So I’m not the only one who refuses ro touch it?
Around me and everywhere it’s getting insane that if feels like there’s literally no one who hasn’t used it or use regularly for all kinds of shit.
Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point
Submitted 2 months ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/06/meet-the-ai-vegans
Comments
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 2 months ago
Auli@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Search sucks and the AI is faster for tech questions. Try searching a Linux cli question or obscure error. Lots of stuff from over a decade ago that are no longer relevant. And you have to wade through so much to find the right one. Or type in AI wait a minute and get the answer.
davidagain@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And you have to wade through so much to find the right one. Or type in AI wait a minute and get the answer.
Uhhh, type in AI, wait a minute and get an answer. How are you checking it?
rm - f /isn’t the only filesystem footgun.I’m finding AI to be right roughly only 60% of the time, and it’s as bad and hallucinatory about shell scripts as it is about everything else.
It will happily admit its mistakes and give you another answer when you call it out, but it’s no more likely to be right that time.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Can you give an example?
udon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
“refuse” lol as if there were a general requirement to use this shit
bigbabybilly@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This caught my eye as well. Haha. Some people are constantly looking for a machine to rage against.
CarrmynCarnage@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
If anyone says the words “AI Vegan” to my face, I’m throwing shit.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Make sure to wash your hands after.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 months ago
Or use a sling for higher velocity
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I don’t use ai either. But because it’s fuckin stupid. It’s not even ai. It’s a glorified sorting algorithm.
Zacryon@feddit.org 1 month ago
It is AI.
mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Not if you use “AI” as the abbreviation of “artificial intelligence”.
If you use AI as meaning “what chatGPT & co are” then it’s a trueism.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 1 month ago
Hard copium there
mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
“AI” or LLMs are great for people without skill. They love them and get quite aggressive when you insult the machine.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Aigen or Aibstenant something for a term. Vegan is not right.
Montreal_Metro@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I just don’t have a use of it. I already am AI.
axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 1 month ago
you aren’t artificial tho lol
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 1 month ago
[citation needed]
Honytawk@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Maybe they were artificially inseminated?
b01f4@leminal.space 1 month ago
Effectively I believe we are. During my MFA I realized we were simply copying as a form of craft. It’s all we do in arts. Any great work feels like just one continuous story retold again and again.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
This is deeply cynical.
MTK@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The irony of environmental activists using the word “veganism” while not being vegan 😒 (being vegan is one of the most significant reduction to greenhouse emissions that is within your personal choice)
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Eh. Factory farming is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases, particularly through methane released by large livestock herds.
But the industry is so saturated with subsidies and shielded from liabilities and exempted from taxes and so comically wasteful in its surplus production that there hasn’t been any material benefit to veganism as a social movement. You can take a moral position (and you should, eating meat is awful for a variety of reasons). But there’s no actual correlation between an increase in vegan eating habits and a decrease in agricultural emissions. All we ever get is more meat thrown in the trash.
The real curb to agricultural production has been raw materials constraints - limits on arable land, potable water, and slaughterhouse workers - that have (directly or indirectly) emerged from a changed climate. Outside these limits, all we’ve really achieved is “Grapes of Wrath” style surplus destruction to keep retail prices up.
If a factory farm can produce another dead cow, it does, even if it can’t reliably bring the carcass to market. The profit margins are set so artificially high that they’d be fools not to do so. Only herd die-offs resulting from heat waves, water shortages, and a lack of below-market migrant labor seem to dissuade them from trying to expand.
DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
20 years ago you could have said “Well, solar panels might be great for sustainability in theory, but the fossil fuel industry is so overwhelmingly powerful and solar panels so bad and expensive, it’s absolutely futile.”
Now, over 90% of added power plants are renewable, because there was at least some pressure to implement alternatives, and now they have matured enough to become economically viable on their own.
I think there are certain parallels to factory farming and plant-based alternatives + cultivated meat. We know that factory farming is very unsustainable, especially in terms of climate impact, resource use and zoonotic diseases (like bird flu and swine flu). These issues become ever more pressing as factory farming continues. We just won’t have a choice at some point but to switch to alternatives that are more sustainable, or everything goes to shit.
Creating demand for the alternatives funds their R&D and furthers their availability, which in turn leads to better products for lower prices, which makes further adoption much easier. Advancing the alternatives might have a much bigger impact than the mere reduction in meat consumption.
The more early adopters, the faster new technologies can advance. That’s true for every sustainable industry like solar energy, wind energy, battery storage, electric cars, and also meat alternatives.
MTK@lemmy.world 1 month ago
So just the “Appeal to futility” logical fallacy? I’m convinced!
Every change starts somewhere. Yes, 0.001% of the population can be vegan and it most likely won’t save a single slaughterhouse animal. But 1%? That’s already significant enough to make at least some change, and 10%? That’s already setting market trends and modifying industries, 50%?
You get my point. You joining the current vegan population is significant! The vegan population is estimated to be 9% in india and mexico, 5% in Israel, 2% in the UK, 1.5% in the US, and estimated to be a total of 1%-3% of the global population. This is a movement that has probably saved more lives and more gas emissions than many others have.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
thank you. no matter how many times I point out the inefficacy of consumer choices or how I word it, I end up with bad faith and fact-avoidant responses like you got.
drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Incorrect cocks shotgun
teuniac_@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Explain?
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
They aren’t using the word. Other people are using it and applying it to them.
glibg@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Come on Guardian… why frame it like that? Folks using AI should be called out as strange.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The better term would be “LLM gobbling fuckheads” for those who use that stuff and believe it has anything to do with “AI”
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Reading this thread, I wonder if the term is intended to divide a largely environmentalist opposition.
Makes “nocoiner” seem tame by comparison.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
There’s a huge push right now to salvage the AI hype bubble as people realize the tech can’t live up to the promises. They are also trying to prevent regulation.
This includes the pushes to humanize the tool, like saying it deserves rights or that there may be some kind of racism against the tool.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They’re trying to pretend it’s real AI rather than extremely complicated text prediction. Hell, the less knowledgeable among them might even believe it. LLMs are a sort of language pareidolia.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
like saying it deserves rights or that there may be some kind of racism against the tool.
Wait, who’s saying this?!
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
There it is. The stupidest headline I’ve read all week.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 months ago
I’d rather be called a Luddite than ai vegan
lightsblinken@lemmy.world 2 months ago
luddaite?
crash_thepose@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
This deserves more votes
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
AI is the new crypto. It will appear to die off but the aspects that work will be integrated into everything.
audaxdreik@pawb.social 2 months ago
What aspects of crypto have been integrated into everything?
vane@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think it’s scam. Before crypto scam was in couple of places but now it’s everywhere.
ragas@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
The US government.
rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
techbros graced everyone else with disruptive, innovative methods of money laundering
bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Wishful thinking. Crypto never got anywhere anyway. I am already seeing AI slop on billboards and all.
Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
No an Image generation is not ten times the impact pf a Google search, a ChatGPT query is. Image generation is probably a lot more.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I want to avoid it but with google making sure that search results get worse and worse I’m in a bit of a pickle. Other search engines still feel lile they’re a bit behind though
Malek061@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Duck duck go
Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Unfortunately, it’s not better and also shows slop
JigglySackles@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Fish@midwest.social 1 month ago
If you’re willing to pay money then Kagi is a great alternative. They claim they don’t collect or share your data. Though, Kagi isn’t very good for local search results and probably never will be.
Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 1 month ago
You’ve probably heard this before but do consider alternatives like Startpage and Qwant. It’s not flawless but I’ve found it’s definitely better.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m gonna go a step further and recommend searx :)
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I use my boyfriends own browser. Boyfriend, please explain it:
Soooo, it’s called searXNG. It’s a metasearch engine I host locally. It searches across multiple search engines, like duck duck go and others. And then shows the results as a normal webpage. It also changes your “fingerprint” per every search, and every search/result is proxied through the server. If you wanna try it out, you can use (public instance): searx.bndkt.io But you can easily host it locally from the source or with docker.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m using searx, too, but google’s results still stand to be some of the most relevant.
Zacryon@feddit.org 1 month ago
Have you tried Ecosia?
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Not OP. I’ve been using Ecosia for years and was glad they didn’t do the AI summary shit so far… But a few days ago I got an AI summary on Ecosia as well. I fear they’re also hopping on this train and in that case I’ll look for another search engine.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Isn’t ecosia just using google’s results?
CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’ll just stick with calling myself “old man yelling at clouds” for the double meaning and so I’m not a vegan of any kind, thanks.
Kekzkrieger@feddit.org 1 month ago
Its neither for me, i just dont like getting wrong information and AI is giving tons of it.
Also its not intelligent it just fucking sounds so
haloduder@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
I agree. AI would be way more useful if it gave some kind of indicator of accuracy, or even just saying “I don’t know.”
Right now, AI only doesn’t have an answer when the goons who programmed it told it not to give one.
Zacryon@feddit.org 1 month ago
Whithout a clear definition of intelligence, such a discussion is somewhat pointless. The closest thing I would use to describe artificial “intelligence” is: Mimicking human thought and decision processes, without the necessity of being identical.
Secondly, regarding your first paragraph:
Humans excel at providing wrong information. Sometimes they are right. In that regard there are similarities between an LLM and a human.By the way: LLMs are part of the field of AI. But AI consists of a plethora of methods and algorithms, where LLMs are just a tiny fraction that is currently very popular.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 2 months ago
Terrible choice of words, veganism deserves better than that.
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It’s honestly not even the worst way I’ve even seen it used.
I used to watch some League of Legends (I know, I know) streams from time to time, and there’s a meta where your mid laner, who is supposed to be a strong carry, gives up all their farm to the roaming jungler roll so they become the super-carry.
In any case this somehow got termed to be the “vegan mid” strategy. Ugh.
bigbabybilly@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Missed opportunity to coin the term “Aitheist” Fools.
NostraDavid@programming.dev 1 month ago
VAIgans.
sirico@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Journalists constantly trying to be the origin of a term.
Zephorah@discuss.online 2 months ago
What a terrible choice of words. They’re immediately assigning political placement and party to the idea of avoiding AI use instead of appealing to all of humanity on this topic.
Plus, it’s a silly metaphor.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Which is the vegan party?
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
AI isn’t the meat, jack. It’s slop.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 1 month ago
AI vegan is not a thing and shall never be.
The correct term is Technophile. Anyone obsessed with tech would never hand it off to a third party to do when they can go through the joy of learning themselves.
_g_be@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m technophobic. Fucking clankers
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I see. Another one to serve the gloriouse republik!! Long live chanclor palpatine!
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
That’s a completely different reason to not use AI.
You’re a technophile - you don’t use AI because you enjoy finding information on your own and learning. Great. That ignores the vast majority of people using AI to write emails/posts (which is not looking up information nor learning anything related to tech).
The people the article is about don’t want to use AI due to environmental reasons - the amounts of water and energy it uses for every prompt is stupid high and they don’t want to contribute to that waste.
assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world 1 month ago
So normal decent human beings
Pudutr0n@feddit.cl 2 months ago
I only eat non-sentient AIs too.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I am a AI Freedom Fighter.
Dvixen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I prefer Neo-Liddite. There’s a few aspects of modern tech I eschew - AI/LLM bring one of them.
ileftreddit@piefed.social 2 months ago
Luddites
MoonRaven@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I can only imagine someone came up with AI vegan after they decided to eat steak that evening while thinking they’re the ones who are pressed by vegans…
Allemaniac@lemmy.world 1 month ago
“AI vegans”? I knew guardian was already bought by tech bros, but wtf is that phrasing lmao I dont use AI either, simply because it is wrong more often than not and I am still capable of googling myself, but being cautious equals to being vegan in tech bro eyes?
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Seems like it. Because vegan is already seen as a ridiculouse thing and “the enemy” by the average person
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I don’t agree with the framing, either, but they’re drawing parallels between people not using something due to a principled moral stance. (As well as some not-so-subtle implication that these people are holier-than-thou, too.)