As a general observation, I find that the more right-leaning a person is, the more they tend to be receptive to the usage and adoption of “AI”. And inversely, the more left-leaning, the more skeptical.
I pin this on the notion that most conservatives hate workers, are happy to see them laid off, etc. Whereas more progressive folks tend to see value in what human beings do.
Moreover, communists like ourselves almost completely dismiss the plagarism slop machines as being utterly misanthropic, not to mention flying in the face of the labour theory of value.
As an anecdote, I work with a conservative guy who puts EVERYTHING through Grok. Almost everything he types/says to his team mates he gets Grok to write for him. Everything he “fact-checks” goes through Grok. He views it as totally impartial, without bias, etc.
On the other hand, I think more critically-minded folks are prone to seeing the inherent bias in these chatbot slop machines, and view them with skepticism in the same way they view all other institutions in society.
Clearly I am generalising a lot here, but has anyone else made the same or similar observation?
I think it’s more of a common cause thing: a lack of curiosity and critical thinking skills make you both more likely to be conservative and more likely to trust AI.
I’d take it a step further to a fear of curiosity and critical thinking, because once you engage with the world, you start seeing how complicated it is, and how complex the problems actually are, and how difficult the solutions are
Conservatives want simplicity, ease. They are nostalgic for the simplicity of childhood. They crave the bliss of ignorance.
Conservativism is basically weaponized Daddy issues and Grok is the new Father figure.
my armchair psychologist take is that it’s related to the conservative tendency to struggle with ambiguity/uncertainty. LLMs always have an answer, will assert that their answer is correct, and since it’s a computer program, they figure it has to be neutral and giving them accurate output at least 99% of the time.
conservativesl tendency to struggle with ambiguity/uncertainty.
Reactionaries hating abstract art comes to mind. Or how they don’t understand subtext/literary themes (look at how many of them wish they were Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, Walter White, or Don Draper). I think a lot of it comes from not wanting their worldview challenged/altered.
AI gives immediate output conforming to their worldview. An abstract painting challenges their understanding of art. Nazis would have loved Grok because they could do what Trump/Musk do with Grok.
the conservative tendency to struggle with ambiguity/uncertainty
One example that comes to mind was telling a conservative former friend about a dream I had, in which a human and an alien in a first contact situation created a game together, which they then used to determine who would get a resource that could only save one of their species, both of which were threatened with extinction. The dream ended with the human winning, but the victory felt tragic and hollow because these two species had enough in common to create and play a game together, yet one of them would die through nobody’s fault. I told him the dream was emotionally striking to me and I thought I might be able to adapt this into a sci-fi short story.
He took the story as an HFY-style endorsement of alien genocide and was baffled by my attempts to explain that it was meant to be a bitter and ironic tragedy.
I also mentioned to this same friend that I thought it might be an interesting angle for a Star Wars story to be told from the view of an average grunt about how terrifying it would be to have their unit come under attack by a Force user. He went on a rant about how Force users were Mary Sues because “no one could possibly block a laser because they travel at the speed of light” and assumed that I must be a Star wars fan (we’d known each other for years and I’d never given any other possible indication that I liked Star Wars).
they’re kindred spirits, one’s a confidently-wrong robot and the other is an LLM
Look at conservative art. It’s already extremely bad, so AI output isn’t as jarring. If you think Taylor Sheridan is peak kino you’re not gonna notice how many fingies are on the manly cool teevee man.
It’s a bit snotty of me to say this but, yeah, it’s not surprising that the “conservatives” are amenable to a thing that does the thinking for them. It’s more of what they’re used it.
every “haha you artists are gonna have to become plumbers now and AI is gonna kill woke” person i’ve met hasn’t just been a conservative but a full-blown neo-nazi
The right hates artists and academics but want to consume the products of their work. Replacing them with a robot is very appealing to them.
Because they’re dumb fucking orangutans. Remember everyone is 12. They’re also lazy. There’s a shiny new toy that can do thinking for you. The people I know that are super into it are amazed at obvious scam bullshit. New tech that is obvious bullshit, bitcoin, nfts, all meat diet, gluten free diet (while not actually having an allergy), sports betting. It’s all slop. It’s no surprise they rely on the lying machine. They can be on top of all this shit, but try to point out all the fucked up shit with the world and I get “I don’t know man, I don’t really pay attention.”
I also see AI art all over town on petite bourgeois independent contractor trucks. We all know why they do this.
Even google searches are slop / always were slop. So is wikipedia.
Having someone tell you what position you should have on any issue at the tip of your fingers / how they frame it is an extremely powerful tool for those that want to maintain the status quo
i seriously think it’s mostly because of Silicon Valley making the hard right turn and being “adopted” into the greater Conservative Ecosystem
it’s taken some effort but somehow they have fused “traditional values” with this all gas no brakes everything AI and tech ideology. i mean just look at Thiel fusing his version of Christianity with transhumanism
it’s obviously all for self serving reasons; they want money and the right has all the money now. and since most right wingers are basically unthinking automatons they just go with the flow and the flow says AI is good. boss says it’s good so it must be.
plus they hate artists because artists are woke and gay or whatever. but at the top, it’s obviously a hatred of workers and humanity in general, which has just filtered down. the average right wing prole doesn’t like to think about that part and just ignores it or assumes because they use AI they will not be ground into bio-diesel to fuel some Yarvinist data center.
Yeah, like “AI” has always been ChudTech.
I think they also get a kick out of it because in a sense, AI is a sign they’ve got what they wanted out of the culture wars. You know how at one time, sushi was considered this fancy new thing and libs would sniff their own farts over it? Yeah, AI is the conservative equivalent. Let me explain. It’s this shiny, new, trendy thing that is supposedly embraced by those “in the know”, and disliked by dumb rubes. This time, they get to feel like the intellectual cosmopolitan embracing the future and laughing at those uncultured provincials who just don’t GET IT!
I wish AI was actually as good as people said it was. If I had a niche question and some advanced google search can explain any concept in parts? Great! If IDEs corrections were so advanced that all the silly mistakes any coder makes were a thing of the past? Awesome!
Because conservatism and AI enjoyment are both downstream from being dumb as shit and wanting an authority to think for you.
Yeah, it fits into their need for simple answers. And if something can’t be answered simply, they’ll invent a simple answer to it.
It’s because the bourgeoise and the petty-bourgeoise are all-in on it.
The working class conservatives are people that have been tricked by these two classes. Their outlook on everything is filtered through the same influencers that have convinced them to be conservatives. When I use the term influencer here I don’t just mean online streamers and youtubers, I mean all media sources, their religious influencers, their workplace influencers (boss), their local small business tyrant influencers, cops, and so on and so forth. The ecosystem of influencer that these proles who have been misled by the ruling classes is all pro-AI because the ruling class view it as beneficial.
They get their beliefs on AI from the same places they get their conservatism and that ultimately comes from the boug and the petty boug. If they trust them when they say that conservatism is in their best interests, why wouldn’t they trust them on everything else they say?
They exist in an alternate information reality and that has to be changed in its entirety.
Slop appeals to the most braindead and uncreative amongst us
I think it’s also that most conservatives don’t give a fuck about art/human creation and will consume whatever slop is fed to them. I’ve seen some truly horrendous AI-generated halloween-themed garage banner things that are also JPEG as fuck. They just don’t care about aesthetics and beauty and soul at all. I’m not sure the average conservative could even pass a Turing test.
AI is essentially the fresh coil of dog shit on the sidewalk that all of the hitlerites on social media have immediately swarmed on like flies to churn out propaganda with
