Data:
- LLMs are killing the planet
- LLMs are raising utility prices
- LLMs are raising computer prices
- LLMs give you teh dums
- LLMs show negligible increases in net productivity
- LLM costs are going up
- LLMs run on stolen content
- LLM companies keep breaking laws and saying, "Oopsie!"
Open Source maintainers for some reason:
- We are debating our AI policy, but it's a tough decision. *whines*
Dudes. WTF is wrong with you?
@EdCates
"Dudes. WTF is wrong with you?"
Assuming this isn't rhetorical, and for anyone else confused:
For many larger FOSS projects you can follow the funding sources for the answer. For smaller projects it is likely just more of the psychosis caused by industrial and nation-state scale gaslighting paired with defensive hype by the overwhelming amount of new and wannabe devs trying to pump their egos while skipping the learning curve.
@RadicalEcologist @EdCates a bunch of "ideas guys" getting told they finally don't even need to interface with movers & shakers at all anymore, or ever again! lmao.
@EdCates because OSS maintainers tend to be somewhat spectrally committed to full truth, but the "Data" is all kinda-sorta-partly true. and most techies recognize that AI is not going to go away.
@EdCates You might want to join https://fuckaifoundation.org
@EdCates The question is: do people at large care about the negatives to advocate for change?
@parsingphase @EdCates @Gargron not a senior developper but I have a lot of senior coders who were praising the quality of AI code
@gilgam @parsingphase @EdCates @Gargron это означает лишь то, что эти люди — не опытные и не программисты
Oct 13, 2026, 1:16 AMSo many anti-ai people. And yet, I don't know any engineers that don't use it. Possibly because they're now unemployable? 🤷
Oct 13, 2026, 2:23 AMYour local environment is self selecting. I don't know any engineers that *like* AI, and only a few that use it.
Because we know very different people.
Oct 13, 2026, 5:35 AM@doctormo@floss.social @bocan@infosec.exchange
I know some who like it. It's usually a sign they're pretty bad at coding, so AI really does help them a lot. It's just way faster than being on StackOverflow 80% of the time and it does analyze the existing code (maybe wrong, but still better than them).
Oct 13, 2026, 4:32 AM
@EdCates Ive seen some arguments about how AI block rules are stupid becouse you cant know if AI is used in some cases and whatever.
But thats just stupid becouse like should you get rid of laws if you cant always know if someone breakes them? Or any rules in general! Its clearly about the message that we do not want AI slop here!
So in my mind if ure not against AI ure kinda for it.
@cliffordheath @EdCates You can call it whatever you want.
@cliffordheath @joonq why does this read like a panel from the "Mr. Gotcha" comic? Is this on purpose?
Oct 13, 2026, 1:19 AM@EdCates forgot LLMs drink a LOTTTT of water
@Vak I was worried about the character limit. It's sort of generically covered under "utility costs" and "killing the planet."
Oct 13, 2026, 2:01 AM@EdCates indeed! didnt mean to be terse, I was nodding along the whole time. good post!
@Vak oh, no worries. I didn't take exception to your comment at all.
Thanks!
@EdCates the only explanation that I've been able to come up with is that using LLMs causes what amounts to brain damage. People lose the ability to analyse situations and stop being able to make even the smallest decisions on their own.
@EdCates
> "Dudes. WTF is wrong with you?"
I throw back that question at you. Why the misinformation? I don't defend all the wrong things about LLMs or GenAI but I also don't understand the hyper-focus on the wrong thing.
- Humans are killing the planet. (Fossil Fuel Dependence, Deforestation, all kind of Pollution, Overconsumption, etc)
- Unregulated Capitalism (Gov. corruption) is raising utility & computer prices.
- Excessive screen time and media illiteracy give you teh dums.
- Wars, Tariffs, inflation makes everything go up.
- LLMs and the internet in general run on stolen content.
- Most Companies keep breaking laws and saying, "Oopsie!"
- Negligible net productivity claim might be true for now if not already outdated data.
The problem is the government not reacting properly but in many cases begin pro unregulated AI.
The problem is the people for electing those politicians that work against the constituents interests.
The problem is a human one.
China cleaned up Beijing’s air in weeks for the Olympics. The ozone layer healed because countries cooperated. We fix what we prioritize.
If anyone is going to be this naive-level of anti-AI you might as well be anti-cars, anti-airplanes, anti-Industrial Agriculture & Factory Farming, etc. At least I'm glad this issue is bringing awareness onto environmentalism.
I don't want to downplay the specific role that AI plays in accelerating these problems but man I'm so tired of this viral causal reductionism posts.
@EdCates i am afraid the problem is that they like it…
Dudes. WTF is wrong with you?I suppose, they forgot that adopting big-corporate style, soul-sucking "efficiency race" (while efficiency applied only to speed of closing bugs/tasks in Jira) and making new releases fast AF to win other the competitors — is not the only one way to perform the programming.
@EdCates based :orehus:
@EdCates eins fehlt:
"- LLM shares are going to crash" – very soon
@EdCates как это ни прискорбно, 95% разработчиков — безвольные куколды, не способные защитить от неприкрытого вредительства свой многолетний труд
@EdCates think about the non functioning reimplementations!!!!
@EdCates ah, so we found whom to blame: open source maintainers who try to deliver you free software in a rapidly shittier world. Nice job shifting the blame. Nothing wrong with us, you just never bothered to look into the actual reality we're facing.
@EdCates Ask the man who is making copies of famous software suites alone with AI help.
Oct 13, 2026, 6:26 AM
Oct 13, 2026, 6:30 AM@EdCates dudes loves a good obedient coding slave and laziness is easy.
@EdCates assuming a real question here:
I think the primary reason is overwork to be honest.
Maintainers are overwhelmed by both existing conditions and new conditions created by the social side of LLMs where people drive-by PR and don't even bother to understand what they're doing. That's not an LLM that's unsociable behaviour. Actual pure LLM based agents or whatever that go around opening PRs are much less common.
I think the reason for the unsociable behaviour is the "publish or perish" dynamic extended into open source.
Additionally some companies donate LLM usage for open source (which is obviously somewhat of a trap but it minimises or eliminates cost from the equation).
The productivity increase counter argument has a lot to do with what tasks are given and how studies get structured. For example if you want to rename a lot of things, a language model is naturally going to have a high chance of getting that done quickly and won't leave you fighting to figure out a way to maintain capitalization in a single pass replacement.
I would much prefer maintainers have reduced load but something that can iterate in the background independently definitely will figure some things out.
Of course there's also the security argument. I'm not sure honestly how applicable it is but people definitely at least feel that it is. There's also the "keeping up" argument that I think isn't really much of a real thing even if people feel it might be.
I personally have very different views on usage between cases where you pay for access versus being provided access. Because in the latter I view it as basically a way to extract money out of corporations.
But I don't think my views matter here at the end of the day because in general people have made their minds up about things pretty strongly and I'm not sure honestly how positive I view that behaviour in general but it's not an uncommon one amongst humans at least.
@EdCates Great post. Great thread. I blocked so many trolls/bots. Thank you 🙏
@EdCates openAI offering them a large bag with a $ sign on it
