Why I don't like Generative AI

2026.08.19

Here are 10 reasons I do not like generative AI:

  1. It's abilities are grossly overstated
  2. It produces a lot of low-quality content (slop)
  3. It is expensive
  4. It provides exceptionally detailed personal information to data brokers and big tech (re: AI is designed to fail and then sell your data, an instagram reel)
  5. It removes the effort required to do things that should require effort
  6. It writes bad
  7. It writes bad code
  8. It is not intelligent
  9. All the AI-bros are very weird
  10. I feel the need to compensate for the excessive push towards AI by rejecting it
Preface: This is unedited, and in the process of writing it my opinions have developed more clearly. This blog is likely very inconsistent or hard to read. Good luck!

Even if AI was significantly cheaper, faster, smarter, more ethical, and worked amazingly, I ask: Is this a technology we want? For me, as I write this, the answer is no. This might be naive, but I am becoming more and more wary of technology, especially when it is backed so heavily by people I dislike. People often compare AI to thinking as calculators to math. Not as a replacement, but as a tool. Gah this just sounds like AI already. But throughout history, mankind has advanced by making our work easier: First we survived off of our own manual labour. Then we built machines to reduce physical labour, like the plow. This enabled us to abstract our work to higher levels, from physical labour to mental labour. As we spent more and more time on math, we built machines to help with this as well; first the abacus, then the calculator, and finally the modern computer. Now we can abstract our work to a higher level, which I will call "creativity". Quotation marks here denote that I understand this may not be an entirely accurate description, as the term "higher level thinking" may be just as apt. Either way, Generative AI has come along to help us think. We don't need to make art anymore, or reason about what food we should eat, or trust our own judgement to be correct in an argument, when 'AI the Omnipotent' can come along to answer these questions for us. The problem is that we are squeezing what it means to be human out of humanity.

Sure, maybe this isn't true, because maybe being human includes all those lower things, like physical labour and arithmetic. But I think there is a difference, because it seems to me that humans have always differentiated ourselves from other creatures by our consciousness, our lived experience. This is what justifies man at the top of the food chain, above all other physical creatures in the chain of life. Then again, maybe from a Thomistic point of view, that is exactly defined as rationality, which AI mimics. Forgive the digressions, I don't want to leave any loose ends untied.

But my point being, that if we replace all of our faculties with machines, there will be nothing left for us. Some people want this, a utopian state run by machines who do all our work for us, allowing humans to live a life of pure leisure. I don't think it's worth explaining why this is a terrible idea. Maybe a blog post for another time, but at least it's a whole other can of worms. Suffice it to say that the people who live in such a world would be depressed out of their minds.

As I write this, I realize something: By condemning AI for robbing humans of our more advanced capacity to be creative and think critically, I also have to criticize machines for robbing humans of our privlige to do physical work. As a soft handed city boy, I know manual labour is rewarding. Obviously not excessively, but things like cutting the grass are honestly great. I guess we have machines for that too.

Seems to me that tools are good insofar as they are tools. Machines that help with cutting the grass are great, but a machine that does it for you is not. This is the difference between a lawnmower and a mowbot. In the same way, using AI to help you reason, perhaps by comparing listings for a product you intend to buy, is not bad as long as it is used as a tool in the decision making process, and does not replace your mental faculties.

Thanks for reading! Here are some of my notes:
I should focus on making my writing more concise and readable, not "sophisticated"
I should make my writing simpler and easier to understand, not "sophisticated"
But not at the expense of "dumbing down" my thoughts.