AI Chatbots Are Evil

Michie · Aug 11, 2025

The purpose of human conversation is not limited to pragmatic ends, as if we only spoke in order to learn new recipes and get salient tips on what stocks to invest in. A good conversation is always a discovery of the person who reveals himself in speech.

So much fighting concerning AI is really no more than that preliminary chest-thumping, prior to blows, in which combatants square off and say “you wanna go?” and (a little confusedly) “you don’t want none of this!”

I have observed this ritual with great interest—it flowers every summer by the apartment complex outside of my grocery store. It has its uses: the loudness of it gathers spectators (and grocers) who can break up the oncoming fight should it become too obscene. It allows each to size the other up. It gives all parties a chance to back down.

In the case of the AI fight, the “posturing” phase is largely a display of mood. A pessimistic grouch predicts a horrible AI future, an optimistic numbskull predicts a happy one, and all parties to the discussion leave with the vague impression of having discussed the technology—really, they have been discussing the discussers. One may as well have said “I’mfrom California” and received the withering retort, “But I’m from the Midwest.” They display the same temperamental progressivism and conservatism that they would be on display if the argument concerned a new style of shoe. (Lord, I am guilty of this “method,” as when my own arguments against modern efficiency and modern planning boil down to the fact that I am temperamentally inefficient and constitutionally incapable of planning.)

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