Many people on Lemmy despise AI with a passion, and demand storefronts provide them with the ability to exercise their prejudice against developers choosing to use AI tools during development. I think it’s silly, but if we’re going to start judging developers based on the tools they used then we should expand the concept to the full extent. For example, many people here don’t like Microsoft, and so developers should be forced to disclose whether they used Windows, Visual Studio or GitHub in development so that people can discriminate on that basis.
Personally I think Apple is the worst company in the technology industry, and I would like to be able to see which developers used Apple hardware in development so I can boycott them and make sure none of my funds are inadvertantly going to pay Apple. We’re abandoning the old practice of simply judging software based on the end product, and instead we’re scrutinizing the creation process itself, so we shouldn’t stop at just AI usage. Let’s pick apart every development decision that would otherwise be invisible to the end user.
Why stop at AI? Using a Mac is far more unethical in my view. Let’s enable people to boycott on every single possible tool used, and not focus on a single one.
Yep, this is unpopular, so get an upvote.
Thanks, Mr. Foot. May the hair on your toes never fall out!
Very unpopular opinion.
The trouble with AI is it allows a gaming of consumers (dropping shovelwear, using review farms to boost it, cashing out, repeat) which reduces the overall quality of product on the market.
An AI flag warns people of this risk, and helps mitigate this harm.
I won’t go into the dubious legal status of AI content, but that is also a risk the consumer should be aware of.
You wouldn’t think so from the upvotes 🤔 Maybe there are more who think like me than either of us would have imagined.
I don’t disagree with your assessment, I’d just say that the same argument applies to empowering the creator of the tools in my argument. Giving money to Apple results in more e-waste, due to their corporate strategy of forced obsolescence, harming the environment for everyone.
I would disagree that your sentiment matches - my argument is that AI can strongly facilitate anti-consumer practices that directly impact the buyer.
You’re arguing on broader ethical grounds - it’s less direct.
Sorry if I’m being obtuse, as it’s not intentional, but I don’t understand. You don’t believe that Apple implements anti-consumer practices that directly impact the buyer? If so, and I’m understanding correctly, then we greatly disagree on that point. I’d say their impact is even more direct than that of AI.
Upvotes mean they agree the opinion is unpopular.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it’s something that’s widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Exactly. So the lack of upvotes implies my opinion is popular, no? At least when compared to the ratio of upvotes on the top comments.
I’m 99% sure you’re a troll.
I swear I’m not being obtuse, but for the purpose of my edification would you please define a troll by your own personal definition. Maybe I am, and just don’t realize it. I don’t believe so, but apparently silent observers agree with you.
You’re being intentionally obtuse. This is less an unpopular opinion and more a strawman that you can dominate. Gen AI end product is often low quality, hallucination prone, expensive and unreliable. Using AI to code also exponentially raises the likelihood that you do not fully understand “your” code and thus limited in improving it. AI hate us not a random “prejudice” or arbitrary “discrimination” but an evaluation of the final product and the limitations of the tool that made it.
It’s normal to continue arguments in your head when your upset, but those thoughts generally shouldn’t turn into posts.
I don’t believe I am being obtuse. I think we just have different perspectives, and that’s okay.
As I said in another analogy, some people are prejudiced against those with tribal tattoos, because they feel like it’s usurping cultural heritage. They would boycott a restaurant where the chef has such a tattoo, even though it’s a visual style of personal choice that in no way affects the food served. It’s the same thing with AI - people argue it’s appropriation of others efforts, and they refuse to eat at a restaurant where the menu designer used the tool on the menu.
Perhaps with this analogy you can better see the similarities in thinking?
Upvoted for a truly unpopular opinion. “Devs should disclose whether or they used a keyboard or a typewriter” defeats the purpose of anti-ai sentiment, which I believe is your intention. Good job, bozo.
He… Almost has a point. He’s likely so close. It’s actually painful to watch him fumble that hard.
It’s unpopular either way. But like damn it. He could have gotten there if he just tried a bit harder.
Maybe if he used to write this it could have helped him. Kek
Dangit! What part did I miss? I really should have told DeepSeek to scrutinize my analogy so it would pass muster.
Thanks, person who chose to insult me. It isn’t my intent to “defeat” anything - other than Apple’s Trump-like appeal. That is likely to be as successful as Lemmy’s attempt to defeat AI.
Using words like “prejudice” and “discriminate” implies a moral dimension that I don’t think applies here. There’s nothing inherently immoral about disapproving of AI use or not wanting to unwittingly consume AI-generated content.
I mean by definition it’s a moral stance. Morals literally by definition just mean the belief of what is right or wrong.
It’s basically impossible for any stance to not be a moral one on nearly everything. Prejudice and discrimination are entirely the correct words here.
The problem is the way people typically use these words makes it feel wrong to use them in this context in this fashion.
So despite them being technically correct. They feel wrong.
I’m not saying the user isn’t making a moral judgement, I’m saying the OP is implying a moral parallel to racism and bigotry that simply doesn’t exist here.
Thank you. They seem the right words to me, too, but I’m always open to alternatives in using the right words as I make a sincere effort to be exact in my vernacular.
They’re accurate by dictionary definition. Care to make alternative suggestions so I can improve the accuracy of my analogies?
My critique of your position is that you are intentionally using these words to imply immorality where there is none, not that you are using the words incorrectly.
In other words, I believe you’re trying to say that boycotting or calling out AI use is immoral in the same way that racism is immoral. If that’s not what you are trying to say, then I would suggest using different words.
I do believe it is an issue of morality, though. At least so far as people judging others for using AI. It’s no different from judging someone based on their haircut, their tattoos, or the clothes they’re wearing. All of these are choices.
Most people think that someone should have to disclose if they’re a sex offender, but why stop there? I think everyone should have to disclose whether or not they’ve ever done it missionary or doggy style.
Oooh, edgy. I could see some prudes making this argument unironically.
I had to upvote because both the title and text do qualify as unpopular by several standards. I suspect that it’s rage bait rather than an actual opinion though.
Just in case it isn’t bait, and is just unnecessarily aggressively worded, I agree with the underlying concept. I don’t think it would apply to OS levels just because it’s not relevant to the end user. No closed source os is going to be fully ethical. No corporate os can be either, imo, though I’m not as confident that a non profit is or isn’t at the same risk of bad behavior.
But yeah, we should all have some degree of information about fundamental decisions in the process of what we use. How much detail, what details, and who is obligated legally is the real difficulty. You make it too much of a pain in the ass, and bye-bye big segments of the FOSS dev community.
However, I think trying to pin it on the fact of AI existing and being treated as a bad thing is spurious thinking. That’s because there are already people that will object to and refuse to use software that’s significantly dependent on apple or Microsoft. Not a ton of people, but they’ve existed for decades. Others will refuse to use anything closed source. People do what you’re suggesting as well. Very, very rarely but some developers are quite open about some details of their hardware, and plenty will gladly talk about their os of choice and why they chose it.
So trying to shoehorn it into a false equivalency with ai doesn’t hold water even with that false equivalency in play. Supervising a generative llm or letting the llm do everything, vs running an os on hardware just aren’t the same thing at all.
Let’s be blunt nothing made by humans can be truely and purely “ethical” if for no other reason then ethics vary.
Plenty of things are on that sliding scale of mid ground where any reasonable person could go either way.
Ethics are what the person defining them believes they are. No more or less. There’s after all no such thing as universal ethics.
We get close with some things but they are almost universally the extreme ends.
Like unless we want to pull out the Nazi arguments saying something is always unethical is just hard to do.
Yeah, I’m on board with the all ethics being situational wagon. I’m just saying that weighing a given issue ethically is necessary in a complex society.
Thank you, you get it. Besides, when people making decisions are involved, it is indeed prejudice and discrimination. Refusing to eat at a restaurant that uses AI imagery is no different from refusing to eat there because the cook has a tattoo. Some people are just put off by the visual, even if it has no impact on the food.
I didn’t intend it as rage bait. It is my sincere opinion. I only post here because it seems ALL of my opinions are unpopular. Bully for me, no?
Given the mood here on Lemmy, I really don’t think my intentionally passive aggressive prose is unnecessary. This is literally a new culture war, and there are literally people on this platform saying they’ll make it their life’s mission to harass people who use AI.
Personally, I’m a realist, so I would rather see constructive solutions that aren’t adversarial. Such as instituting AI-usage tax that is paid out universally, so that everyone who contributes to what amounts to a social project to benefit from their unintended efforts.
I really do hate Apple with the same passion others hate AI, though, and I’d love to be able to exercise my own prejudices in the same way that people are currently exercising their prejudice against LLM technology. 😒
I mean, no, the passive aggressive thing isn’t necessary. Hell, I’m aggressive fairly often, I just don’t make the habit of assuming it’s okay and trying to justify it. Sometimes, I’m an asshole. If you’re also going to be an asshole with that kind of base assumption (which comes across pretty damn “look at me” edgelord), you gotta at least not pretend it’s acceptable.
That being said, I think you miss a lot of the fediverse nuance on the issue. There’s entire instances that a ai/llm friendly. There’s plenty of folks like me that will openly discuss their stance that the problems are about implementation, not the underlying idea or technology (what I think of as the FOSS AI crowd).
I’m also with you on apple, though I don’t waste hate on them over any other massive corporation fucking with the world.
I’m also with you on the heavy taxation idea, and would add heavy regulation to it. If we’re going to be fucked over by capitalist ai, at least give us a reacharound and ban non consensual anal.
Point taken. I’ll try to rein in my sour disposition about my passion, and chosen career, being everyone else’s target dummy 😂 Thank you for sharing your insight.
Yep, that’ll be unpopular. But I also agree: disclose your toolchains.
Most of the time this is probably going to be inferable from a public repository: there will be “dotfiles” and similar IDE and CI configuration files committed. Various scripts for testing and bootstrapping the development environment will tell you if the developer’s OS.
Thank you. Yes, if it’s an open source project this is already possible to an extent.
What about a carpenter who uses Parkside or Ryobi power tools? Why would I buy a kitchen table from a guy who uses interior tools? I think a carpenter should use something nicer like Makita tools.
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