Stop trying to make it a thing, I'm begging you.
I've seen too many things recently that are related to AI companies, their tools and the various perspectives you can take as to why they are bad. While I kind of already wrote about these things in more abstract ways (see links at the bottom of this post), I never clearly stated my own perspective. Partially, because I don't really feel the need to openly declare myself (more on that below), but also because I find discussions around these topics to be deeply frustrating and exhausting.
However, this has now come to a point, where I wanted to say something, because I feel that maybe my perspective might help people understand some things a bit better.
Because I'm a human being, and currently a bit tired, the post is a bit all over the place, which is why I split it into three parts.
- Why I hate AIs and their companies and why I'm not interested in any "good" versions of them that other people might imagine.
- The absurdity of labeling products that were made with questionable methods.
- Why I think that creating the equivalent of an "organic food" label, but for human culture is actually helping those companies.
(important note: When I use "AI" I mean Large Language Models and I'm aware that there might be a semantic difference, however I don't want to waste my time with semantics right now.)
1. Why I hate AI:
I studied physical Anthropology, a field that is still obsessed with the idea that you can understand humans and their closest relatives, just by collecting enough data from them. That practice led to some horrific results last century and while there were some efforts made to push the field towards a more hypothesis driven approach, it never really got rid of its very flawed fundamentals.
I'm mentioning this, because while I'm not that deep into how Large Language Models are constructed, I do understand that they too rely on the collection and evaluation of huge amounts of data, in order to create an output that is supposedly resembling that of another human being. While they might not be using calipers, from my position, it's basically the same approach and as we can see, it basically leads to the same outcome as it did 100 years ago.
Their base assumption that you're somehow able to re-create whatever we might call "human intelligence" just by stuffing more numbers into a computer, is also epistemologically flawed. In order to re-create ourselves, we would have to perfectly understand who we are, which is impossible, because reality is not a videogame. We will never know when we achieved perfect knowledge of a field, because no one is out there to tell us. What we will notice is that it will get harder and harder to find new things, because we're starting to approach the limits of both our cognition and perception.
So I'm not worried that what these fascists call "AI" is somehow going to supplant human beings, or make us obsolete. I do think however that their existence is abhorrent and destructive.
First of all, because their stated goal is impossible and their methods are wrong, they will continue to devour more data in the hopes that at some point the machine has enough and becomes a boy (ever noticed how all those pre-LLM voice assistants, like Siri and Alexa, were female-coded and now you have 'Claude', 'Rufus' and 'Grok'?). So as long as they are enabled to do so, they will continue their efforts to destroy whatever vestiges of human culture they can get their hands on and build more and more data centers. It's the same reason why Anthropological Collections are full of shelves with Skeletons.
Furthermore, the People who create and proliferate these models hate life itself. Pointing at a chat window that displays "I have anxiety" and claiming the program behind it has reached a certain degree of cognitive agency, doesn't demonstrate the abilities of their machines, but how little they think of what humans, and any other living organism on this planet is actually capable of.
They don't elevate their chatbots, they are trying to reduce us all to such a degree that there's no apparent difference.
While they haven't really succeeded at any of their goals, I'm deeply concerned that they did manage to muddy the waters enough, that people have started to inherently distrust each other.
2. Where I talk about good and evil Eggs:
A few years ago, I noticed how a lot of Egg Cartons in my local grocery stores started to display messages on them, that declared that the eggs weren't coming from farms where they immediately kill all the male chicks. Apparently it's not good for an Egg Farm's profit margin, to have male chickens around, because they are not very useful when it comes to that whole 'laying eggs' thing, so at some point in the past, farms have started to just kill them. Now, factory farming is already terrible, but it's a specific absurdity that can only come out of Capitalism where the pressure for profits is so high, that it's more "efficient" to murder baby chickens.
I'm sure most people weren't aware of this practice, until these boxes started showing up that declared that their products came from farms that were less evil.
I find these types of messages always interesting, because they display several things:
First of all, they put the responsibility for the continuation of this practise into the hands of the consumer. While the decision to murder baby chickens was made by the companies who wanted to increase their profit margins, it is now up to the consumer to "vote with their wallet", regardless on whether or not they actually have the funds to make such a decision. This also obviously means there's now a moral component to what types of products you buy.
Second of all, it immediately creates this notion that any Eggs that don't openly declare that they're not of the baby-killing variety, are probably engaging in baby-killing. It also paints those "good" farms in a better light, even though we don't really know how they operate beyond the "we don't kill baby chicks" part of it all.
Third, you never see a label that, for example, states "this chocolate was made with slave labour", or "the people who grew these coffee beans were paid way below market rate!", or in this case "we murder male chicks on our farms, because it boosts out profit margin by half a percentage point!"
Capitalism, because it only ever cares about the amount of money a business generates for its owners, keeps creating destructive, harmful structures, but for some reason the responsibility for the creation of these structures is never put on the companies who create and proliferate them.
3. The ever-looming spectre of "Organic Videogames"
Back in 2022, when Large Language models started to really come into focus, I said somewhere "sooner or later we will get some kind of 'organic food' label, but for videogames'.
I've since seen several attempts to make this a reality.
I will never use AI for anything. I'd rather go completely off the grid and walk into the Ocean. However, I will also not put a "This was made without AI" sticker on my work, because I did not introduce these things into the world. It was not me, or my friends who at some day decided that we should devour all of human culture and rent it back to those we stole it from. I did not make a tool and only after a few days wrote a blog where I mention that actually it was written by the coding tool from that one AI company that has a record of having a rather cult-like internal company culture.
The companies who make LLMs and those who use them, would love for everyone to put a "non AI" sticker on their works, because it would absolve them from the responsibility that they are proliferating these things and continue to erode the trust between us all.
Last week I already saw someone say something along the line of "if I don't see a 'this was not made with AI' message by a creator, I just assume they used it" and it's this type of stuff that will cause these companies to gain a foothold.
Creating a space where your base assumption is that your other is somehow trying to trick you, or witholding information, makes it worse for everyone involved, especially those who are already struggling. I've experienced this enough already with having spend over a decade being stuck in Germany's welfare system. Every message I get is framed such that it questions my intentions. It's exhausting to operate under these conditions, and it made me very reluctant to actually ask for help I'm qualified for.
Trust is difficult, especially today. I myself have huge problems with that. Basically each time I see some kind of cool tiny tool, or thing that could be fun to play around with, I immediately wonder if it was made with AI. I stopped updating Game Maker, because I'm pretty sure they are using AI to maintain it. Very often it's hard for me to know for sure. I'm glad that platforms like itch require you to declare whether or not you used AI tools, because at least this way I know for certain if someone did use them. Because there isn't really any material benefit from declaring it. Yet, sometimes you can't tell and I really want to push myself more to trust people's intentions and desire to make things.
If this means that maybe, occasionally I get "tricked", so be it, but I'd rather get betrayed 1000 times, then hurt someone who has done nothing wrong.
Right now, at least for games, people who use these tools are forced to state that they did so. Basically they have to put a "we kill baby chickens" message on their egg cartons, which is obviously bad for their business. If anything we need to push for more and better declaration. Steam (as far as I know) for example, doesn't seem to think that AI-generated code falls into the same category as AI-generated art, which is wrong.
It has to be awful and costly to use these things, if not from a financial standpoint, then at least from a cultural and social standpoint.
The moment we start putting the responsibility of declaration onto those of us, who refuse to use these tools, is the moment we have lost. The base assumption will switch from "only assholes use these things" to "everyone uses them". The current environment of mistrust, that we already have thanks to these companies, will be cemented by this.
So I ask you all to refuse this idea of an "Organic Games" label, or whatever name it will eventually have. It will not have the effect you hope it will have.
Related Posts:
The Capitalist State, Human Cultre and the inevitability of History
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2025-03-30-The-Capitalist-State-Human-Culture-and-th...
Notes about The Algorithm
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2025-12-07-Notes-about-The-Algorithm
Waste is for the Dead
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2026-02-02-Waste-is-for-the-Dead