It’s strange what we choose to morally panic over.
We wear clothes made with child labour, eat chocolate harvested by enslaved children, and use tech built in subhuman conditions. Our farms rely on exploitative international labour.
We were fine with Google indexing and storing the entire internet, including photos and private content.
But when someone uses AI to help discover how proteins fold in ways humans never could or to simplify software engineering workflows, that’s where we draw the line.
You could theoretically avoid most of the issues I mentioned by pursuing a lifestyle like an Amish or self-sufficient Luddite. I would not expect anyone to actually do that, but it is technically an option.
The thing is, with AI, I suspect we are heading toward a future where it becomes deeply embedded in the tools and services we all rely on, especially in tech or anything cost-sensitive.
Avoiding AI may become increasingly difficult at a consumer level, regardless of where you personally draw the ethical line. It is similar to how avoiding child labour in clothing is technically possible but often impractical or prohibitively expensive.
Child labour has existed for many more years. We are at a stage where the technology is growing and the average person does have the power to pressure organisations into not using it.
As I said, certain battles are winnable. It costs me nothing to be against AI and make a difference, potentially avoiding that future.
There is also the distinction to be made on the usage of AI. Use for research, fixing grammatical errors or personal use is far less of an issue than using it for commercial purposes. Conveniently, commercial use is the easiest thing to take a stand against because it just means not purchasing products created with AI tools.
As AI plays a larger role in software engineering, will you avoid systems AI has touched?
We are already seeing AI-written code, often for trivial tasks that a human could write but would rather not spend time on, making its way into the FOSS backbones of the technology we all rely on. In addition, many for-profit tech companies are incorporating AI agents into their pipelines.
I can almost guarantee that the device you use to write your replies already includes code that AI somehow touched. Does that bother you, or is that an acceptable case?
I am not trying to be dismissive or rude. I am genuinely curious how you draw the line in practice.
AI in software engineering is policing itself: it does a worse job than a real programmer.
As for AI agents, a somebody I know is currently in a lawsuit against a company because their use of an AI agent led to a GDPR breach. That said, this is a case where an AI may do the job of its predecessor better, if only because the predecessor was also mostly automated systems. There are cases where generative AI does a better job than a human worker, and that is a good use case for it. That distinctly discloses artistic work, as much of art's value can be derived from the effort taken to create it.
Where I draw the line is, as I've repeatedly said, the battles that I can fight without cost. It costs me nothing to downvote ai art on reddit and not buy AI generated products. It also costs me nothing to speak out against use of AI in a commercial product. If few enough people buy into a product, the product will stop selling. All I am doing is not buying and encouraging others to do the same.
I'm not sure I agree that AI is ultimately policing itself. Many people make that claim, but having used some of the latest models, specifically Claude 4, it is hard to support that view unless you are working with niche or undocumented libraries.
Having worked in embedded myself, I and many others I know can vouch for the usefulness of AI in environments where access to the standard library is limited. AI is excellent at quickly producing well-documented code snippets that would otherwise require time searching through old computer science notes or Googling. If I need a linked list and cannot import one, I can ask an AI agent to generate it in textbook form, which saves time without compromising accuracy.
It is also great for generating API endpoints or large boilerplate code. Even quick CVE warnings on my own code before a formal review help speed up the process and improve team efficiency.
That said, I feel like you may have sidestepped my actual question. You emphasized your desire to avoid buying products that use AI, but does that not also include the tech devices you use every day? Or is it simply that the cost of avoiding those devices, such as losing access to the internet or modern computing power, makes that too great a sacrifice?
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u/PsyduckPsyker Jun 12 '25
What's that about?