So, the latest bulletin from the ivory towers of academia lands on my desk – or rather, my screen, which is currently smeared with what I hope is coffee. Some professors, Steffen and Wells over at BYU, decided to poke their noses into why Joe and Jane Luddite ain’t exactly rushing to embrace our new robot overlords, specifically the generative AI kind. You know, the ones that can write your love letters, paint your nightmares, and probably file your taxes if you bribe ’em enough.
The papers and the blowhards on the news keep screaming about how these things are everywhere. Like a bad rash, or another damn politician promising change. But not everyone’s chugging the Kool-Aid. And get this: it’s not just the usual panic about Skynet nuking us all from orbit or your boss replacing you with a blinking cursor. No, these professors, bless their cotton socks, actually talked to people. Imagine that. Real, live human beings. Probably needed a stiff drink afterwards. I know I do just thinking about it.
Turns out, most folks who are giving GenAI the cold shoulder are worried about less Hollywood, more everyday crap. Stuff like: can you actually trust the gibberish these things spit out? Does it feel like talking to a particularly advanced toaster? Is it even right to use this stuff? And, my personal favorite, some people just don’t want to or need to. Imagine that. Lack of desire. In a world that’s constantly trying to shove new desires down your throat. It’s almost revolutionary.
These aren’t just idle thoughts people have while waiting for the bus. The study says there’s “a lot of thought or intention” behind saying “no thanks” to the thinking machines. Good for them. It takes guts to look at the shiny new toy everyone’s drooling over and say, “Nah, I’m good.” Especially when the toy is promising to do all your thinking for you. That’s a hell of a sales pitch for a species that supposedly prides itself on its big brain.
Let me light a smoke here. This “research” involved surveys. People described when they told GenAI to take a hike and why. Then they made another survey based on those answers. Sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry, but hey, someone’s gotta do it. And the top four reasons for dodging the digital bullet?
First, trusting the results. No kidding. I wouldn’t trust one of these AI things to tell me if it’s raining outside without sticking my own damn head out the window. They’re trained on the internet, for Christ’s sake. The internet is a cesspool of lies, cat pictures, and manifestos written in crayon. You expect truth to magically emerge from that? It’s like expecting a virgin to walk out of a whorehouse. Possible, maybe, but I wouldn’t bet the rent money on it. These things hallucinate, they make shit up, they confidently state nonsense. Sounds like half the drunks I know, come to think of it, only less entertaining.
Second, missing the human touch. Now we’re talking. This is the good stuff. People want connection, not computation. They want empathy, not algorithms. You think some chatbot can write a eulogy that’ll make you weep into your bourbon? Or a love poem that’ll get you laid? Maybe it can string the words together, sure. But it won’t have the heart, the guts, the sheer, messy humanity behind it. It won’t know the dead guy’s particular brand of bastard, or the woman’s specific kind of crazy that you love. That’s the stuff of life, not lines of code. Missing the human touch… it’s like preferring a real woman to an inflatable doll. Some things just don’t have a substitute. This coffee’s gone cold. Or maybe it was always this bad.
Third, being unsure if GenAI is ethical to use. Ethical. That’s a rich one. The corporations pushing this crap are about as ethical as a pack of wolves in a henhouse. They’re talking about “democratizing creativity” while they scrape every piece of art, writing, and music ever made by humans without paying a dime, then use it to build machines that’ll put those same humans out of a job. Ethical? It’s a goddamn heist, dressed up in a lab coat. And people are right to feel uneasy. When you use it, are you party to the theft? Are you eroding your own skills? Are you propping up a system designed by sociopaths in hoodies who think “move fast and break things” is a life philosophy instead of a warning label? Yeah, I’d say there are a few ethical tripwires there.
And fourth, my personal champion: lack of desire or need. Beautiful. Simple. Profound. Why use it if you don’t want to? Why clutter your life with another damn gadget, another app, another subscription, another “solution” looking for a problem? Sometimes, the answer is just “no.” Sometimes, you want to write your own shitty poem. You want to struggle with your own dumb assignment. You want to make your own bad decisions. It’s called living. Maybe these folks are onto something. Maybe the real “progress” is knowing when to tell progress to go screw itself.
This ain’t just about writing term papers or asking for stock tips from a glorified Magic 8-Ball. People are hesitant to use this stuff for crafting heartfelt messages, for seeking medical advice (Jesus Christ, are people really doing that?), for making big life decisions. You gonna let a machine decide if you should marry that dame or quit your soul-crushing job? Good luck with that. You’ll end up hitched to a Roomba and working for Uber, delivering tacos to algorithms.
Professor Wells, one of the BYU guys, points out that for schoolwork, GenAI can be a crutch. “If you use GenAI for all your assignments, you may get your work done quickly, but you didn’t learn at all,” he says. “What’s your value as a graduate if you just off-loaded all your intellectual work to a machine?” Damn straight. What’s your value as a human? That’s the question that hangs in the air like stale cigarette smoke. You become a fleshy remote control for a smarter machine. A goddamn meat puppet.
Then Professor Steffen, the other brainiac, compares GenAI to a hammer. Useful in the right context, he says. Sure. A hammer can build a house. It can also cave in a skull. It’s a tool. And like any tool, it depends on whose hand it’s in. And most of the hands holding these AI hammers right now? They’re corporate hands, government hands, hands that don’t give a rat’s ass about your “learning journey” or your “human touch.” They care about efficiency, control, and profit. Your soul isn’t on their balance sheet.
Steffen hopes his research will help people make “smarter choices” and “foster understanding” between the AI fanboys and the skeptics. Good luck with that, pal. Smarter choices? People are still smoking, drinking too much, and betting on losing horses. Understanding? We can’t even agree on what pizza toppings are acceptable. But it’s a nice thought. Like world peace, or a hangover that doesn’t feel like a nail bomb went off in your skull.
He says, “It is important to understand your goal behind creating something. Is it to learn? Is it to get something done fast? Are you presenting something as your own work, or as a gift to someone else?” These are the questions, alright. If you’re just trying to churn out spammy blog posts to sell more plastic crap, yeah, maybe AI is your huckleberry. But if you’re trying to say something real, something that bleeds a little, something that costs you a piece of yourself to write… well, the robots ain’t there yet. And I hope to hell they never get there.
This whole Wasted Wetware gig, with its tagline “tomorrow’s tech news, today’s hangover,” is built on sifting through the digital sewage to find the occasional pearl of… well, not wisdom, maybe just a less polished turd. And this AI hype? It’s a mountain of fresh, steaming manure. The promise of a world where no one has to think, or write, or create, or even feel too deeply. Just plug in and let the machine do the living for you. Sounds like hell to me. A clean, efficient, perfectly optimized hell.
Me, I’ll take the messy, the flawed, the gloriously imperfect human way of doing things. I’ll take the struggle, the doubt, the occasional flash of something that feels like truth, even if it’s just the bottom of a whiskey glass staring back at me. These machines, they can have the spreadsheets and the data entry. But the words, the art, the goddamn eulogies? Leave that to us poor, fumbling apes. We might not always get it right, but at least it’s ours. At least it’s real. And right now, “real” feels like a pretty scarce commodity.
So, to all you folks telling the AI to politely (or not so politely) piss off, I raise my glass. You’re not dinosaurs. You’re just human. And in this increasingly artificial world, that’s a goddamn rebellion.
Time for another drink. Or three. This thinking business is thirsty work.
Chinaski out. Pour me another.
Source: Exploring the real reasons why some people choose not to use AI