Mastodawn

Jörg Stephan Mar 31

Baldur Bjarnason

It's clearly going to take the tech industry a while to understand that the "AI" brand is well and truly toxic

If you have a software or feature, sell it on what it does for people. If it's actually useful, then calling it "AI" will just make people assume it's yet another money-grabbing con.

Especially if you aren't using an LLM or diffusion model and instead are just using a non-generative ML model. Why willingly adopt all that negative baggage when you don't have to?

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

"It's clearly going to take the tech industry a while"

It really shouldn't, though. We have plenty of studies and other evidence.

https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/on-generative-ai/#consumer-sentiment

I wonder if this is denial, or maybe they just don't care?

On generative AI and LLMs | Stefan Bohacek

Generative AI is anti-worker, anti-environment, and doesn't even work all that well.

G. Wozniak Mar 31

@stefan Evidence and data have never been much of a factor up to this point. I'd say indifference, but it's more fanaticism than anything else.

Maria “indigoviolet” Ivy Mar 31

@stefan @baldur it’s actually “capitalists are as sentient as the alphabet soup cans they create”

Ben Ramsey Mar 31

@stefan @baldur It seems to me that by-and-large, our peers in the industry have embraced and adopted AI use as part of their daily work. I think we might be in a fairly loud echo chamber on the Fediverse.

Scott Miller 🇺🇦 🇺🇸Mar 31

@ramsey @stefan @baldur LinkedIn is very AI bullish to the point I can’t read more than a couple dozen posts before I nope out. That said, I assume there’s lots of folks there hiding distrust of AI because they know they’ll be judged negatively for it.

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

"we might be in a fairly loud echo chamber"

To some degree, yes. But look at the studies and surveys listed in the blog post that I shared. Seems like the general public is very much not onboard?

It is also fascinating to see the response to Bluesky announcing their AI-powered feed builder tool, not sure if you saw that:

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/116319584608160102

Ben Ramsey Mar 31

@stefan @baldur That’s only 0.3% of registered users who have blocked the account.

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

@ramsey First of all, are you using the 43 million accounts figure that sometimes gets tossed around?

Doesn't seem accurate.

https://bsky.app/profile/mackuba.eu/post/3mhg7zdpgsk2r

But okay, that's still only 0.4%.

If we look at the number of accounts that have been active over the past day*, it jumps to 10%.

I'm guessing that's still too low for you, but Bluesky itself is an echo chamber, it's a very self-selected group.

What issues do you have with the sources I listed in my article, that should be more representative of a more general audience?

* via https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth

Kuba Suder 🇵🇱🇺🇦 (@mackuba.eu)

I've done a full scan through all PDSes seen on bsky.network (listHosts and then listRepos everywhere), and I got such numbers: active: 39,207,881 (= meaning: repo is visible) deactivated: 427,544 taken down: 2,564,669 total: 42,200,094 so around ~1M would probably have been deleted. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Bluesky Social

Ben Ramsey Mar 31

@stefan @baldur I don’t think comparing total number of blocks with number of daily active users is a good measurement, unless you’re able to filter the blocking accounts by active accounts.

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

Alright, first, apologies to you, @baldur, let me know if you want to be taken off the conversation, hate to keep polluting your mentions.

Second, @ramsey, let me step back a bit.

In my original reply, I argued that general public is turning against LLMs.

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/116321006190065141

You replied that "our peers in the industry have embraced and adopted AI".

Sure, but with not a lot of trust?

"Only 33% of developers trust AI accuracy in 2025, down from 43% in 2024 and 42% in 2023. AI favorability dropped from 77% in 2023 to 72% in 2024 to just 60% this year."

https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-data-reveals-the-hidden-productivity-tax-of-almost-right-ai-code

But why is that relevant? I was talking about general population, now we're discussing developers and users of Bluesky, very narrow, self-selected groups.

Stefan Bohacek (@[email protected])

@[email protected] "It's clearly going to take the tech industry a while" It really shouldn't, though. We have plenty of studies and other evidence. https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/on-generative-ai/#consumer-sentiment I wonder if this is denial, or maybe they just don't care?

Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server

Ben Ramsey Mar 31

@stefan @baldur “But why is that relevant? I was talking about general population, now we're discussing developers and users of Bluesky, very narrow, self-selected groups.”

That’s fair. I went too narrow mentioning developers, and then you mentioned reaction on Bluesky, which is why I was discussing it.

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

@ramsey @baldur Yeah, we both got a bit sidetracked there.

But I do think there's enough evidence to support @baldur's claims that AI has a toxic impact on branding.

Ben Ramsey Mar 31

@stefan @baldur I hope we never stop saying “Microslop.”

Stefan Bohacek Mar 31

Definitely! And case in point on AI and branding!

divVerent Mar 31

@stefan @baldur

"
Only 26% of voters view AI positively, making it even less popular than ICE, according to an NBC News poll of 1,000 voters.

axios.com, March 2026
"

Love it.

Holger Krupp Mar 31

@baldur how about an AI powered induction stove or an AI powered washing machine? I think I also saw an AI fridge.

https://mastodon.social/@_holger/116288611675424603

Mike Cane Mar 31

@baldur The AI hatred by the public is real. Began with phone trees replacing people. Now the damn things are AI voices that can’t understand a fucking thing.

Human Brain Enthusiast Mar 31

@baldur @emilymbender I think that’s why there is an attempt to use “agent” more and more

@baldur classist people only listen to others of the same class or above. The owner class all benefits from the surveillance-&-labor-theft machine, so they can't understand why anyone wouldn't like it.

Cap Ybarra Mar 31

@baldur machine learning's brand is definitely less damaged

arestelle Mar 31

@baldur how long did it take for "big data" to die?

🥑 Yours Truly! Unruly 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦🌻Mar 31

AI is a toxic brand.

jon saenz Mar 31

@baldur after this LLM tide passes (and it will), advanced statistical methods will still work for classification, regression, and so on, and they will be useful.

@baldur The AI branding is not for the customers. It's for potential investors.

@baldur For the stock price. In tech businesses, driving up the stock price can make more money than actaully finding customers.

Bruno Girin Mar 31

@baldur Even more so when they're B2B businesses because the hype has gone from the tech industry to another industry and it then comes back to the tech companies that serve this industry, all with a delay. Unraveling will have a delay too.