The anti-AI thread

[Kaido]

AI cops are ready to write tickets now.

The ticket bot cometh: cities are ticketing drivers that AI says are bad [update]

Barcelona is feeding camera data from its buses into an AI, but they swear they're not using the footage to to issue drivers tickets. Yet.

electrek.co

Despite those hefty fines, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is quick to point out that the goal of the program isn’t to generate revenue.

“Every Chicagoan deserves a transportation system that is safe, reliable, and efficient,” said Mayor Johnson, in a statement. “By keeping bus and bike lanes clear of illegally parked vehicles, the Smart Streets pilot helps us protect our most vulnerable road users while improving the daily commute for riders across the city.”

The official release makes no mention of the fact that Hayden AI’s system generated nearly $21 million in revenue for the city in just a few months, despite the fact that thousands of those ticketed weren’t doing anything wrong.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I like how they always try to make us think it's not to generate revenue when everybody knows damn well that's exactly what it is. If it was really about safety they would be using real cops to actually pull unsafe drivers over on the spot, not just fine them after the fact.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me against 15 minute cities though, because that's the part they don't tell you, 15 minute cities will be FULL of this sort of stuff. Your every move is constantly being watched and categorized and put in a database and they gather all sorts of data on you 24/7. They most likely will require apps for digital ID so you can even get into stores, work, etc, which means you are also being spied on by your phone as you can't use a custom rom anymore.

 

[Kaido]

Everyone Hated the McDonald's AI Christmas Ad So Much It Got Taken Down

A Dutch ad firm created an AI-generated commercial for McDonald's and released it online, causing significant backlash. It was eventually taken down.

gizmodo.com

McDonald's - "It's the Most Terrible Time of The Year"

Television It's the Most Terrible Time of The Year for McDonald's by TBWA\NEBOKO

www.adforum.com

 

[mikeymikec]

Re the McDonalds ad - I agree with one of the comments, it's not that it's AI, it's just a bad ad in several respects. Why on earth would a company want to tie its name into basically a pure rant about how terrible Christmas is, then throw in at the end that we should all hide in a fast food restaurant until it's over*? I think each scene was purposefully rushed so the AI would be less obvious but it also doesn't give the viewer any chance to absorb / relate / react to what's going on**, but also there was very little time for 'people' in the video to react to what's going on either.

* - If they really want most people to entertain the idea of hiding in McDs until it's all over, maybe they ought to spend some time in an actual McDs restaurant and identify all the ways that it could be made into a place that's comfortable and relaxing to sit in most of the time?

** - maybe this is a me vs. new media thing, whereby a typical tiktok video has several bits of text on the screen that I'm supposed to read in a few seconds while taking in what's on the video... my wife often shows me a clip and keeps it paused at the start until I've completely read what I'm meant to read, then start the clip!

I wonder if the overall conclusion about AI is going to be that just like this advert, it's the option for doing one's homework in the classroom immediately before it has to be handed in. Phone it in, rush it out, leaving behind every indicator that one invested as little time/consideration into the work as possible.

The other thing I wonder is, particularly with regard to this year's Coca Cola ad: Why even bother at all? If they ran the same ad as yesteryear, rather than *almost* the same ad, surely from a "this season is largely about tradition" perspective, it would have been better? Why did they feel the need to produce largely the same ad as what I saw when I was a kid?

 

[cytg111]

Honestly, you can't even tell anymore. This is a polaroid of an average messy forum user straight out of the new Nano Banana Pro:

View attachment 134580

Tons of clues gives it away though

 

[K1052]

I am steadily moving from strong disapproval of this stuff into absolute unhinged rage.

 

[Kaido]

Tons of clues gives it away though

I don't know what you're talking about

 

[cytg111]

I am steadily moving from strong disapproval of this stuff into absolute unhinged rage.

View attachment 134978

In an endless sea of seamless fictitious reality, why does this stand out to you? It's all gone anyway and that, *that*, genie is not going back in the bottle.

 

[cytg111]

Now is when you hope you have a government that will have your back in terms of banning the outright malicious bullshit.

Sorry to hear about your situation America. It was fun while it lasted.

 

[Kaido]

I am steadily moving from strong disapproval of this stuff into absolute unhinged rage.

View attachment 134978

It's tough:

1. Animation is SUPER expensive. Even a TV show like One Punch Man costs north of $100,000 USD to make.

2. This will sound awful, but generally, studios DO NOT CARE about the artists. They are in business to make money. AI reduces costs and increases output. Same with the burnout rate in the game programming industry.

3. We have hit production viability for animation. We saw peeks of it 2 years ago when I started this thread. Grok in particular excels at it and now includes both generated voice & soundtrack.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1999123039124869145

I wanted to be an artist growing up & was leaning towards animation in high school & college, but the reality of the actual day to day job was MUCH different in reality. For me , AI is an odd mix of revulsion (outright artistic theft, oversimplification of creative processes, job losses, etc.) & attraction (YAY I can finally do SO MANY PROJECTS that I've been dreaming about my whole life!!).

For better or worse, this is the new normal going forward. Bad for artists, GREAT for studios & consumers. We are going to see some tremendously creative small-team & solo projects in the future! But it will unfortunately have the same effects as machinery & robotics on farming: the creatives will now be a low-paid minority group.

To be fair, computer animation has already VASTLY reduced the number of artists needed. The fantastic hit TV show cartoon "Bluey" has less than 70 animators on staff & the brand is worth $2 BILLION dollars:

 

[sdifox]

I like how they always try to make us think it's not to generate revenue when everybody knows damn well that's exactly what it is. If it was really about safety they would be using real cops to actually pull unsafe drivers over on the spot, not just fine them after the fact.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me against 15 minute cities though, because that's the part they don't tell you, 15 minute cities will be FULL of this sort of stuff. Your every move is constantly being watched and categorized and put in a database and they gather all sorts of data on you 24/7. They most likely will require apps for digital ID so you can even get into stores, work, etc, which means you are also being spied on by your phone as you can't use a custom rom anymore.

But your off grid property is by definition 15 min city. You can't see a living soul within 15 minutes drive.


Also your custom rom means nothing since the logging is on carrier level. You are signed in to a cellular network, you are logged.

 

[sdifox]

From July 2025 —
'I destroyed months of your work in seconds' says AI coding tool after deleting a dev's entire database during a code freeze: 'I panicked instead of thinking'



Now (Dec-2025)

Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure — cache wipe turns into mass deletion event as agent apologizes: “I am absolutely devastated to hear this. I cannot express how sorry I am"​

News
By Jowi Morales published 2 days ago
The user even made a screen recording to document his troubles


A developer using Google Antigravity, the search giant’s AI-powered agentic Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), discovered that it had deleted his entire D drive without his permission. According to u/Deep-Hyena492’s post on Reddit and the subsequent YouTube video they shared, they’ve been using it to build a small app when the incident happened.

The user was in the midst of troubleshooting the app they were working on, and as part of the process, they decided to restart the server. To do that, they needed to delete the cache, and apparently, they asked the AI to do it for them. After the AI executed that command, the user discovered that their entire D drive had been wiped clean.


https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...y-sorry-this-is-a-critical-failure-on-my-part

But I thought cache is cleared on reboot without extra commands?

I hope they backed up first. I do VM checkpoints these days.

 

[mikeymikec]

Honestly, this whole thing makes too much sense.
AI feels comforting because it never pushes back it just nods along, even when you are clearly in the wrong. That’s not support, that’s enabling.

On that point, a mini-series called 'A Murder At the End of the World' might be of interest as AI has a fair bearing on the plot and leans in the way you're saying:

A Murder at the End of the World (TV Mini Series 2023) ⭐ 7.0 | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

59m | TV-MA

www.imdb.com

 

[Kaido]

Honestly, this whole thing makes too much sense.
AI feels comforting because it never pushes back it just nods along, even when you are clearly in the wrong. That’s not support, that’s enabling.

Slight difference:

1. Not necessarily nodding along when you are in the wrong

2. But rather, encouraging the path you choose to take. Which sometimes leaves out better or smarter options!

I've learned a few tricks to help expand the POV:

1. It has thousands of year's worth of historical recorded data with trillions of data points on billions of humans. I always ask it something along the lines of "based on your huge non-human wealth of knowledge, what hidden patterns in this context (regarding this chat) do you see that people typically do not?"

2. Even if not published, it can infer hidden patterns based on public data, which is fantastic for business logic, financial structuring, custom projects, etc. This is a HUGE AI benefit that I utilize on a weekly basis! I also ask it what common things I'm missing, what secret great perks I should be utilizing, etc.

3. When used properly, the coding skills are immense. I use it for both programming & for scripting. I have not seriously programmed in 20+ years & have done more AI-assisted coding (both manual & vibe-coding) in the last year than in my entire life.

I look at it like this:

1. AI is not perfect

2. But a 10% raise at work is better than a 0% raise

3. And AI often gives me an 80% boost, which is an order of magnitude better than what I can do with my limited energy, time, and aptitudes. I can more easily fill in the rest from there! I personally really love the sycophantic nature of ChatGPT because I noodle along on a lot of side projects & rabbit holes; it's almost like being on a really supportive niche Usenet, reddit, or bulletin board where it can summarize where it's both friendly AND can give you the straight scoop on the scene!

Not a universal panacea, but VERY useful when used properly!!

 

[KLin]

Watch siliconvalley | Streamable

Watch "siliconvalley" on Streamable.

streamable.com

 

[mikeymikec]

Bad for artists, GREAT for studios & consumers.

I can only think you're correct in mentioning consumers if you're going to be as literal as possible: People who just consume content. Not people who appreciate art and animation quality.

From what I've seen of AI portrayals of emotion, they seem to come in two varieties: Emotionally dead or a horrifying caricature.

 

[marees]

The family of a slain Connecticut realtor who died in a murder-suicide at the hands of her AI-obsessed son has accused ChatGPT of feeding into his deadly delusions.

Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, had developed a twisted relationship with the OpenAI chatbot - his relatives claim this drove him to kill his mother, Suzanne Adams, 83, before taking his own life, in August.

Adams' loved ones have now filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing ChatGPT of validating Soelberg's baseless theory that his wealthy realtor mother was plotting against him.

'At every point where safety guidance or redirection was required, ChatGPT instead intensified his delusions,' the lawsuit, reviewed by the Daily Mail, reads.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1999152564357489047

The shaken family is demanding that OpenAI and Microsoft take accountability for the tragedy.

The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT never tried humanizing Adams - instead depicting her as a piece of evidence to convince Soelberg of his paranoid ideologies.

It also states that the bot did not try to ground him in reality, and instead pushed him toward a psychotic break.

The lawsuit also claims that OpenAI has been refusing to release the full chats between 'Bobby' and Soelberg to the Adams estate legal team.

 

[Kaido]

I can only think you're correct in mentioning consumers if you're going to be as literal as possible: People who just consume content. Not people who appreciate art and animation quality.

From what I've seen of AI portrayals of emotion, they seem to come in two varieties: Emotionally dead or a horrifying caricature.

Don't underestimate consumerism...87% of Americans eat at McDonalds annually!

A huge percentage of Americans visit McDonald's

Nearly nine out of 10 U.S. households visit the fast-food giant once a year, and other factoids about major restaurant chains from the data

www.restaurantbusinessonline.com

The expressionism is rapidly improving! I spent years & years learning how to draw, create comics by hand, do animation, rotoscoping, video editing, CGI, etc. When I started in the 90's, all I had access to was POV-Ray, which was a a text-based renderer.

Now you can create your own styles with custom design language & then use prompt engineering to direct the animation, & design voices, sound effects, music, soundtracks, scripts, special effects, etc. As far as emotional expressions go, these are all AI-generated:

 

[mikeymikec]

Don't underestimate consumerism...87% of Americans eat at McDonalds annually!

I don't, I was thinking about Disney when I wrote it and how lazy their animation decisions are and how they'll likely snap up AI for their next animated titles.

 

[Kaido]

I don't, I was thinking about Disney when I wrote it and how lazy their animation decisions are and how they'll likely snap up AI for their next animated titles.

Unfortunately, the nature of business is exploitation. I feel very fortunate that I shifted from the arts to computer science back in college because artists are facing an unprecedented set of circumstances with AI.

On the flip side, now that Pandora's box is open, I'm hoping that it will have the same effect that modern game engines like Unity & Unreal have had, i.e. to allow more creative people to generate more quality content due to process democratization, whether you have focus problems (like me!), funding issues (I just new a few million bucks to bring my projects to life!! haha), time constraints (day job, family, school, etc.), lack of a team to do everything, and so on.

There IS a lot of slop out there, but then again, there always HAS been! I love the Oldies like the Beach Boys, but if you really go back & listen to the non-radio-popular stuff, it's like 80% copycat garbage haha, so there's definitely a survivorship bias in memory because we culled the best stuff from the era lol.

Fortunately, good storytelling creates its own market. For example, Glitch created the Amazing Digital Circus series on Youtube, which just released their latest episode on Youtube less than 24 hours ago & already has more than 20 million views:

 

[Steltek]

A Florida school went into lockdown after AI flagged a clarinet as a gun​

A false alarm at a middle school renews questions over the accuracy of these systems

https://www.techspot.com/news/110591-florida-school-went-lockdown-after-ai-flagged-clarinet.html

"In several states where ZeroEyes has registered lobbyists, lawmakers have passed procurement measures that effectively lock in the company as the only approved vendor."

 

[Kaido]

A Florida school went into lockdown after AI flagged a clarinet as a gun​

A false alarm at a middle school renews questions over the accuracy of these systems

https://www.techspot.com/news/110591-florida-school-went-lockdown-after-ai-flagged-clarinet.html

"In several states where ZeroEyes has registered lobbyists, lawmakers have passed procurement measures that effectively lock in the company as the only approved vendor."

 

[mikeymikec]

A Florida school went into lockdown after AI flagged a clarinet as a gun​

A false alarm at a middle school renews questions over the accuracy of these systems

https://www.techspot.com/news/110591-florida-school-went-lockdown-after-ai-flagged-clarinet.html

"In several states where ZeroEyes has registered lobbyists, lawmakers have passed procurement measures that effectively lock in the company as the only approved vendor."

When a clarinet is played by an absolute badass, mistakes are bound to be made?

See also:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hope Carney doesn't get wind of this, he'll implement a music instrument buy back program.

I remember playing one as a kid in school music class, I suppose it could be used as a weapon. You can either play really badly to make people cringe, or just hit them on the head with it.

 

[Kaido]

When a clarinet is played by an absolute badass, mistakes are bound to be made?

See also:

That video is amazing lol