AI Literacy, Shame, and Nuance | The Renegade Coder

One evening, I was scrolling YouTube when I found a video that caught my eye. After about 20 minutes of listening to it, I kind of crashed out and started to frantically write my response. The next morning I restructured my thoughts, but I never quite settled on what I wanted to get across. So, enjoy more paywalled ramblings of a mad man. Frustrations With a Video I recently saw a video titled "How to (Anti) AI Better" by Dr. Fatima, which tries to take a more nuanced or balanced look at the anti-AI movement. To be completely honest, I found the video frustrating to the point that I couldn't actually finish it. In fact, I had considered making this article an entire response to that video, but I didn't feel like it was fair to critique a work that I couldn't finish (though, I couldn't stop myself from referencing the video several times throughout the piece anyway, so consider the paywall my best attempt at avoiding the dogpile). That said, if you're curious about some of my issues with the video, the short answer is that I felt it spent far too much time fence-sitting (i.e., playing devil's advocate for the sake of nuance)—something I clowned on Andrew from Channel 5 for not long ago. While attempting to apply nuance might seem like a way to maintain objectivity and/or intellectual honesty, in cases like generative AI where the harms far outweigh the benefits, all nuance does is lend credence to bad actors. I just don't find a discussion around shame to be all that productive when the industry is doing the bulk of the shaming (e.g., "if you don't use AI, you'll be left behind."). However, while I found so many of the arguments made in the harms sections of the video to be frustrating, I also get the feeling that maybe these arguments were presented to make others feel less bad about about their AI usage. That's at least the vibe I got in the vulnerable portion of the video. After all, if the creator was at one point addicted to AI, perhaps the arguments around water usage being not that bad helped them deal with their shame. I don't know. It just doesn't feel good to attack a creator who has been through some shit, even if I find a lot of their arguments counterproductive to the cause. Ultimately, I just felt that maybe this video could have been separated into two distinct videos: one heartfelt video about how shame made you feel and why shame is harmful and another video educating folks (a la "AI literacy") on the harms of AI. It seems like doing both is why the video feels like a mess. What Is AI Literacy? With that said, I want to talk about this idea of AI literacy. Apparently, it came up somewhere in the video because I saw it referenced dozens of times in the comments. While I clearly skipped that portion, I suspect that the argument went something like: because shaming users of generative AI is unproductive, we should teach people about AI. To be honest, while I agree that it's probably a good idea to teach people about AI, it misses a broader point. How can anyone possibly become AI literate without first becoming literate? And, I think becoming literate sort of solves the AI literacy problem by itself, as argued by this Reddit comment (though, take this comment with a grain of salt since the account is young and the comment is full of AI hallmarks): Anything like "AI literacy" must come after—fully and thoroughly after, and not instead of—complete mastery of actual literacy. And surprise surprise, highly literate people can figure out the finer nuances of AI literacy in about 15 minutes. It's not a real skill—at least, not above and beyond being a thoughtful human being. FFS. Apollo_Eighteen, 2025-11-09 With that said, let's assume AI literacy is important for the sake of argument. I suppose I can get behind that. After all, why would I write so much about why I hate this technology? I want to educate others on the issues and pitfalls. BUT, we have to be incredibly careful with how we define AI literacy. According to the video, AI literacy is discussed in the harm reduction section (~45:47). Specifically, the machine learning expert states, "to be able to teach about these things, you have to use them." This to me is an absurd take, especially since the creator compares AI use to drug use only a few minutes earlier (yes, I realize these are two different people, so it's on the creator to not use this bit as part of their argument). Like, when we teach kids about drugs, we obviously shouldn't take an abstinence only position. However, I can't imagine there's a single expert that would recommend we give kids drugs. Similarly, would it be appropriate for a teacher to do drugs in front of children to show them what it's like? Of course not. I'll let you map that idea back to AI literacy yourself. Personally, I feel like the idea of AI literacy is less about actually teaching people about the technology and more about getting us to buy into it. It seems like a buzzword, which is why no one can define it. At my university, we have some silly AI fluency initiative, and it's equally as absurd (e.g., all classes must integrate generative AI in some way). Side note, but I was thinking about how funny this AI literacy concept is. We're constantly told its a tool that we must use. There are tons of tools out there, but we're not constantly like "X exists; therefore, you must learn to use it." I don't see this with any other technology beyond maybe the computer, and even then I have computer science students who barely understand how to use them (e.g., do people even learn how to type anymore? do people learn about folders?). Yet, LLMs are special I guess. We're not like "hey, if you don't learn about electron microscopes, you're going to fall behind." What are we doing here? The Inevitability Problem Honestly, this whole rush to get angry at the anti-AI movement seems misplaced. It's been four years since ChatGPT hit the market, and we've all seemingly fallen for the "AI is inevitable" propaganda. Can something be ubiquitous or inevitable in four years? Is it not possible that it's a fad? Is the cat really out of the bag? Likewise, I just find it kind of silly to be complaining about shaming people for their AI use. It has that "conservative complains about cancel culture" energy. Perhaps that feeling of shame is entirely internalized (i.e., you feel shame because you know it's harmful). Any effort to project these feelings onto others who oppose generative AI is sad. There's no coordinated effort to shame people; just individuals exercising their best judgement. Look, I know I promised not to dunk on the video because I didn't finish it, but I just kept getting more frustrated the more I watched it while writing this. That's partially why this piece is so incoherent. It bothered me so much that I ended up heading over to Michael Burn's video where he interviewed Dr. Fatima, and I found myself totally in line with the comments. Ultimately, I can see why Dr. Fatima felt ashamed, but it seems odd to double down. The whole thing almost feels like engagement bait. It's giving "Contrapoints crashes out over pushback for being a Zionist." Perhaps my entire response to this video could have been Hasan's tweet about Natalie. Because I intend to put this article behind a paywall, I'll sneak some of my original draft notes down here. These were all thoughts I had while watching the video in question, but I didn't want to throw those thoughts away. Of course, keep these in the context of what I've said earlier in the article. In other words, critique the message, not the messenger. To be completely honest, I didn't love the early portion of the video, specifically the section on back-end costs. While I almost never touch the back-end costs here on this site, I don't find the arguments made in that section particularly compelling. There was far too much time spent lending credence to the kinds of arguments that tech bros make (i.e., "if you hate the water usage so much, you'll hate almond farming"). This almost felt like the creator was purposely presenting the least charitable version of the anti-AI side for the sake of nuance, as if this was some "how I left the left" video but for AI. Like sure, the water consumption argument isn't great, but I'm not sure that's what most folks are saying. It seem more like people are worried about how their local water supplies will be affected when a data center is built, especially in poorer and drier areas. I am also a bit confused because the early section of the video talks about how we shouldn't lump all kinds of AI under the term AI, yet the video makes no attempt to separate the concepts. Like, the video is clearly about LLMs (as stated around 3:10), but there are times where broader ideas like machine learning sneak in as positives. For example, Dr. Fatima talks to a machine learning expert about improvements in traffic efficiency due to AI (~9:26). That is almost certainly a machine learning model at play and not an LLM, yet that benefit is described anyway to provide nuance (not to mention that solving traffic is something we know how to do, and it involves building public transit; AI is just perpetuating a problem here). In other words, in an effort to provide balance, the message becomes less disciplined and more incoherent. Ultimately, this is the problem I always have with nuance; it's centrism laundering as intelligence. Like no disrespect to Dr. Fatima. but I clowned on Andrew of Channel 5 for this as well (and he's doing great work). I'm just always bothered by this constant pursuit of nuance for the sake of nuance. If there's value in it, fine. But more often than not, nuance just gives the "bad guys" legitimacy in an argument. Hope that was of value to you! That's what a midnight crash out looks like.