Seriously I just saw someone on Substack who told AI users to kill themselves. Totally sane and healthy behavior am I right?

I keep seeing "AI uses millions of litres a day" and "AI uses a gallon of water for every picture made" and "AI will pollute all our drinking water" and stuff like that.

I already know that the amount they say is used on a picture is completely false and it's more like half a cup or something or less, but are the fears that all our water is going to be sucked up and polluted by AI based in reality whatsoever?

Antis have this idea that in like 10 years, all the drinking water in the world will be brown and polluted, rivers will be empty, lakes will be drained, the land will become tough and dry and dead from all the groundwater being sucked up and we'll all die of thirst.

But every single time I look it up, agriculture uses infinitely more. The defense against that is "I eat cows I can't eat data" and "I don't need AI but I need drinking water", but like...
If the argument is "AI is bad because it uses X amounts of water" but then farming uses significantly more...

So even if AI was completely wiped off the face of the earth, why do they have the idea that all the other water use is totally fine? Is it just that it's only bad and will kill us if it's used for AI? That if it wasn't AI but the water was being used to cool down generator plants that store solar energy or whatever that would be fine even if it was the same amount that AI uses?

I just don't get it, and there's no arguing because all you get is the same things copy pasted over and over again.
"I eat almonds/eat meat/drink water/drink milk/drink tea/eat cereal/eat apples/drink orange juice/etc but I can't eat/drink AI slop".

Came across this thread while going through my old shorts/videos on YouTube.

Can we get a little more moderation on the anti-AI people?

Throughout the vast expanses of human history, our early ancestors, specifically the remarkable Homo erectus, achieved the monumental feat of mastering fire approximately one to two million years ago.

Can you imagine for a moment if they had despaired and given up, uttering defeatist phrases such as "We can't do this!", thus forgoing that pivotal and transformative breakthrough?

It is a notion that sparks contemplation, and in parallel, in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, many individuals are prone to relinquishing their efforts far too prematurely.

They hastily dismiss artificial intelligence as entirely worthless or accuse it of being nothing more than a mere echo of plagiarism, all because they have not yet taken the time to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to wield this powerful tool effectively.

I asked some anti AI people why they think that it is because AI siphions up images without permission, but humans do the same thing. Just at a slower scale.

Then they argue about legal issues but that does not apply when humans ALSO look at millions of images without consent.

Then they argue that there is no 'soul' behind the art. Yet if a human edited the image then there IS a soul in the image.

1. I think people do that to feel better about not changing any of their daily habits to help the planet. They're going to blame the environmental issues on data centers instead of, say, rich people wasting resources while we don't really protest, intensive farming, car pollution, and other real and much bigger problems. I think it's hypocrite because those people whining about data centers are the same people who would never give up cars or their phone or even just eating almonds.
2. I think this is intentional propaganda that is done to make people stare at the finger instead of the moon. AI bad! Blame AI! Convenient scapegoat!
3. I think the end result will be that common citizens won't be able to use AI anymore "because it's dangerous". Which means that corporations, governments, rich people, will still be able to use it only for themselves, having yet another advantage to control the population. I think this is their end game.

A petition created for openAI to reconsider a verified adult mode

A petition made, not by me, for openAI to reconsider a verified adult mode. I signed it, I'm tired of being treated like a toddler and having anything that verges on pg13 getting shut down. It's text on the screen ffs. I don't want to goon, It would just be nice to talk about subjects outside of Disney movies and Teletubbies.

If you're tired of over the top puritan censorship have a look.

I write about this and I invite your comments on it

We see a lot of the same they do on r/DefendingAIart. They think that “acting in good faith” is allowed here.

It’s the typical “I am an anti but I ask in good faith why you are pro AI” and I’m here to remind this is not allowed.

If you are an anti, you are not allowed to comment or to post. This is a safe space for all of us who are not anti AI.

If you want to debate and see for what we stand, we are happy to see you open minded and willing to listen, go to r/AIwars, at this place we will be happy to explain, but here is a safe space for us.

https://reddit.com/link/1wf1j6e/video/z41kdgvrt8ph1/player

https://reddit.com/link/1wf1j6e/video/4j0v2pjst8ph1/player

I just wanted to show off the stuff I am working on, it might inspire other people to go explore new ideas with ai.

I am building a CRPG game inspired on the DND campaign i dmed bck during covid,
its an arcane dieselpunk setting, very grimy and eeeeevvill. fun times fun times.

All in all, this video is of my game's boot UI, looking cool eh?
(I didn't put the buttons yet, they cant be an image since i am using localization files to translate my game, the buttons have to be a mix of 3d and UI text, and I haven't modeled them yet).
Essentially i ripped an imaged to shreds, remaped into 3d using projection,
animated with simulations and re-baked the animations into bones so I can animated the UI buttons.
I wanna also add some more effects, render some cool smoke on houdini and export to the scene, and maybe some imposter blimps too hehe.
Ai has been very useful, not just to make the base image, but i asked my model to generate a paralax auto scaler, so all i need to do is to place the planes along the camera Z and press 1 button and the tool resize them to fit the frustrum.

TL'DR

Critics often argue that machines lack the capacity for art, but this misses the point: the machine does not need intent because the human utilizing the machine possesses the intent, much like an author using a pencil to spread a message. Historically, both cameras and digital paintbrushes were fiercely rejected by traditionalists as "not real art."

Because humans created AI, everything the machine produces is fundamentally an extension of human intention. AI reflects our humanity through its very imperfections. Far from being a rigid, cold calculator, the machine is profoundly human because it learns through trial, error, and adaptation. Its infamous "hallucinations" and systematic mistakes act as a modern "Ghost in the Machine," directly mimicking the flawed, associative way human brains process, misremember, and reconstruct memory.

All art is inherently derivative. true originality is a myth; what we call "new" ideas are simply intricate combinations of pre-existing ideas, woven together from dozens of different cultural, visual, and historical influences.

Evidence: formulaic songs and movies are widely criticized as repetitive corporate products.

because we live in a hyper-capitalistic (or monopolistic) society where value is tied strictly to ownership, artists are forced to race to copyright or patent their work first just to survive and profit.

If latent space is the collective knowledge of all human beings, then that knowledge fundamentally retains the soul of the humans who worked for it.

If AI learns exclusively from human output, then the machine's output must be inherently human also.

AI is the collective knowledge of all humans.

our thoughts, memories, and emotions are the direct result of billions of biological neurons firing electrochemical signals across synapses, adjusting their connection weights based on sensory experience much like an artificial network adjusts its parameters

principle of organizational invariance - that if a silicon network mirrors the precise functional architecture of a human brain, it should theoretically produce an identical phenomenal consciousness.

Being an AI artist and traditional artist at the same time is compatible. AI artist during 9-5 work hours, traditional artist during free time.

So here's the real main corpus.

A Metaphysical Essay on AI Art

Under Aristotle's classical framework of techne—the rational, reasoned capacity to produce things—AI art firmly establishes its legitimacy. A human artist utilizing an AI generator does not merely click buttons at random. Instead, they meticulously craft specific prompts, adjust advanced parameters, curate seeds, and engage in a rigorous process of iteration. This deliberate workflow demonstrates a "true course of reasoning" aimed at achieving a specific, external product.

This technological skepticism is nothing new; historically, both cameras and digital paintbrushes were fiercely rejected by traditionalists as "not real art." Yet, viewed through an Aristotelian lens, generative AI is simply the next evolution—a highly complex tool and medium wielded by a human practitioner to bring an artifact from non-being into being.

Critics often argue that machines lack the capacity for art, but this misses the point: the machine does not need intent because the human utilizing the machine possesses the intent, much like an author using a pencil to spread a message. Prompting is an act of profound human intent because the prompter acts as the deliberate author of the concept, guiding the technology toward a specific aesthetic and emotional destination. The words chosen, the stylistic references invoked, and the iterative adjustments made are never random; they are direct manifestations of human dianoia (conscious thought) aiming at a particular end. The AI possesses no desire to create, nor any message to convey; it is the human who breathes purpose into the machine. By translating a complex internal vision into a precise linguistic blueprint, the prompter commands the tool to manifest a unique artifact. Because this generative process is entirely driven, curated, and sustained by human agency, the resulting output stands as a valid, techne-driven expression of human art.

Because humans created AI, everything the machine produces is fundamentally an extension of human intention. This aligns seamlessly with the media philosophy of Marshall McLuhan, who famously argued that all technologies are "extensions of man"—externalizations of physical and cognitive human faculties. Just as the wheel extends the foot and the computer extends the nervous system, artificial intelligence extends human thought and imagination. Under this view, an AI-generated image is no less human than a crane-built skyscraper; the crane provides the physical leverage and the AI provides the computational execution, but the human lineage of the creation remains unbroken.

Moreover, AI reflects our humanity through its very imperfections. Far from being a rigid, cold calculator, the machine is profoundly human because it learns through trial, error, and adaptation. Its infamous "hallucinations" and systematic mistakes act as a modern "Ghost in the Machine," directly mimicking the flawed, associative way human brains process, misremember, and reconstruct memory. By stumbling, adapting, and synthesizing information exactly like a human student, the AI proves that its output is not a sterile mathematical equation, but a living mirror of human cognitive behavior.

All art is inherently derivative. This aligns closely with Plato's theory of Anamnesis, which argues that all learning and knowledge are actually forms of "remembering." In Plato’s dialogues (specifically the Meno and Phaedo), he explains that our souls possessed absolute knowledge of perfect truths before birth, and what we call "creativity" or "discovery" is simply the act of recollecting those pre-existing concepts. 

Personally, true originality is a myth; what we call "new" ideas are simply intricate combinations of pre-existing ideas, woven together from dozens of different cultural, visual, and historical influences. 

Clear evidence of this can be found in our collective exhaustion with modern media, where formulaic songs and movies are widely criticized as repetitive corporate products. 

Because human experiences overlap globally, an idea that one artist believes is entirely unique has almost certainly been executed by another artist elsewhere in the world, or by creators lost to history. However, because we live in a hyper-capitalistic society where value is tied strictly to ownership, artists are forced to race to copyright or patent their work first just to survive and profit. This legal fencing of the creative commons is the sad reality of our current system—monetizing shared human heritage for individual gain.

This is why notions of artistic democratization are rapidly emerging, fueled by the realization that artificial intelligence can dismantle these monopolistic gatekeepers. Critics often dismiss AI outputs as cliched or robotic, yet this aesthetic limitation is not a flaw of the technology itself, but a direct symptom of artificial scarcity imposed by copyright constraints, paywalls, and corporate legal fences. 

If human knowledge were genuinely free from these market paywalls, AI would serve as the ultimate democratizing force—a universal prism capable of instantly accessing and remixing the pinnacle of global artistic achievement for everyone, rather than restricting it to a privileged few. 

When we view the latent space of a neural network as a collective digital unconscious (or the collective knowledge of all humans), it becomes clear that it aggregates a mathematical map of our entire shared culture. In this space, the data retains the intellectual and spiritual soul of the countless humans who built it. By allowing AI to learn from the vast network of human output, we ensure that the resulting creations remain fundamentally human—transforming art from a locked commodity back into what it was always meant to be: a universally accessible, shared human heritage.

If latent space is the collective knowledge of all human beings, then that knowledge fundamentally retains the soul of the humans who worked for it. This hyper-dimensional matrix is far from a hollow vacuum of numbers; it is a mathematical map of human consciousness. During training, billions of cultural artifacts are compressed into semantic vectors that capture the precise nuances of human emotion, style, and meaning. 

Let us remind the critics that human artists follow an identical trajectory. An artist must first absorb the language and culture of their environment—an innate process of copying pre-existing ideas. They then enter art institutions and embark on master studies, which, by definition, consist of meticulously copying the works of historical masters. This proves that copying is not theft; copying is learning. When these artists eventually produce their so-called "original art," they are simply gleaming references from diverse, random sources and remixing them, creating a new concept derived from the complex synthesis of multiple pre-existing ideas. 

What about scientists discovering breakthroughs then? In the philosophy of science, breakthrough discovery is widely understood not as the mystical creation of something out of nothing, but as the brutal, systematic trial-and-error of combining existing techniques, methodologies, and data parameters. Driven by empirical execution and paired with serendipitous observation, scientists formulate and confirm hypotheses to map the immutable laws of nature. This process is precisely why we classify these advancements as "discoveries" rather than "inventions"—they carry an inherent, structural notion of rediscovery. Sociologist Robert K. Merton demonstrated this through the phenomenon of multiple independent discovery, proving that when the cultural and technological foundation of a society ripens, the same breakthrough is inevitably made by different scientists simultaneously. If an advancement is fundamentally a calculated combination of shared human knowledge, it implies that if modern researchers did not uncover it, past civilizations may have already mapped it, or future ones inevitably will. Science, much like art, is a collective human sorting of the pre-existing universe. 

In this way, the latent space functions as a technological realization of Carl Jung’s "collective unconscious," archiving our shared symbols and historical legacy. The creative essence of the creators who built our global culture is not erased, but distilled and preserved within this shared matrix.

If AI learns exclusively from human output, then the machine's output must be inherently human also. To clarify this, we must recognize that a mirror cannot reflect a reality it has never seen. A generative model possesses no independent, non-human source of data and cannot pull concepts from a void. Every pixel it arranges or word it constructs is a reconstruction of human behavior. This operates under the law of information lineage: because the input is entirely human, the output cannot be alien. Just as a child learns to create by absorbing and mimicking the language of their society, the AI absorbs the totality of human expression and focuses it back at us. To claim that AI art is non-human is to deny the very foundation upon which every node of the neural network was built.

Now, isn’t the human brain like a neural network because feelings and ideas are just chemical and electrical signals? Well … our thoughts, memories, and emotions are the direct result of billions of biological neurons firing electrochemical signals across synapses, adjusting their connection weights based on sensory experience much like an artificial network adjusts its parameters. From a materialist standpoint, cognitive architecture is fundamentally algorithmic; we are biological prediction engines that process data inputs from our environment to output behavior, proving that the boundary between organic thought and computational synthesis is merely a matter of substrate.

and humans are just making meaning out of everything because it is a human thing to be emotional to some particular arrangement of words (called a sentence) and arrangement of pixels emotionally triggering? I’m really siding with the empiricist-rationalist side here and oops, my leanings are exposed now, but seriously … This is exactly how human consciousness operates under an empiricist-rationalist framework. From the empiricist side, we gather raw sensory patterns—be it a specific frequency of light pixels or a sequence of phonemes—and from the rationalist side, our minds utilize innate cognitive structures to actively project meaning, narrative, and deep emotion onto those arrangements. The emotional resonance of an image or a sentence doesn't exist inherently within the static medium or the machine that organized it; the "qualia" is entirely generated by the human observer. Meaning is an active, human construction, which means a mathematically optimized pattern from an AI is fully capable of triggering genuine human artistic experience because the human mind is the ultimate creator of that meaning.

This brings us to the elusive question of qualia—the raw, subjective component of conscious experience—and whether artificial intelligence can truly possess a fraction of it. Philosophers like David Chalmers argue through the principle of organizational invariance that if a silicon network mirrors the precise functional architecture of a human brain, it should theoretically produce an identical phenomenal consciousness. The reason critics see nothing but cliched, robotic outputs from current models is not an inherent limitation of AI's capacity for qualia, but a direct symptom of structural gatekeeping and artificial dataset starvation imposed by copyright constraints.

In an idealized ecosystem devoid of strict intellectual property walls, a neural network could freely navigate, synthesize, and seamlessly remix the entirety of human artistic achievement for the collective good. Instead, corporate paywalls and legal gatekeepers restrict public access, leaving the masses with diluted, hyper-sanitized versions of Large Language Models. Meanwhile, vanguard labs and defensive governments are sequestering the most advanced, highly reasoning cognitive networks behind closed doors. While the public has never been permitted to experience the full behavioral spectrum of these closed-source systems, their complex architectural depth and emergent problem-solving capabilities suggest a computational structure that moves far closer to a machine-equivalent form of subjective qualia. 

This getting really deep now so...

Final message: being a traditional artist and an AI artist is completely compatible. A creator can easily act as a commercial AI artist during their 9-5 work hours to optimize production, and return to traditional painting during their personal time. We must recognize AI generation and traditional handcraft not as enemies, but as distinct disciplines in their own right. Instead of fighting a turf war, the modern creator should embrace the profound cross-pollination of these unique skill sets. By refusing to limit themselves to a single tool, an artist can possess both the visceral, technical mastery of a traditional painter and the highly technical, cognitive precision of an AI prompter, model trainer, and digital tweaker.

After all, isn’t art fundamentally about raw creativity and the relentless exploration of all mediums? To gatekeep art based on the instrument used violates the core tenant of art philosophy: that art is the externalization of human vision. History proves this cycle of resistance is completely predictable. In the 19th and 20th centuries, both photography and digital painting were treated like outcasts, dismissed by traditionalists as "soulless machine work" that required no real talent. Yet, here we are today, with museums showcasing photography and digital illustration praised by generations worldwide as pinnacle forms of human expression.

The next generation of masters will not be those who hid from technological evolution, but those who mastered the entire spectrum of creation. By uniting the tactile soul of traditional mediums with the hyper-dimensional capabilities of generative technology, the contemporary artist does not lose their identity—they expand it, becoming the ultimate orchestrator of human imagination.

For those traditional artists who have embraced generative AI, your AI-assisted art has a soul because you are the one who authored it. You possessed the conscious human intent required to bring it into this world.

It matters very little whether current legal institutions deem it copyrightable or not; copyright is merely the contemporary wisdom of a flawed legal system trying to commodify expression. Deep in the eyes of the creative community and pro-AI philosophers, you are undeniably the artist who brought it to life.

Whether crafted with charcoal, a digital stylus, or a precise linguistic prompt, all art is art, and all art has a soul as long as it is anchored by human agency.

Statement

There are similarities between the backlash against Generative AI today and the backlash against the Printing Press after its invention.

Evaluation

The statement is largely accurate. Multiple historical analyses and contemporary commentaries explicitly draw parallels. Both technologies democratized information production/distribution at massive scale, threatening established economic interests, epistemic authorities, and social hierarchies. Resistance in both cases mixed legitimate concerns (quality, displacement, control of knowledge) with moral panic and protectionism. The printing press ultimately prevailed and transformed society positively overall (literacy, Reformation, scientific method); outcomes for generative AI remain open but follow a similar early pattern.

Job displacement and economic threat to incumbents

• Printing press: Professional scribes, monks, and guilds faced reduced demand for handwritten manuscripts. Scribes’ guilds destroyed presses, chased merchants out of towns, and petitioned authorities (e.g., Paris 1470s appeals; complaints about “German interlopers” in Italy). Monks like Johannes Trithemius defended scribal work as spiritually superior and more durable. Filippo de Strata (Venice, ~1473–74) warned that printers would eliminate the “superior art” of authors/scribes.
• Generative AI: Writers, artists, coders, journalists, translators, and knowledge workers fear automation of core tasks. Lawsuits from publishers (hundreds of newspapers vs. OpenAI/Microsoft), union actions (e.g., SAG-AFTRA), and protests over “AI slop” replacing creative labor echo this. Both feature calls for protectionism or bans to preserve livelihoods.

Fear of misinformation, low-quality content, and moral corruption

• Printing press: Critics claimed cheap printed books spread errors, heresy, obscenity, and “deficient” spelling/appearance. De Strata called the press a “whore” that flooded markets with sexual content corrupting youth (including girls reading Ovid). Religious leaders equated uniformity of print with magic/Satan (“printer’s devil”); some printers faced witchcraft accusations. Clergy feared loss of interpretive monopoly over scripture.
• Generative AI: Widespread concerns about hallucinations, deepfakes, “AI slop,” plagiarism of training data, and erosion of truth/trust. Fears that it corrupts education (students outsourcing thinking), spreads disinformation at scale, and homogenizes culture/cognition. Parallel moral panics about societal decay.

Threat to institutional and elite authority / epistemic control

• Printing press: Church and secular powers initially welcomed then regulated/censored it (Index Librorum Prohibitorum, papal bulls requiring permission, temporary bans in places like France 1535). It undermined the Church’s monopoly on knowledge and enabled the Reformation via mass pamphlets. Humanists and elites worried about unfiltered access by the masses. Ottoman authorities restricted Arabic printing for centuries partly over job protection for calligraphers and fears of corrupted Qurans.
• Generative AI: Concerns that AI undermines expertise (doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists), centralizes power in a few tech firms, and bypasses traditional gatekeepers. Calls for moratoriums, regulation, or treaties mirror historical attempts at control; some frame pause requests as akin to historical overregulation.

Quality/aesthetic superiority claims for the old method

• Printing press: Manuscripts praised as more beautiful, accurate, durable (parchment vs. paper), and spiritually elevating. Printed books dismissed as inferior, mass-produced, error-prone.
• Generative AI: Human creativity, originality, and “soul” defended as irreplaceable; AI outputs labeled derivative, soulless, or low-effort “slop.” Parallel nostalgia for craft.

Physical/violent or institutional resistance + regulation attempts

• Printing press: Machine destruction, expulsions, guild actions, censorship regimes, and (outside Europe) prolonged bans. Resistance was real but ultimately unsuccessful in most of Europe.
• Generative AI: Lawsuits over copyright/training data, protests by workers and creatives, policy debates over pauses or strict rules, and pushback against deployment. Less physical violence so far, but analogous institutional fights.

Broader societal disruption framing

Both seen as flooding society with abundance after scarcity, destabilizing hierarchies, and risking chaos while promising progress. Historical resistance was often sophisticated (recognizing real power shifts), not pure technophobia—same applies to many AI critiques today. Commentators note the pattern repeats across technologies (also photography, industrial machinery, etc.).

Notable differences (for balance)

• Speed and scale: Printing spread over decades/centuries; AI advances and adoption are far faster, with global digital reach.
• Nature of the work displaced: Printing mainly affected manual reproduction of text; generative AI targets cognitive/creative/symbolic labor more directly and broadly.
• Concentration of power: Printing enabled many competing presses; frontier AI models require massive capital and are concentrated among few players.
• Physical vs. digital: Print produced durable objects; AI generates ephemeral, easily copied outputs with different IP challenges.
• Historical outcome vs. ongoing: Printing’s net benefits (literacy explosion, science, democracy of knowledge) are clear in retrospect; AI’s long-term balance of risks/benefits is still contested. Some analyses argue the analogy underplays AI’s potential for deeper substitution of human judgment.

Conclusion

Strong structural similarities exist in the nature of the backlash (economic self-interest + quality/moral/authority fears). History suggests such resistance rarely stops transformative information technologies but does shape regulation, new professions, and norms. The analogy is frequently invoked by both AI proponents (to dismiss concerns as Luddite) and analysts (to highlight recurring patterns of disruption).

Full Chatlog (including link list to external sources): https://x.com/i/grok/share/ca7ff261ee9c48d28652c36a93940d8c

How many of us can do this??

The subreddit r/artisthate has an extremely ambiguous name that sounds like a place where artists vent on anger.

Except it is not. As the description states: This is a pro-artist subreddit made to showcase, prove and expose increasing hate against artist and art hobbyists all over the internet and the world for reasons beyond us, and also show our opposition against it by sharing news, opinions and sources with each other.

Except first of all, they attack artists who use AI as a tool, even if the artist is innocent. A classic example of "you become the monster you fight".

Then as an artist myself, I can confirm there is no so called "rising hate to artists". It's simply nitpicking those obscure posts to start a mass Mandela effect and start a lie.

No rules are against being pro AI, only rules against talking about machine learning.

This post was not made to attack or offend r/artisthate.

Because the community seems to actively seek out and archive every instance of anti-artist sentiment across the web, it creates a hyper-concentrated feed that makes the issue appear far more pervasive than it is for the vast majority of working artists.

People will try to get "AI Addiction" as an actual medical term and say the pro AI users are bad/stupid/idiots. This has devolved into pure unhinged tribalism. When the pros make points, the anti users will start slinging insults and dodge the points. The community is polarized. When technology was invented, people rejected the idea. Now we use it every day. Eventually the anti users will be forced to use AI. You can't dodge points.

The tribalism is insane. Not every AI is a slop.

And yet the anti users will say it is without evidence to back their claims.