Hi everyone. I’m a senior Computer Engineering student and my girlfriend is a senior Mechanical Engineering student.
She is caring, cute, clever and really thoughtful. I love everything about her. But the one thing that always bugs me out is the amount of AI she uses.
When we met 2 years ago the first topic we talked about was about AI and ever since that day I always mentioned her the advancements and dangers of AI. I said how there can’t be ethical AI and any use of it is harmful.
She agrees with me every time and says she will decrease her usage but at the end she uses it still. Projects, reports, homeworks all go through the LLM. She shows me her work and I can’t congratulate her without forcing myself because I know it’s AI.
She has diagnosed ADHD and I think this might be one of the reasons but I still don’t understand. She sometimes spends hours working. If she had spent that time with pen and paper she could’ve reached the same conclusions she did with AI but with more understanding of her work.
I don’t want to upset her but also seeing someone this close to me do this is saddening to me. What should I do? Should I just ignore it?
She’s a STUDENT? Why the hell would you cheat as a student? That seems incredibly counterproductive
Yeah ignore it. Really if it bugs you that much I would do something about it, but that feels dramatic to me. But I’m not in your shoes and I don’t know your moral compass or how annoying this girlfriend is with her ai use. This is really a you issue though and I would not ask peoples advice, and if you wanted real advice I wouldn’t ask the anti ai space for one.
I can tell you though, there’s tons of things I can tell you about my partner and what they do and how it bugs me. Every time they use our stove I say never put it above 6 just give it time. And everytime we Cook the stove is blasted on full.
I could get up set and argue about it which I did for a short period of time. But clearly they aren’t going to change and I’m being obnoxious about it.
That doesn’t mean i don’t love them, its just a balance of learning eachothers quirks and embracing them rather than making things more adversarial than it needs to be. But again I can’t draw those lines for you, you can’t ignore something that really bugs you. Really just talk to them about it.
Replace “uses AI” with “is an alcoholic” and follow similar advice.
Below is one of the best sourced comments that I’ve seen about listing the negative aspects of LLMs/AI.
One of my main ones is, thinking about spinning up a jet engine, next to someone’s backyard, each time a LLM is used for a web search.
Stick to the facts when you explain your views, explore ways to run local models for her if you can stretch that far.
Reasons not to use AI-LLM artificial intelligence. (There is probably a bunch more in the 7 months since this list was written.)
Perhaps address the impact this will have in the future in her career. From decades of experience in the mechanical field, I will tell you that if she doesn’t have the knowledge in her head she will get laughed at and fired. AI has not really penetrated the mechanical field. Yes, there is AI in CAD and other software, but at best it is for tinkerers and not scalable. Without the knowledge she won’t last a month in a mech eng role, assuming she manages to even get one.
I’m sure enough people have told you to yeet her into the sun. I empathize if you decide you want to work this through with her. I have had issues like this with my own partner.
I found this video essay by Dr. Fatima helpful to empathize in my case. You agree on some of the fundamentals it seems. She has a habit and somewhat agrees that it’s bad. But due to stress or whatever reason she can’t kick it. So try to help her to work on this. It’s good to keep in mind that even half-measures can do lots of good. Maybe she isn’t super principaled in her AI abstention like you, but there’s a wide range between occasional indulgance and full-on dependency.
One seemingly small thing that reduced a lot of conflict for us was me replacing her search widget on her android. She kept quoting AI summaries from Google at me and I kept getting annoyed until I offered to help by changing it to DuckDuckGo. Maybe you’re better skilled in configuring your devices and can offer to protect her from addictive design patterns she is barely aware of.
I’ve had experiences that relate to your post, and I understand how difficult it can be to be in your position. I can’t really make your decisions for you, but hopefully some of the following will help:
First, since I made the post I linked here, my mother made an abrupt and unexpected reversal. One day out of the blue, she asked me to help her switch her default search engine on her computer to
noai.duckduckgo.comand switch her phone’s browser to the Duck Duck Go browser and disable all AI features. (She’s not technical, so she appreciated, wanted, and requested the tech support assistance.) I don’t really know what prompted her to make the switch, but I’m elated by it. She’s still quite addicted to YouTube/Facebook shorts and some of the videos I see just by virtue of the fact that they’re playing in my viscinity are slop, but she usually makes the comment that “oh, that’s AI”. (Hell, we watched something on some streaming platform that had a slop scam ad targeting seniors with promises of some “Medicare grocery card” or something and my mother was the one who pointed out it was AI.) Her attitude has changed on the topic quite drastically. Between that post and my mother’s reversal, I did tell her “don’t read me that slop” or “yeah, but you can’t trust that because it’s LLM output” not terribly infrequently when she read me Google AI summaries or “oh, that’s not real though” when she’d show me a slop YouTube short. So it’s not like she didn’t get that I disapproved, and I think part of the reason for the reversal was probably for my benefit specifically. I’ve always been careful not to make any demands on her about things that aren’t my business. If she wants to consume slop content, that’s not really on me to correct. (To express concern, maybe, but not to demand she changes how she stewards her own brain.) But I don’t want that shit infecting my brain with LLM-hallucinated misconceptions, and I’ve been careful to make it clear that the boundaries I’m setting are where she ends and I begin. I’m not trying to control her, I’m trying to control me.Second, I usually try to avoid making predictions about the future, but more and more voices are saying now that there’s a strong possibility the AI bubble will pop within a couple of years. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc are all giving away LLM access at a huge loss. They’ve already bumped prices and gamed the system to extract more revenue, but it isn’t enough. At some point they’ll have to either shutter their generative AI efforts or start charging what they actually cost (and then shutter their generative AI efforts when it becomes even more clear that virtually nobody is willing to pay anywhere near that). Assuming that all goes down the way I’m hoping, at that point your girlfriend may well basically lose access to LLMs. (Running LLMs locally is a little cheaper in the long run, but there’s a steep effort curve and a steep up-front-cost curve (not to mention ongoing power usage bills) to get anything that even the boosters would call acceptable results. I doubt any significant portion of people using LLMs today will undertake such and effort or cost.) All that to say, there’s a strong possibility she’ll quit using Generative AI just by virtue of an impending massive bubble pop.
I dunno. I probably am not one to take advice from when it comes to relationships (or economics, for that matter). You’ll have to decide how to address and/or deal with this issue yourself. I told you what I did and what resulted. I think boundaries, done properly, are generally a good thing. I didn’t think it would work for me to pretend I was fine with being force-fed slop frequently and it worked out. But whatever you end up doing, I hope your situation resolves similarly positively. Good luck.
Using it for school work is demonstrably not learning. In fact using an LLM is antithical to learning: it’s cognitive offloading.
If she cares about actually learning she’d do her own school work.
That’s the problem I see here… my 2¢
Every time she gives you a paper to review, quiz her on the content within it.
Play some games / do activities together that don’t involve internet / computer or any technology and best if it require focus and attention. ex yoga, board games, but also cooking from physical book or just experimenting in kitchen.
Hey here’s something you should probably hear: You’re wrong.
You claim there’s no ethical use of AI, yet you don’t ever actually prove that claim. Your GF sits there, ethically using it in front of you and you can’t see it because your ideology blinds you. You literally ran to the fuck_ai forum for ideological relief. It’s kind of pathetic. Leave your GF alone.
If you actually read the comments you will see most people don’t act like a circle jerk. Some say I’m wrong, some say I should break up with her and some say we should talk instead. I wrote here because people here might understand me.
You should phrase your concerns to her in the form ‘Your use of AI harms me in <specific way(s)>’ to her, then. Don’t talk about the planet, don’t talk about licenses. Is she not spending time with you that she’s spending with the AI? Is she spending excessive money on tokens and hurting your family? What is she doing that’s actually hurting you? Having a different opinion than you doesn’t count as a harm.
ETA: I also read every comment in the thread before I responded. No one just proferred that maybe you’re just flat out wrong and need to stop pushing your weird opinion this deep into your relationship. And I think the fact that you ran to the fuck_ai community to ask for relationship advice is testament to that. Come on bro.
Why are you so violent? Do you also use AI and feel bad to be called out?
As I suspected you’re just looking for agreement and not advice. So yeah, you’re right dude just keep pressing her on this, it would be a great idea.
Until everything made by LLMs trained on copyleft materials are legally forced to have all generated content be automatically licensed under copy-left licenses I don’t wanna hear that “ethical use” bullshit.
Also make sure all the training infrastructure uses renewable energy, landmass, and water.
If any profit is made, donate enough to cover environmental damage.
Make sure the AI products won’t take away any job on earth.
Or just, you know, don’t fucking bother.
I agree with all of the above, but also think UBI should also be implemented as a safety measure for those losing jobs to automation as a whole.
You’re making a legitimate argument, but an argument isn’t a fact. he can say to his gf til he’s blue in the face that she’s being unethical, but he hasn’t demonstrated (nor can he really beyond theoretical hand waving) who is actually harmed by her use of AI. That isn’t to say there aren’t real harms that can happen and do happen, but it’s a bit ridiculous to tell someone who’s using an LLM to summarize an email that they’re responsible for the downfall of society. Get a grip
It is a fact that LLMs took the teeth away from copy left licenses.
You can now legally make a proprietary version of a copyleft licensed work by having an llm gobble it up and regurgitate it.
As someone who has donated money to, daily drives, and has even written software under a copyleft license? Yes that tangibly hurt me. It undermined my work, and others work I helped pay for, and even just work I use for free, and gave businesses a legal pathway to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish said software.
Don’t believe me? Some asshole who thinks he’s doing the lords work already started doing it to GIMP. Even if its open source, its still stealing the spotlight and funding from the actual FLOSS solutions worth using.
Taking the teeth away from a license many rely on isn’t an intangible harm, its a very real problem. We used to be able to legally threaten companies into playing nice, that needs to be brought back.
…ok, so are you saying that this guy should start talking about copyleft licenses and that will resolve his relationship dispute? Because I’m saying he should accept that she has a different opinion and that he may even be wrong since she’s demonstrably not using it unethically (assuming she’s not trying to LLM-wash some open source software), I’m not really sure how what you mentioned is a relevant harm that would change his gf’s opinion?
ETA: To give you a better idea what I’m talking about, let’s say that the gf really just ethically thinks playing video games is a massive waste of time, and she raises that concern. And that he thinks that playing video games is a social outlet so that he can spend time with friends from high school, and have a fun time, and that the time he spends with it is in balance with the rest of his priorities and life.
The GF has a valid opinion about video games, but she’s not going to win any arguments with someone who is enjoying their usage in a balanced way with random ideological arguments, and moreover, she needs to either accept that this is something he enjoys to do in the balance of his life, and/or that she gasp may be wrong and/or leave the relationship if it’s really that big of a deal, but it would seem like she’s a bit of a nutter if she does that, to me at least.
You can say the same about any creative commons media they may have swallowed. There are copyleft forms of licenses for all creations in all domains. By using LLM generated content, you’re using that training data.
Keep backpeddling all you want, I demonstrated one of tbe many ways that LLMs create inherit and tangible harm as asked.
As for this guys girlfriend? I’ll refer to my first comment. (Admittedly edited a coupla mins after its original posting, so ya nights missed it):
That being said, yeah that’s rough and you’re probably gonna have to just accept it if a coupla conversations aren’t doing it, because trying to ‘fix’ your partners like they’re a project is both unhealthy and condescending.
I wasn’t asking for an abstract concept of how LLMs can cause ethical harms, I was asking how this person ever made the case that his GF’s particular use of AI was causing ethical harm. As I said in my last comment, responding with esoteric random arguments (arguments, not facts, I still remember when ‘theft’ required actually having to lose property) is not how you resolve a dispute in a relationship or a difference of opinion. I’m not backpedaling, you just demonstrated exactly what OP is doing and why it isn’t relevant to the situation.
There are copyleft forms of licenses for all creations in all domains. By using LLM generated content, you’re using that training data.
If you create with an LLM you’re relicensing work under an incompatible license.
Even if you do release under a copy left license, which one do you use? Many of them are incompatible. No matter what your breaking someones terms (or you would if AI companies wherent allowed to get away with murder.)
Again, as someone with publicly released works under copy-left licenses, that is doing anyone who’s contributed to such works, in effort or donation, a tangible disservice.
Unless your work is so fucking innately important as to be above that issue, like improving quality of life for someone who’s disabled, or curing some horrible disease, I don’t wanna fucking hear it.
She is caring, cute, clever and really thoughtful
If you’re ending it, can I get her number? /s
Y’all need to chill it with crucifying anyone and everyone who uses ai. Like any other tool it depends on how it’s used. (If you can put aside the environmental factors cause a single person using it is not going to even scratch the surface of how much companies are)
As someone with ADHD, it’s an amazing way to organize thoughts and to destill ideas into actual writing. And before you go on about how you can do that without ai, yes you can, but it requires someone to sit down with you and help you through the executive functioning process that I don’t have. Would you be willing to spend that time and become her brain’s crutch?
Before you do anything drastic, talk to her, figure out what she uses it for, how it helps her process. Don’t blanket dismiss it cause it’s ai.
Of course I won’t break up with her. I want to support her with her work but I don’t feel like her work is genuine. And the issue is I am not good at lying or acting.
So when she talks about the things she did I can’t help myself and say “you could’ve done that by yourself”. She claims she doesn’t use it for everything but I saw the chats.
I know I sound like a jerk but this is important to me. I will probably try to ignore her use of AI and support her regardless.
Dump that zero, and get a hero.
Commenting just to reiterate what a lot of the other comments are saying. It’s ok if AI use is a dealbreaker for you, it would be for me. I personally have a list of companies I boycott and if my partner didn’t care enough to also boycott them then in my opinion we just wouldn’t align enough to stay together. That being said, you can also just decide that not using AI is important to you but you will tolerate it in a partner. My main advice if that’s the route you go would be to be clear that you don’t personally use it and draw clear boundaries. It’s ok to say for example “if you use AI for a project I’m not interested in reviewing/discussing it”. Maybe that’s a dealbreaker for her, I don’t know, but I’d just sit down with yourself and determine 1) if it’s a dealbreaker or not and 2) if it’s not a dealbreaker what your boundaries about it are. You just have to be ready for whatever her decision is regarding that. If you tell her it’s not a dealbreaker then you should just let it go. No one likes being nagged. But you also don’t have to support it, just be clear about that and keep consistent with whatever you said you were/weren’t going to do when she brings it up.
Also, I think the comments calling you controlling are out of line. You can have preferences regarding your partners behavior. It only becomes controlling in very specific conditions. If you’re unclear about your desires and then retaliate against her without her knowing why that would be one way of being controlling. If you’re open and honest and communicate that you have a preference and are open to her response then you’re probably perfectly fine. The most important thing is clear communication and respecting each others boundaries.
Having a partner doing something that don’t align can definitely be hard to deal with. My fiance is the best person I know, I love everything about her, but sometimes she endorses the murder, rape, torture and breeding of animals for the sake of taste.
To me it makes no sense, but I accept that we have different priorities. If I were to look down on all people that make different choices than me I would be lonely and I don’t think hanging out with vegans gives me better life quality than being with my friends and family.
I’d say it’s about the same as other issues in relationships. People ain’t perfect. I have a few habits which don’t really resonate with my partner at all. And I see other people discuss other stuff as well. The amount of partying someone does, friends, kids, doomscrolling and TikTok addiction, chores, leisure time, relationship to someone’s parents… There’s a million things to fundamentally disagree on.
Somehow you need to work it out. Talk. Make up your own mind, think about where to compromise, what are hard limits for you. And what’s more important to you. That thing or her. And where do you all want to go. And then find a effective ways to talk. Seems to me what you’ve been doing is talk, but from the description, it doesn’t seem like it’s all that effective.
I personally don’t think policing someone’s work is the job of a spouse. I’ll ask my partner what’s up with their job, take interest, empathize… But I don’t tell them how to do their work. On the other hand I have expectations for personal life. I wouldn’t like it at all if someone brings AI slop into the shared living room. I might be able to compromise on some of it, especially if I disagree on the way to do it but there’s no bad consequences. But there’s hard no’s for me. And you do you.
I think most important is to come to some kind of agreement which makes everyone comfortable at least to some degree. If you wanna make the relationship work, that is. But I feel if she’s saying one thing but does another… There’s still some things to work out. Either you’re not really communicating and she just says yes to make you stop. Or she’s struggling to pull it off. (Might not be easy at all to quit AI?) Or you both have different opinions and avoid conflict.
Maybe another option is to remove your own opinion for now, and just listen for a while. Find out what she wants. Where she’s at and where she wants to go with this?
