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Gonna briefly do an AI take: it used to be possible to have interesting discussions about AI here, and it's got progressively less so. You can't just think AI is bad, or overhyped, you've also got to subscribe to a very particular worst-case scenario about *how* it's bad and how bad it is.

There's a particular view on its environmental damage, psychological damage, and that it's useless, and if you deviate from that here you just end up deluged in yet another debate about those things, instead of the discussion you were trying to have.

I think it's quite noticeable that several thoughtful and serious AI critics now post here much less than they used to. Some have gone back to X (or if they didn't leave, upped their posting there), while others just don't seem to post anywhere very often any more. It's a shame.

That’s interesting. I would have to admit my baseline position is that AI is overhyped and I’m unconvinced about the scale of its net (I mean total net) benefits. But I don’t quite get why, if I were evangelical for it, I would be driven off this site by a bunch of sceptics I don’t know.

It's more that if you're where I am, which is that this is an impressive technology with transformative potential, surrounded by hype merchants, and at the centre of a damaging financial bubble, it's hard to have constructive conversations

But even if I were to come on here and say that AI is shit (I haven’t), why would someone who believes in it be frightened off a tech platform full of early adopters? What is it about AI that the proponents seem uniquely unable to defend themselves on here? I’m clearly missing something.

It's not that people are unable to defend themselves – it's that the amount of abuse that you get can be staggering. Like if you post something even vaguely pro AI and it breaks containment into Discover, you will get hundreds of people yelling at you. Blocking is great, but it's still unpleasant.

It's also that instead of discussing whatever your post was actually about you end up in one of the same three ai 'debates' on here instead