I see a lot of people talking about Generative AI recently and the conversations regarding it end up going nowhere because people tend to discuss things auxiliary to the AI itself. Its effect on climate change, it being “the future” of technology; whatever people talk about, it’s not about the actual thing people have started using on a daily basis. Sure, there’s a lot to discuss regarding how people view it as some sort of demon or devil, or even the effect it’s having on the planet or society as a whole, but instead of getting into the moral standings of AI’s existence in general, I’d like to state my personal opinion regarding the products of AI generation:

If you give me an AI Generated creation, I assume you did not view what you’ve created as particularly meaningful or even worthwhile.

I am not saying this as a bad thing necessarily, but if someone shows me an AI generated text or image, the implication I get is that they did not see the act of creating said image or text as particularly enjoyable and so they decided to skip the process entirely. For example - a lot of people said they started using AI to summarize school texts or to respond to work emails, and that checks out for me: people don’t really care about either of these things and just do them as a matter of necessity.

The same extends towards other topics. If I see someone giving a presentation created by an AI, I see them as not really caring about the presentation itself, as otherwise they would have done it with at most some side assistance by an AI. If someone sends me a response to a question I asked but answered by chatgpt, I understand that the implication is “why are you asking me this?” or “I dunno.”

This does not mean AI is inherently evil - it may be bad in terms of costs, or the way it’s used, or who is using it, but it’s not rotten to the core. All it means is that using genAI is a way of skipping the creation process and arriving at a decent-to-alright product, and that by doing so, you indicate the creation process is not a major concern for you.

This indication is what ends up bothering me about AI use, frankly - when someone uses an AI to create something they really should have put more dedication to. When people use AI to solve questions at academia, it indicates they don’t get why we’re doing these at all and just want to get their diploma. When a teacher gave a class with an AI presentation, it felt like she didn’t really care about teaching us and just wanted to get it done with little regard to what we were actually being taught. When I got accused of using an AI during a zoom meeting¹, the implication I got was “can you stop pretending to be smart and actually listen to me?”

If you use an AI, regardless of your moral standing about its usage, remember that this is how it’s read by other people: “I didn’t care enough to actually make this.” This is not necessarily bad, but it is what the act says.