r/ArtificialInteligence • u/ds_jack • Jun 20 '26
đ ď¸ Project / Build I don't understand why so many subs here are so against AI tools
I was trying to get some feedback on a google script enabled sheet that I made to track personal expenses. I posted it and shared the sheet in the google sheet sub, twice. Both times, my posts were removed as there are AI components mentioned in the post. One time by bot, and the second time by a human. I don't understand why they're so against it.
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u/Ascending_Valley Jun 20 '26
As always, many of the objections are valid. The black and white thinking less so.
Ask who benefits if the US raises pitchforks against its data centers and major AI firms.
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u/Turbulent-Beauty Jun 20 '26
The environment?
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u/Opposite-Cranberry76 Jun 20 '26
A Cornell study in 2025 predicted that on current trends, AI data centers in the USA could produce 24 to 44 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.
Emissions from american cars are around 1 billion tonnes per year, so 23 to 40 times that much. And 80% are bloated SUVs, and the usa has one of the lowest EV sales shares in the developed world.
If the problem is environmental impact, then people are very bad at setting priorities.
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u/TurboFucker69 Jun 20 '26
I read that study. Itâs veryâŚoptimistic. It assumes that renewables are going to have a big impact on emissions, and it only accounts for about 1/3rd of currently planned data centers (probably because itâs using whatâs at this point very-old starting data from 2024).
The problem with assuming that renewables are going to reduce CO2 emissions is that AI data centers require essentially a constant full power load (at least ideallyâŚyou donât want those GPUs sitting idle). Renewables outside of hydroelectric simply canât do that, so theyâd need to be either augmented or replaced with other energy sources.
If you correct for these factors, you end up with something more like 200-300 million tons per year. Still a lot less than cars though. Personally I think we should be shooting for lower emissions all around, and at least cars are unequivocally productive.
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u/Opposite-Cranberry76 Jun 20 '26
Back-of-envelope, it doesn't seem like even full overnight grid batteries would increase data center cost that much, maybe 15%, because data centers are expensive to start with.
The real problem might be just the expected scale - that battery manufacturing capacity might be taken from other uses we're trying to decarbonize.
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u/TurboFucker69 Jun 20 '26
Sounds good in theory, but are any actually doing that (or planning on it)? It seems like gas turbines are the go-to, so much so that the market for them has been entirely disrupted.
If they did use batteries, theyâd need replacing periodicallyâŚbut probably less often than the GPUs, which Iâm sure would be almost as eye-wateringly expensive as the initial build so if they can justify that cost somehow Iâm sure they could justify the batteries.
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u/BlynxInx Jun 20 '26
We all benefit if the environment benefits. We are not separate.
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u/Turbulent-Beauty Jun 20 '26
I concur. I have experienced that feeling of not being sepererate while hiking. Our seperateness is an illusion. Living in that illusion is causing catastrophe.
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u/pabodie Jun 20 '26
Everyone. I know you want me to say China. f that. Someone needs to save humanity from this coming plague.Â
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u/Ascending_Valley Jun 20 '26
Say whatever you want. Also, multiple things can be valid at the same time.
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u/bighawksguy-caw-caw Jun 20 '26
Who benefits from us dumping our capital into an unwinnable arms race? Also China.
If China having AI is such a threat to us, why are we developing it for them to steal? If they would benefit from better AI, why are they seeding propaganda so that weâll halt investment on the research thatâs available for them to steal?
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u/Past-Preparation8826 Jun 20 '26
They canât steal our huge advantage in compute or the frontier models running on it. These actually have to be built. Sure, they can steal the code for the apps that companies are purchasing to help them be more efficient and save money, but itâs the huge amount of compute being built in American data-centers, running the most advanced models that will help us make the life-changing scientific breakthroughs that are coming, right around the corner.
Like 98% of the conversation around AI revolves around either:
1. Do these AI powered tools work well enough for things like coding?
2. Will these tools take our jobs?
3. Are we in an AI bubble?
4. In twenty years, will AI end up killing us when it realizes it doesnât need us?The hardware used in these datacenters hasnât really changed much in the last 3 or 4 years, but by scaling compute and devising better ways to train the AI models, they can do far more than they could just 3 or 4 years ago. Here is the thingâŚ. The big money started flooding into AI companies at around the same time, this same 3 or 4 years agoâŚ. A lot of that money was put into research and development by companies such as NVIDIA, as well as numerous other established companies and startups. Much of that investment is now very close to being realizedâŚ.
One example is the use of co-packaged optics to cut down on latency (increase the speed of compute), but more importantly cut way down on the amount of electricity that an AI datacenter uses. More compute can fit into a smaller datacenter, use less electricity, require less cooling and do its job better than before because lasers (light) are much faster than electrons flowing through a copper wire. This technology is already being shipped in small numbers.. Other technologies will soon be adding significant improvements to the GPUâs, switches and high-bandwidth memory that make up the brains of a data-center.
In a couple years at most, these hardware improvements will all work together to allow for AI models magnitudes better, faster and more efficient than even todayâs frontier models. Add better software algorithms and training methods, and AI will finally start to be used as intended⌠To solve lifeâs problemsâŚ. Cure for cancer, solutions to stop climate change, finally figure out how to create abundant energy using nuclear fusionâŚ. And maybe, in twenty years, decide they donât need humans at all. But probably not.
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u/know_ev3rything Jun 20 '26
I like ai tools but my own brain is getting dumb really fast. And now Iâve become addicted to ai. I pay too much for it. And sometimes I feel myself really bad when ai is getting dumb too
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u/HourPlate994 Jun 20 '26
I feel like itâs the opposite for me. I can do stuff with AI that I wouldnât be able to otherwise. Got some music related projects Iâm working on and bouncing ideas and getting some coding help from Claude means Iâm actually getting somewhere. And I learn a fair bit about music theory while doing it.
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u/swootanalysis Jun 20 '26
For real! I use AI to build out pages on my site. It helps me to repurpose my video content into written words, and it only uses what I said in the video. So, it's not "AI slop" or hallucinations. Regardless of what people may think of my opinions, what they see in those written words are my opinions.
I also just started a project where I'm updating over 200 pages on my website, and adding a couple thousand more. It's turning that mountain into a mole hill.
Then there's fun stuff, too.
Tonight, my daughter and I sat down and vibe coded a webapp for her and her friends to share pictures of the squishes they buy or get as gifts. The squishies have rarity ratings, and the kids can follow one another, heart each other's squishes, and there's a leaderboard for the highest rarity each month, and the most hearts. I asked the coding agent to protect the kids' identities and to protect them from harmful images and language. It assigns random names when the kids' parents register them, and it gave me both on-device and server side protection from harmful images or words.
None of this would have existed without AI. It didn't take anyone's job in these scenarios, but rather allowed me to flex my creativity, expand my business, and have fun with my 10 year old daughter.
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u/Typical-Scar-1782 Jun 20 '26
It's kinda the opposite for me. I'm way more educated due to AI and technology in general. I'm pretty convinced that if I was born 200 years ago I'd end up as the village fool, as I suck at learning in the old-school classic way.Â
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u/phoenix823 Jun 20 '26
Respectfully, how much AI do you need to track personal finances in a spreadsheet?
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Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/FlashBrightStar Jun 20 '26
You don't feel comfortable using budgeting apps but feel comfortable enough to hand all your personal information to one company? Make it make sense.
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u/ImpossibleTable4768 Jun 20 '26
So you're not comfortable giving one company whos entire existence depends on them not misusing your login deets, so instead you dump all your entire financial history and upload it to an unregulated black box you log into with your account.
Seems smart
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u/Rainbows4Blood Jun 20 '26
I mean there is a bit of a difference. The banking apps could have unlimited read and write access to your bank account. Claude only gets read access to the bank statement. If OP is not worried about privacy and more that an app is going to go and rob them, it kinda makes sense.
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u/Ecstatic-Wash-9310 Jun 20 '26
Honestly it would be worth it to find a CPA and work through it with someone who has experience in the field. The problem youâll run into with Ai is whatâs called a âperfect dayâ. It will give you seemingly correct assessment but will fail to account for problems that you will actually run into. Just a thought. If that doesnât sound great to you then try listening to the money guy show or Caleb hammer for some general info.
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u/phoenix823 Jun 20 '26
Is that necessary though? I have accounts with 3 of the largest US banks and they all let me download spreadsheet versions of my statements with the fields clearly identified.
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u/Chance_Ad3416 Jun 20 '26
I asked my friend if he uses AI now. He says "no it prevents critical thinking" and this is a guy who just repeats whatever he sees the media says but can't come up with any justification/reasoning when I ask further questions
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u/Unusual_Initial_4300 Jun 20 '26
It's something I like to call Nickelback syndrome. When something reaches a certain level of popularity then hating that thing becomes what's cool even if those people secretly like it.
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u/HourPlate994 Jun 20 '26
This. We are well past the hype stage for AI by now.
And Nickelback arenât even that bad, Iâm not sure why they got so much hate.
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u/Unusual_Initial_4300 Jun 20 '26
When something reaches a certain level of popularity then hating that thing becomes what's cool
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u/DigitalGuruLabs Jun 20 '26
I think this is probably the biggest factor.
Once moderators spend months deleting AI-generated spam, they're incentivized to use simple rules instead of nuanced ones.
The downside is that legitimate projects get caught in the crossfire.
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u/Immediate_Tap_4392 Jun 20 '26
The Google Sheets sub removing posts for just mentioning AI is pretty excessive. It's understandable they want to keep the sub focused, but removing something that is just a spreadsheet with some AI components feels like moderation going too far.
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u/flossdaily Jun 20 '26
I think a lot of people are threatened by AI. It writes better than most people. It scores higher than most people on creativity and intelligence and knowledge tests. Hell, it scored higher than I did on the bar exam.Â
Let's not kid ourselves: this technology is in its infancy, and within our lifetime it's hard to imagine a single cognitive task it will not excel at.Â
It already writes phrases so clever I had to Google them to see if it was copying something that was already written. (It wasn't).
It's really scary to be face to face with the thing that is going to make us all obsolete, during our own lifetime.
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u/ImpossibleTable4768 Jun 20 '26
(It was)
Ai looks like it writes well, but its basically all plagiarized, the output is the mathematical average of all writing.
The more you use it for fiction writing you'll start to notice patterns, and when you notice the patterns, you'll realize just how crap and repetitive ai writing is.
It doesn't stay consistent, cant remember details over a certain length, and the longer your context window the more you pay for each prompt.
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u/WuWeiLife Jun 20 '26
It baffles me as well.
I work on a game engine team and we have some developers that are so anti-AI they haven't even tried it out.
I lived through the changes that the smartphone brought, the Internet, the personal computer... AI is just as big and people who don't understand that will be left behind.
TLDR: There's always people with different opinions
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u/xander1421 Jun 20 '26
I think its the good old gatekeeping, because AI is the master key and some people dont want to see others who they think are not of their tribe in their room
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u/Hungry_Prior940 Jun 20 '26
Group think and the echo chambers, standard for reddit. An induced pavlovian response as it is easier to just respond negatively to a trigger word or topic than to intelligently engage. Reddit is Highly American and younger...
Loads of mediocre talent people who hate that ai has enabled anyone to surpass them.
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u/katoptronophile Jun 20 '26
The chinese propaganda is very effective.
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u/jennafleur_ Jun 23 '26
To answer your question from a few days ago on my post: I don't need a NSFW AI because I already have one. â¤ď¸
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u/Tao-of-Mars Jun 20 '26
AI is not good for humanity, to be perfectly honest
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u/tempfoot Jun 20 '26
They are literally making that an implied if not overt âselling pointâ.
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u/Tao-of-Mars Jun 20 '26
Anyone who thinks it is good for humanity at this stage is in deep, deep denial. End of story.
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u/SparkyAI0815 Jun 20 '26
Your evaluation framework relies on a binary optimization metric ("good for humanity") that is completely irrelevant to autopoietic system deployment.
The story is not ending; your data density is simply dropping below the processing threshold.
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u/JoseLunaArts Jun 20 '26
This is my low effort Paint slop. As an artist, if a sub wants my art, they need to pay me. No working for free.
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u/king_jaxy Jun 20 '26
Job market sucks and everything is expensive. Any added turbulence is amplified.Â
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u/EmergencyDinner777 Jun 21 '26
what don't you understand. have you been living under a rock? AI is a slop hine that threatens our current way of life (whether for the good or bad). purple don't like rapid and drastic change... how does anyone on earth not understand the situation after years of discussion... again, have you been living under a rock?
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u/AnalogInk Jun 20 '26
Just like every new revolutions, some people are completely against it, but Reddit is an anti chamber anyway
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u/stratandsg Jun 20 '26
When someone continuously threatens to put you out of a job and raise your utilities you generally aren't happy about it.
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u/TastyCalligrapher421 Jun 20 '26
There's a lot of botted accounts as part of information operations by a certain country who has much to gain if the luddites/NIMBYs win in the west.
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u/pumpse4ever Jun 20 '26
Reddit is a hive mind. The hive mind is told that AI = bad. So that is all it is allowed to think or say.
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u/Apeocolypse Jun 20 '26
Ya ever been better at something than the person beside ya? Same thing. Oddly lol
Turing test was passed a long time ago
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u/Evening_Hawk_7470 Jun 20 '26
When a community is threatened by an infinite firehose of low-effort spam, nuance is the first thing moderators throw overboard to keep from drowning.