I admire you taking personal responsibility and actively refusing to support systems you see as wrong and harmful. But, echoing what others have said, as a vegan and previously vegetarian of many years, I think there's probably a better way to describe this than "AI Vegetarianism". Both so that people take it more seriously, and to avoid adding even more confusion to the already misunderstood topics of vegetarianism/veganism.
While you're at least trying to use the term in a positive light, it's not hard to imagine people using the same terms "AI vegan" and "AI vegetarian" in a disparaging way. The implication is "vegetarians/vegans are preachy/crazy/annoying/arrogant" and using that to describe someone who's anti-AI. E.g. "Oh don't listen to Bob, he's just an AI vegan" or "These annoying AI vegans keep protesting outside and blocking traffic". Now vegans/vegetarians are dragged into something they have nothing to do with, AND you've given detractors an easy way to mock you.
Just say GenAI-free; organic software (written by organic agents as opposed to silicon-based ones); or, literally anything that actually means what you wrote.
I liked it immediately, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I saw your comment.
To me, "vegetarianism" is a much better label than "organic" or "GenAI-free". People who buy "organic" and "free range" do so because they believe it's better: higher quality, healthier, etc. (Whether they're right depends a lot on the requirements placed on that label and how those requirements are enforced, but that's tangential here.)
On the other hand, vegetarianism used to be this weird, niche thing that people made fun of. Vegetarians had to fight for acceptance. This is exactly how I feel about this new world that I find myself in, where AI is being shoved down everyone's throat and where developers (like me) who resist it are treated like a weird, niche group of outcasts.
It might be better to shoot for terms that have more positive associations. e.g. Someone might claim to be a fan of "soul code" (i.e. Code made by people with souls and not LLM's). Soul food is pretty tasty after all.
Not GP but I like that “organic” implies that it came from a living organism. “Organic content” both carries the idea of specificity of consumption and also the idea that the content was produced by a living organism. The association maps directly onto what OP is referring to.
“Vegetarian” works insofar as it borrows the context of specificity of consumption, but only directly implies consuming non-animal products, which doesn’t map onto the OPs meaning as nicely.
I think it was a mistake to apply a label to the normal, default case of food that comes from living organisms. We should have just called it food. The label should have been "inorganic" or something, for the unnatural, non-default case.
Same for software. We don't need to justify a new "human made" label. Just call that stuff software. They should need to differentiate their "AI made" software with a label.
Organic in the sense of chemistry meaning... coming from an organism, at least in the original sense. Chemistry expanded this to carbon chemistry with some exceptions and no particularly exact rules (it's a term that doesn't get all that much focus from experts, sorry pedants)
I know a lot of late-career people opting out. Just chilling and doing great work as usual, waiting a few years for this all to blow over. The ones who work where AI is mandatory are just setting aside some time every week to do the bare minimum token-spending needed to appease the AI metric gods.
If the AI boosters are wrong, it'll peter out in a bit, and we'll all be back to business as usual. If the AI boosters are right, and "not using AI" makes you unemployable, well, I guess we'll just either pick up the tools or retire.
Given the capabilities of upcoming LLMs, I suspect that by mid-2027, most competent companies, outside specific niches, will not hire and might fire any non-senior “generative AI vegetarian” software developer.
Note: I agree with others that another term should be used instead of ‘vegetarian’. “LLM vegetarians” do not hold the same moral values as vegetarians.
Believing in the capabilities of _upcoming_ LLMs that you have never actually used shows that you buy into marketing and hype very easily. No one really knows what the future will look like and there's an equally plausible one where post-subsidy token economics become impossible to justify for most use cases.
Does this imply there's room for ethically-sourced AI? I've always thought that at some point there would be some sort of p2p-style way of people contributing their compute resources to training AI models that are distributed for everyone to use.
I feel like people who loved writing software before ai Armageddon referred to our practice as a craft and themselves as craftsman. I think I still prefer that term.
I like the idea, but it needs a better name. Vegetarianism already means something very specific. Maybe something like Sloppite. Sloppitism. Something like that.
The term "GenAI veganism" is deeply disingenuous, and simonw knew exactly what he was doing when he coined it.
In the broader context of most human societies treating meat consumption as a default, with thousands of years of precedent, it deliberately frames abstaining from the use of "GenAI" as an extreme perspective, suggesting that moderate or extensive usage of LLMs and their ilk is more intrinsically "normal". The "GenAI" tools in question have only existed for a few years- or perhaps months in more specific cases- and the unending marketing blitz around them notwithstanding, using them does not remotely represent an engrained cultural default.
The choice of terminology also casually devalues and denigrates the reasons many people have for being actual vegans. It's meant to sneeringly evoke negative stereotypes of vegans as annoying and irrational.
Attempting to carve out a "softened" version of this language with the "vegetarian" label is not descriptively useful.
To draw an incredibly stretched comparison to vegetarianism instantly tells me everything I need to know about the way you think. It's overwhelmingly sanctimonious.
I understand why you would think that, and I did too at first, but I'd encourage you to give the post another read. What the author's trying to do is precisely the opposite. He wants a good social script to ensure he's not sanctimonious or argumentative: he's sure your brisket is great, he's got no problem with you and your friends enjoying it, but he's not personally interested in it because he doesn't eat meat.
Why not live like the luddites won? Why not move to a cabin in the middle of the forest and only live with the level of technology they wanted to stay at under the guise of "protecting skilled labour" (all technology since 1785 merely being a lazy shortcut).
I personally wouldn't be so categorical - AI in useful capacity feels like was around just for a little while, certainly not long enough to have any conclusive long reaching effects like the claim.
It is also uncertain where this technology would land, because two years ago I wouldn't believe what is AI capable today.
I applaud your bravery but it sometime feels like sticking to kerosine lamp when electrification is happening, just because they got to fall some trees to build the lines.
I am not saying that this would be as impactful, but it the first thing over my lifetime which feels like it. And I lived through adoption of internet and handheld revolution. Life is changing so rapidly that fear of being left behind is very real. Especially seeing as much change as any person over 40, that is crazy.
Is it a bit ironic that, while I certainly believe the author did not use gen AI to create this post, it reads like the most mindlessly AI generated post ever?
What I find ironic is that "this reads like an AI" is a phrase that is rapidly losing its meaning, partly due to advances in AI, but also because it's being worn out, just like every other generic phrase used to dismiss someone's work out of hand without providing any additional context.
While you're at least trying to use the term in a positive light, it's not hard to imagine people using the same terms "AI vegan" and "AI vegetarian" in a disparaging way. The implication is "vegetarians/vegans are preachy/crazy/annoying/arrogant" and using that to describe someone who's anti-AI. E.g. "Oh don't listen to Bob, he's just an AI vegan" or "These annoying AI vegans keep protesting outside and blocking traffic". Now vegans/vegetarians are dragged into something they have nothing to do with, AND you've given detractors an easy way to mock you.
How does one know if a stranger is vegan?
Just say GenAI-free; organic software (written by organic agents as opposed to silicon-based ones); or, literally anything that actually means what you wrote.
To me, "vegetarianism" is a much better label than "organic" or "GenAI-free". People who buy "organic" and "free range" do so because they believe it's better: higher quality, healthier, etc. (Whether they're right depends a lot on the requirements placed on that label and how those requirements are enforced, but that's tangential here.)
On the other hand, vegetarianism used to be this weird, niche thing that people made fun of. Vegetarians had to fight for acceptance. This is exactly how I feel about this new world that I find myself in, where AI is being shoved down everyone's throat and where developers (like me) who resist it are treated like a weird, niche group of outcasts.
It might be better to shoot for terms that have more positive associations. e.g. Someone might claim to be a fan of "soul code" (i.e. Code made by people with souls and not LLM's). Soul food is pretty tasty after all.
BTW I honestly expect the "certified organic content" label to appear on texts, music, pictures, etc, signifying the lack of AI involvement.
“Vegetarian” works insofar as it borrows the context of specificity of consumption, but only directly implies consuming non-animal products, which doesn’t map onto the OPs meaning as nicely.
Same for software. We don't need to justify a new "human made" label. Just call that stuff software. They should need to differentiate their "AI made" software with a label.
In case, any also 100% AI free! ;-)
Vegetarianism is about people eating plants.
Agreed. I was expecting to find AI-generated vegetarian recipes.
Actually, I wonder if they would be any good.
If the AI boosters are wrong, it'll peter out in a bit, and we'll all be back to business as usual. If the AI boosters are right, and "not using AI" makes you unemployable, well, I guess we'll just either pick up the tools or retire.
Note: I agree with others that another term should be used instead of ‘vegetarian’. “LLM vegetarians” do not hold the same moral values as vegetarians.
Economics will likely sort itself out through optimizations, which are also highly plausible.
Something like Humanism, Brainism, ...
In the broader context of most human societies treating meat consumption as a default, with thousands of years of precedent, it deliberately frames abstaining from the use of "GenAI" as an extreme perspective, suggesting that moderate or extensive usage of LLMs and their ilk is more intrinsically "normal". The "GenAI" tools in question have only existed for a few years- or perhaps months in more specific cases- and the unending marketing blitz around them notwithstanding, using them does not remotely represent an engrained cultural default.
The choice of terminology also casually devalues and denigrates the reasons many people have for being actual vegans. It's meant to sneeringly evoke negative stereotypes of vegans as annoying and irrational.
Attempting to carve out a "softened" version of this language with the "vegetarian" label is not descriptively useful.
Example usage: "I met a fellow slop-free human. We decided to a baby together without asking chatgpt for advice. Are we crazy or what?"
It is also uncertain where this technology would land, because two years ago I wouldn't believe what is AI capable today.
I applaud your bravery but it sometime feels like sticking to kerosine lamp when electrification is happening, just because they got to fall some trees to build the lines.
I am not saying that this would be as impactful, but it the first thing over my lifetime which feels like it. And I lived through adoption of internet and handheld revolution. Life is changing so rapidly that fear of being left behind is very real. Especially seeing as much change as any person over 40, that is crazy.