Document: WM-072                                                 P. Webb
Category: LLM                                                 2025.07.07

                           In Defense of "AI"

Abstract

   The hate train looks fun but maybe relax

Body

   Over the weekend I saw a post on Mastodon listing a few reasons why
   LLMs are terrible (stolen data, power hungry, speculation bubble,
   ruining your brain). I won’t refute these points because everything
   can be true and untrue at the same time, just depends on context; for
   the record, replace "LLMs" with "people" and the solution isn’t to
   get rid of people.

   I’ve been using LLMs (I dare not call it "AI" because…that’s not
   intelligence IMO so why scaremonger?) for maybe a year or two and
   loving it for the most part. I started with ChatGPT, then spending
   money on it, not liking the results, to trialing Anthropic’s Claude,
   to subscribing to their service ever since. For background, I am a
   self‑taught design engineer. I got my start in the recession of 2008.
   I couldn’t find work so spent a lot of time on the internet imitating
   the cool stuff my friends were doing on deviantART. Anyhoo,
   fast‑forward a decade and I’m utilizing StackOverflow for answers to
   questions I don’t even know how to formulate sometimes…and getting
   absolutely shit on for it. There was a time period after I was fired
   this one time[^1] that every question I posted to the StackExchange
   network got downvoted with no comments, and this happened
   for months).

   You know who doesn’t give a shit about your dumbass questions? LLMs.

   The best of humanity is great. We are the culmination of hopes,
   dreams, aspirations, and the wide range of emotions that flourish
   from that. On the flip side, when can get nasty and downright evil if
   motivated enough. I don’t need to suffer through YOUR bad day because
   you happen upon my naive request while in a horrible mood and you
   can’t help but put me down, or whatever the case may be.

   This is pretty much my argument for why LLMs aren’t totally bad,
   haha! There’s not much space for nuance on the internet these days so
   your opinion isn’t swayed if you think LLMs are a scourge upon the
   Earth. The same was said for television in defense of newspapers and
   radio. It’ll be fine. Railing against "AI" is fine but to pretend
   that it isn’t useful is a crock of shit. Speaking for myself, I am
   not an expert so having an approximation of one at my disposal at any
   time of day or night is an indispensable tool I happily utilize to
   figure things out or get research about things I’ve wondered about.

   Case in point, I’m thinking about starting a magazine. Claude
   researched for about 5 minutes while I did something else. Could I
   have done this myself? Of course. Would I have a comprehensive report
   in 5 minutes or less? In this (search) economy? With Google,
   absolutely not. With Kagi, possibly. I could also turn screws
   manually or use a power tool. It doesn’t matter.

   For another recent project, I got Claude to scaffold me a video
   transcoder built on ffmpeg and it didn’t work, no matter how many
   times I badgered it to fix its issues and stop adding mystery
   functions. The transcoder works now of course, but the logic was
   fixed by me, a human. An enthusistic junior developer could make the
   same mistakes Claude makes but understands, "Hey, this isn’t
   working," doesn’t mean tear down the entire project, rename some
   variables, and call it a day.

   I resent the phrase, "AI is stealing jobs," because no, they aren’t.
   Middle managers and CEOs who read articles light on substance about
   the marvels of AI are firing people, realizing AI is not a
   replacement for people, and hiring people back.

   You still need to understand how to code to make LLMs work for
   you. These tools are NOT a drop‑in replacement for people, nor will
   they be for quite some time. As a replacement for elitist cis‑White
   male dominated Q&A spaces, my Black ass will take an LLM any day.

   🕸️



   [^1] In 2015, my wife (then girlfriend) and I experienced a
        miscarriage and I didn’t know I should take time off instead of
        being depressed at work and after given a throwaway project to
        work on (a website for the CEO’s father), I was fired.