#luddite — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #luddite, aggregated by home.social.
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One difference is that someone actually grows real food and (at least currently) industrially-processed food is much worse (both nutritionally and taste/quality-wise) than human-grown and human-cooked food.
Yes, currently, the clothing we wear is industrially made, not hand-constructed, but when the weaving machines were introduced, they produced crappy clothes relative to what experts could do. (The #luddite s were not anti-technology. They were anti-crappy-technology that was being pushed on them by corporate CEOs interested in the bottom line over quality work.)
I think the answer to these arguments is that we are a long long long way from AI providing human-quality scholarship.
1/2
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One difference is that someone actually grows real food and (at least currently) industrially-processed food is much worse (both nutritionally and taste/quality-wise) than human-grown and human-cooked food.
Yes, currently, the clothing we wear is industrially made, not hand-constructed, but when the weaving machines were introduced, they produced crappy clothes relative to what experts could do. (The #luddite s were not anti-technology. They were anti-crappy-technology that was being pushed on them by corporate CEOs interested in the bottom line over quality work.)
I think the answer to these arguments is that we are a long long long way from AI providing human-quality scholarship.
1/2
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I remember when Netflix was too good to be true. Mind you, I used to feel that way about Google, once.
While venture capital demands ever increasing profits based on eternal growth, the world eventually refuses to work that way. Now that the commodification of TV drama has reached its peak, fully AI-generated TV series can't be far behind. In the way that Spotify slops AI-generated music into playlists.
@Antigrav is right and boycotting the US is a moral choice I actively support. But revulsion with everything Trumpine is only a part of it.
For ethical reasons I cancelled Netflix and Spotify in 2020 and weaned myself off all big tech. I'm old and grumpy and I've reached a happy stage where nobody can enshittify my digital life, because I hardly have one.
Living in an area with no cellular reception helps -- I don't own a cellphone. I've run my own web and mailservers since 1995, have never used "the cloud" and don't own any device which phones home. Thanks to uBlock I never see a single advertisement anywhere. Not one. Ever. Mastodon is my only social media.
Some may see that as a sad life. In my defence, my collections of books and CDs remain conveniently algorithm-free. Film festivals are a delight and libraries have again become magical places.
For fifteen years I've described myself as an accidental Luddite. These days I'm a decidedly deliberate one.
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I remember when Netflix was too good to be true. Mind you, I used to feel that way about Google, once.
While venture capital demands ever increasing profits based on eternal growth, the world eventually refuses to work that way. Now that the commodification of TV drama has reached its peak, fully AI-generated TV series can't be far behind. In the way that Spotify slops AI-generated music into playlists.
@Antigrav is right and boycotting the US is a moral choice I actively support. But revulsion with everything Trumpine is only a part of it.
For ethical reasons I cancelled Netflix and Spotify in 2020 and weaned myself off all big tech. I'm old and grumpy and I've reached a happy stage where nobody can enshittify my digital life, because I hardly have one.
Living in an area with no cellular reception helps -- I don't own a cellphone. I've run my own web and mailservers since 1995, have never used "the cloud" and don't own any device which phones home. Thanks to uBlock I never see a single advertisement anywhere. Not one. Ever. Mastodon is my only social media.
Some may see that as a sad life. In my defence, my collections of books and CDs remain conveniently algorithm-free. Film festivals are a delight and libraries have again become magical places.
For fifteen years I've described myself as an accidental Luddite. These days I'm a decidedly deliberate one.
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If you're going to compare me to the badasses of the Luddite movement, at least read the history.
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I was thinking about the term "Luddite" today. I've read @brianmerchant's work and I identify with the historical movement, but not the colloquial term. I was reflecting on the difficulty of explaining the difference.
Then I recalled the Orphan-Crushing Machine meme. That one is so simple!
I'm not opposed to technology or AI. I love it. But I am opposed to orphan-crushing. I see a dangerous enthusiasm for orphan-crushing in the tech industry today.
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Inside the #Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against #BigTech
New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline amid the suffocating presence of Big Tech.
#privacy #genz #nyc #summerofluddhttps://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/
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Inside the #Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against #BigTech
New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline amid the suffocating presence of Big Tech.
#privacy #genz #nyc #summerofluddhttps://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/
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@MissConstrue You know, the marching song of the original Luddites remains almost completely appropriate today. You'd just need to change "cutting and coating and squaring" in the last verse to "cutting and coding and pasting."
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@MissConstrue You know, the marching song of the original Luddites remains almost completely appropriate today. You'd just need to change "cutting and coating and squaring" in the last verse to "cutting and coding and pasting."
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#Meta conducted a secretive program that directed hundreds of contractors to pose as children while bombarding its competitors’ #AI models with disturbing prompts ranging from suicide to cannibalism.
Internally known as “#Cannes,” the project, run by Meta contractor #Covalen, targeted #OpenAI’s #ChatGPT, #Google’s #Gemini, and #Character.AI chatbots using throwaway under-18 accounts.
Prompts focused on suicide and self-harm, eating disorders, and sex or romance, all written from the perspective of a child.
Wanna know where some child porn is coming from? #Zuckerberg is building it in to every AI he can pay to touch.
Eat the rich. Kill the #AIs. #Luddite the data centers.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-contractors-pretending-to-be-teens-chatbot-testing/ -
#Meta conducted a secretive program that directed hundreds of contractors to pose as children while bombarding its competitors’ #AI models with disturbing prompts ranging from suicide to cannibalism.
Internally known as “#Cannes,” the project, run by Meta contractor #Covalen, targeted #OpenAI’s #ChatGPT, #Google’s #Gemini, and #Character.AI chatbots using throwaway under-18 accounts.
Prompts focused on suicide and self-harm, eating disorders, and sex or romance, all written from the perspective of a child.
Wanna know where some child porn is coming from? #Zuckerberg is building it in to every AI he can pay to touch.
Eat the rich. Kill the #AIs. #Luddite the data centers.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-contractors-pretending-to-be-teens-chatbot-testing/ -
Police forcibly remove 14 year old girl from data center meeting.
#DataCenters #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Luddite #NeoLuddite
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Police forcibly remove 14 year old girl from data center meeting.
#DataCenters #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Luddite #NeoLuddite
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The "AI revolution", summed up in a civil sabotage manual from WWII:
https://mastodon.social/@simple_sabotage/116861733036039197 -
Will Humanity’s Future Be Cosmic Exploration Or A.I. Slop Robots?
Humanity has the potential for greatness. We also have the potential to destroy ourselves either through the most obvious methods of traditional warfare and nuclear annihilation, or by various longer-term means. One of these longer-term means is a much newer, yet possibly greater existential threat, but I’ll get to that later on after I discuss something more positive. A few weeks ago there was a fantastic gathering of experts in Boulder, Colorado. It was the “Humans to Titan Summit […] -
Will Humanity’s Future Be Cosmic Exploration Or A.I. Slop Robots?
Humanity has the potential for greatness. We also have the potential to destroy ourselves either through the most obvious methods of traditional warfare and nuclear annihilation, or by various longer-term means. One of these longer-term means is a much newer, yet possibly greater existential threat, but I’ll get to that later on after I discuss something more positive. A few weeks ago there was a fantastic gathering of experts in Boulder, Colorado. It was the “Humans to Titan Summit […] -
What is it to be UNSUPERVISABLE
It's a desire to be not only unmanageable but also unmonitorable. About getting off the big social platforms and finding privacy at the edges. It's about blocking the ads, using privacy controls and choosing better software. It's about being a ghost in the machine and finding small ways to jam up those cogs. But above all it's about not complying in advance, and saying fuck you to every fascist that demands your obedience. This all started as a deep need to push back and to bite the hand […]https://unsupervisable.vivaldi.net/2026/06/30/what-is-it-to-be-unsupervisable/
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What is it to be UNSUPERVISABLE
It's a desire to be not only unmanageable but also unmonitorable. About getting off the big social platforms and finding privacy at the edges. It's about blocking the ads, using privacy controls and choosing better software. It's about being a ghost in the machine and finding small ways to jam up those cogs. But above all it's about not complying in advance, and saying fuck you to every fascist that demands your obedience. This all started as a deep need to push back and to bite the hand […]https://unsupervisable.vivaldi.net/2026/06/30/what-is-it-to-be-unsupervisable/
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@cmccullough @nifta “it would be a shame if those GPUs were to overheat.” is the sort of thing a modern #Luddite might be heard to mutter from time to time.
#Sangamon from #Zodiac would have #MonkeyWrenching ideas.
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@cmccullough @nifta “it would be a shame if those GPUs were to overheat.” is the sort of thing a modern #Luddite might be heard to mutter from time to time.
#Sangamon from #Zodiac would have #MonkeyWrenching ideas.
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RE: https://mastodon.online/@shaedrich/116828527750164363
Hier das nächste Beispiel wie ein #Luddite einen wichtigen Thread spengt und das Thema an sich reißt. 🤬
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RE: https://mastodon.online/@shaedrich/116828527750164363
Hier das nächste Beispiel wie ein #Luddite einen wichtigen Thread spengt und das Thema an sich reißt. 🤬
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The Luddite Club, The Documentary:
A film teacher and her high school student take stock of a post-COVID landscape, where tech-addled teens are experiencing a public mental health crisis and New York City is suing Meta for fueling the flames. Amid the chaos are The New York Times-profiled Luddites, teens who are rejecting smartphones and social media in order to rediscover the value of IRL connections.
https://www.ludditeclubdoc.com #Luddite #neoLuddism -
As AI gets more life-like, a new #Luddite movement is taking root https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/08/business/ai-luddite-movement-screens
#neoLuddism -
As AI gets more life-like, a new #Luddite movement is taking root https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/08/business/ai-luddite-movement-screens
#neoLuddism -
Almost too bleak to post.
"The Guardian’s examination of data-collection practices across six factories in five states found that workers wearing devices ranging from meta smart glasses to head-mounted cameras received no compensation for generating footage that would later be sold to technology companies."
... to build robots to take their jobs.
""Sometimes they give us a soft drink,” says Lalita, who earns about $200 a month at the factory."
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Almost too bleak to post.
"The Guardian’s examination of data-collection practices across six factories in five states found that workers wearing devices ranging from meta smart glasses to head-mounted cameras received no compensation for generating footage that would later be sold to technology companies."
... to build robots to take their jobs.
""Sometimes they give us a soft drink,” says Lalita, who earns about $200 a month at the factory."
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The #gowanus interview with #hasanminhaj is the best thing I've seen on the internet in a while.
It left me feeling encouraged in my efforts to divest from the surveillance state and help my communities do the same.
I deleted Facebook the other day after the beeswaxgate incident. I want a local/hyperlocal swap meet type of setup that does not involve Facebook Marketplace. I hate that the #buynothing communities are largely using Meta to operate. Anyone have ideas or success stories about how to create something like this that is manageable to operate without big tech?
I'm looking right now for a used laser printer. I know they're all over FBM for between $20-50. But how do I find one otherwise???
#luddite #lowtech #freecycle #swapmeet #buyused #thrift #solarpunk #optout
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The #gowanus interview with #hasanminhaj is the best thing I've seen on the internet in a while.
It left me feeling encouraged in my efforts to divest from the surveillance state and help my communities do the same.
I deleted Facebook the other day after the beeswaxgate incident. I want a local/hyperlocal swap meet type of setup that does not involve Facebook Marketplace. I hate that the #buynothing communities are largely using Meta to operate. Anyone have ideas or success stories about how to create something like this that is manageable to operate without big tech?
I'm looking right now for a used laser printer. I know they're all over FBM for between $20-50. But how do I find one otherwise???
#luddite #lowtech #freecycle #swapmeet #buyused #thrift #solarpunk #optout
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This was absolutely fantastic!
I highly recommend everyone to watch this interview when you have the time. If you're on the Fediverse, I think you're gonna love it.Thank you Gowanus,
I love you too ❤️ -
This was absolutely fantastic!
I highly recommend everyone to watch this interview when you have the time. If you're on the Fediverse, I think you're gonna love it.Thank you Gowanus,
I love you too ❤️ -
I mean - technology can help. Like image recognition helping with tedious inspections of cast parts for possible casting faults with humans still making the final decisions. Astronomers also would be lost without machines analyzing petabytes of image data to help with later analysis of possible findings. But that's always *very* specific, limited, well-defined tasks.
Add autonomous driving, maybe. A machine keeping the cameras on the road and surroundings *all* the time can't be as bad and it's not insanely complex anyway. Seems entirely doable, at least. We do it as a subroutine while talking and having our brains focused on other stuff altogether.All the hyped, generative shit merely copying the work of artists, raping them of the fruits of their labour, however? Answering machines, suggesting to be your competent friend while they're rigged for fascism, lying with utter confidence while actually being stupid af and having no actual understanding whatsoever?
Robots, devaluing labour, basically only ever enriching capitalists as their mechanical army of slaves, implied by the very name already? That also raises a lot of red flags.
Just sign me up for a #ButerianJihad any day and call me a #luddite, because luddites, after all, weren't against technology. They simply knew they would end up as slaves and they were right. They fucking knew it.
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I mean - technology can help. Like image recognition helping with tedious inspections of cast parts for possible casting faults with humans still making the final decisions. Astronomers also would be lost without machines analyzing petabytes of image data to help with later analysis of possible findings. But that's always *very* specific, limited, well-defined tasks.
Add autonomous driving, maybe. A machine keeping the cameras on the road and surroundings *all* the time can't be as bad and it's not insanely complex anyway. Seems entirely doable, at least. We do it as a subroutine while talking and having our brains focused on other stuff altogether.All the hyped, generative shit merely copying the work of artists, raping them of the fruits of their labour, however? Answering machines, suggesting to be your competent friend while they're rigged for fascism, lying with utter confidence while actually being stupid af and having no actual understanding whatsoever?
Robots, devaluing labour, basically only ever enriching capitalists as their mechanical army of slaves, implied by the very name already? That also raises a lot of red flags.
Just sign me up for a #ButerianJihad any day and call me a #luddite, because luddites, after all, weren't against technology. They simply knew they would end up as slaves and they were right. They fucking knew it.
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"AI Deep-research agents can be poisoned via user-generated content"
Ouais ben i'z'avaient qu'à pas commencer ! #luddite -
"AI Deep-research agents can be poisoned via user-generated content"
Ouais ben i'z'avaient qu'à pas commencer ! #luddite -
CW: Wordle 1,820 4/6* (Left Wordle)
When asked how he felt about the technology industry, this is the word a recent retiree used to describe it. I would have to say, I totally concur. I’ve been in this field for almost 25 years and I’ve never seen things not work as much as they don’t work now.
Wordle 1,820 4/6* (Left Wordle)
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 -
Workers striking for guarantees against AI replacement represent a glimmer of hope. As do grassroots movements against the proliferation of data centers. But these movements must go beyond “Not In My Backyard” sentiment to an unflinching critique of the technology.
#ai #datacenter #strike #luddite #stopaihttps://freedomnews.org.uk/2026/06/11/abolish-ai-before-it-abolishes-us/
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Workers striking for guarantees against AI replacement represent a glimmer of hope. As do grassroots movements against the proliferation of data centers. But these movements must go beyond “Not In My Backyard” sentiment to an unflinching critique of the technology.
#ai #datacenter #strike #luddite #stopaihttps://freedomnews.org.uk/2026/06/11/abolish-ai-before-it-abolishes-us/
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a human poem on humans liking AI poems over human poems
#ai #poetry #poem #ia #chatgpt #perplexity #openai #llm #humanity #philosophy #blog #web1 #littleweb #nicky #art #luddite #ego #psychology #people #cyberpunk #aboringdystopia
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RE: https://mastodon.scot/@decvalts/116692303982583510
That’d be the longwave broadcast that our emergency training at work last year told us is *the* national emergency channel. And which unlike all the alternatives can actually be picked up by mariners way out at sea. And that I listen to whenever I have the car radio on.
Remember how when Russia invaded Ukraine the BBC increased its shortwave provision in that part of Europe because these “legacy” forms are more reliable and resilient in adverse conditions?
This is up there with making it so that telephones only work if the electricity grid is on. FFS.Say it with me: bastards.
#Radio #BBCRadio #Longwave #198Longwave #StupidShortTermism #Luddite #FFS
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My son thinks that I am a Luddite.
My son finishes AI at the VU (NL). As his study focused on the impact and usability of AI, he is not an experienced coder.
I have decades of experience in building data-processing applications.
Knowing the real costs of applications are not in initial development but in maintenance, I am fiercely against deploying AI-generated applications.
According to him, AI is now pretty good at application maintenance as well.
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1811 - 1817
Mill and factory bosses shot protesters & the Luddite movement was suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and convict transportation to penal colonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite#Ai #Capitalism #DataCentres #directaction #exploitation #Luddite #resist
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“Join the luddite renaissance”
Source: https://synthmedia.fr/data-centers/resistances-technologiques-renaissance-luddite/
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I saw this on Mastodon and almost had a stroke.
@davidgerard wrote:
“Most of the AI coding claims are conveniently nondisprovable. What studies there are show it not helping coding at all, or making it worse
But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.
These guys had one good experience with the bot, they got one-shotted, and now if you say “perhaps the bot is not all that” they act like you’re trying to take their cocaine away.”
First, the term is falsifiable, and proving propositions about algorithms (i.e., code) is part of what I do for a living. Mathematically human-written code and AI-written code can be tested, which means you can falsify propositions about them. You would test them the same way.
There is no intrinsic mathematical distinction between code written by a person and code produced by an AI system. In both cases, the result is a formal program made of logic and structure. In principle, the same testing techniques can be applied to each. If it were really nondisprovable, you could not test to see what is generated by a human and what is generated by AI. But you can test it. Studies have found that AI-generated code tends to exhibit a higher frequency of certain types of defects. So, reviewers and testers know what logic flaws and security weaknesses to look for. This would not be the case if it were nondisprovable.
You can study this from datasets where the source of the code is known. You can use open-source pull requests identified as AI-assisted versus those written without such tools. You then evaluate both groups using the same industry-standard analysis tools: static analyzers, complexity metrics, security scanners, and defect classification systems. These tools flag bugs, vulnerabilities, performance issues, and maintainability concerns. They do so in a consistent way across samples.
A widely cited analysis of 470 real pull requests reported that AI-generated contributions contained roughly 1.7 times as many issues on average as human-written ones. The difference included a higher number of critical and major defects. It also included more logic and security-related problems. Because these findings rely on standard measurement tools — counting defects, grading severity, and comparing issue rates — the results are grounded in observable data. Again, I am making a point here. It’s testable and therefore disproveable.
This is a good paper that goes into it:
In this paper, we present a large-scale comparison of code authored by human developers and three state-of-the-art LLMs, i.e., ChatGPT, DeepSeek-Coder, and Qwen-Coder, on multiple dimensions of software quality: code defects, security vulnerabilities, and structural complexity. Our evaluation spans over 500k code samples in two widely used languages, Python and Java, classifying defects via Orthogonal Defect Classification and security vulnerabilities using the Common Weakness Enumeration. We find that AI-generated code is generally simpler and more repetitive, yet more prone to unused constructs and hardcoded debugging, while human-written code exhibits greater structural complexity and a higher concentration of maintainability issues. Notably, AI-generated code also contains more high-risk security vulnerabilities. These findings highlight the distinct defect profiles of AI- and human-authored code and underscore the need for specialized quality assurance practices in AI-assisted programming.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21634
Something I’ve started to notice about a lot of the content on social media platforms is that most of the posts people are liking, sharing, and memetically mutating—and then spreading virally—usually don’t include any citations, sources, or receipts. It’s often just some out-of-context screenshot with no reference link or actual sources.
A lot of the anti-AI content is not genuine critique. It’s often misinformation, but people who hate AI don’t question it or ask for sources because it aligns with their biases. The propaganda on social media has gotten so bad that anything other than heavily curated and vetted feeds is pretty much useless, and it’s filled with all sorts of memetic contagions with nasty hooks that are optimized for you algorithmically. I am at the point where I will disregard anything that is not followed up with a source. Period. It is all optimized to persuade, coerce, or piss you off. I am only writing about this because this I’m actually able to contribute genuine information about the topic.
That they said symbolic propositions written by AI agents (i.e., code) are non-disprovable because they were written by AI boggles my mind. It’s like saying that an article written in English by AI is not English because AI generated it. It might be a bad piece of text, but it’s syntactically, semantically, and grammatically English.
Basically, any string of data can be represented in a base-2 system, where it can be interpreted as bits (0s and 1s). Those bits can be used as the basis for symbolic reasoning. In formal propositional logic, a proposition is a sequence of symbols constructed according to strict syntax rules (atomic variables plus logical connectives). Under a given semantics, it is assigned exactly one truth value (true or false) in a two-valued logic system.
They are essentially saying that code written by AI is not binary, isn’t symbolically logical at all, and cannot be evaluated as true or false by implying it is nondisproveable. At the lowest level, compiled code consists of binary machine instructions that a processor executes. At higher levels, source code is written in symbolic syntax that humans and tools use to express logic and structure. You can also translate parts of code into formal logic expressions. For example, conditions and assertions in a program can be modeled as Boolean formulas. Tools like SAT/SMT solvers or symbolic execution engines check those formulas for satisfiability or correctness. It blows my mind how confidently people talk about things they do not understand.
Furthermore that they don’t realize the projection is wild to me.
@davidgerard wrote:
“But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.”
They are presenting a story—i.e., saying that the studies are not disprovable—and accusing computer scientists of using anecdotal evidence without actually providing evidence to support this, while expecting people to take it prima facie. You’re doing what you are accusing others of doing.
It comes down to this: they feel that people ought not to use AI, so they are tacitly committed to a future in which people do not use AI. For example, a major argument against AI is the damage it is doing to resources, which is driving up the prices of computer components, as well as the ecological harm it causes. They feel justified in lying and misinforming others if it achieves the outcome they want—people not using AI because it is bad for the environment. That is a very strong point, but most people don’t care about that, which is why they lie about things people would care about.It’s corrupt. And what’s really scary is that people don’t recognize when they are part of corruption or a corrupt conspiracy to misinform. Well, they recognize it when they see the other side doing it, that is. No one is more dangerous than people who feel righteous in what they are doing.
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I saw this on Mastodon and almost had a stroke.
@davidgerard wrote:
“Most of the AI coding claims are conveniently nondisprovable. What studies there are show it not helping coding at all, or making it worse
But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.
These guys had one good experience with the bot, they got one-shotted, and now if you say “perhaps the bot is not all that” they act like you’re trying to take their cocaine away.”
First, the term is falsifiable, and proving propositions about algorithms (i.e., code) is part of what I do for a living. Mathematically human-written code and AI-written code can be tested, which means you can falsify propositions about them. You would test them the same way.
There is no intrinsic mathematical distinction between code written by a person and code produced by an AI system. In both cases, the result is a formal program made of logic and structure. In principle, the same testing techniques can be applied to each. If it were really nondisprovable, you could not test to see what is generated by a human and what is generated by AI. But you can test it. Studies have found that AI-generated code tends to exhibit a higher frequency of certain types of defects. So, reviewers and testers know what logic flaws and security weaknesses to look for. This would not be the case if it were nondisprovable.
You can study this from datasets where the source of the code is known. You can use open-source pull requests identified as AI-assisted versus those written without such tools. You then evaluate both groups using the same industry-standard analysis tools: static analyzers, complexity metrics, security scanners, and defect classification systems. These tools flag bugs, vulnerabilities, performance issues, and maintainability concerns. They do so in a consistent way across samples.
A widely cited analysis of 470 real pull requests reported that AI-generated contributions contained roughly 1.7 times as many issues on average as human-written ones. The difference included a higher number of critical and major defects. It also included more logic and security-related problems. Because these findings rely on standard measurement tools — counting defects, grading severity, and comparing issue rates — the results are grounded in observable data. Again, I am making a point here. It’s testable and therefore disproveable.
This is a good paper that goes into it:
In this paper, we present a large-scale comparison of code authored by human developers and three state-of-the-art LLMs, i.e., ChatGPT, DeepSeek-Coder, and Qwen-Coder, on multiple dimensions of software quality: code defects, security vulnerabilities, and structural complexity. Our evaluation spans over 500k code samples in two widely used languages, Python and Java, classifying defects via Orthogonal Defect Classification and security vulnerabilities using the Common Weakness Enumeration. We find that AI-generated code is generally simpler and more repetitive, yet more prone to unused constructs and hardcoded debugging, while human-written code exhibits greater structural complexity and a higher concentration of maintainability issues. Notably, AI-generated code also contains more high-risk security vulnerabilities. These findings highlight the distinct defect profiles of AI- and human-authored code and underscore the need for specialized quality assurance practices in AI-assisted programming.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21634
The big problem in discussions about AI in programming is the either-or thinking, when it’s not about using it everywhere or banning it entirely. Tools like AI have specific strengths and weaknesses. Saying ‘never’ or ‘always’ oversimplifies the issue and turns the narrative into propaganda that creates moral panic or shills AI. It’s a bit like saying you shouldn’t use a hammer just because it’s not good for brushing your teeth.
AI tends to produce code that’s simple, often a bit repetitive, and very verbose. It’s usually pretty easy to read and tweak. This helps with long-term maintenance. But AI doesn’t reason about code the way an experienced developer does. It makes mistakes that a human wouldn’t, potentially introducing security flaws. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use for where it works well, which is not everywhere.
AI works well for certain tasks, especially when the scope is narrow and the risk is low. Examples include generating boilerplate code, internal utilities, or prototypes. In these cases, the tradeoff is manageable. However, it’s not suitable for critical code like kernels, operating systems, compilers, or cryptographic libraries. A small mistake memory safety or privilege separation can lead to major failures. Problems with synchronization, pointer management, or access control can cause major problems, too.
Other areas where AI should not be used include memory allocation handling, scheduling, process isolation, or device drivers. A lot of that depends on implicit assumptions in the system’s architecture. Generative models don’t grasp these nuances. Instead of carefully considering the design, AI tends to replicate code patterns that seem statistically likely, doing so without understanding the purpose behind them.
Yes, I’m aware that Microsoft is using AI to write code everywhere I said it should not be used. That is the problem. However, political pundits, lobbyists, and anti-tech talking heads are discussing something they have no understanding of and aren’t specifying what the problem actually is. This means they can’t possibly lead grassroots initiatives into actual laws that specify where AI should not be used, which is why we have this weird astroturfing bullshit.
They’re taking advantage of the reaction to Microsoft using AI-generated code where it shouldn’t be used to argue that AI shouldn’t be used anywhere at all in any generative context. AI is useful for tasks like writing documentation, generating tests, suggesting code improvements, or brainstorming alternative approaches. These ideas should then be thoroughly vetted by human developers.
Something I’ve started to notice about a lot of the content on social media platforms is that most of the posts people are liking, sharing, and memetically mutating—and then spreading virally—usually don’t include any citations, sources, or receipts. It’s often just some out-of-context screenshot with no reference link or actual sources.
A lot of the anti-AI content is not genuine critique. It’s often misinformation, but people who hate AI don’t question it or ask for sources because it aligns with their biases. The propaganda on social media has gotten so bad that anything other than heavily curated and vetted feeds is pretty much useless, and it’s filled with all sorts of memetic contagions with nasty hooks that are optimized for you algorithmically. I am at the point where I will disregard anything that is not followed up with a source. Period. It is all optimized to persuade, coerce, or piss you off. I am only writing about this because this I’m actually able to contribute genuine information about the topic.
That they said symbolic propositions written by AI agents (i.e., code) are non-disprovable because they were written by AI boggles my mind. It’s like saying that an article written in English by AI is not English because AI generated it. It might be a bad piece of text, but it’s syntactically, semantically, and grammatically English.
Basically, any string of data can be represented in a base-2 system, where it can be interpreted as bits (0s and 1s). Those bits can be used as the basis for symbolic reasoning. In formal propositional logic, a proposition is a sequence of symbols constructed according to strict syntax rules (atomic variables plus logical connectives). Under a given semantics, it is assigned exactly one truth value (true or false) in a two-valued logic system.
They are essentially saying that code written by AI is not binary, isn’t symbolically logical at all, and cannot be evaluated as true or false by implying it is nondisproveable. At the lowest level, compiled code consists of binary machine instructions that a processor executes. At higher levels, source code is written in symbolic syntax that humans and tools use to express logic and structure. You can also translate parts of code into formal logic expressions. For example, conditions and assertions in a program can be modeled as Boolean formulas. Tools like SAT/SMT solvers or symbolic execution engines check those formulas for satisfiability or correctness. It blows my mind how confidently people talk about things they do not understand.
Furthermore that they don’t realize the projection is wild to me.
@davidgerard wrote:
“But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.”
They are presenting a story—i.e., saying that the studies are not disprovable—and accusing computer scientists of using anecdotal evidence without actually providing evidence to support this, while expecting people to take it prima facie. You’re doing what you are accusing others of doing.
It comes down to this: they feel that people ought not to use AI, so they are tacitly committed to a future in which people do not use AI. For example, a major argument against AI is the damage it is doing to resources, which is driving up the prices of computer components, as well as the ecological harm it causes. They feel justified in lying and misinforming others if it achieves the outcome they want—people not using AI because it is bad for the environment. That is a very strong point, but most people don’t care about that, which is why they lie about things people would care about.
It’s corrupt. And what’s really scary is that people don’t recognize when they are part of corruption or a corrupt conspiracy to misinform. Well, they recognize it when they see the other side doing it, that is. No one is more dangerous than people who feel righteous in what they are doing.
It’s wild to me that the idea that if you cannot persuade someone, it is okay to bully, coerce, harass them, or spread misinformation to get what you want—because your side is right—has become so normalized on the Internet that people can’t see why it is problematic.
That people think it is okay to hurt others to get them to agree is the most disturbing part of all of this. People have become so hateful. That is a large reason why I don’t interact with people on social media, really consume things from social media, or respond on social media and am writing a blog post about it instead of engaging with who prompted it.
