I use AI for some things. I’m putting that out there right from the start because it will get rid of those people who are so unreasonable that they can’t even be arsed to hear me out.

I get most of the arguments against “Artificial Intelligence”. In fact, I agree with a lot of them. From the environmental and human costs to the apocalyptic possibilities, the arguments make a lot of sense. There are a lot of dangers when it comes to this “AI” revolution, and the corporations who are in charge of this revolution cannot be trusted to do anything but try to pad their bottom line.

All that being said, the “AI” haters out there are often too extreme for my tastes. The whole idea of “I’m not going to use anything that has been touched by an AI agent,” is nonsense. These people will use nothing if that’s there attitude. There are very few developers out there these days that aren’t utilizing LLM models in some form or fashion. Most probably just use it for autofill and autocorrection if nothing else. Some use it for testing and bug finding.

I think the problem here is that people see the use of Claude or ChatGPT as a lazy way of working. They think that if you’re using these tools to help with development that the AI tool did all the work and you, the developer, are just taking credit. You “vibe coded” it.

And this is mostly nonsense. From the developers, real developers, I’ve talked to, most use AI as a tool to do their work, not to do their work for them. Now, are there exceptions? Sure. There are “developers” out there who vibe code everything and claim otherwise. Really, it’s the “claim otherwise” part that’s the issue. If people were honest about it, others would have a lot less issue with it.

But most developers aren’t like that. They’ve adapted to this new reality, and have found ways to integrate LLMs into their workflow.

But that is too much for the staunchest Anti-AI folks out there. And they let you know this at every turn. Even projects that were blatantly not “vibe coded” but have contributions from Claude, are seen as the Devil’s spawn by these people.

This has gotten out of hand, in my opinion. You can not use AI tools. You can try to only use projects that are completely AI free (good luck with that). But being so Anti-AI that you harass and bully other people, that’s not okay. It’s fine to have an opinion and do what you want to do, but when you’re so offended by others usage of these tools that you get unreasonably angry and say horrible things, you’ve gone too far.

Frankly, I don’t hate AI. As I said at the beginning, I use these tools. I’ve done some vibe coding. I’ve also learned a helluva lot of stuff from actually using these tools because I can ask dumb questions and mostly get answers (Claude still lies to me all the damn time).

I think that AI has many bad things about it too, mostly due to companies wanting to put it literally everywhere. That’s a huge issue. But it doesn’t negate the good the LLMs can do.

The problem is that when people find something they really dislike, they get so unreasonable about the potential good that could happen that it might as well not exist at all. The thing is, AI isn’t going away. The Anti-AI protest is ineffective on a grand scale. The best thing we could do is work together to make sure the revolution is something we can all live with, instead of a corporation ruled dystopia. That’s the real monster that needs to be fought, not the tools themselves, and especially not those who use the tools. Now, maybe not using AI is the best way to fight that dystopia. I could get behind that, but I doubt it would be effective.

At least that’s the way I feel. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this was all written by AI (it wasn’t). What are your thoughts?