[rogerrogerr]

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools.

While I do think there is value being created, I think this form of argument is not as watertight as it appears at first glance. Humans are very capable of behaving irrationally.

I think there is a lot of harmful, negative “work” being done by AI today. Creating fake videos for Facebook, running girlfriend bots, automated scams, etc. Even employees just trying to be at the top of their employers’ AI token leaderboards. (So last month, I know). There is legitimate value being created, but I don’t think it’s obvious that the positive value is swamping the negative value 10:1.

“There is value being created, or people wouldn’t buy the meth” - people do buy meth, quite enthusiastically, but any sane person would think allocating 23% of a nation’s electricity to a meth factory is a bad plan.

[AussieWog93]

This might just be my bubble, but us there that much AI being used for girlfriends/scams, or even reels these days?

Most people I know use it as a tool to do things for them, technical or otherwise.

Even the loneliest people I know don't want to talk to a clanker unless there's at least a pretense of work being done.

[esseph]

> This might just be my bubble, but us there that much AI being used for girlfriends/scams, or even reels these days?

How would you react if you got a panicked call from your spouse and it came from their phone number?

To answer your question, it's a series of different but huge problems.

https://www.iansresearch.com/resources/all-blogs/post/securi...

https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20260603-20-minutes...

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/deepfake-scams-are-creeping...

There's also a whole industry of basically "virtual onlyfans" models that generate a TON of content and ad impressions on everything from Instagram, X, TikTok, even Twitch.tv

[AussieWog93]

>How would you react if you got a panicked call from your spouse and it came from their phone number?

I would be surprised if an AI successfully imitated the batshit insane way my wife and I speak to one another, but I get how that could work for, say, a grandparent or aunty.

>There's also a whole industry of basically "virtual onlyfans" models that generate a TON of content and ad impressions on everything from Instagram, X, TikTok, even Twitch.tv

Are there stats on this? Like if you look at the top hundred influencers on these platforms, how many of them are AI? Is it a long tail?

Like you do hear a lot of stories about this kind of thing happening, but I haven't ever seen a figure that says something like "$x million lost to AI scams" the way you do with romance scams or crypto.

[esseph]

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/21/ai-influencers-secreti...

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-models-creators-see-succe...

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/03/17/meet-jessica-fos...

> Like you do hear a lot of stories about this kind of thing happening, but I haven't ever seen a figure that says something like "$x million lost to AI scams" the way you do with romance scams or crypto.

Most people don't have a couple mil laying around. If you mean collectively, how many dudes are going to call the FBI or whatever and admit their life savings are fucked because they fell for AI goon bait? I expect not many.

> would be surprised if an AI successfully imitated the batshit insane way my wife and I speak to one another, but I get how that could work for, say, a grandparent or aunty.

What if her emails and texts between you had been scraped? Very easy and to grab that and record voice with single click or no-click tap jacking attacks.

[cadamsdotcom]

No doubt, there's always some bad with the good. The counter is to ask about the proportions.

It's actually a sliding scale of badness, but for the sake of argument let's pop a marker on that imaginary badness line and call everything worse than our marker "bad" and everything better than it "good". Let's also assume such objective criteria exist. This is a lot of assumptions!

Now, assuming we got this far, is the "bad" 1% of the sum? Or 90%? 99%? Because we just don't know, I'm going to make another assumption and assume it's a tiny minority.

We still sell knives even though they can stab. Mostly though, knives do other knife things. And we have police and courts to deal with the bad uses.

[blackjack_]

Anyone with half a brain can see that destroying the public internet is a very very bad thing. I now have to half assume you are a bad faith argument by a bot.

The good information is again being siloed to hide it from the scrapers, destroying a massive amount of value.

Poisoning the well of human trust is one of the worst things you can do to society.

[twelve40]

data center = girlfriend bots = meth lab is a pretty wild connection to make.

[mvdtnz]

If you had trouble following the analogy that's a you problem.

[TaboZ]

No it's not.

[protocolture]

Theres no reason for AI hate to bleed over to Data Center hate.

I really cant be stuffed defending AI. It either succeeds or it doesnt. But we get so much value from Data Centers and there's basically no one lauding them as an industry. Its like people waking up one morning and hating trains.

Its like people just discovered they existed yesterday and hate them for no reason.

[danaris]

We get loads of value from various industries.

That doesn't mean we would benefit from expanding those industries by triple-digit percents just to increase the profits of multibillion-dollar corporations without some pretty strong justifications.

In this case, "data centers" don't benefit anyone in and of themselves. They are merely a container for, well, data. And compute. So the degree to which they benefit us depends entirely on what data is stored there or what is being computed there.

Thus, trying to separate "AI hate" from data centers is not merely unhelpful, it's effectively meaningless. The datacenters are the AI that happens within them. That's literally the only reason so many more are being built now.

[protocolture]

>That doesn't mean we would benefit from expanding those industries by triple-digit percents just to increase the profits of multibillion-dollar corporations without some pretty strong justifications.

Ok but people are crowing against existing data centers.

>In this case, "data centers" don't benefit anyone in and of themselves

Yeah they do.

>They are merely a container for, well, data. And compute.

No they are also neutral hosts of telecommunications infrastructure where carriers can meet.

This is like saying that you like emergency services calls but want to blow up the wires that carry them.

>The datacenters are the AI that happens within them.

Patently ridiculous.

>That's literally the only reason so many more are being built now.

No you really just started paying attention.

Also "So Many" whats the correct number of Datacenters to be built? How are you calculating that? What happens if AI instead cannibalises existing rack space instead of expanding? What happens to industries that rely on colo when these trillion dollar companies make better offers for their rackspace? Do they just go nowhere? This is like attacking houses because you don't like a subset of tenants.