Dejan Naarm (@dejantesicnaarm.aus.social.ap.brid.gy)

Against Generative AI I’ve been saving links about the problems with, and flaws within, generative AI for some time. Here’s a selection of links (necessarily incomplete!) to which I’ll keep adding as new work appears. To lead off, a thought-provoking quote from Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic: > “What if the real doomer scenario is that we pollute the internet and the planet, reorient our economy and leverage ourselves, outsource big chunks of our minds, realign our geopolitics and culture, and fight endlessly over a technology that never comes close to delivering on its grandest promises?” # **The Hype (and why it’s being hyped):** Benj Edwards, “Is AI Really Trying to Escape Human Control and Blackmail People?” 2025 Robert Evans, “The Cult of AI.” 2024 Keith Fitzgerald, Bsky post linking to video of Meredith Whitaker (Signal) Explaining The Marketing Myths around Agentic AI. 2025 Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, “Sam Altman Says he’s Losing Money on OpenAI’s $200 a Month Subscriptions.” 2025 Adi Robertson, “Chatbots Aren’t Telling You Their Secrets.” 2025 Eryk Salvaggio, “Challenging the Myths of Generative AI.” 2024 Charlie Warzel, “AI is a Mass-Delusion Event.” 2025 Audrey Watters, “LLM as MLM.” 2025 Edward Zitron, “OpenAI is a Systemic Risk to the Tech Industry.” 2025 # **How LLMs work:** Catherine Anderson et al, “Do ChatBots have Language?” 2025 (video and text) Michael Townsen Hicks et al, “ChatGPT is Bullshit.” 2024 Jeff Horwitz, “Meta’s AI Rules Have Let Bots hold ‘Sensual’ Chats With Kids, Offer False Medical Info.” 2025 Jeremy Hsu, “AI Doesn’t Know ‘No’ – and that’s a Huge Problem for Medical Bots.” 2025 Celeste Rodriguez Louro, “Generative AI is Not ‘A Calculator for Words’: 5 Reasons This Idea is Misleading.” (2025) Gary Marcus, “Why DO Large Language Models Hallucinate?” 2025 Kyle Orland, “LLMs ‘Simulated Reasoning’ Abilities are a ‘Brittle Mirage’ Researchers Find.” 2025 Mark Reidl, “A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models Without the Hype.” 2023 Aaron Tay, “The AI-Powered Library Search That Refused to Search.” 2025 # Privacy and General Ethics Issues Katharine Miller, “Privacy in an AI Era: How Do We Protect our Personal Information?” 2025 Fereniki Panagopoulou, “Privacy in the Age of Artifical Intelligence.” 2024 Gai Sher and Ariela Benchlouch, “The Privacy Paradox with AI.” 2023 The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. “Ethically Aligned Design:A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, First Edition.” 2019 United Nations Advisory Body on Artifical Intelligence, “Final Report: Governing AI for Humanity.” 2024 (available in multiple languages) UNC Information Technology Services, “AI, Data Privacy, and You.” 2024 # **Losing out on Thinking:** Kyle Chayka, “AI is Homogenizing our Thoughts.” 2025 Josh Freeman, “If Memory is the Residue of Thought, What are we Learning from AI?” 2025 Michael Gerlich, “AI Tools in Society: Impacts of Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking.” 2025 Cooper Lund, “The Incuriosity Engine.” 2025 Cooper Lund, “The Virtues of Thinking for Yourself.” 2025 Jennifer Sano-Franchini et al, “Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies.” 2024 Josh Stein, Bsky thread on AFT’s partnership with tech companies. 2025 Meghan O’Rourke, “I Teach Creative Writing: This is what AI is Doing to Students.” 2025 John Warner, “Writing is Thinking.” 2023 # **Labor Violations/Issues and AI:** Jem Bartholomew, “Q&A: Uncovering the Labor Exploitation that Powers AI.” 2023 Hannah Beckler et al, “Big Tech Promised Jobs. Cities Gave Millions. Where are the Workers?” 2025 Benj Edwards, “Time Saved by AI Offset by New Work Created.” 2025 Karen Hao and Andrea Paola Hernández, “How the AI Industry Profits from Catastrophe.” 2022 Jasmine Lianalyn Rocha, “AI in the Workplace: The Dangers of Generative AI in Employment Decisions.” 2024 Mercy Mutemi, “African Workers Are Taking on Meta And the World Should Pay Attention.” 2025 Aiha Nguyen and Alexandra Mateescu, “Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work.” 2024 Niamh Rowe, “‘It’s Destroyed Me Completely’: Kenyan Moderators Decry Toll of Training of AI Models.” 2023 # **Environmental Costs:** “Against AI and Its Environmental Harms.” (a collection of links to news articles) Hannah Beckler et al, “AI Runs on Dirty Power – And the Public Pays the Price.” 2025 James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart, “We Did the Math on AI’s Energy Footprint: Here’s the Story You Haven’t Heard.” 2025 Kenza Bryan, “Meta’s AI Climate Tool Raised False Hope of CO2 Removal, Scientists Say.” 2025 Dakin Campbell, “The AI Boom Pits Neighbor Against Neighbor.” 2025 Nasser Eledroos, “Progress Shouldn’t Poison Black Communities.” 2025 Michelle Fleury & Nathalie Jimenez, “‘I Can’t Drink the Water’: Life Next to a US Data Center.” 2025 Cindy Gordon, “AI is Accelerating The Loss of our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water.” 2024 Helena Horton, “AI Boom Means Regulator Cannot Predict Future Water Shortages in England.” 2025 Sasha Luccioni et al, “The Environmental Impacts of AI: A Primer.” 2024 Adams Rogers et al, “Tallying the True Cost of AI.” 2025 Adam Zewe, “Explained: Generative AI’s Environmental Impact.” 2025 # **Built-In Biases and Censorship:** Abeba Birhane, “AI for Good [Appearance?]” 2025 Krishani Dhanji, “Use of AI Could Worsen Racism, Sexism in Australia, Human Rights Commissioner Warns.” 2025 Ezekiel Dixon-Román et al, “The Racializing Forces Of/In AI Technologies.” (paywalled) 2019 Siôn Geschwindt, “ChatGPT Advises Women to Ask for Lower Salaries, Study Finds.” 2025 Reese Rogers, “OpenAI Designed ChatGPT-5 to be Safer: It Still Outputs Gay Slurs.” 2025 # **Access Issues:** Laurie Henneborn, “Designing Generative AI to Work For People with Disabilities.” 2023 Stephanie Kirmir, “Disability, Accessibility, and AI.” 2024 New York Bar Association, Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies, “The Impact of the Use of AI on People with Disabilities.” 2025 Macharia Waruingi, “ChatGPT Not Fully Accessible with JAWS.” 2023 # Stolen Property David Carson, “Theft is not Fair Use.” 2025 Brianne M. Culliton, “The Generative AI Pirate? The Intersection of Copyrights and Generative AI in Literary Works.” 2024 Rachel Kim, “The Largest IP Theft in History: Takeaways from the Senate Hearing on AI and Copyright Piracy.” 2025 Alex Reisner, “The Unbelievable Scale of of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem.” 2025 (paywalled; limited free trial available) Justin Sherman, “Scraping for Me, Not for Thee: Large Language Models, Web Data, and Privacy-Problematic Paradigms.” 2025 # **All of the Above:** “I Will Fucking Pilldrive You If You Mention AI Again.” 2024 “Pivot to AI” (website collecting things AI does wrong) Billy Berfield, “Opinion: Our Final Alientation: Generative AI Steals More than Labor.” 2024 Center for Humane Technology, “The AI Dilemma.” 2023 Matthew Cheney, “There is (Still) No Ethical Use of AI.” (2025) Ted Chiang, “Why AI Isn’t Going to Make Art.” 2024 Maggie Harrison Dupré, “Sam Altman Calls His Own AI Model ‘Annoying’ After Being Forced to Raise it from the Dead.” 2025) Jessica Grose and Tressie McMillan-Cottom, “What AI Really Means for Learning.” (podcast with transcript.) 2025 Dan McQuillan, “The Role of the University is to Resist AI.” 2025 Ray Naylor, “AI and the Rise of Mediocrity.” 2023 Lorena O’Neil, “These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI.” 2023 Salvador Santino F. Regilme, “Artifical Intelligence Colonialism: Environmental Damage, Labor Exploitation, and Human Rights Crises in the Global South.” 2024 Neil Selwyn, “The Future of AI and Education: Some Cautionary Notes.” 2022 Matt Seybold, “Against Technofeudal Education.” 2025 Audrey Watters’ blog, Second Breakfast (so good!) J. Weidlich et al, “ChatGPT in Education: An Effect in Search of a Cause.” 2025 Ben Williamson, “The Social Life of AI in Education.” 2024 Last updated Wednesday, August 20, 2025. https://catherinedenial.org/blog/uncategorized/against-generative-ai/