The Generative AI Offense Scale
So, I am very much anti-AI. I hate it, I think it is no more than some techbro-fueled plagiarism machine that only exists because techbros don't want to pay people what their worth and think this wonderful black box of misinformation they created will replace everyone and do everything and will throw unfathomable amounts of money and natural resources at it to realize that goal.
It is peak enshittification, at least as the AI bros present it.
However, the thing with being against something is being informed and not irrational about it, and yes, I do see some uses in AI tech (that don't align with what the AI bros and boosters are pushing on us without our consent). To try and be more nuanced in my opinion, I have a tier list in my brain that I use to classify generative AI stuff and whether it's something I'm going to give someone shit for, or if I'll let them pass and not think less of them.
This is that tier list, at least as best as I can put my brain's processes to (electronic) paper.
Let's begin with the least offensive and move up from there.
Tier 0: This might as well not even register on the scale
This tier is mostly for people who played with it and got their funnies out of it when it was a new and novel thing but have come to realize that AI is kind of a shitty thing and have walked back any of their feelings on it. Because you know what? A lot of us played around with it when it was new. We didn't know what was coming. All we saw is this thing making weird-ass images and talking to us like some chatbot on steroids.
An example of this is one of my favorite games to come out in the last decade or so, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They got "busted" using an AI generated asset as a placeholder. The game's director was confronted and asked about this and he mentioned that they had played with it (as everyone else did) when it was a new thing, and used it to make some placeholder textures. Soon thereafter, they stopped. Because they realized just how utterly fucked up this technology is.
Again: I will not fault anyone for playing around with this and having fun with it before we knew how bad this was going to be. In 2022 no one knew that ChatGPT was going to give the tech industry collective psychosis..
Another use that I won't judge to harshly is people running local models on their own hardware to use them for specialized tasks that aren't necessarily generative. An artist I listen to, for example, has said he runs a local model that is trained on the manuals and documentation for all of his audio equipment so it can page through stuff faster than he can. This is one of the few good uses of AI, I feel. That model never touches actual music production. It just serves up documentation.
I'm sure there are other examples of stuff that would register a tier 0, but I think you get where I'm going with this. It's mostly people who are 1. using it for something it is genuinely good at in a way that doesn't boil the damn oceans, or 2. people who once played around with genAI and quit as soon as the abuse potential was made very clear.
Tier 1: The "I really wish you wouldn't, but okay, I guess." tier
This is where we start getting into the point where I raise my eyebrows a little bit.
If I had to describe this tier, it's people who use things like Claude Code but fully understand the limits of the AI and fully understand the output and aren't just using it to make up for skills they don't actually have.
Or they use it to speed up a process they already full well know how to do. We haven't hit full-on vibe coding yet, but we're kinda sidling the boundary.
For graphics people, this could be, say, having AI generate you an image to kinda prototype an idea, but then you do the actual work on the final product all yourself with skills you actually have. Again, you're not using AI as a means to feign experience in a medium you have none in.
I guess the best way to say this is "you're using AI but you're fully aware that you shouldn't crutch yourself on it nor become reliant on it".
An exception to this, obviously, is if you work for a company that's forcing you to use it and you're kinda making the best of a bad situation.
Tier 2: The "I am now actively side-eying you" tier
Coming off that last one, for this tier, you're probably crutching yourself on AI in some way. Rather than trying to learn to code something you don't understand, you just let Claude handle it. If you can't draw, paint, or whatever, you just ask AI to generate you an image and say you're an artist.
Rather than, oh, commission a human to do some work for you, you'd much rather ask an AI to do it for you for free.
Instead of reading something, you ask ChatGPT to summarize it for you. No matter the length of whatever it is that you're reading. You have it write for you, too. When you're fully capable of doing both things.
You might think it can't get worse than this. But oh, oh it does.
Tier 3: I Actually Want Nothing To Do With You
There is a special circle of hell for people in this tier. I'm talking the ones who are so joined at the hip to ChatGPT that everything they do is filtered through it and everything you ever converse with them about is also filtered through it. Ask these people for advice on how to grieve a lost loved one? They'll 100% feed your message into ChatGPT and ask it to help out.
Going through something serious with a lover and venting on a friend? Yeah, they're telling ChatGPT and asking it what to say to you.
Sharing deep, secret family information with someone and asking your advice? Yep, they've given it to ChatGPT. (I've actually seen this happen firsthand!) Volunteering someone's info and likeness to the slop machine without their consent is such a douchebag thing to do, and if you do it I hope you reading this makes you reconsider your life decisions and maybe DON'T DO THAT.
There's also a worse version of T2 people in here too: The person who always uses AI to insert themselves into every conversation even if it doesn't involve them. Say you're asking for help about a very specific subject or object or what have you that really could use the input of someone who actually has experience with the thing you're asking about. These absolute chuds will walk in, confidence sky high, and say "well here's what ChatGPT had to say about this!"
MY BROTHER/SISTER/EVERYONE IN BETWEEN IN CHRIST. IF I WANTED TO ASK CHATGPT ABOUT THIS, I WOULD HAVE DONE SO ALREADY.
And then they have the nerve to get offended when you tell them as such (even gently).
There's also another person who I'd place here and that's the type of person who advocates for pushing the bullshit machine into every possible area, including hobbies that want nothing to do with AI slop. Case in point, there are some that would love to push ChatGPT into the retrocomputing hobby when--at least speaking for myself here--one of the big reasons I even dabble in retrocomputing is to escape the slop and go back to when tech wasn't this big net negative like it is today.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, you do NOT need to bring the slop machine to every hobby and to every community you participate in. If you enjoy it, you do you I guess. But to impose upon other people with it? Please sod right off.
(Now, on the flip: Anti-AI people can land here too! Specifically the ones that are way too quick to call content "AI generated" without doing their due diligence and going bombs away on some poor person. Those free AI detectors? They're often wrong and misfire. Basing your entire opinion of something on what one reports is never, ever a good idea.)
Anyway. I hope that kinda clears up my position on AI stuff. I'm sure there are other examples I can nestle in here and will probably do so as I can think up more, but this sums it up for the most part.