It goes a bit further than just not berating. People often get defensive when you criticise something they like, which makes it harder to argue due to the other side suddenly treating the discussion as a fight. However by saying “it’s not for me” in a rather roundabout way you shift the focus away from “is it good/bad” and more about whether the other can empathise with your reasoning, and in turn reflect your view onto themselves and maybe realize that they didn’t notice something about their usage and feelings about AI that you already did.

Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean ignorant in a general way, but to the critiques on AI/dangers of AI OP referred to in their post. I’ll edit my comment.

Maybe trying to be objective is the wrong choice here? After all, it might sound preachy to those who are ignorant to the dangers of AI. Instead, it could be better to stay subjective in hopes to trigger self-reflection.

Here are some arguments I would use for my own personal ‘defense’:

• I like to do the work by myself because the challenge of doing it by my own is part of the fun, especially when I finally get that ‘Eureka!’ moment after especially tough ones. When I use AI, it just feels halfhearted because I just handed it to someone else, which doesn’t sit right with me.
• when I work without AI, I tend to stumble over things that aren’t really relevant to what I’m doing, but are still fun to learn about and might be helpful sometimes else. With AI, I’m way too focused on the end result to even notice that stuff, which makes the work feel even more annoying.
• when I decide to give up or realize I can’t be arsed with it, I usually seek out communities or professionals, because that way it’s either done professionally or I get a better sense of community, but overall feel like I’m supporting someone. With AI, I don’t get that feeling, but rather I only feel either inferior for not coming up with a result as fast as the AI does or frustrated because it either spews out bullshit or doesn’t get the point I’m aiming for.

Honestly, I stopped reading after

The power creep just got way too out of control for my liking, and while I know that the power creep always existed, I feel like the adventures before showed how you can tell a good story without just brute force. Plus, even with their superhuman abilities, their struggles still felt relatable. And with what happened before and right after the aforementioned turning point, it felt like that would be left in the dust.

And even then, editing out unwanted mutations can still stifle society as a whole and may be morally the wrong choice. For example, what about eradicating autism due to the immense pain these individuals receive due to our society? Is it better to change our society to accommodate people afflicted with it or wipe out the genes responsible for it if it is easier? And if we choose the latter, where is the cutoff point? Can we even tell when we crossed that line, where our drive to improve ourselves ended being done out of mercy and began to be about creating the model citizen?