Right Place, Wrong Time
A sentiment I've seen amongst friends and folks in my social circles is that hey, AI isn't all bad! That there are some redeeming factors to it and some things it is actually good at if you look past what the cancerous US AI companies are doing and look at open source models + models developed by other countries.
I will admit: I can personally see some merit to this. While I vehemently hate AI, I do acknowledge that yes, it CAN have applications (specific models tailored to a specific task rather than trying to make a "it only does everything, badly" model). I do acknowledge that local models (on hardware YOU own) are nowhere near as problematic as the ones put forth by the likes of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
However, the time is not right for these conversations. No one and I mean no one is ready for them to happen. Not now. These are the types of conversations to be had when the threat has passed and the danger is over. As of right now, the threat has not passed, and the damage wrought by generative AI is still ongoing and significant.
The zone is so ridiculously dominated by the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI that it is borderline impossible to discuss AI anything without the sheer amount of evil they've enabled overshadowing everything, even if you absolutely despise both companies. US AI companies are so loud, so prevalent right now that it is impossible to have the "some parts of AI are good, actually" conversation without them overshadowing it.
Yes, I do think that's unfortunate. Because harmless Machine Learning projects got swept up in this mess, and those to me are totally okay! Nothing wrong there. But from my understanding ML projects had to throw their work under the AI umbrella or face threats of losing funding due to collective techbro AI psychosis.
But again.
As much as we want to say this, it's very much like pissing in the wind at this point. It's not going to help. The damage inflicted by US AI companies (and their acolytes) and their brazen disregard for consent and the sanctity of human creation, it's all still ongoing and fresh in our minds. Such that a LOT of people are going to visibly recoil if you do so much as mention AI, even if you're talking about running a model on your own hardware, or something relatively harmless. (and not connected to the shitty AI companies running everything into the ground.)
Do I think there eventually will be a time where we can look at AI and actually apply it effectively in an ethical way that doesn't drop a giant deuce on Mother Nature? Sure. I think there will be a day eventually where the evil techbro shitheads will move on to their next grift and maybe at that point we can have the discussion about what AI is actually good at (versus some asshat like Altman trying to present it as the second coming and forcing it down our throats).
But not right now.
The evil must pass before we can even so much as think of having that conversation.
And not a minute sooner.
Only then--and after letting people rebuild from this big mess--can we have that discussion about what parts of AI are actually good.