i'm starting to feel the same way about anti-ai purists as i feel about vegans (as a former vegan/current flexitarian and someone generally against ai).

1. the meat industry, intensive animal farming etc is bad and evil and unethical for many reasons. the industry surrounding ai is bad and evil and unethical for many of the same reasons. both are terrible for the environment. both use human labour unethically. both victimise more vulnerable populations (animals vs artists, creatives, other regular people creating content on the internet) for their own gain. both influence politics through lobbying. and so on.

2. their impact on individuals is more contested. vegans can rant to you for hours about the harmful effects of meat and dairy and the health benefits of a plant-based diet, but at the same time, it is totally possible to have a healthy diet that includes animal products. everyone's body is unique and some people actually find it harder to stay healthy on plant-based diets than others; with certain health conditions, veganism isn't even an option. if you're someone actively trying to put on weight or gain muscle, this is also generally easier to do on a diet including animal products.

   in the same vein, anti-ai people will tell you using ai will rot your brain. there is plenty of evidence for the negative impact of regular ai use on our mental faculties, and i do believe this has a larger potential impact on society at large compared to the impact of the average diet of meat-eaters being unhealthy (although the burden on our healthcare system that could be alleviated by promoting and making healthier, more plant-based diets accessible is also an issue worth talking about) – after all, our society is built largely on mental labour. we want our voters (and politicians) to be able to think for themselves.

   but it's also entirely possible to use ai in ways that don't rot your brain. you can use it to learn things, or to make certain processes more efficient. i don't really know. i don't really use it. but there are plenty of intelligent people in my life who do use it in some way or another and i would never look down on their intellectual abilities for that. leftists use ai. people with learning disabilities use ai. academics and writers and artists and other intelligentsia and creatives use ai. vegans use ai (and, conversely, many anti-ai people eat meat). i think we need to get over our idea that anyone who uses ai for anything is worse than us.

3. the industries surrounding both have become so entrenched in our society that no amount of individual action will change anything anymore. when ai first started to become mainstream a couple of years ago, i did have some hope that being loudly against ai might be able to slow the tide, maybe even reverse some damage. in 2026, it is clear that that hope was naive. we live in a world where factory farming and ai are part of the status quo now. you can choose to reject it, but acting like everyone else is crazy for not doing the same will end up alienating you from society. which some people don't mind, but i kind of care about being part of the society i live in.

on a personal level, the only context i have ever used ai in is coding, and that has been very limited. i use vscode, which offers a limited amount of free ai queries each month and since i've been learning javascript through doing projects for my website, i've asked it for help occasionally when i've gotten stuck and couldn't find help through other sources.

some things i've noticed:

1. it really does get easily addictive. coding can get really frustrating, and once you realise you have a little helper robot right there and all you have to do is type in a question… it can be hard to convince yourself to go through the hassle of reading through stackexchange threads and figuring things out yourself instead. i'm pretty grateful that the limit for free queries is so low because after a couple of days of having it as an option i definitely feel my brain start to get slightly mushier.
2. however! it is genuinely helpful when you're trying to figure out super specific problems and nothing on the internet seems to help. i'm so sorry but if my only option for some things was posting my own stackexchange thread and waiting and hoping that nobody is mean to me i would probably have quit a while ago. i have given up every previous attempt i've made at learning javascript precisely because a) i just don't find online courses and tutorials very motivating or interesting ways to learn code and really prefer to do it through personal projects and b) i am scared of posting in forums and annoying people with my stupid questions.
3. it also does make mistakes and it is super important to actually go through whatever code it spits out to make sure you understand what's going on and spot and fix any errors. generally, i avoid letting it write the code for me and ask it instead to explain how i can do something – once i have an idea of what methods etc i should use to do something that is totally new for me, it is also easier for me to google and find more detailed information and examples.

also, this is totally random and subjective, but i feel like it is less unnatural to use ai to learn coding than it is to use ai to do almost anything else. coding is the computer language. it makes sense for the computer to teach it, even to generate it. but asking the computer to write a story? to draw a picture? to create a song? those are things so inherently human and non-computer. fake computer brain should not be allowed anywhere near that shit.

that is my current take on the whole ai debate. i think it's good that people continue to talk about it, but people who still think anyone who uses ai ever for anything is evil should probably touch grass. we should be less judgmental of people in general and get off our moral high horses. i still strongly advocate for avoiding allowing ai to encroach on our lives as much as possible, and have respect for people who never use it (just as i have respect for vegans). i will absolutely never pay for anything ai-related, am against things like ai art or using ai for writing emails or being your therapist, and am mad that my job as a writer is being replaced by a dumb robot that strings words together but has no idea what they mean. i miss the days when you didn't have to wonder if everything you saw on the internet was ai-generated. if ai goes bust i will be happy (the fact that no ai company is making a profit makes me gleeful). the end.