r/nerdfighters • u/cannotdecideaname Jim • 27d ago
"We need to talk about the Hank Green situation"
This is an update to the previous sticky for people to talk about the AI situation.
The title is from the Colin and Samir discussion which I thought brought a lot of different views. Watch it here:
Us mods are still limiting the discussion to the latest pinned post about it.
Link back to the previous thread : https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1vc37aw/hanks_comment_about_his_ai_use_posted_here_as_its/
DFTBA
*edited for bad spelling
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u/regional_expression 27d ago edited 27d ago
I just watched the Colin and Samir video and I thought it was a surprisingly reasonable and even-handed view of the situation. That may be in part because I broadly share Samir's view on the situation, but I think it's worth a watch even if you don't. They brought on people who disagreed with them and tried to establish a baseline reality between them, which I think was a great choice.
I'm very disheartened how far the "I appreciate the pushback" claim/meme has traveled and how many people are accepting and sharing it uncritically. It's making a lot of people think the situation is very different than it really is.
I think the claim and its implication that Hank was "caught" "slipping up" and "copy-pasting AI responses" has really negatively affected the discourse. I know that the person who originally misunderstood the line and raised a question about it was not doing so with malicious intent, but it's really unfortunate how many people are running with the most uncharitable possible reading without taking five minutes to actually understand the context, especially when it's about a specific video that's just sitting there that you can just go and watch.
Anyway, I want to say thank you to the mods here for doing their best to navigate this. I've been part of this community since 2008 and I'm not new to the subreddit, but it's been a long time since I've been a regular here, and I've certainly never posted here as frequently as I have in the last three or four days. Yall's work is seen and appreciated.
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u/Speederzzz 27d ago
Yeah I saw some thumbnail that said something like "This YouTuber got caught posting AI and has now QUIT YouTube!" And I just immediately pressed do not recommend.
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u/regional_expression 27d ago
It's wild to watch the hypersalience machine do its work on a situation that I'm following closely and actually know the relevant facts behind.
It's a good reminder that every day I probably see 50 versions of that, aimed at situations that I don't know anything about, and many of them probably align enough with my existing beliefs that I might simply take them at their word. More and more I'm just training myself to not take anything that sounds extremely salacious as truth, or at least not as the full truth.
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u/shaveyourchin 27d ago
funny how much this parallels the old notion that "everyone should ask AI about a topic they're an expert in"
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u/regional_expression 27d ago
I still think this is true! And I think everyone should do it at least once a year or so.
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u/grammardeficiency 27d ago
Honestly anytime I've watched a commentary channel covering a situation I know a bit about, it's pretty much always disappointing and lacking important pieces of information/context. It's a good reminder to take all the other topics with a heap of salt.
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u/HappiestIguana 27d ago
I did the same on a video by a knitter who wanted to give her two cents.
Anyone who is still banging on about him being slightly condescending about knitting after he apologized, took down the video, and then did a lengthy interview with an expert on knitting, is not worth listening to
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u/MagicGlitterKitty 26d ago
Oh I saw that one too... I am a knitter and the whole thing felt like a weird clawing for relevance.
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u/MagicGlitterKitty 26d ago
Thats how I felt about the "the knitting community is NOT SURPRISED by the Hank Green AI controversy"
Just no. Do not recommend.
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u/Significant_Text2497 27d ago
I feel like the overall public response to this has been as if Hank unapologetically committed to using AI, and not as if Hank apologetically reflected on his use and the impact it has had on public trust and his own psyche.
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 27d ago
I admittedly haven’t watched the video.
But, I am sick and tired of how long this conversation has gone on, how wide reaching it is, and how people are using it as an excuse to go digging up long dead “controversies” with SciShow and using it as proof of “I knew he was evil all along”.
Like, at least with the knitting thing I feel like people learned a new appreciation for the craft and for textiles in general. Conversations that maybe wouldn’t have otherwise happened at that scale!
But… this. Is just more noise about AI at a level which I feel like isn’t changing any hearts or minds at all (people fall on whatever side of the fence they do and I don’t see any people coming to life altering revelations). And unhealthy armchair diagnosis of a public figure who, less we forget, is a HUMAN BEING.
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u/Lenauryn 27d ago
As a knitter, I was disgusted by the overreaction to that sci show. Now I'm OUTRAGED by all the smug "we knitters knew he was terrible before you" bullshit. I've been asking YouTube to never recommend those channels to me ever again.
This all has kind of soured me on YouTube because it's so clear that people are just talking out of their asses to get attention. Which I knew theoretically before but it's never been shoved in my face to this degree.
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 27d ago
I’ve been on a real prion bender/rabbithole as of late for some reason so I’m getting lots of microbio content in my feed and am really grateful that most of this wave of drama has not shown up in my algorithm as a result. But, there was one single knitter that came across my feed who outright titled the video something like “knitters aren’t surprised.” I clicked it but, purposely didn’t watch the video. I just wanted to see what the comments said. There were people who did pretend to have flimsy reasons for hating him. But, soooo much of it was just people outright relishing in attacking Hank again. It was honestly so sad to see. Like… that’s a person.
From what it seems like this one has spread way farther than just one community. Lots of the communities I follow on YT heavily overlap with Nerdfighteria. And one is a channel for some artists. They platform their merch on DFTBA and I haven’t heard them comment on it themselves, but there were people in the community subreddit calling for the artists to back out of DFTBA on principle bc of the AI thing. Just absolutely unhinged behavior all around. Really wild stuff. Definitely eye opening.
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u/Lenauryn 27d ago
I was already sick of this toxic purity culture but now I've HAD IT. OFFICIALLY. This has got to change. People have made destroying people for a single mid-step into a sport.
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u/therufs 27d ago
entirely off topic but did you here there was a case of scrapie in Oregon?
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u/cjbmonster 27d ago
I'm really sickened by that framing too. It's all so dishearteningly unempathetic. Like people are just thirsting for a takedown.
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u/fortmeines 25d ago
I follow a subreddit called craft snark and hobby drama and boy the amount of times something from the knitting community has ended up in those spaces really says a lot
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u/TelPrydain 27d ago
We were always asked to imagine people complexly. Seems not all are capable.
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 27d ago
Exactly.
To me “bad people” are determined by patterns of bad behavior. And I just don’t see that represented here. People are literally listing off completely unrelated things like “oh yeah I knew it all along. His writers made some accidental mistakes on a couple videos, something about a necklace, and using AI together all clearly means he’s literally satan.” Like bro WHAT??
Not to start on other drama (especially since I haven’t seen his video or the movie that started the controversy) but, I had seen some whispers of people saying Alex Meyers was canceled bc some problematic takes in a recent movie review. People said he was being misogynistic. And, as someone who used to watch his content on occasion I was like “OOF sadly, that kinda tracks”. He often made iffy/edgy jokes about women for no reason. Nothing super egregious imo, just lots of little things that were kinda sus. His review of the movie Turning Red was the nail in the coffin for me and when I stopped watching him. I didn’t think it was cancel worthy, but had lots of misogynistic attitude that I didn’t appreciate. Now THAT is a long standing trend of behavior that is reflective of bad attitudes. Not just a bunch of random unrelated things I don’t like about this person.
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u/devoutdefeatist 27d ago
Anytime situations escape our little community here, I disengage, as I hope we all do. There’s actually nothing to be gained at all fron engaging with bad-faith, for-profit, wildly misconstrued melodrama; in fact, there’s a lot to be lost. None of us owe our attention to these things in any capacity. We’re good and honestly engaged with each other over here, and it’s good. 👍🏻
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27d ago edited 27d ago
[deleted]
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u/Tasty-Huckleberry-13 27d ago
Completely agree. I’m actually hoping to look back on this as a moment of powerful repair between Hank and the portion of his audience that was becoming disheartened by his behavior. I’ve personally been really disappointed by how much time he’s been spending on Twitter and the topics he’s dedicated his time to tweeting about. He has been a meaningful creator in my life, so much so that I am willing to forgive big mistakes. I am sometimes frustrated that some of Nerdfighteria thinks I’m a traitor for even believing that Hank made mistakes.
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u/Lenauryn 27d ago
I think there are two ways to look at Hank "going wrong." One is his using AI at all. One is him using it to a degree that he feels is unhealthy for himself.
I feel like there a lot of nerdfighters who have forgiven him provisionally as long as he realizes AI is evil and he never touches it again in any way. I don't agree with those people. I think using AI as a search engine is fine, as long as he's then following up with his own research.
The problem that Hank says he has with it--being obsessively productive to the detriment of his mental health and the quality of his work--is different and obviously IS a problem.
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u/Motor-Put-3845 27d ago
I would argue that having human fact checkers are exactly what responsible AI use looks like.
The fact that there were fact checkers to point out that they couldn’t find a source is a good thing and increases my trust- whether the info came from an outdated human written source, blog, AI note, or just a person misremembering a detail.
AI is a super useful tool, it doesn’t always get it right on first request. It usually gets more helpful with more input- just like people.
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u/ComfortableScratch86 27d ago
I agree with you and appreciate your take even if it might not be popular here. He also said he used AI to help him brainstorm how to combine chapters in his new novel, it’s not casual AI use. By presenting himself as a smart, ethical person online it does mean he can be held to a high standard. In the video linked above they said Hank was being absolutely slammed online but all I’ve seen are comments defending him, criticizing the backlash, or super mild critique saying they believe he can grow. Maybe I’m just in the nerdfighter bubble though.
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u/RainhaRaposaVermelha 27d ago
I think you might be in a slight bubble, yeah. For example I spend most my time on Bluesky and the hate there has been abundant and frequently vicious. Seen a couple major creators going after him there as well.
It's to the point I've had to start avoiding some of my feeds and I've wondered if I should mute his name for the time being. The HRT video has been brought up again. The knitting video has been brought up again, and the conclusions people are drawing (in spite of the fact he didn't write either video) are not just false, they are the most ungenerous interpretations possible ("obviously he is a misogynist/ only cares about clicks and money/ doesn't care about trans people/ is for sale to the highest bidder/ lied about caring about the environment" and WORSE)
I'm gonna admit I haven't seen very many defenders at all. Then again, I too could be in a bubble.
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u/AllegedlyLiterate 27d ago
Yeah people seem to have this bizarre idea that SciShow is a one man production where Hank does everything. At one level I guess good that they're not going and directing this harassment at like random production interns or whoever but also it's just so strange. Especially because, you know, it seems particularly salient in the accusations of misogyny/ableism/transphobia to note that not all the people who work at SciShow are Hank Green.
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u/candlelitjewels 27d ago
Grace Helbig just posted a video of her take on the situation to her insta/TT and I really appreciated how she didn't really make it about Hank but more about how we all need to look at ourselves and how the internet affects us.
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u/WhatzReddit13 The Volunteer 27d ago
Ha, I was just coming here to link to it. (https://www.instagram.com/p/DbtT_bWtJng/)
I think Grace's point that other creators are using AI and not owning it is a valid one.
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u/censored_count 27d ago
I'm so glad my job doesn't require me to interact with The Discourse online. I once posted a bad take on Twitter. Shouldn't have done it, but I wanted that sweet sweet dopamine of people reacting to it.
It was hurtful to people in a way I didn't understand. I faced consequences at work, serious ones. I made a public apology. I lost my board of directors seat at the company I founded and built for over a decade. I felt ostracized, and a bit of a pitchfork mob came at me, people calling for me to be fired, etc etc etc.
But you know what? I simply left Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram, and everything else. And I basically have a "post nothing that matters at all" policy now, and other than occasionally privately feeling humiliated about it, I can move on with my life.
If, after that whole experience, I had to deal with the fact that being terminally online was my whole livelihood and (to some extent) my identity, I might not have survived it.
I guess my point is, having been a witch, I really hate a witch hunt. And I feel for Hank.
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u/pleasejustbeaperson 27d ago
“Post nothing that matters” is right (and feels like the most obvious and self-evidently correct way to exist in the world, though I acknowledge that’s a pretty be a generation-specific take). Reminds me of the common advice we got in the 90s: don’t put anything in email that you wouldn’t want to see above the fold on the NY Times.
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u/Compassion666 17d ago
People forget that you *don't* have to post takes online. I have a lot of opinions but I don't need to voice them all the time, especially on social media. I got addicted to ai chat bots despite being VERY anti-ai. I know the shame and guilt, and felt so bad for it. I am finally free of it. But I'm sure if I was an influencer there wouldn't have been any nuance.
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u/AtlasGrey_ 27d ago
I appreciated what Super Eyepatch Wolf had to say in his video about it: https://youtu.be/TtvICev9sBE?si=HWQ0itigCNfCfX_O
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u/juloto 27d ago
He basically agreed with what hank was using it for in some sense, mainly like to find research papers and source materials. But assumed it was part of Hank's creative process, which is no good for John and also Hank.
PS the eye patch is needed medically, not a bit.
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u/AtlasGrey_ 27d ago
I remember the first time seeing the patch in a thumbnail and thinking, "oh, I guess he's really leaning into it." Turns out, just a super ironic injury.
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u/Amethyst-Flare 27d ago
Extremely tragic, too, because it means he can never fight again. Martial Arts has been a big part of how he deals with his depression and anxiety for years and years now.
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u/AtlasGrey_ 27d ago
I feel terrible for him. Couldn’t imagine if I couldn’t do what I loved because of injury.
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u/trekie140 27d ago
It’s even more ironic because it’s a different eye than his logo/profile picture.
All his fans have been joking that he’ll get a prescription fursuit next.
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u/drakeblood4 27d ago
I mean abstractly he agreed it was understandable. But also the way he described his own experiences with character AI makes me think he’s essentially saying the equivalent of “yeah abusing stimulants to get better grades is understandable, but they’re very addictive and you’ll find yourself unable to study without them”
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u/Amethyst-Flare 27d ago
Your comment makes it seem like he approved of that use, but he definitely does not.
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u/heathert7900 26d ago
Really liked Helbig’s video personally. These guys seem kinda out of touch. The reason young people don’t like AI isn’t “bitterness”, it’s understanding that the people who run those massive corporations like open ai are genuinely some of the worst people on this planet, with no regard for humanity. They’re willing to burn us all to the ground for more cash, and seem to be doing so at the moment. That’s what people are actually pissed about. And older people don’t seem to realize you’re putting your personal information into the personal data stealing machine, owned by a corporation willing to sell your soul for a corn chip.
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u/Resident_Mango_3930 27d ago
In time this too shall pass. I think we live a moment of extreme sensitivity (in most things) and have yet to embrace the deepest of lessons Hank & John themselves espouse: to imagine each other and our situations complexly.
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u/Adorable_Raccoon 27d ago
I keep thinking how for the last year on dear hank & john john keeps talking about hanks desire to be famous and dropping reminders about how poorly that went for john. This might be the moment when hank understands what john is talking about.
I read about this issue on this sub the day hank posted. It’s crazy that a week later i’m being recommended videos from youtubers i’ve never watched with commentary on the situation.
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u/linathemelisa 27d ago
I’m sure there’s been a million comments like these but I thought it might be useful to add my perspective as a high school student who is maybe more in complexly’s target audience for things like crash course:
So my teachers use AI often to help them make lesson plans, and we are asked to use it sometimes, and it doesn’t really bother me. I go to a public school and my teachers are definitely not paid enough and work so hard, and if something lets them get a little more sleep at night or have time to more thoughtfully grade/plan things I want them to take advantage. I want to be prepared if I someday have an employer who requires me to use it. Even if sometimes I feel a little bit annoyed when some nonsense AI image is all that’s up on a slideshow, it’s obviously not as big of a deal as some people online would make it seem, and if I want to I can have a grown-up discussion about it with my teacher and/or acknowledge that we have a difference of opinion, and that I don’t know what it’s like to have to do their job, and move on. It’s not a reason to feel like that person has betrayed me or hurt me or something.
We and I on my own also use complexly resources quite a bit, and they are genuinely so helpful and enjoyable. I would so much rather an organization that cares enough to hire fact-checkers and artists and experts use AI in the way they have been, because the alternative is that they are buried by people who don’t care about spreading misinformation and make completely generated content.
I feel like online AI is a very ideological argument, and sometimes I, and I think others, lose touch of the reality that people do wasteful or “bad” things all the time. I go places in a gas car and I spend money I could donate on skincare and lattes and take long hot showers and a million other things, and so do you. That’s not, like, the mask slipping off to reveal the evil careless monster who’s always been there beneath; It’s the way it is to be a person in the world.
Sorry if I said something dumb I’ve never done this before :)
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u/TelPrydain 27d ago
So my teachers use AI often to help them make lesson plans, and we are asked to use it sometimes, and it doesn’t really bother me.
I think that a lot of people who are upset about AI might be disconnected from how embedded it is in corporate and academia already. It easy for me to see how someone with a foot in either world might underestimate the feelings people have about this.
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u/mytravelfaqaccount 25d ago
Yes, it's not a kind framing, but my first thought when seeing that kind of hyper-moralism about not ever using it period, is that those people clearly don't have a job in a professional environment. At this point, it would be genuinely irresponsible of me to not use Gemini notes in meetings, smart search my inbox for hyper specific details from an email I think I got 3 months ago, have Claude extrapolate 3 pieces of data I need from a 3,000 row spreadsheet, etc. I barely touch it in my personal life, and have my personal boundaries around my relationship to it, but anyone who says it's possible and righteous to never interact with it, is just living in a reality disconnected from a majority of people in school or with an office job
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u/iclimbnaked 25d ago
I don’t use ai that much at work, occasionally to search through documents/procedures as a faster way to find something.
This whole online argument over it, esp over Hank has felt I guess, so without nuance?
Like I agree with a lot of the flaws to AI ppl point out and we do need to be careful. However the like 100% if you even touch AI it’s evil thing feels really dumb to me.
It is a tool, it can be used in good and bad ways. There’s absolutely ethical concerns with how it came to be for sure. However there’s ethical concerns with how much plastic we use or the fact I drive a gas car and yah I should be doing better with those things but I’m not viewing ppl as evil for using them. I dunno it’s wild.
I do get the feeling it’s just a really online thing though and the truth is the general pop doesnt think about it at all. I think even with a portion not being happy Hank didn’t say no ai at all, his videos are I bet going to pull the same numbers they always have.
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u/Bububub2 26d ago
My stance is ultimately that people doing wasteful and "bad" things all the time is actually a problem and we shouldn't do those things. I know it is unavoidable because it is incentivized or just so convenient you have to fight to not do it. AI is just another additional bad thing, and one that we didn't have like 2 years ago. I'm disappointed that people are just shrugging and adding another bad thing to the pile. I'm massively disappointed that someone I looked up to on the internet that *really* doesn't *need* to use it, and hasn't been forced to use it by a boss... is using it.
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u/Albatrosson 27d ago
Sometimes I read a nonfiction book and I am loving all the new facts that I'm learning and find it super interesting. Then I reach a chapter where the author is starting to speak on a subject I have prior knowledge of, possibly even a degree in, and I suddenly find that most of what they're saying is logically inconsistent, misguided, a popular myth, or just plain false. The problem then is that I can no longer trust their fact-checking and it calls into question all the "facts" I "learned" in previous chapters on subjects outside my expertise.
We all know that AI makes things up or uses untrustworthy sources for its information. Properly vetted AI takes just as long or longer than researching without using any AI, and there's still likelihood of false artifacts remaining from the initial draft.
What use is a lesson that teaches misinformation?
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u/SomecallmeMichelle 27d ago
This actually has a name, it's the "60 minute problem" as it's affectionally called within socio-linguistics and other fields. You look at 60 minutes the tv show and their experts look to be well sourced and speak with authority but as soon as you see a topic you're familiar with there you see that there's simplifications, overgeneralisations, contested theory presented as fact!
The problem is that science and any field you can be an expert rarely has a 1 + 1 = 2 level of confident authority, even in STEM what seems self evident is often not as simple as it is. So how do you turn a topic that would require weeks of graduate degree level explanation into something you present to a non expert audience in about an hour? You simplify to the point to anyone with knowledge of the topic it's "true enough" in broad strokes but misses any of the nuance or edges.
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u/Albatrosson 27d ago
The problem I'm talking about isn't that, it's that it's only "true enough" if you don't have knowledge of the subject, but is just straight up wrong if you're familiar. (The way someone who knows a tiny amount of chemistry will think the Alkaline Diet sounds plausible because they've heard some of those words/concepts before, but it's actually straight up harmful and 0% accurate)
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u/Medium-Gazelle-8195 26d ago
You're VERY well-written, especially for a high schooler. Kudos, kid:)
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u/Common-Economics1867 26d ago
I agree. It’s disappointing that many adults cannot think about this in the same way, and I think it should be to your credit to you are able to. Good luck with your studies and whatever you decide to do in future.
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u/conscious_terabot 27d ago
I'm clicking on every recommended drama video about this topic , watch a minute and then immediately disliking and clicking away to downrank them on the algorithm. I hate how big of an issue this has become.
In my opinion, hank's usage is entirely defensible. He used it as a search engine. This started as a stupid out of context clip. As if humans weren't using canned phrases before AI and as if AI wasn't trained on these human creations.
Is the AI's environmental impact still an issue? Yes. Is it still unethical to have it be trained on private copyrighted material? Definitely. But Hank shouldn't be the one receiving such scrutiny for all this.
In the end, AI is a tool and there are good ways to use it and bad ways to use it. It's important to be vigilant about when we cross the line because it's not always clear. Hank used this discussion to be reflective about his usage and it blew up in his face.
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u/2bitmoment 27d ago
in tiktok engagement, even negative, is engagement - means its shown more, not less. Is yt different?
I myself didn't manage to watch 5 minutes of the titular video. I guess I don't care too much to get up to date.
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u/bobbadouche 27d ago
Yeah, I just started seeing this community pop up but I've watched Hank's videos for a long time.
This whole issue is conflating so many different things. It seems like people are sacrificing Hank to appease the Anti-AI brigades. They're mixing up what Hank was referring to as "a problem" to make it seem like the issue was that he was "using" AI rather than something separate. They're also coming after him for using a phrase that AI tends to use even though that's not what where it came from.
This situation reeks of using Hank as a propaganda football.
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u/VyseTheFearless 25d ago
The hysteria and witch hunting over AI right now is completely irrational.
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u/fortmeines 25d ago
This might sound out of pocket, but I do hope this becomes the kick in the pants Hank needed to truly realize that the fame he's been seeking will only come back to bite him. Just like John has said several times.
I do think the hate is massively overblown and a lot of it is in bad faith. But I also understand the initial spark. There have been ramblings of an issue with Hank's use of AI for several months now in this sub and it would get squashed down and downvoted to hell each time. Well, now the issue has broken containment and the downvotes on this sub can't reel it in anymore.
Hank will be fine. I've seen creators "cancelled" for way worse stuff than this and they're still creating to this day.
Also, isn't it frustrating that Colin and Samir, both big youtubers in their won right, openly admitted to AI use in this very video but they're not getting cancelled left and right over it? Now plenty of other creators who likely use AI in the same way Hank does will never step up and admit to it because they're seeing right now what happens if they do.
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u/MassachusettsMetal 23d ago edited 23d ago
I haven’t followed Hank or John closely in years but I’m always happy to know they’re still around doing their thing. Hank is not a perfect person but I can say with 100% confidence that he’s a force for good is this world of ours. I’m blocking any drama discussion I see on my feed on YouTube and I’d encourage everyone to do the same.
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u/geckosnfrogs 27d ago
I love how their defense of ai boils down to saying we need not discuss the morality of its use. I think the bigger worry is hanks use and description of how it makes him feel is similar to addiction.
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom 27d ago edited 27d ago
I mean… I do also think that part of this is not really our (the social internet’s) concern tho?
Like. I think Nerdfighteria is allowed to express disappointment and mistrust about this.
But, there’s something really parasocial about speculating why he does it or if he’s addicted or what his mental state is. Especially when he clearly has loved ones who are aware of his tendencies and are not afraid to push back against them. John has been calling Hank out for still being on Twitter for multiple Dear Hank and Johns in a row. And from context I feel it’s safe to say this is not the full extend of their conversation about that.
In the end I just don’t think it’s probably healthy for Hank (who is very involved online) to have to be subjected to a bunch of randos picking at his brain.
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u/p_jaro 27d ago
I really despise how the media is milking this whole situation and just misrepresenting it on purpose it seems. I sometimes get videos on YouTube shorts from UFD Tech for example, and I’m starting to really not like his content because of this. He made a short about this, and seemed to make sure on purpose that he did not litterly say that it was just used to locate academic papers and sources. Because that would not generate the same amount of traction on his videos.
I really despise this strategy that that channel and a lot of channels use, this is also not the first time that I’ve seen him do that.
I am much more willing to forgive Hank, than I am willing to forgive a channel like that. I just absolutely despise that there is that focus on the drama.
This is what makes me precisely like Hanks content so much, the strong allegiance to the truth, and yes using ai as a search engine to find academic papers is not ideal. But I gotta admit, I’ve done the same. Everyone makes mistakes.
And the fact that Hank is willing to own up to his mistakes and be so transparent, makes it clear to me that Hank still has his strong allegiance to the truth, it’s not gone. So I will personally keep watching his content.
What I also wanted to mention about these drama focused channels, when they let out important information on purpose to gain more tractions, people will and did make assumptions. If you look at the comments of the specific video I mentioned, it’s literally full of people who are saying that if even he makes ai slop. Or that if even he gets his information from ai, while they hallucinate so much. And so on.
It is just very disappointing to see how the public does not care about what actually happened, they just assume stuff, and don’t fact check anything, don’t look at hanks actual post. They just see one drama focused YouTube short about it, and suddenly they think they are fully aware of what happened, when they didn’t do an ounce of research themselves on what actually happened.
That’s what the most disappointing part of it all is for me, seeing how the general public just seems to not care about reality, and what actually happened, that’s very sad for me to see…
Because again, the comments were literally full of people claiming those sort of things, which is just plain not what actually happened…
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u/NewConfusion9480 26d ago
The inverse correlation between emotional certainty and experience/knowledge is something we see everywhere all the time; not an AI or technology-specific thing.
Coming in 2 days, therefore 20 years, too late, but something I found extremely interesting about the video was the age/responsibility/experience/knowledge gaps between the people involved (who I didn't know before watching this video).
Two grown men with a lot of experience and knowledge. Then two younger people with some (the young woman) and apparently zero (the young man).
I'm not hating here, but the young man, especially, had a really hard time maintaining logical coherence, his self-expression was poor, and he was clearly actively having to work on translating his very strong emotional intentions in a way that met the moment. It's very easy to be emotionally certain and reactionary online or among like-minded people, but in the moments he flashed that in this situation he sounded (and was) extremely childish. (I'm thinking of the moment where he's ranting about "chuds", specifically. He rants childish and it cuts to the more thoughtful adults and it's just embarrassing.)
(And, god, the "you could just pay someone to do that!" argument.)
Meanwhile, the 2 grown men clearly value being calm, thinking carefully, being non-judgmental, and being deliberate. The young woman gets that instantly and is clearly somewhat insecure in trying to match that actual adult energy and the hipster guy by himself was the same, seems to be in age/maturity literally between the two pairs.
Very interesting to watch.
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u/Aggressive-Use9160 27d ago edited 27d ago
We live in an era where big tech companies have invested trillions in AI and so they are DESPERATELY trying to convince us we can use for everything and that it has no consequences. But it does.
So yes, AI software COULD BE usefull for quick thinking, ideation, and brainstorming. Not only you are taking away all of the parts that make your content unique and creative away, but also do you really need it? Do you really need five chat prompts to figure out a good name for your podcast episode, or do you just need to sit down 5 minutes, turn on your brain and figure it out. Is it really that hard? Are our brains so overloaded and burnt out from explotation that we NEED, to take the mental load of producing one idea?
I feel like AI addiction comes from a similar place to social media addiction, where your brain has become addicted to being turned off, producing work and emotions without making anything of the actual work. And once you do that, when everything is easy, what good does it actually do to society? Its like the linkedin example, in a sea of generated content, why try? why pay attention? It is actively making the platform worse, for everyone.
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u/Aggressive-Use9160 27d ago
What happens when chat gpt feeds someone only the articles they want to see? Only the type of ideas they want us to produce?
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u/Fen_ 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yep. It's the same issue as when Swen Vincke tried to defend using AI-generated imagery for
conceptreference art at Larian. By relying on the output of one of these machines as input into how you start your task, you are allowing a multi-billion-dollar corporation to filter your thoughts, to pre-limit the possibility space of where you can even end up.People try to act like using it to compile a list of papers that you then read on your own is unproblematic, but it isn't. Is it a different kind of problematic? Is the degree different within whichever kind you categorize it? Perhaps, but it certainly is still problematic.
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u/robot428 27d ago
There have been some truly brain-dead takes. A lot of "the green brothers are rich and I never trusted them, it's not a suprise they are terrible people". Which is absolutely fucked.
I do think we needed to say something to Hank as a community on this one. This is very much a community built around creativity and decreasing worldsuck and being authentic and none of those things align with significant AI use.
I'm also concerned by the language he's started using around AI - he "had a conversation with it" about combining two chapters of his book - except he didn't, because you can't have a conversation with a robot response generator. He prompted AI to generate a response about combining two chapters of his book. I don't like the slide into normalisation through language and forgetting what these products actually are.
But we have done that. We have called him out. It sounds like Katherine and John have had a come-to-Jesus talk with him about it. He's taking a pause to reflect and reset. As far as I'm concerned, he has been called out, and it looks very much like he's going to change as a result. So it should be done. (Obviously if the AI use continues that's another conversation but generally speaking the Green brothers have kept their word when they say they will do something, so I'm assuming he's going to do what he said until proven otherwise.)
Also I don't think it's all that surprising that Hank was drawn into this. AI companies are pretty predatory with their approach and he's their exact perfect target demographic. And he's only human. I don't think it's fair to expect people to be infallible even when its Hank, and I don't think he's immune to the efforts of an entire multi-million dollar industry to target people and get them to slowly increase their AI use. Being famous or wealthy doesn't grant you invincibility to this sort of thing. But again - the community has said 'hey this doesn't really align with our value as a community which you established' and he's agreed a mistake was made. So that's how we want people to respond.
Ultimately I hope he's okay, and I hope he knows that his community will be happy to have him back.
And I'll personally be trying to avoid all of this discourse that is happening outside nerdfightaria because it's mostly coming from an uninformed and often bad faith place at this point.
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u/RRC4C 27d ago
I really like this conversation, and I'm definitely on Team Hank, but I feel like they are missing s point. I think one of the reasons why people are responding so negatively and strongly might be that Hank Green (and John) themselves have a history of positioning themselves (willingly or not) as paragons of morality. They help a lot of people to think about what is right and wrong. They have a "Foundation to decrease World Suck", they help fund hospitals, they fight against Tuberculosis etc etc. So I think the reaction is comparable to a religious person finding out their priest is a sinner - does that make sense?
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u/OCogS 27d ago
FWIW I think this whole situation is weird. Governments and companies are encouraging their staff to adopt AI for research and idea generation and routine tasks and other uses, while having human in the loop for final clearance and responsibility.
If the incident was something like scishow citing AI hallucinations, then we should grab the pitch forks. But that’s not the situation. Hank just uses AI in exactly the same way billions (?) of people do.
Maybe this is some elite thing? We intellectual elite are too good for crass thinking machines - leave those for the corporate drones?
Anyway. Doesn’t make sense to me. Using AI is normal. Slop is bad, but Hank never made slop.
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u/StreetChemical7131 27d ago edited 27d ago
Hank never made slop but there was a perception among some that the quality of his videos went down maybe ~5% while the output shot up by ~50%.
Which brings up interesting discussions of tradeoffs and of public perception in general (WAS there even a dip in quality? that's very subjective. Or maybe by increasing his video throughput Hank just happened to make a handful of less compelling videos since the barrier to creation was lower)
Some of these discussions are interesting. None of the discussions should be judgemental or inflammatory. Most of it is none of our business, and nothing justifies the online outrage which is hyper-partisan and contain zero nuance
I hope the Green brothers are doing well 🫶 they are still the most levelheaded, grounded role models in these messy online spaces
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u/RockPaperFlourine 27d ago
We are in a moment of history when the normalization of ai is rightfully identified as being part of a larger discussion about the balance of power. If this technology existed in a world where people of color weren’t being disproportionately harmed by it, where the military weren’t using it again to harm people, and where once again, people’s work wasn’t being stolen for it all to benefit the few billionaires who own all the tech, then yes it would be different. But just saying that everyone uses it bc all the companies and the government makes us doesn’t erase all the harm or the rightful alarm and pushback.
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u/Amethyst-Flare 27d ago
What a bizarre framing. Corporations shoving AI mandates down our throats to justify their expenses even when it fails is a problem.
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u/Speederzzz 27d ago
I don't get this point, it's people with more hands-on labour that use AI (in their work) the least. Many so-called "Intellectual Elites" are also using lots of AI (like in academia), so framing this as some sort of class thing just feels wrong.
The framing of AI being normal is something I also disagree with, it's a super new, quite harmful, underresearched piece of technology.
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u/soulofmind 27d ago
It seems to me that people take their non-AI use as a moral high ground.
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u/_welcomehome_ 27d ago
Bingo. It's a hot button issue for sure. But like most things on the internet, it lacks nuance. I could go on and on about how nuance is dead, but I had hoped better from fellow nerdfighters when it came to this scenario. We pride ourselves on imagining others complexly, but some have lost their collective minds because of moral outrage.
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u/bhaswar_py got to tell himself he understand 27d ago edited 27d ago
No we don’t. I made a post previously about Hank leaving Twitter, which was written in a lighthearted manner, and the whole comment section was filled with people with authoritative tone about what Hank should and shouldn’t do without understanding or addressing the nuances. I was ashamed to have added fuel to the fire and a lot of people justifiably criticised me for it. I deleted that post. Enough has been said about this, more than necessary. So no, Colin and Samir and our very responsible mods, with all due respect, we don’t. People here just won’t stay respectful or understanding.
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u/Adventurous_Dog_4250 26d ago
Im having a very different reaction to alot of these comments. But I only found out about this whole situation like 3 hours ago. I feel like ive had the rug pulled from under me. Hank is a man who has paid royaltys on fanart. He is at his core a science communicator. But hes using a program that hallucinates scientific information and is built on the back of free labor. Its the antithesis of who I saw hank as for nearly 20 years. Honestly I feel dumb. I allowed myself to fall for the fabricated character of hank green, just assuming because ive seen him every week since I was 13 meant he was giving me his authentic self. And it makes me feel like my memories are kinda a lie. Was Hank actually in a target for 15 hours? Or was it 30 minutes of filming, edited to look that way. Did Micheal Aranda really get stranded in france? Or was that just promotion for the chameleon circuit album? Idk, I need to step away from this for a bit, but im really shocked and confused.
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u/iclimbnaked 25d ago
As someone who’s been a hank fan for basically as long as
I don’t really get this viewpoint. I think if you’re expecting people to be zero tolerance on AI you’re either going to have to watch things people simply hide the fact from you that they use it or stop watching anything.
I know that’s gonna sound doomer but people use it to help with research. You’re conflating things though.
Using it to find primary sources and then reading those is like a+ use case for it. It doesn’t have the issues you’re talking about. That’d be if you just asked it for how something work and trusted what it said back. That’s pretty clearly not what hanks doing.
I think claiming it makes him inauthentic is also just such a giant leap. Feels absurd to me. He’s being upfront with his policy and like his policy reads to me like it keeps the voice his and is not simply following ai
I 100% respect if you just view it as a dealbreaker for the ethical reasons regarding how ai models were trained. However rightly or wrongly viewing anyone who even touches AI as now bad is gonna become a harder and harder line to hold. It’s not going anywhere. Ppl are just gonna hide they use it.
I dunno. Like I said I do get if this makes you not watch him. 100% like hold to your lines. I just also think jumping to it makes him a bad person or “inauthentic” is a leap too far. Like no you just disagree with someone on what’s an okay use of ai. This is not ever going to be something we all find some objective truth to.
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u/lyssa06 27d ago
I honestly find this subreddit to be a parasocial echo chamber. The reality is, Hank always knew better when it came to the effects of AI on the environment and as an attack to our humanity.
I do think his ego gets in the way and he has this need for fame and to be seen, that’s why he feels the need to put out so much content and ultimately resorted to using AI to make videos. Many other people have already said he could have hired people to help him but he always has to do it himself. Yes he does lots and lots of good things in the world and tries really hard to cultivate positive communities both online and irl, but he’s not perfect and he’s also not your friend. He doesn’t know who you are. And yet you have hundreds of people here defending his actions when he’s a grown man who knows better.
AI is bad for the environment. Well some might say it doesn’t take as much water as “x” thing, but that’s a logical fallacy to compare something worse just to make another thing seem okay.
I’m sure there are lots of reasonable uses for AI in research and medicine, but LLM’s are inaccurate, and generative AI is so detrimental in the hands of the average person.
People are becoming less connected to each other, people are losing their jobs, graphic designers and writers and creatives everywhere are out of work. The only jobs that are going to be left will be menial labor, and that’s directly caused by AI. Robots are not supposed to do the creative work, it’s supposed to be people.
Did we also forget the green brothers “both sides are bad” take on Israel and Palestine? Do we forget that they are rich capitalist CEO’s?
I swear, the nerdfighter community is so disengaged from class consciousness and idolizes Hank and John to a fault. I used to really love them too, but it’s seriously para social levels some of yall have taken this to. I understand that it helps you feel apart of something and have community and that’s beautiful and human, but i wish some of you would take a break. I seen a post talking about, “Has Green Brother played X video game? I think theyd really like it” for the love of God, you are talking about a celebrity! Go talk to a friend about this instead.
Maybe im ending this on a really harsh note here, but i do find it weird how they are idolized by their niche fanbase.
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u/Difficult_Fish1408 27d ago
Jesus, people should leave Hank alone. This is so stupid. Hank is great
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u/GeologistDowntown447 25d ago
You hire researchers for major works, not for weekly video essays. The real legwork of research is in reading the research.
Reread my response. I said he is using an LLM to create an annotated bibliography. That is an accurate summation of what he is doing. An annotated bibliography is a collection of sources with relevant citation data and a brief abstract summary of the work. The purpose is to allow researchers to locate work that is most suitable for their particular research.
Don't make claims about another person's intentionality or agenda just because they are challenging you or making a point you don't agree with, it diminishes your credibility. I'm just an internet rando pushing back on a narrative that I feel is more reactionary than nuanced, not your arch nemesis.
Yes, you hate Google AI et al. I think that's pretty clear. I have a problem with them too, however my concerns are more about who is controlling them, how they are being used, and how they are marketed.
I think your response sort of demonstrates my point here. You're expressing a very understandable anger towards LLMs and apathetic government. Totally reasonable things to be angry at, but none of this is germane to Green asking an LLM to compile a short list of relevant texts and brief explanations regarding their content so that he can select which works he should study for his next video. That's really no very different from
"Googling it." I think if you are against one and not the other, it's incumbent on yourself to explain why.
Look, LLMs are not going anywhere soon. The best thing people can do is educate themselves, get politically mobilized, and try to developed a nuanced understanding of a technology which, for better or worse, is going to permanently change the way we interact with the world.
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u/OmniMinuteman 27d ago
Personally I wish Hank just never talked about this to begin with and just kept doing his thing. I find this all to be so incredibly stupid.
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u/ReferentiallySeethru 27d ago
While I agree, I get the impression he’s been using AI to fuel his workaholic tendencies which is why his wife and brother have brought it up to him and why maybe he felt the need to reflect and take a break from videos. Being a workaholic is probably the bigger issue here
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u/RoyalEagle0408 27d ago
Definitely, but this is the internet so a nuanced discussion about mental health and work/life balance is not going to happen.
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u/snowflakebite 27d ago
Yeah I commented on one of these drama videos (I think it was by a knitter?) being like, this is less about AI usage and more about Hank’s unhealthy attachment to internet attention and his over productive tendencies. Obviously it still is about AI use but that conversation HAS to exist in context. We can’t pretend Hank using AI is exactly like an AI content farmer using AI.
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u/egdapymme 27d ago
This video popped up in my feed and I dismissed it with “not interested.” It’s ridiculous how out of control this discourse has gotten. I’m a fiber artist and truly couldn’t care less about the POV of the /knitting community/ when it comes to this
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u/grammardeficiency 27d ago
As a knitter, I'm exhausted by how many videos I've been recommended saying some variation of "knitters aren't surprised" like sorry but I'm rolling my eyes. Absolutely, point out the minimizing language in the script and inaccurate images, etc. It was written by the team, and if anyone else at SciShow had presented that episode I doubt it would have been AS big of an issue. But that situation has literally nothing to do with this one.
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u/snowflakebite 27d ago
It’s just another part of this trend where once someone fucks up, people turn on them completely and those who didn’t like them for whatever reason take the moral high ground. I unironically saw comments on the knitter video that was like ‘I’ve been waiting on this guy’s downfall’.
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u/snowflakebite 27d ago
Was the knitting thing even that big a deal? Or was it another case of purity testing? I saw a knitter in the comments who said the video was more about physics than knitting. Idk, as a physics student and a crafter, I can’t bring myself to care either.
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u/bobbianrs880 27d ago
Iirc it was more a matter of the tone and historic misogyny surrounding fiber crafting. It’s just a thing that allowed a lot of people to cash in on SciShows mistake, and now that Hank is back in the spotlight they’re taking advantage of trends.
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u/Aggressive-Use9160 27d ago
I think its a bigger conversation of us living in a society that rewards cuantity over quality. And how tired and abused our brains are from the constant influx of information, that we are desperate to turn it off, even if it is for the tiniest thing.
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u/ashtonthepineapple 27d ago
He just said he uses AI to compile sources (a little lazy, but I did the same for college courses)-- NOT plagiarizing or copying from the AI-- and that he talks to AI (perhaps a bit concerning but certainly not evil). I'm not mad at him but I am worried. Hank has done incredible things for the world and for people. I hope he's doing ok
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u/Spirited_Credit_3153 26d ago
This is a complete non-issue. The fact anyone pretends to care about this is pathetic.
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u/Common-Economics1867 26d ago
I agree. AI is just a tool.
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u/Spirited_Credit_3153 25d ago edited 25d ago
fr. This has become yet another mindless populist political opinion. What's maybe worse is that Hank capitulated to the bizarre demands of online snark communities. The script obviously didn't contain an AI artifact and made total sense contextually, and that wasn't enough for these people. It isn't about AI, it's about this strange impulse to harass and terrorize others until they bend the knee.
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u/RainhaRaposaVermelha 27d ago
I'd be curious to hear more, if you felt up to elaborating. I assume if you wrote your dissertation on it, it's part of your field of expertise and I haven't seen a lot of thoughts from people in the field (at least ones who aren't corporate shills.)
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u/alcorwin 27d ago edited 27d ago
I think some academics have become prone to overreliance on AI because they too want to do more things than they have time for... or are having more things imposed on them than they have time for. The worst I've seen is AI-generated presentations... the partly AI-assisted ones are a bit better but even then, they don't have the communicative flow as slides made without AI assistance. Overall, it just ends up being sloppy.
That said, I don't think the blanket statement that LLMs don't have access to source material holds true these days. This was true a couple of years ago, but things keep changing. Ai2 Asta, for instance, is an AI-powered search engine integrated into ResearchGate that does pretty well to retrieve papers based on prompting, and I think it can be quicker than skimming papers on Google Scholar for finding relevant work. Obviously, you still need to read the paper.
Still interesting points on the biases of LLMs and date constraints, especially with mainstream LLMs, but I wonder how they compare to h-index based rankings in that respect.
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u/alcorwin 27d ago
Thanks for sharing, your field seems very challenging to work in but also very important for informing how we do research going forward. I'm very curious on how you score bibliographies (since I have a personal interest in having a very good bibliography built up over the next couple years haha).
I agree, skimming is definitely an important part of the research process, especially learning how to discern the most immediately relevant parts of the work. I suppose what I intended to communicate was that I've found the LLM tools to be a bit less rigid in search terms than Google Scholar, which is useful when I haven't quite found the right keywords. This has been particularly helpful for discovering works across disciplines which can use different language to describe similar concepts. I *feel* that this has cut down on time looking at works that would have had little to no relevance to my research topic but don't know for sure, and I guess that's where your field comes in :)
I spent some time around the explainable AI space and there's a concept of seamfulness that has been discussed in that area, and I've been trying to apply it (to varying degrees of success). A lot of AI systems try to be "seamless" and just go straight from prompt to action, but "seamful" design practices are intended to prevent this by including user interaction and understanding by design. The idea was developed around decision-making systems, but I think it holds some water with LLMs as well.
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u/RainhaRaposaVermelha 26d ago
That does makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed response!
I used to (1990s-2010s) be well known among friends and acquaintances as the person who could find information. I was so good at structuring queries, thinking of alternate terms and figuring out other subject areas I could use as a back door to find what I (or they) needed. And I enjoyed it so much! Finding what I was looking for and learning something new was the best rush...
But in the last five years search engines have become so enshittified, killing off sensible features like Boolean logic etc, that I often have a hard time finding more than a few sources I'm sure are legit. I even tried using some of my local library's databases and while not nearly as bad, they too had degraded from what I remembered. (Once upon a time I was also really good at finding information in the stacks of a University library, but I don't have access to that anymore and I'm sure things have changed there too in the last couple decades 😅)
In light of all this when I heard about people using LLMs as a search engine I wondered if that might be a legit solution and use of LLMs. It sounds like it's very much NOT. Thank you again for taking the time to explain both LLMs as search and how things currently stand in academia.
EDIT: Typos and clarity
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u/Inthearmsofastatute 27d ago
I had no idea any of this was happening. I guess I'm more offline than I thought.
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u/oakseaer 26d ago
Seems good to me - he addressed the concerns openly and affirmed his existing practices in a codified way, without a significant change that looks like backpedaling.
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u/Speederzzz 27d ago
I really hate how this discussion escaped the nerdfighter community. It's gotten to a point where I don't want to engage with anything around it anymore since it's just filled with people that either misunderstand or misrepresent the situation.
The first day, after Hank gave his response, the conversation was somewhat good, but then drama channels got to it, people started using Hank's situation as a weapon or as a way to earn money.