The knee-jerk hate for AI tools is pretty tiring

I’ve noticed a growing trend where the mere mention of AI immediately shuts down any meaningful discussion. Say “AI” and people just stop reading, literally.

For example, I was experimenting with NotebookLM to research and document a world I generated in Dwarf Fortress. The world was rich and massive, something that would take weeks or even months to fully explore and journal manually. NotebookLM helped me discover the lore behind this world (in the context of DF), make connections between characters and factions that I hadn’t even initially noticed from the sources I gathered, and even gave me tailored podcasts about the world I could listen to while doing other things.

I wanted to share this novel world researching approach on the DF subreddit. But the post was mass-reported and taken down about 30 minutes later due to reports of violating “AI-art”. The post was not intended to be “artistic” or showcase “art” at all, just a deep research tool that I found beneficial for myself, and using the audio overview to engage myself as a listener. It feels like the discourse has become so charged that any use of AI is seen as lazy, unethical, or dystopian by default.

I get where some of the fear and skepticism comes from, especially from a creative perspective. But when even non-creative, productivity-enhancing tools are immediately dismissed just because they involve AI, it’s frustrating for those of us who just want to use good tools to do better work.

Anyone else feeling this?