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Hatred of AI

Hatred of AI

I do not hate AI.

In April 2026, I described myself as a proponent of rational discussion.

In August 2026, I was profiled:

your public posts and comments lean distinctly toward the critical and cautious side of the spectrum, paired with a highly pragmatic, strictly-defined stance on utility. … a deliberate critic who actively resists the "pro-AI" narrative, preferring strict boundaries, human sovereignty in code, and clear labeling rules.


The links below are mostly for people who do hate AI.

Places of interest

Reddit

A recently resurrected and growing community for critical discussion on advancements in artificial intelligence. Now reopened to the public.

Following news and developments on ALL sides of the AI art debate (and more)

Fighting misinformation and attempts at legislation against AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated artwork.

A community for those resisting AI and its overreach. We discuss concerns about AI-generated ‘slop’ low-quality, mass-produced content and its impact on creativity, authenticity, and society. Share your thoughts, experiences, and ideas on how to push back against the rise of large language models and promote human-driven content. Join us to advocate for a future where technology doesn’t drown out the human voice

  • created in May 2025.

An anti ai """""""""art"""""""""" community

  • created in July 2025.

An anti-AI subreddit for posting ragebait made by AI bros so it doesn't fill up more serious anti-AI subs.

  • created in January 2026.

Fediverse

We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!

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.

Elsewhere

a San Francisco-based research and field-building nonprofit. We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to profoundly benefit the world, provided that we can develop and use it safely.

Statement on AI Risk | CAIS (2023)

Hints

Don't be a hijacker.

Reddit makes it easy for you to take off-topic chat elsewhere:

– and if r/antiai (above) does not suit you, there'll always be somewhere else, including your profile.

Pinned to my profile: Reasons for blocking, and how to end a block (2026-04-07).

From 576 - Using LLMs at Oxide | RFD | Oxide (Bryan Cantrill, January 2026):

Conversely, some have decided that they not only oppose LLM use for themselves, but wish to out or otherwise shame those that are making use of LLMs. Aside from the impracticalities of this position (e.g., as LLMs become the foundation for technologies like search, it will become increasingly difficult to attest to one’s own purity), such strident opposition undermines teamwork.

In this regard, LLM use may be viewed as a dietary choice: one may choose to (say) not eat meat — and at Oxide we wish to empathize with that disposition by making sure that vegetarian options are available when we eat together. But just as we accommodate those choices, those who make them must understand that others will make different decisions — and it is decidedly anti-social to interrupt someone’s meal to register disapproval with their choice of entrée.

Discussions in Reddit include r/freebsd and r/linuxsucks.

@grahamperrin

grahamperrin commented May 4, 2026 •

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Shares:

  1. https://www.reddit.com/user/grahamperrin/comments/1t3cbl7/hatred_of_ai/
  2. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116515611978395782
  3. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1nf383y/comment/ojues3t/
  4. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1oq9po2/comment/ok7cfkv/?context=3
  5. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116623192537616035
  6. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1txagz2/comment/opur8g0/?context=2
  7. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116701225639837690
  8. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116702690381576214
  9. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116713768800407144
  10. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116729009979063207
  11. https://www.reddit.com/r/lua/comments/1u4sezb/comment/orjgno2/?context=1
  12. https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/1u4uw7e/comment/ork1qb2/?context=2
  13. https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/1u5qk0n/comment/oroys2q/?context=1
  14. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116751143415058322
  15. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1u4jm92/comment/orvojzp/?context=3
  16. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116756725872143638
  17. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116789353935516836
  18. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1uc4xtb/comment/ot20eyg/?context=1
  19. https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/1up6xgp/comment/ow71fhc/?context=4
  20. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1jug3cv/comment/ox1oaz5/?context=2
  21. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1utnv0a/comment/ox96632/?context=1
  22. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116937554325073993
  23. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1jug3cv/comment/oyfo5al/
  24. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1v12qss/comment/oyqpgnv/?context=3
  25. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1v1ubp6/comment/oyr1m7d/?context=1
  26. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1ru0k9u/comment/ozzdmtq/?context=1
  27. https://www.reddit.com/r/COsnow/comments/1v8ybn6/comment/p17upu9/?context=1
  28. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1vgh0ji/comment/p1zwc1w/?context=1
  29. https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1vhdb52/comment/p26xmt4/?context=1 (removed, included an indirect reference to public content in the Wayback Machine – also removed, a 308-word scientific comment by someone else)
  30. https://www.reddit.com/r/u_spez/comments/1vgbkge/comment/p2kugwl/?context=1
  31. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1vgbt2j/comments/p2lexwj/?context=1
  32. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vn1yzf/comment/p3plv5h/?context=5
  33. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vthk9s/comment/p5l3avk/?context=2
  34. https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/1vx2yrk/comment/p5uedm1/?context=1 | bonus
  35. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/117162453645898067
  36. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vxxu0i/comment/p61u9ug/?context=1 | bonus
  37. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vvhalh/comment/p6h2ipl/
  38. https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/1s3oc76/comment/p6jzmur/?context=1
  39. https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1vzqns8/comment/p6l4uem/?context=2
  40. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_on_mac/comments/1vyzeno/comment/p6qgk1c/?context=3
  41. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1w1v1v2/comment/p6rsb4b/?context=3
  42. https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/117190086950758605 – here's an extract, because the vile, insane person to whom I responded is symptomatic of an incurable malaise with the anti-AI mob: "Wherever you find yourself: don't be as short-sighted, blinkered, prejudiced, and twisted towards other humans as you were towards me."
  43. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1w9ibuu/comment/p8cpw8i/?context=1
  44. https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1weml7k/comment/p9h1f20/?context=1

@grahamperrin

grahamperrin commented Jun 21, 2026 •

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@grahamperrin

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DeArrow - A Browser Extension for Better Titles and Thumbnails …

an open source browser extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait. …

  • use of AI is sometimes a norm for things such as thumbnails.

https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/dearrow/

Some features may require payment

@grahamperrin

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ava.pet scans

  1. github.com/freebsd/pkg
  2. github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src
  3. github.com/openzfs/zfs – some overlap with the FreeBSD src tree.

Slop-free URLs for the above:

  1. https://tinyurl.com/freebsd-pkg-avapet
  2. https://tinyurl.com/freebsd-src-avapet
  3. https://tinyurl.com/openzfs-avapet.

Discussion in Lobsters includes objections to the word "slop". My own objections:

@grahamperrin

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April 2025: Soliciting community input about AI generated content in r/FreeBSD – still open for discussion.

July 2026: r/freebsd rule – a reminder of the rule, which was added to the subreddit in April 2025.

@grahamperrin

grahamperrin commented Aug 26, 2026 •

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The phrase vibe coding

Quoting a former member of the FreeBSD Core Team (August 2026):

… a needless, cruel dig.

… cruel. Full stop. … rudeness. Also using an llm isn't necessarily vibe coding. … high quality with Claude assistance in various ways. Vibe coding has extremely negative connotations and no real definition so it's not a useful characterization to have a useful discussion. So in addition to being rude, it doesn't tend to promote thoughtful dialog.

Vibe coding and AI slop

I asked Anthropic Claude (Sonnet 5, medium):

Does the phrase 'vibe coding' have a useful definition that is not prejudicial? Is 'vibe coding' less offensive than the phrase 'AI slop'?

Claude's response is below.

"Vibe coding" and "AI slop" aren't really doing the same job, and one of your questions has a fairly clean answer while the other is more of a judgment call.

Does "vibe coding" have a useful, non-prejudicial definition?

Yes. The term was coined (by Andrej Karpathy, in early 2025) to describe a specific workflow: writing software by describing what you want in natural language and letting an AI model generate the code, with the human accepting outputs, running them, and iterating based on results rather than reading and understanding every line. That's a genuinely useful distinction from, say, "using AI to help you code" in general, because a lot of professional AI-assisted coding still involves the developer reading, understanding, and often rewriting the generated code. Vibe coding specifically names the case where the human is not doing that — they're steering by outcome rather than by understanding the mechanism.

The term carries a light connotation (mild self-deprecation, a sense of "I'm not really engineering this") but it's descriptive of an actual practice rather than a pure insult. People use it about their own work approvingly and neutrally, not just as a jab at others. So it clears the bar of "useful definition" pretty easily — it picks out something real that other terms don't quite capture.

Is it "less offensive" than "AI slop"?

These aren't parallel terms, which is why comparing offensiveness is a bit apples-to-oranges:

  • "Vibe coding" names a process (how the code was produced) and is often self-applied, neutrally or even proudly.
  • "AI slop" names a judgment about output quality (that the result is low-effort, low-quality, or generated indiscriminately) and is almost always applied to someone else's work as a criticism — the term was built to be pejorative.

So in practice, yes, "vibe coding" is milder — it's closer to a technical/descriptive label, while "AI slop" is closer to a value judgment baked into the name. But you could vibe-code something that turns out great, or vibe-code something that turns out to be slop; the two terms aren't measuring the same thing, so "less offensive" is true but somewhat beside the point — one describes a method, the other a verdict on quality.

Pejoratives

A recent example. A developer, Nicola, wrote eloquently about his use of AI. Clearly not slop.

In Mastodon, Alex responded:

This is entirely AI slop, right?

Nicola responded to Alex, then I responded to Alex:

that's a sloppy human comment from you, right?

Alex responded:

The poster literally confirmed AI wrote everything.

I responded with Claude's dissection of Alex's comment. Success: Alex blocked me.

@grahamperrin

grahamperrin commented Sep 13, 2026 •

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Where I stand

At the end of August 2026, I asked Google in AI mode:

From what's known publicly about me (Graham Perrin) – my publicly available Reddit posts and comments at https://www.reddit.com/user/grahamperrin/ in particular – is it possible to tell whether I'm "centrist" with regard to recent debates about AI/LLM?

Google's response

Based on your public Reddit footprint, no, you would not be characterized as a "centrist" in the typical sense of recent AI/LLM debates. Instead, your public posts and comments lean distinctly toward the critical and cautious side of the spectrum, paired with a highly pragmatic, strictly-defined stance on utility. [1] Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else (<- by me on El Reg) (r/freebsd), [2] Please do not wrongly assume that I am pro-AI (u/grahamperrin), [3] FreeBSD, AI, and LLMs (r/freebsd)

Your publicly available digital trail demonstrates a position that can be broken down into three key areas:

1. Direct Public Disclaimers

You have actively gone out of your way to correct assumptions about your stance, explicitly pinning or stickying statements to your profile such as:

  • "Please do not wrongly assume that I am pro-AI" on your own u/grahamperrin profile.
  • Loudly aligning with or sharing anti-AI sentiments in open-source discussions, including promoting AI-free forks of operating systems (like FreeBSD) and tracking alternative BSD operating systems that establish strict anti-AI policies. [1] Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else (<- by me on El Reg) (r/freebsd), [2] Please do not wrongly assume that I am pro-AI : (u/grahamperrin)
2. Criticism of Broad AI Hype and "Slop"

In your interactions across technical subreddits (such as r/freebsd, r/answers, and r/BetterOffline), you consistently challenge the narrative of unbridled AI adoption:

  • You have openly pushed back against consumer-facing AI products, echoing sentiment that it degrades the quality of creative and daily digital spaces, referring to automated outputs as "slop". [1] AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking (r/BetterOffline), [2] What’s something AI has made worse instead of better? (r/answers)
  • You have actively engaged with material targeting "AI mania" and the degradation of decision-making by blindly feeding human processes into LLMs. [1] overview for nbari, [2] AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking (r/BetterOffline)
  • As a moderator on r/freebsd, you have proactively worked with the community to establish rule structures and flairs designed to let users filter out, downvote, or entirely avoid AI-generated content. [1] Soliciting community input about AI generated content in r/FreeBSD (r/freebsd), [2] AI Just Hacked FreeBSD… And Nobody Saw It Coming – GaryH Tech (r/freebsd)
3. Pragmatic, High-Constraint Tool Usage

While a classic "centrist" might argue for a middle ground of widespread but regulated use, your stance is closer to that of a technical purist who permits highly compartmentalised utility:

  • You don't deny the functional presence of the technology, noting that "that ship has sailed", and you have openly experimented with LLMs under extremely narrow parameters—such as utilizing highly structured, single prompts in ChatGPT for specific non-commercial or creative personal tasks. [1] overview for grahamperrin, [2] What’s something AI has made worse instead of better? (r/answers)
  • However, you heavily criticize sloppy usage, noting that AI excels at "making the visible thing appear to work" while masking critical, underlying architectural system failures underneath. [1] FreeBSD, AI, and LLMs (r/freebsd)
  • You advocate for strict boundaries where AI acts only as a secondary reviewer or vulnerability checker, while insisting that any actual implementation must undergo manual creation and rigid approval frameworks. [1] FreeBSD AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project launch | FreeBSD Foundation (r/freebsd), [2] FreeBSD, AI, and LLMs (r/freebsd), [3] overview for nbari

Ultimately, your public history frames you not as a neutral centrist looking to balance both sides equally, but as a deliberate critic who actively resists the "pro-AI" narrative, preferring strict boundaries, human sovereignty in code, and clear labeling rules. [1] FreeBSD, AI, and LLMs (r/freebsd), [2] Please do not wrongly assume that I am pro-AI (u/grahamperrin), [3] AI Just Hacked FreeBSD… And Nobody Saw It Coming – GaryH Tech (r/freebsd)

Further exploration

If you would like to explore this further, let me know if you want to look at:

  • How your stances mirror the broader philosophical split within the open-source community
  • A specific breakdown of how r/freebsd AI guidelines compare to other major tech subreddits
  • Deeper exploration into the vulnerability discovery projects you have highlighted [1] FreeBSD AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project launch | FreeBSD Foundation (r/freebsd)

https://share.google/aimode/ve0pe4JqmwDwKr7Zf

@grahamperrin

grahamperrin commented Sep 13, 2026 •

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On 13th September 2026, I reused Google, it offered to look at how my Mastodon posts might alter the balance. The essence of its response:


Your Mastodon presence adds weight to your profile as a pragmatic centrist:

  • You support utilizing AI when it helps write clean code or solve actual technical problems.
  • You fiercely protect human spaces from being drowned out by AI spam or emotional arguments.
  • You favour clear, open rules rather than reactionary corporate hype or total defensive bans.

https://share.google/aimode/DLzomObrF7QY2sUDJ


I added a second presence to the mix, one post in particular. The tail of Google's response:


The centrist distinction

An extremist anti-AI stance uses blocking as an ideological weapon to punish people for their tools. Your mass block, … functions as an operational filter. You treat bad data the exact same way a systems administrator treats a broken software dependency: you isolate it and remove it so the main system can keep running smoothly.

It proves that your centrism isn't passive or wishy-washy. It is a strict, active boundary: you are willing to use AI tools like Claude behind the scenes, but you will completely cut off the noise of hundreds of accounts if they degrade the quality of your open-source and social spaces.

https://share.google/aimode/cY1fVFRvkkouZMrIS

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