this post was submitted on 20 May 2026

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Fuck AI

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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.

AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.

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73

Is this the life now? Jumping to alternatives every few months because every open source project is adhering to AI? (lemmy.today)

submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by JohnDarlen@lemmy.today to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just seeing the list here: https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware

I don't know what to think about it, many incredible open-source projects went downhill, some worse than others, full AI permission usage and some of them even advertise AI providers on README.md. I'm even using many of them myself.

Even the good guys are falling, I'm not sure what to think about it. Am I overreacting maybe?

You might think, that's fine, not a big deal, some of them just allow AI usage, but not AI generated code, but for how long? If you allow use of AI for anything the tendency is that you'll be even more open about it in the future.

List of projects that personally draw my attention or I use eventually:

Firefox: not unexpected, but still, I had hope on Mozilla bring more tech awareness on mainstream
Spaceship prompt: I use this on my terminal for customization, why'd you need AI for such a simple project?
VLC: just sad
curl: sad x 10
Vim: sad x 20
zoxide: they literally promoting AI providers in the README, such a simple tool as well, why?
CoMaps/Organic Maps/OsmAnd: the few ones providing a good alternative to Google Maps
Element: that's literally the most used client for Matrix I guess?
Python: I thought they were the good guys as well
Lemmy: unexpected, code of conduct says it's allowed
Linux: the final boss, unbelievable

Is there any hope at all? Or am I just overreacting?

all 44 comments

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[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 1 points 4 minutes ago

curl is definitely NOT writing code with AI if you follow the newsletter. And wget will never be a valid alternative to curl if you know what they both do. You can safely remove it from the list.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

There is hope - https://piefed.social/c/piefed_dev/p/2020721/ai-policy-for-contributions-to-piefed

[–] chloroken@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 minutes ago

Lmao no honey, no

[–] chocrates@piefed.world 41 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Once token based pricing hits all the major platforms I expect it will slow down

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 20 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Not long now, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs incoming, monetization everywhere.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 1 hour ago

Imagine doing basic business things like having to show an ROI and public disclosure is going to collapse the economy. Lol. Should've happened 2 years ago.

[–] amzd@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago

I’m all for not having vibe coded security vulnerabilities creeping into my apps but that repo lists apps if they’ve ever even attached copilot to an issue/pr which is pretty hard not to do because the button is bigger than attaching yourself to an issue.

[–] MxRemy@piefed.social 16 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah agreed, it's incredibly disheartening... The Starlight Network maintains a NoAI list at least: https://noai.starlightnet.work/

[–] runblack@feddit.org -5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

If the argument is that AI code is devaluing labour, then you'd need to be critical of any automation. The steam machine devalued the labour of artisans, robots devalued the labour of assembly line workers. You can hold this belief but you'd basically have to become an Amish OR you say: Yeah this devalues labour, so we should fight for the workers getting their share in increased productivity at least.

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 8 hours ago

steam machine devalued the labour of artisans

I'm so cooked that my brain went: "how is this the fault of Gabe Newell?"

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

Long story short: LLMs can provide value in software development, especially in senior developer hands. Apparently that value is not something many feel they can just leave on the table.

This doesn't answer the question whether you can separate the tool from it's maker or from how it came into existence or even about possible long-term consequences of it's usage.

But for a lot of programmers these are questions they don't feel compelled to consider, and I can empathize. LLMs are now here and they, like most technology, won't just disappear again for ethical or long-term-risk reasons. Completely shunning them will become a niche, even in the often idealistic world of open-source.

I'm looking forward to when the hype dies down and the general understanding of what LLMs really are and where they are useful becomes more normalized. This whole "AI" nonsense drives me nuts.

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 3 points 8 hours ago

LLMs can provide value in software development, especially in senior developer hands.

The value they do provide is in scamming and providing skill atrophy.

[–] jaredwhite@humansare.social 11 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds like you're just laundering marketing talking points from Big AI.

I will continue to participate in a significant, thriving, and very long-lived movement of people writing code for people. When it comes to the slop machines, the battle is just getting started.

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Well, I write code for people, too, and still much of it by hand. But there is also a non-trivial portion that can be generated and quickly evaluated. It's not the majority and it's hit or miss, but in aggregate I'm measuring a positive impact. It's far from the insane promises made by the AI companies, but it's measurable, in real numbers. Think more of a 10% increase, not 10x. Is this enough to justify a trillion dollar industry? Doubtful. Is is low enough to be discarded? Not in a serious productivity focused environment.

[–] jaredwhite@humansare.social 8 points 11 hours ago

I'm afraid arguments of mere utility don't hold much sway for me. Asbestos is also very useful as a fire retardant. 🫠

[–] JohnDarlen@lemmy.today 4 points 10 hours ago

You forget one thing, it's not fair with the ones who stand against it.

There are plenty and good projects who stand against AI, is it fair with those who are trying to do the correct thing?

I don't think so.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml -4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Sadly AI is here to stay and we need to learn to live with it, differencing it by its owners, avoiding those from Big Tech and using it with common sense and there where it is really usefull and needed, not as toy, to create memes or substitute our own intelligence and creativity, but as tool eg.in certain complex and repititive tasks or researches in thousends of documents, where it make sense.

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I dont like the environmental impacts of data centers nor the exploitation capabilities of this tool.

I cant get past these two.

I fear we live in a world folks just dont do the right thing. Sure this tool helps a small task, but ultimately, this isnt helping anyone but the wealth hoarders at the moment

[–] runblack@feddit.org 0 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

I do think you are overreacting. I don't see why AI-generated code in FOSS projects is necessarily bad. I think the policy in the Linux kernel development makes a lot of sense: Human maintainers own their commits and are responsible for any bugs. It's not like humans did generate bug-free code before the rise of AI tools.

I think a lot of the AI hype and it's implications can be criticised: environmental impacts, job losses, tech feudalism, etc. Yeah I totally get that and it's important to voice this critique. But the technology in itself is not evil, nor good. It's just technology.

You also wouldn't criticise the invention or usage of lenses, just because you can use them to build rifles, right? It makes more sense to address those uses of the technology that cause harm, and not those that are beneficial for humans, like having glasses or satellite optics.

[–] jaredwhite@humansare.social 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Not even remotely an overreaction. AI-generated code is morally incompatible with FOSS. And yes, I will continue to defend this position for many years to come. It really makes no difference to me what Linus Torvalds or any other influencer has to say on the matter.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

AI-generated code is morally incompatible with FOSS

Whitewashing foss can be done and I'm sure has been done without ai. Any old obfuscatory code will whitewash foss code.

Then there are companies like Bambu that take foss, fork it and declare it proprietary without even the veneer of whitewashing.

[+] kibblebits@quokk.au -18 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

To leave a thing because of blind hatred for AI and no proof that the AI has actually been a burden is definitely overreacting.

Most developers have found a way to incorporate AI into their development. Even if it’s just using to review code for bugs.

My suggestion would be, whenever you think of AI, stop thinking about AI.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Professional developer here. I use AI every day at work and still think it's utter crap.

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au -1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Can you give me an example of how you’ve used it properly and how it failed?

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I use Claude Code for work, and before that I used Cursor. I'd say I have about a year of total experience with the tooling, and I've used all the various AI ephemera: MCP integrations, RAG context management, skills, vector databases, custom orchestration laters, etc, etc, etc. I've built AI-powered tools like customer service chat bots as enterprise projects. I've even experimented with using AI in personal projects just to see if the experience is any better than working on large enterprise projects with years of accumulated technical warts.

It's all crap.

Actually it's worse than crap, because at least a turd has the decency to identify itself with a foul odor. AI code is insidious. An LLM is just a statistical model of grammar, so its output always has the same statistical features of correct code. It looks correct, and when it's wrong, it's wrong in ways that can be very hard to spot. Of course there are also times when it's just brazenly, comically, catastrophically wrong right from the jump, and it's always fun to point and laugh when that happens... but the other times, when it's almost right, when it's right enough to slip an immaculately subtle, server-killing memory leak past code review and past QA, it stops being funny.

Now your production app is dead in the water for no clear reason, and you've got a release candidate made of a dozen AI-generated PRs, any or all of which could be responsible. And at this point you realize that you don't actually know this code anymore. Yeah, you prompted it. You guided the agent through the process and you carefully reviewed its output... probably. Were you actually paying attention that day, or did you auto-approve Claude's changes while you were in the middle of something else? Either way, you didn't actually sit there hammering out the keystrokes and getting that reinforcement learning that only comes from physically engaging your brain with a problem, so now you're not even sure where to start debugging.

And by the end of it all, you've burned a zillion tokens — which probably isn't something that matters to you right now, but it will in 6 months or in a year when the big AI firms are forced to IPO or run out of money, and they all start scrambling to close their utterly massive revenue shortfalls by dumping subscriptions and switching to usage-based models. Suddenly the $200 a month you were paying for a Claude Max subscription is $200 a DAY, and now your passion project costs triple your mortgage.

[–] sen@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Have you considered creating a skill telling it to make no mistakes?

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

People have unironically suggested this to me and I've tried it, because... fuck it, why not?

It doesn't work. :(

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Oh I see you’re telling it to make code for entire features and just accepting what it made without going over it yourself, or … I’m gonna stop here. I know where the actual problem is.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Sometimes, yeah, when management is constantly breathing down your neck telling you that you need to be more "agentic". Just typing a prompt and waiting for the LLM to spit out a feature is the fantasy workflow that a lot of orgs are pushing for, and it's what companies like Anthropic keep pretending is possible.

But even the more careful and focused approaches still produce crap — or, after much hand-holding and angst, they give you something that actually does work while conforming to the styles and standards of your platform... but only after you've spent more time babysitting the AI than it would have taken you to just write the damn code yourself. And, again, you've burned a shitload of tokens in the process.

The only thing AI coding tools are reliably good at is writing "boilerplate", but non-AI tools have existed to handle that stuff for decades... and honestly, if your project has that much required boilerplate, it's probably not very well-engineered in the first place and the AI is just acting as a crunch holding up weak architecture.

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The only way to go over something yourself correctly is by doing it yourself correctly.

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

You: fire all developers but yourself.

Got it. 👍

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Only if you want to go over everything.

If you don't you either need to make someone else responsible and accountable for going over something, or be accountable for not being responsible.

Remember:

A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” – IBM Training Manual, 1979.

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au 0 points 2 hours ago

🥱

[–] JohnDarlen@lemmy.today 19 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

Sorry to be that idealist, but open-source used to mean something, not just the word. It used to be a symbol, people who stand for something. But now? It feels dirty. I don't care if AI will do an excellent job, it still [insert all dozens of issues behind AI use here that I'm tired of repeating].

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

For idealists this is a hard time indeed, but isn't it always?

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

true because fundamentalists are always hiding a secret doubt

le carre

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

this is comforting

[–] Brummbaer@pawb.social 0 points 13 hours ago

Exactly, it was a long death, but in the end open-source fell victim to capitalism and capitalisation.

AI and Rust* are just the final nails in the coffin.

*I mean the weird link between Rust and MIT here.

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

and no proof that the AI has actually been a burden

You commenting that just highlights that you've either never had to work with a developer who uses AI, or do not have the adequate level of skill to correctly review something submitted by a developer who uses AI.

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au -2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I review things all the time. Crap comes from people and from AI. People just love to let it roam free, and that becomes a problem.

My quote was…. Just because something might have AI involved, doesn’t mean it’s suddenly “slop” and no one can show me an open source project they used that went from “great” to “slop” because of AI.

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I guess you missed all those studies/results about:

Technical debt (including code quality, code ownership and conservation of familiarity, complexity traps, etc...)
Cognitive debt (including but not limited to: general cognitive debt, codebase cognitive debt, skill atrophy, etc...)
Systems theory (specifically failure cascades in complex systems)
Psychological effects (confidence machines, eliza effect / AI psychosis, Gell-Mann Amnesia, false consensus effect / illusory truth effect, etc... x 100)

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au 0 points 2 hours ago

🥱