many of the projects that are coming out within that community. They are less stable, more bloated, and fewer public resources are being released. The community's participants are turning inward and becoming less capable of socializing with real human beings.

It is not good. Interpersonal communication isn't supposed to be seamless and easy. Solving hard problems shouldn't be effortless and fast. This isn't gatekeeping: This is forcing people to recognize that the ability to solve hard problems comes from struggling to solve slightly less difficult problems and building skill and knowledge in the process. The result doesn't really matter that much. The process is what matters, and LLMs have significantly disrupted it. The influences and exposures of communicating with other developers drives exposures you wouldn't be drawn to on your own. The developers that are relying on LLMs to do the work are coming out stunted in ways they are completely blind to.

The old guard of the community that's still around have realized we're the last generation. Those who are working in the environment now simply will not develop the skill, knowledge, or care to be stewards for the environment that we have constructed for them, the resources we have produced will rot, the documentation we wrote has been ingested, and the new guard simply will not produce their own. They are totally reliant on what we created, because it IS the training data. But they aren't going to create more because they are only interacting with the result of our scraped training data, but zero actual human beings. They have no incentive to create more documentation to better train the machine, much less actual human beings.

[u/JMHC]

The only real benefit I’ve gained from AI is being able to do my job faster, which isn’t a benefit for me, it’s for the company I work for.

[u/Funsized_eu]

How did we ever manage without them?

Oh yeah, just fine...

[u/iSadhak]

AI chatbots aren't as important in everyday people's lives as these CEOs think they are.

[u/jon13000]

Yes it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

No one sitting around thinking how we can fire 75% of the work force so we can have a chat bot.

[u/HomerDoakQuarlesIII]

Sounds like someone with Stockholm syndrome “Do you think you could make it on the outside, master gives us 3 bread and water meals a day in here!” But the master is a stochastic parrot.

[u/bootycuddles]

Yeah I don’t use it at all. I avoid AI everywhere I can. I have functioning brain cells.

[u/B-Glasses]

I don’t think anyone with an ounce of sense would say no to that. Chat and other similar programs have been a net negative since they became popular

[u/rarz]

Yes. I can get my work done and find solutions without ChatGPT.

[u/Minute_Attempt3063]

It has not cured cancer, it has ruined stock, it has ruined children in school, and it has ruined critical thinking of dumb people (who now have 0 chances of being critical of anything.)

So yes, I can be. Back to good old manual code writing, takes longer, yes, but more job stability, instead of being fired

[u/SlowCrates]

I can't stand how everything is "summarized" by AI these days. I hate the AI answers to searches. I just want a normal search function and I don't need your summaries. Fuck. The internet sucks now.

[u/Conor_Electric]

Yes 100%

A decent search engine is enough and we figured them out in the 90's

[u/Dangerous-LemonBar]

Yet another disingenuous question posed to provide cover for AI executives. The issues with data centers are legitimate. Utility customers should not have to subsidize data centers, and residential areas should not have to put up with noisy generators and cooling equipment. And no one is going stop ChatGPT.

The amount of disinformation is overwhelming.

[u/thagor5]

Who is actually saying they can’t love with out it. Lazy people? I would be fine

[u/LegitimateBeing2]

Lol I won’t be gaslit into thinking ChatGPT was ever a helpful resource

[u/wdtpw]

He's literally embodied the meme:

We should improve society somewhat,
yet you participate in society. Curious.
I am very intelligent.

[u/impioussaint]

never fucking used it so yes I would

[u/BootsOfProwess]

All of society would benefit from the absolute removal of AI facilitation. Youth would learn again. Jobs would come back.

[u/grayhaze2000]

Absolutely. I never use it, and I never will.

I love how they keep pushing the "everybody's using it" line, as if that's not very easily proven false. They basically use the same marketing techniques as toy manufacturers advertising to kids.

[u/Academic_Isopod_6190]

Humanity has managed for all of its existence without it. I managed the first 48 years of my life without it just fine. If the choice is surrender my children's futures to the likes of Altman, Modi, Zuckerberg and Thiel and their desciples, or carry on just the way things were, then yeah lets just carry on as we were before thanks. We'll be fine.

[u/scubastefon]

For the record, I absolutely would give up ChatGPT to get rid of data centers

[u/Situationlol]

Yea, I’d just go back to searching “[question] reddit” on google.

[u/reddittorbrigade]

We can live without ChatGPT or AI.

We have proven that.

[u/DiddykongOMG]

Does it count as giving it up if you dont use it?

[u/Oh_Little_Brain]

Never even used it once

[u/PartyClock]

We were doing just fine before ChatGPT we'll be just fine after its gone