The public discussion on AI is still heated in 2026. What's your take?
Make your voice heard: Are you yes or no when it comes to AI?
If you choose, "Yes AI, but..." complete your thought in the comments.
Yes AI, but only locally - for example.
@Tutanota
For science, with open source data and weights.
Jul 30, 2026, 9:58 AM@Tutanota Frugal AI (only locally) = oki
@Tutanota Yes AI reasearch, but no commercial "AI" that is just an LLM.
But why? If the concern is sustainability and resource consumption, I hate to break it to you, but inference on a local model is several times more power-hungry than a cloud model while being less capable.
This is because the hardware for cloud models is highly optimized for the purpose, and the workload is batched to serve multiple requests and users at the same time. Also, cooling clustered machines is way more efficient.
If the reason is privacy, I can't argue with that; local models are incomparably superior in this regard.
But it's like intensive vs. extensive farming, where the former is technically more sustainable due to higher yields with fewer resources while the latter is the more ethical option.
@Tutanota no AI. Ever.
@Tutanota what's ‘AI’?
Jul 30, 2026, 7:53 AM@Tutanota Is this some weird way to gauge thoughts on having AI integration in Tuta ??
@Tutanota
Yes, I think there should be a place for AI, at least in part. Asking humans for help with certain topics can be difficult, and not everyone can be as patient as AI. :D At this point, I don't think there's any issue with using AI as a helpful tool when you're in a tight spot.
Jul 30, 2026, 7:54 AM@Tutanota the missing option is “no, but” because…
@Tutanota Yes AI, but open-weight models, run locally where possible.
@Tutanota
"I am utterly disgusted… I strongly feel that AI is an insult to life itself.”
Jul 30, 2026, 7:57 AM@Tutanota Yes, but… because there is no way we can roll back technology even if we wanted to. But we need to regulate it and the authorities need laws to be able to control how it is used. We also need to obtain taxes from AI that replaces human workforce.
AI slop hurts your soul.
It makes you: distrustful, dismissive of creative works, uncreative, derivative, imaginatively stunted, unreflective, dependant, it robs you of the satisfaction and growth granted by the creative process and it poisons you with all the same cultural biases taken from the training data.
AI robs people of imagination and the drive to create and instead produces output that is pastiche on steroid, uninspired unchallenging slop, every little detail crafted without personality or opinion with nothing to say except "this might vaguely remind you of something good that already existed"
Gen AI is notorious for lying about things, googles AI search famously told people to eat rocks and put glue on pizza. So called "Hallucinations" are endemic to AI models and there is currently no known way to root them out.
By trusting LLMs for factual reference you are contributing to poisoning the information ecosystem with hallucinated LLM garbage. Please don't do that, stick to sources written by humans who can be held accountable for lies
I am also particularly concerned about the rise of chatbots pretending to be humans for political purposes.
@Tutanota Basically no AI whatsoever. My main problem is generative AI, but that extends to any sort of LLM usage. I find it immoral.
Jul 30, 2026, 8:02 AM
@Tutanota No AI AND why are you even asking?
Jul 30, 2026, 8:05 AM@Tutanota but where and when I choose
@Tutanota locally only and not for images
Jul 30, 2026, 8:09 AM@Tutanota It's not even doing the best job recognizing traffic signs... I can write my thoughts my self and I don't need it for a worse search either, just thanks but no thanks.
@Tutanota Ja, KI, aber nur europäische, wie Mistral Vibe und Proton Lumo, wegen Datenschutz.
@Tutanota Yes, but privacy respecting and only where augmenting or suggesting, not where it is decisive.
@Tutanota yes AI, but as a tool to support people, not to replace. And deployed responsibly and sustainably, not the way it's happening now.
@Tutanota@mastodon.social
Yes AI, but only as a tool which helps you e. g. with repetetive or annoying tasks.
Having a robot which could do all the household work would be great.
I also have the hope that it improves research especially in medical fields.
No AI for creativity.
@Tutanota Yes AI, but...only local models for very specific applications, NO LLM chatbots and general generative AI.
@Tutanota my default answer is "No AI" as it causes so much damage at so many levels, in so many ways:
- Data centers (land use, water waste, noise pollution, RAM & SSD shortages)
- Crawling (DDOS, book destruction, copyright infringement, software code theft)
- Training (energy use)
- Use (Slop, fake news, loss of trust, bullying / non-consensual image-modification, extra work for FOSS maintainers, sloppy apps everywhere...)
@Tutanota yes AI but run locally, sandboxed, preferably no outbound connection
@Tutanota I refuse to rot my brain by outsourcing my thinking
Jul 30, 2026, 8:44 AM@Tutanota i misclicked 😭.
Yes ai, but only locally, and ethically sourced data. I find LLMs useful for translation, and small utilitarian applications of it.
@Tutanota Yes AI, but not this stupid.
@Tutanota Even “yes, but” is an oversimplification. AI is a whole field in computer science (for many decades, I might add) or do you mean “LLMs” or “generative AI”?
In that case it would be a “no, unless”. Training data must not be stolen but public or bought, cost should be transparent and charged to the user (no dumping or bait and switch) and that includes not externalising cost of water and electricity use. That alone cuts out most applications on cost-effectiveness.
What remains is a smarter search and decent summarizer/note-taker. Preferably running locally. Fine.
To which I would add that search engines (cough Google cough cough) already steal ad revenue from sites by reducing click-through rates with summaries, which only worsens with AI as a smarter search engine. I would include that in cost to be accounted.
Pinning the cost externalities (water, electricity) directly to the application layer is something almost no one does honestly, and you're right that it would kill most use cases on its own before you even get to the training data question.
@Tutanota I'm personally a bit against the people using AI, but it can still be used for good stuff, as it was already used in medical fields.
I'd personally put:
No, but if used to improve the life of people, then yes.
And also:
Yes, but only if I search for it, I don't want it shoved into my throat
@Tutanota Yes to the research field and proper use of it, but these days I just assume what is meant are the LLMs, aka large copyright-infringement soups that generate something based on a prompt and usually consume a lot of resources doing so. So the answer becomes «no».
@Tutanota Machine learning: Yes, depending on how it's done and what it is used for.. What's commonly called "AI": Absolutely not. Even if it isn't entirely useless, it has to be rebuilt ethically, by different actors, for me to say "yes but".
@Tutanota First of all, let's get this clear: „AI“ is a word that is semantically so unclear, that it makes less and less sense to use it… but:
Yes AI, but not by big Tech, not as Opium for the masses, not realized in absurdly inhumane Datacenters, not in every application, not with the equally inhumane Author's Right violations, etc etc …
In essence: use it in an academic context.
@Tutanota Yes, but with strong control by government.
Jul 30, 2026, 9:10 AM@Tutanota AI Alignment needs to happen, a slowdown needs to happen, something like Plan A https://ai-2040.com/?choices=plan-a-root
@Tutanota Personally: No.
Picked "Yes, but.." because I have to use it at work.
I don't use it in a personal setting at all.
Jul 30, 2026, 9:19 AM@Tutanota AI can be very useful, but not as much as tech giants make it seem to be. We definitely don't need AI in every imaginable and unimaginable place. We definitely don't need LLMs to do tasks that other types of specialized algorithms can do cheaper and with greater accuracy. We definitely don't need to ruin our environment to support the demand that doesn't exist (or even if it does exist, for that matter). We definitely need regulations to enforce things like explainability, interpretability, lack of biases, accountability, etc.
Jul 30, 2026, 9:21 AM@Tutanota
No AI. Its only now not an automatic dealbreaker because so many others are openly making terrible political decisions. Still.
No AI. If it "has to" exist, it has to be fully optional and easy to permenantly turn off.
@Tutanota Yes but private, along the lines of what Duck and Proton are doing.
@Tutanota @SunDancer Yes AI, but responsible and regulated, fully paid by its users without any externalized costs.
@Tutanota
The question is too broad. 🫤
@Tutanota Yes AI, but the only strategy which will keep it in check is enough people saying No AI
Jul 30, 2026, 9:37 AMYes, but favour open models
Yes, but use your brain first
Yes, but call it Generative AI
AI -> Machine Learning -> Generative AI
Tuta looking to enshittify itself already?
@contrasocial No, just asking.
Jul 30, 2026, 10:02 AM@Tutanota It's an all together impossible debate due to the overly broad term "AI"
I pick "no AI" since the AI debate is mostly concerned about theft based, energy hogging LLMs.
I see no issues with machine learning being used for classification tasks, this is also AI, but this is not why we are having this debate.
Even small, no-theft LLM models that have specific use cases can be ok, though it's harder to find good examples of these.
There would not be an AI debate, if this was the AI that was offered to us. Simple tools to solve certain problems in a cost effective way.
This is not what "are you for or against AI" is about.
@Tutanota I think machine learning ('AI') has a place in society. It has helped with cancer research. It has helped the less able bodied with more natural language processing. It has helped with safety in cars and home security by way of pattern recognition.
The Generative, stealing, billionaire bubbling part of it can quickly be shot into the sun for all I care. Including the ringleaders. That's the part most people will see as "AI" but that's just an Ourouboros eating the world and itself.
Jul 30, 2026, 10:12 AM@Tutanota yes AI, when it comes to local machine learning models and llm with a decent energy footprint. No to the kind of AI greedy silicon valley billionaires dream of.
@Tutanota Yes AI, but more transparency and regulation on big tech companies currently owning the models (and us).
Yes AI, but only for the shitty little tasks, like writing a promo teaser for an event or something like that. Marketing stuff, wich isn't my domain and I want as litte as possible to do with it.
@Tutanota
Your question is flawed. AI does not exist yet. You meant LLMs. You have fallen into the trap of using their make-believe language in order to convince the public that LLMs are more than they are.
@Tutanota
I just realized that I do use AI in my apps that recognize plants or bird voices. Their training data is very specific and I hope there isn't also something unethical about these...