> you aren't allowed to have any positive or nuanced opinion of the tech.

I'm finding this isn't unique to AI, it's as if our entire society has become black and white, overly tribal. There's little room for shades of gray now.

Look at the issue of public drug use by the unhoused in PNW cities, as an example. If you state any opinion other than silent acceptance of the issue, you get called a far-right nutjob. Trying to stand up for your right to a safe public space brands you as evil.

There's no room for a middle ground or nuance anymore. You are either entirely in one tribe, or entirely out.

No technology will have me "excited" if the prospect is lower/no compensation and poorer working conditions. I concur on the nuance -- I use it as a tool at work. I see value in it. I see business value in it displacing me, even if that's not the maximally correct position because some higher up did some numeric calculations. The first prompt I got a decent reply to was a thrill. Then the thinking of the second-order effects kicked in.

Part of the hate surrounding AI is that it is being sold as AI, but it really, really isn't the AI of the kind you read as a child 20 years ago.

Last year Wikipedia reported an 8% drop in humans traffic[1]. That's huge.

[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wik...

Nuance was banned from the internet circa 1996, sorry

> According to Google Wikipedia still gets 4 billion pageviews a month.

> But it seems the online encyclopedia is not completely immune to broader trends, with human page views falling 8% year-over-year,

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/wikipedia-says-traffic-is-...

The nuanced takes of tech haven't been welcome for other tech as well.

> The idea has always been met with negativity, IMO because people want to feel that they have a part of themselves that is beyond nature and has a "special" place in the universe.

This is actually a big part of why being pro-AI is met with negativity today.

As someone who's using and building with AI and also experiences the "anti" movement, you've chosen a pretty condescending minority of the reasons why they dislike AI and painted it as the default.

"They never liked AI because they don't like the idea maybe they're not such special snowflakes in the universe"... really?

They didn't "always hate AI". Most people didn't even think of AI outside of niche things like self-driving. Instead their hatred is from LLMs and generative AI which (as far as they're concerned) didn't exist until November 30, 2022.

Actual reasons they readily share for not liking it are things like:

- it was built by abusing copyright (true with nuance)

- it's used to generate massive amounts of low value content that's overwhelming their spaces (very true)

- it's having an environmental impact (true with more nuance)

- it's making the things they want to buy more expensive (true, even things unrelated to AI)

- the loudest voices in the room have spent years telling them this could destroy humanity and/or take all their jobs (completely true)

- it's behind major layoffs (true with nuance around stated reasons vs actual)

- people who are pro-AI have a strong tendency to minimize their reasons for hating it (... obviously true)

I mean even if you like AI, it's clear we're at a place with so many reasons for people to be anti-AI that it's honestly an own goal at this point.

People didn't have opinions about generative AI as it exists today 20 years ago. The idea of a computer being able to turn any topic into a haiku would have been contentious for if it was possible, not if it was good: that sounds great!

But now we got it and it came with way more baggage than any of them ever imagined. They didn't think it'd learn to write haikus by ripping through every written word. And they didn't think it'd be used to write lots of spam instead of haikus once it could. And they didn't think the same capability would generalize to typing in an artist's name and spitting out infinitely remixed copies of their work.

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I think moving forward in a less negative direction starts with being real about why people hate AI, and it's a lot less "it makes me feel less special" than it is "it's actively reducing my quality of life" for people outside of the bubble.

Truman: "Through the edict of a mad Hitler... the people of that ancient race, the Jews, are being herded like animals into the ghettos, the concentration camps, and the wastelands of Europe. The men, the women, and the children of this honored people are being starved – yes – actually murdered."

derac: "But sir, I think that Von Braun guy is doing some pretty cool stuff with tech. I think we should just let the Nazis keep doing what they're doing; unimpeded."

Truman: "What the hell is wrong with you?"

derac: "Guahh! It'S LiKE yOu aReN'T AllOwED tO hAvE a PosITivE oR NuAncED OpiNiOn oF ThE TeCH!"

>I've been excited by the concept of AI since reading about Turing and such as a child 20 years ago...

I have been too, but LLMs aint it, just like mobile phones is not subspace communicator...