A Blog With No Name

AI: don't shoot the user

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 18:00:00 +0100

Today I’d like to talk a bit about a conversation of sorts that happened recently between Cory Doctorow and tante (from Smashing Frames). Actually it’s not really about the conversation, although I do recommend it (there are four articles: 1, 2, 3 and 4), but rather its subject.

The topic at hand is, again, AI. And more specifically the following question: should we accept its usage at all? Or do we have some kind of moral obligation to avoid it AI at all costs, given the very real and documented harms it caused and is still causing today? And if that’s the case, then what about all the people around us who do make use of it?

I obviously won’t even pretend to cover all of this perfectly by myself, but this subject has got me thinking for a while, so I thought I might as well lay it down properly.

AI is bad, obviously

It should really go without saying, at this point, that AI (specifically generative AI) has done a lot of harm. I’ve written about it before, as did many smarter and more eloquent people. AI uses a lot of water and energy, is dependent on underpaid work from poor countries, can reinforce biases or be responsible for cognitive harms, etc. etc. (see this site for a quick rundown).

But our smartphones and computers and their apps also use water and energy for their production while depending on underpaid work that can be outright modern day slavery, something we have known for a long time. Are any of those apps worth abetting slavery and child labour? Is this a conversation we want to have? Because I don’t, and nothing is worth that. Yet I own a smartphone and a computer, like probably most people reading this.

So why is AI different? The easy answer is: because it’s useless. But that’s not entirely true, since a lot of people do find personal uses for it. Not things that were completely impossible before of course, but then again people did pretty well before smartphones existed! The fact that we can’t easily imagine our lives without them isn’t so much progress as it is a damning indictment of our overreliance on a technology that’s younger than most people alive¹.

A slightly better answer, I think, is that AI pissed everyone off. It is at best a half-functionning technology peddled by pathologic liars and illuminated boosters who’ve been insisting for years now that “next model will be AGI”. Add to that the massive plagiarism, constant slop and fearmongering about AI replacing jobs, and it becomes honestly really hard to not be pissed. And fair enough, I’m pissed too! I hate OpenAI and Sam Altman, I hate Anthropic and Dario Amodei, and I have nothing but contempt for the sad sad people competing on leaderboards to see who will burn the most tokens.

But however pissed I may be, scolding and policing people around me who use any amount of AI is not a good — or viable — answer.

But that doesn’t mean using it is always bad

All of the above being said, let’s not fall into the “people who participate in something are bad and banned from trying to make it better” trap (see Mister Gotcha for a funnier version). Generative AI is a highly flawed technology that deserves utmost criticism, but this is more or less true of a lot of other things, and we still use those other things. So why not use AI?

As long as you are using it in a personal manner, without contributing in any way to the hype or enriching the ploutocrats, why would it be automatically wrong?

Morally speaking, if you were to judge other human inventions as harshly as AI, you would either have to make exceptions in order to not reject most modern technology. But even if that isn’t enough for you (even though it probably should be)², I still think it’s a bad strategy, politically speaking.

Think about it: a lot of people might simply not be as informed as you are about AI and the politics of it all. Sure they’re annoyed at the slop or don’t want to use it so much at work, but maybe they see it as just a boring new technology: some people are hyped, some people want to go back to before it existed, and we couldn’t afford it without exploiting poorer countries. What’s new? So maybe they still use it from time to time: hey ChatGPT, can you draw me as a Ghibli character? - Hey Sora, care to generate me slapping my boss? And so what? Are you now so mad at them you’ll just stop talking to them?!

Your relatives and friends are probably the wrong target for your anger, justified as it may be. Alienating them is not helping them (or your cause). Which is not to say you can’t do anything, of course.

So what do we do?

Organize! Or as Cory Doctorow puts it: seize the means of computation!

Like so many people, you can refuse AI. Not by asking your equals to be morally pure and good, and not by simply “shopping carfully” and picking the lesser evil like it’s going to matter. If you want to act³, then speak up! Tell people what you really think about AI, but more importantly show them that you are actually on the same side. That they too can speak out without fear of being shamed by some AI-boosting collegue, or retaliated against by their employer. That you’re doing this because you care about everyone, including them.

Remember where your anger should be directed: towards the clique of con artists and liars who are still, to this day, gaslighting everyone they can about the supposed “miracle of AI”. This isn’t even their first scam. And we should Never Forget What They’ve Done.

Probably. I didn’t check, OK? But smartphones are younger than me, and it would bum me out to find that most people alive are also younger than me. ↩︎
I insist: it should be enough. ↩︎
I’m not saying you have to, although I do believe you should. ↩︎

I am not anti-AI, it's AI that is anti-me

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Foreword: this article probably doesn’t reflect what I think very well, or at least it doesn’t reflect the entirety of what I think. Yet here it is, as a snapshot of my current thoughts. Although I don’t believe I will disown them very soon - if ever -, they will probably keep evolving. Please keep this in mind while reading. (Also english is not my first language, so there’s that too.)

The title of this article may look like a joke to you, but know that it is, in fact, not a joke. It is merely a way to somewhat summarize what would have been an honest title¹

However, it probably warrants some precisions before we really get going. So let’s just say that when the title says “AI”, it actually means the current batch of “generative AI”: LLMs (Large Language Models, like ChatGPT). Let’s also say that, because AI² doesn’t have a conscience and is incapable of reasoning, it can’t be “anti” anything. Lastly, please know that I do not think so highly of myself that I would believe that an AI - even an actually intelligent one - could be anti “me” personally. But I do believe that AI poses significant problems, problems we should be solving before we use try push AI into every part of everyone’s life.

AI’s biggest problem is that it has so many

It is immediately clear, when taking a critical look at AI, that it has many negative impacts on many different areas of many different people’s life. The most discussed of those problems are probably it’s ecological impact³, the fact that it replaces or devalues certain jobs, and the general plundering of data, with no respect for copyright or privacy, that sustains it. One might also think about the current debate on wether LLMs actually make us more productive or not, the fact that the whole industry was mostly built on lies⁴, or the long-term risks on our ability to learn that AI poses, among other topics. Yet as interesting and valid as all of those subjects are, I would like to touch on a slighly different one.

As someone who regularly tries to discuss AI⁵ with any and all people who are willing to, I can’t help but feel that most people who use LLMs mostly know about all the problems mentioned above. It just isn’t enough to stop them from using their favorite chatbot. Why is that? Are we so used to hearing about our negative ecological impact that we just can’t be bothered anymore? Is it the fact that we always have a hard time apprehending things we do not immediately see? Is the hope of fabulous personal gains totally eclipsing our moral sentiment?

Those questions are probably as complex when it comes to individuals as they are trivially answered when it comes to businesses, who only view profit - or potential profit even - as a desirable thing to pursue. But however complex they might be, I keep hearing the same justifications for the use of AI, and I just can’t stand them anymore.

Putting the political back in AI

During most, if not every informal conversation I have about AI, people tell me one of two things. Either that AI “is just a tool” that we must learn how to use, or that AI “is here anyways”, and so we must, for some reason, adapt. Just common knowledge, really. Nothing out of the ordinary. But I strongly feel that both ways of thinking lead to an intellectual impasse.

Tools are never just tools

What is being said (albeit maybe unknowignly) when someone says that AI is “just” a tool? What is being left aside? Well first, this is obviously ignoring the tool’s existence before it is being using and everything that was necessary - materially, politically… - to even make it in the first place. Talking about AI, this is refusing to think about the whole chain of supply, from collecting rare metals in dramatic conditions to undiscriminately pillaging the internet’s data, including every work of art every posted online.

Even if you can ignore the existence a tool has had before you can wield it, it would still be wrong to assume that you should limit your thinking to how it is being used. This article by Frank Elavsky says it very well: a tool is always made for certain uses; it will inhibit others, or render them impossible. A hammer will make you hold it by the handle and hit with the head. You can very much do the opposite, but you’ll be far less efficient. A hammer also makes you swing it when you use it. Again, you can technically just put it against a nail and push, but good luck with that.

Now let’s think about another kind of tool, one where the reasoning would be more radical. A gun, for example. Now a gun clearly isn’t “just” a tool. It’s a killing machine, or at least a wounding or maiming machine. The very fact of carrying is gun is thus something that a lot of people, myself included, simply refuse. It is a moral stance, and one that was popular enough that entire countries would accept civil alternatives to their military services.

It should be evident, then, that such a moral position can also be held regarding other tools, including generative AI or any other technology. Because it obviously doesn’t depend on the tool itself as limited by it’s physical presence, but on what the tool does, implies, or why it exists. LLMS, unlike guns, aren’t literal killing machines, but they are, unfortunately for their fans, slop machines. And isn’t the purpose of a system what it does rather than what it is supposed to do?

Fear of missing out on AI: but missing out on what exactly?

The other thing that I feel I’m hearing all the time is some variation on “well AI is here now anyway”, the subtext being “might as well use it”. “Too bad, I didn’t want to use it but I guess I have to”. And this is something that I hear everywhere, not only from people who don’t really have an opinion about AI, but also from those who are in favor or against it.

People with a bad opinion of AI will be seemingly driven more by fatalism or some kind of external pressure, but will still sometimes join with people who have a good opinion of AI into some kind of FOMO that’s barely disguised as pragmatism. Lastly, people with no particular opinion on AI seem to follow a version of the principle of least effort: everyone is doing it and I guess that it makes my Google searches faster, so I guess I’ll just use it.

In any case, all of those approaches not only accept AI’s existence, but more importantly a form of usefulness. However, it is still not certain that LLMs actually make us more productive. Even if they did, for certain professions or certain people, we could also decide, as a society, that the collective price to pay exceeds the current benefits we get from AI. Because let’s face it: AI has all but proven to be a reliable way to improve our existence.

As for the benefits of AI⁶, let’s start by remembering how LLMs, as products, were sold on some of the biggest lies of the last decade, which means a lot when you consider that said decade also saw the emergence of blockhain, NFTs, crypto and the metaverse. Even then, you do not have to do a lot of research to see that LLMs are almost never as useful as you’re told they are, and rarely even useful at all. Most of the time, it’s not even AIs but actual human beings, a lot of them in India ⁷.

And even when we’re talking about machines, it can be difficult to find scientific studies about AI’s performance. To take just one example, this reddit post asks about exactly this, and the only study ever mentioned in the thread is the famous METR study from july 2025. Except it found that experienced open-source developers were less productive when using AI, not the other way around.

Solutionism is not a solution

The first impulse when hearing about most of AIs problems, as with a lot of problems in general, is to try and find a solution. Unfortunately, any attempt at “fixing” something will depend on the diagnostic you make. Analysing a problem as contingent will probably lead to considering contingent solutions, instead of structural ones which may very well be what we need in AIs case. As Cory Doctorow puts it, “AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society”; if only we didn’t rush to use asbestos everywhere at the time…

Meanwhile, who says that we have to use a technology as nefarious as AI? It’s usually not a very popular argument, but a form of technological degrowth doesn’t mean being anti-technology or even anti-AI. Questioning and wanting to limit the general and unfettered use of super-chatbots is not an attack of anything. Rather, it is in defense of us humans, in trying to protect us from an emerging polluting industry. In trying to make sure that our tool do not make us less creative or less intelligent⁸ before everyone uses them, not afterwards.

“Move fast and break things”, Facebook’s motto until 2014, could be a reasonable goal when you’re just developing a banal website as fast a possible and intending on fixing every bug later. It definately is not a reasonable goal when it means always staying one step ahead of government regulation and the things you are breaking are actual human lives. It is still time to slow down or even take a break on using AI. Let’s give ourselves the times to consciously and collectively decide what we want or not.

Such as “Yes I do have some objections to the use of AI, not because I am against technology or a contrarian, but because generative AI such as it exists today is either dangerous or, at best, doing us a disservice”, for example. ↩︎
Yes I will be writing “AI” instead of “generative AI” or “LLMs”. Sorry not sorry. ↩︎
Yes it has a lower impact than other industries, but that doesn’t make it automatically acceptable. It’s still an additional weight on our global carbon footprint, which cannot be justified by the only thing it actually mass produces : slop. ↩︎
We’ll get back to those. ↩︎
Even though I can’t really recommend it, to be fair. ↩︎
The fact that you have to go looking for them at all is already not great. I mean, I don’t remember people wondering how to make a smartphone or a laptop useful for them? ↩︎
Other articles include the following, in no particular order: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ↩︎
Yes there will always be new ideas and smart people. But it might be in spite of AI and not thanks to it, in the same way that some people are still very good at mental arithmetics in spite of the calculator everyone has on their phone. ↩︎

Today I learned: neo-neoplatonism, we're only our tools, and plastic recycling

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Silicon valley and “neo-neoplatonism”

In this article by the belgian blogger Ploum, he argues quite strongly against platonism and neoplatonism, philosophies that separate the physical world from the “world of ideas” and placing the latter hierarchicaly above¹. Mister Ploum has himself quite the opposite stance: do we shape our thoughts, or are they shaping us? When you think about it (ha), it’s hard to argue that every action is preceded by much thought, if at all. It’s also hard to argue that your thinking is wholly detached from the material world and the experience you have of it. Like, if I’m writing right now it’s not quite only because I decided it; mostly, it’s because my thoughts and the values and principles I hold dear make me do this choice. If I did have a choice² here, I would probably be doing something else. Something easier and more immediately rewarding, probably.

Anyway, Ploum also elaborates by discussing “neo-neoplatonism”, a philosophy where nothing matters anymore except ideas. And it’s pushed by the Silicon valley more that ever with AI, which is advertised as a means of delegating everything - except having ideas. Just tell the AI what to do, it’ll figure it out by itself! Why would you want to think by yourself, or learn, or work for anything? This is obviously a very dystopian world, because it wouldn’t actually reward the people with the best ideas (everyone has ideas all the time), but the ones with the power - the money - to have those ideas be realised by other people.

https://ploum.net/2025-10-27-outil-va-faire-de-moi.html

Our tools are never neutral

I had actually read this piece a few months ago, but it came to mind again when reading the article above. And I read it again, because even though it had made a great impression on me the first time, I couldn’t quite remember enough about it. It’s author, Frank Elavsky, is also angry, but this time at people who say that “AI is just a tool - it matters how you use it”. By way of philosophy, he argues that tools are, in fact, never “just tools”. That it is always important to think about what are tools do, not just in the immediate sense of the word but, as M. Elavsky puts it, as “highly complex parts of life and culture”. The invention of cars, for exemple, has constrained our city design and much of how we live, and has had numerous consequences³ that we’re trying to undo today.

Even a much more simpler tool that an AI or a car isn’t necessarily neutral. Citing Anna Gyllenklev, the article notes that even chairs communicate an intention to us: not just to sit, but to do it in a certain way.

Anyway, this article is (somewhat) long and complex, which is what I enjoyed about it. So instead of badly rehashing it, I would absolutely recommend that you give it a read.

https://www.frank.computer/blog/2025/05/just-a-tool.html

Why plastic recycling is hard, actually (spoiler : it’s mostly capitalism)

In my mind, plastic recycling efforts has always been hampered by a vague resistance I imagined coming from a Big Plastic of sorts, although I never quite read up on anything related. In my defense, it’s all too easy to find various - sometimes criminal - scandals involving large companies exploiting, polluting, and trying to hide what they’re doing.

So I tried to get up to speed with this part-interview video, where Hank Green explains a few things. Like the fact that there are different types of plastic that don’t recycle the same way, or that it can be pretty difficult to separate plastic from other materials that are used with it. Mostly though, he explains that new plastic is “dirt cheap”, due to the fact that the thing we use to make it is a by-product of natural gas extraction, which the US has a lot of. And given that this thing⁴ has practicaly no use except in making plastic, well here we are.

Honestly, I always have a hard time with economically-oriented explanations like this: shouldn’t we making rules that favor long-term sustainability instead of short-term gains? Do we need this much plastic? Is this not another point in favor of changing the system instead of endlessly amending it? At least the video then turns into a mostly optimistic dialog about the future of plastic recycling and what is already done in the field. Far from perfect, but a direction we desperately need to take.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=325HdQe4WM4

This is a very crude and probably only somewhat true summary of those philosophies, I know. Sorry philosophers. Will do better next time. ↩︎
“You always have a choice”: sure, you can always make the wrong choice. But if you apply the principle of charity to what people say, I believe you’ll understand that those aren’t usually conceived as “real” choices. ↩︎
Our dependency on oil and gas, a dramatic shrink in public transport, dramatic building and maintenance costs for every infrastructure our cars depend on (roads, garages, parking lots, refineries, boats to transport the oil…), and this is probably just the beginning of it. ↩︎
No I’m not going back to the video to remember what it’s called. Yes I’m lazy. ↩︎

Today I learned: reverse centaurs, the dangers of centralization and solar energy

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to figure out a way to write (and, more importantly, publish) more regularly. And as I’m trying to stay curious and read a little bit every day, an idea came to mind: why not start by trying to share some of that reading? I would at least get a history of interesting articles, which is probably nice anyway.

Centaurs and reverse centaurs

Over on Cory Doctorow’s blog (you know him at least as the enshitification guy), I learned about centaurs and reverse centaurs. Those are automation theory concepts; a centaur is a machine-assisted humain, while a reverse-centaur is a machine-assisting human, someone who isn’t served by but themselves serve the machine. You might think of Chaplin in Modern Times, but this is very much happening right now, especially with AI. And it’s unlikely to stop with how much of it is shoved down our throats, at least as long as the bubble lasts.

But the risks here do not limit to the psychosocial ones you might be thinking of: as Cory Doctorow explains, you could also just become an “accountability sink” for the machine (here, AI). You would be the “human in the loop”, responsible for every hallucination or error of a machine you supposedly should be able to correct. A very interesting article (and blog) to read through.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

On the dangers of centralization (especially with Big Tech)

Paris Buttfield-Addison is, as he puts it himself, a loyal Apple customer, and has been for at least 25 years. Not only did he probably buy every Apple hardware ever, he also wrote several books on Apple-related programming languages. A true believer if there are any.

What shock it must have been then to find his Apple account completely deactivated one day after redeeming an apparently fraudulous gift card (although he did buy it at a very legal big brand store)! All of a sudden, he had nothing: no mail, no pictures, no messages, no sync, and a bunch of mostly-unusable hardware.

Spoiler alert, he did manage to get his account back in the end. It took almost a week, multiple press outlets talking about it, and a lot of contacting people he knew who work for Apple to finally appease the tech giant. I think it’s safe to say that most people won’t manage all of that…

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

Solar energy is progressing faster than one could think

Everything’s mostly in the title for this part. Now obviously I wasn’t very informed on this subject, and I’m not much more informed now, to be fair. But I’m simply happy to learn that the majority of EUs energy this summer came from renewable sources, and that China is going through a solar panel building frenzy. It’s the little things, y’know.

From this article, I also got to learn the economic observation “if it can’t go on forever it will stop”, a very basic but in a way surprisingly thoughtful fact. However, if you do decide to read the whole thing, do note that it’s not really about what I took away from it, and also that it is not, in fact, very optimistic about our near future.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/10/the-pivot-1.html

Why I wrote a blog (and why maybe you should too!)

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:40:25 +0100

I know nothing about blogs, blogging or being a blogger, at least nothing more than expected from a digital native. I’ve also barely ever posted on social media and have a few (dozen) projects already taking up my mental (and sometimes physical) space, but here I am adding one more to the pile - and this time it’s even public! So… why? Why am I doing this and pretending that you should too?

Well, since you’re curious - don’t be shy, I know you are! -, let me just list some of the reasons why I, at least, started a blog:

1: It’s fun!

Have you ever wanted to randomly ramble for hours on end about subjects so specific that no-one around you even pretends to care? Or if you’re not prone to rambles, how about rants? Surely you must rant on a regular basis, like I can only assume most people do? Well then it just gets better to let it all out, screaming into the void, so to say.

I mean, just imagine what you could be writing: absolutely anything you want. No-one can stop you. No-one can even know it’s you. Now go write that 100.000-words essay about your unabated love for your cat!

2: It’s free (digital) real estate!

There are so many free and easy ways to get your blog up and running these days that the most difficult part is actually choosing the one you’re going to use.

While this particular ego-trip of mine is built with Hugo (and the PaperMod theme) and hosted on GitHub Pages, you truly have an absurd amount of choices. It ranges from small non-profits offering open-source hosting solutions to literally the biggest companies on Earth: pick your poison!

3: It’s a nice way to give your impostor syndrome the finger

“No-one cares about what I’m thinking anyway” can become “No-one cares, but I don’t either!”. Or “I’ve nothing interesting enough to tell the world” can turn into that essay about your cat. And if people start reading you anyway… well, it’s kind of on them, right?

Now I know, I know: it’s usually not that easy. You’re right. It’s also important to take the time to do it the way you’d like. There’s no rush, the internet is (hopefully?) not going anywhere. Also important is the fact that you do not have to do this at all, actually. While some find an unexpected calling in personnal blogging, it isn’t, of course, what everyone should aspire to¹.

However, if you ever start a blog I don’t mind you throwing a link my way! (Ok right now there’s no way to contact me on here except maybe getting my Github name through the URL and messaging me there which is not ideal, but I’m considering some options that will hopefully not get me spammed by a thousand bots.)

See you around!

One of the many things that go without saying, but are very much better said out loud. ↩︎