Nobody Asked For This AI Bullshit

The worst feeling on the Internet. Image taken from r/Memes.

I remember the good old days when you’d go to Google Search and type in whatever question you wanted the answer to. You’d be pointed to several sites ranked in roughly the order of how helpful the algorithm thinks they’ll be. To some extent, this is still the case today.

However, whenever you Google a question, you’re presented with an “AI search overview” that basically already answers the question. This leaves aside instances where it doesn’t give you correct information, including this infamous case last year in which people were told to eat glue and rocks.

Now, at first glance, this AI may seem (mostly) harmless, provided nobody actually eats glue and rocks. Never mind that AI is apparently cooking the planet at an alarming rate. But maybe, you figure, we can find a greener way to do it. Maybe we can have more energy-efficient data centers, or run them entirely on renewables the way Iceland already is. And for the sake of argument, I’ll grant you that.

But think about this for a moment: Google’s AI search overview basically removes the need for websites. Nobody’s going to provide traffic to a small website like my own if you’re already given the answer to your question. This is how what some call “late-stage capitalism” works; greedy corporations are going to take over the market, and then they’re going to choke out the competition. There will eventually be no competition. 

Probably the most infuriating part about this AI “revolution” is that nobody really asked for it except the tech companies.

Now, I’m not saying that every scientific breakthrough should need to be voted on democratically. If anything, that might be a bad idea in a country where Donald Trump won the popular vote. Besides, some innovations just happen organically. However, artificial intelligence is going to make life so much worse for the vast majority of the population that I can’t help but feel this “innovation” is forced.

Let’s talk about AI “art.” In many ways, I miss the early days of this era, the halcyon era that was spring 2023. Back then, the most prominent use of AI online was to make public figures play video games. And for the record, the videos of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden trash-talking one another over Wii Sports remain some of the funniest content I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget this exchange:

Obama: Donald’s in the bunker.

Biden: Bunker? Wait, what happened?

Obama: Bunker in golf, Joe.

Even in those early days of artificial intelligence, there were constant warnings about the nefarious purposes for which this technology could (and inevitably would) be used. The first anti-Biden attack ad of the 2024 campaign (before Biden dropped out of the race) was generated by AI and featured a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Given that Trump’s now selling out Taiwan, the acronym GOP once more stands for “Gaslight, Obstruct, Project”.

But let’s move on past the geopolitical implications of AI and deep-fakes and talk about the fine arts. We keep hearing stories about AI-generated novels and maybe even movies. In fact, during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, which went on for nearly five months, one of the key issues at play was related to the use of AI in Hollywood. As the linked Associated Press article notes, the humans won - for now. 

Still, that was a temporary victory. Humans and the movement for creativity must win every time, whereas our AI-pushing overlords only need to triumph once. On some corners of the Internet, AI has already won.

Take the once-popular website DeviantArt. At one time, it was the go-to platform for anything creative. You could (and still can) post digital artwork, photography, or even fanfiction there. However, as of 2025, it’s fallen out of favor among many artists. The reason? According to this online forum, the site is using submitted artwork to train artificial intelligence. Plus, it’s populated with so much slop that you can’t tell what artwork is genuine and which wasn’t actually produced with a human mind behind it. Consider it a warning sign - a cautionary tale, if you will.

Imagine a world where nobody wants to be creative anymore. Yes, we might still enjoy the AI-generated sitcoms and whatnot (hell, they might already be out there), but on this issue I’m very much a purist. The late science fiction author Harlan Ellison put it best. At one point in the linked 1995 interview, Ellison states that it should cost you something to produce art; otherwise, it’s not art. 

And I agree with this. Even if what we might consider our “souls” is ultimately just a product of our brains, we still need to cherish it. It’s what keeps us human.

Maybe some people will still want to write novels or film movies. However, human-made art may pale in quantity to the AI-generated garbage that’s sure to flood our screens and bookshelves (if bookshelves still remain, that is). Why would anyone go to the trouble of writing a genuine novel when they’d get far more royalties from something a computer wrote for them?

Finally, let’s look at the fields of academia. There’s been a lot of talk about DeepSeek (an open-source Chinese AI model) and ChatGPT lately. Since I’m based in the US and have never been to China, I’ll just talk about ChatGPT here. And if my adventures on Reddit are any indiction, we’re in a lot of trouble.

To share my personal experience, I took a course on Middle East Politics in the fall 2023 semester (an eventful time to be taking such a course, to be sure), and the professor kept harping on to us that we were not allowed to use generative AI to write our essays. Each of us needed to write three essays that semester, and each paper was meant to be turned into AI-detecting software before the professor would read it.

Now, I never used ChatGPT to write my papers, because I have at least a modicum of academic integrity. But I can’t know if any of my classmates did, and apparently the software meant to detect plagiarism or the use of generative AI is far from perfect. It’s none of my business whether the other students honestly wrote their papers, but I know I did. 

My university is far from alone; and indeed, this problem is far from unique to the postgraduate level. All over the country, and probably in other countries as well, teachers are having to adjust their curricula to reflect that some students may be turning to AI to write their assignments. But the AI will keep getting more effective, as ChatGPT and other platforms update, and the teachers will struggle to keep up. 

Most importantly, there are some jobs in which you can’t just look at your notes when you need to do something; being a heart surgeon is one commonly cited example. Medical school is already very expensive in the United States, which could lead to a shortage of such professionals; imagine if the existing surgeons cheated their way to their MD?

Fortunately, there is hope, though not a lot of it. Back in November 2024, an AI-generated ad for Coca-Cola caused a lot of controversy and ridicule. We need to have more backlash like this, keeping the many dangers and disappointments of AI in the spotlight. That’s how we might stand a chance at keeping as much of our humanity as possible.

To the tech companies forcing this on us: None of us wanted AI to take over our lives and destroy the planet. Really, we didn’t. So go fuck yourselves. 

We will take back the human race. We will not be force-fed your dangerous, destructive technology like the duck pictured below. 

A meme of a cartoon character force-feeding a duck AI. This image was found on BlueSky, posted by one Marcus Hutchins at Malwaretech.com.