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Comment by chekibreki | Hacker News Reader

I see the dangers of AI and agree that many companies don’t value our privacy and do what’s best for them and not us, but…

…this is an emotional dogmatic post. „All of this garbage“ clearly shows that the author is stuck in the past. The banners on the website confirm this. It’s the figurative fanatic complaining about those black steam devils and their tracks that nobody needs and that destroy nature. Yeah, steam trains were noisy and created smoke, but the age of horses was over. No emotional outburst would have stopped that, and won’t stop AI now.

The unconditional and emotional rejection of AI undermines the actual valid point he is trying to make.

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If something can't be stopped, does that mean it's good? Reading accounts of the industrial revolution, huge swathes of nature in the north of England were destroyed. This article is an argument that it should be different, and is mostly focused on consent, not whether AI should exist or not (although the author's position on that is pretty clear too).

As a side note, I would argue you're being just as "emotional" (which I don't necessarily see as a bad thing despite your aspersions) by calling it "fanatic".

He's not talking about AI in general. He's talking about a device he owns.

Agree. Anyone should be allowed to disable generative AI features on their device, especially a general computing device such as Mac. It's not some hysterical outburst about the industry to be upset when you can't do that, especially when the option used to exist but was removed.

If you honestly can't see the blatant and absolute anti-AI rhetoric in his post (I provided a citation) and the banners, then there really is no reason to continue this discussion.

It's there for sure. However, it's not particularly relevant to the following two points:

1. The author should be able to do whatever he wants with his own device. That he owns.

2. The author should be able to decline consent for data-gathering activities and general AI stuff that he doesn't want.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with being against AI. Rejecting his argument that he should be able to control his computer because of that is very silly.

> The unconditional and emotional rejection of AI undermines the actual valid point

No it doesn't, one can hate LLMs with a passion and still not want features they don't use take 20GB of the storage they paid a premium for.

The "unstoppable" narrative may or may not be correct but it's certainly maximizing the backlash.

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