Below is one of the best sourced comments that I’ve seen about listing the negative aspects of LLMs/AI.

One of my main ones is, thinking about spinning up a jet engine, next to someone’s backyard, each time a LLM is used for a web search.

Stick to the facts when you explain your views, explore ways to run local models for her if you can stretch that far.

Reasons not to use AI-LLM artificial intelligence. (There is probably a bunch more in the 7 months since this list was written.)

https://lemmy.cafe/comment/16350045

Using it for school work is demonstrably not learning. In fact using an LLM is antithical to learning: it’s cognitive offloading.

If she cares about actually learning she’d do her own school work.

That’s the problem I see here… my 2¢

I’ve had experiences that relate to your post, and I understand how difficult it can be to be in your position. I can’t really make your decisions for you, but hopefully some of the following will help:

First, since I made the post I linked here, my mother made an abrupt and unexpected reversal. One day out of the blue, she asked me to help her switch her default search engine on her computer to noai.duckduckgo.com and switch her phone’s browser to the Duck Duck Go browser and disable all AI features. (She’s not technical, so she appreciated, wanted, and requested the tech support assistance.) I don’t really know what prompted her to make the switch, but I’m elated by it. She’s still quite addicted to YouTube/Facebook shorts and some of the videos I see just by virtue of the fact that they’re playing in my viscinity are slop, but she usually makes the comment that “oh, that’s AI”. (Hell, we watched something on some streaming platform that had a slop scam ad targeting seniors with promises of some “Medicare grocery card” or something and my mother was the one who pointed out it was AI.) Her attitude has changed on the topic quite drastically. Between that post and my mother’s reversal, I did tell her “don’t read me that slop” or “yeah, but you can’t trust that because it’s LLM output” not terribly infrequently when she read me Google AI summaries or “oh, that’s not real though” when she’d show me a slop YouTube short. So it’s not like she didn’t get that I disapproved, and I think part of the reason for the reversal was probably for my benefit specifically. I’ve always been careful not to make any demands on her about things that aren’t my business. If she wants to consume slop content, that’s not really on me to correct. (To express concern, maybe, but not to demand she changes how she stewards her own brain.) But I don’t want that shit infecting my brain with LLM-hallucinated misconceptions, and I’ve been careful to make it clear that the boundaries I’m setting are where she ends and I begin. I’m not trying to control her, I’m trying to control me.

Second, I usually try to avoid making predictions about the future, but more and more voices are saying now that there’s a strong possibility the AI bubble will pop within a couple of years. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc are all giving away LLM access at a huge loss. They’ve already bumped prices and gamed the system to extract more revenue, but it isn’t enough. At some point they’ll have to either shutter their generative AI efforts or start charging what they actually cost (and then shutter their generative AI efforts when it becomes even more clear that virtually nobody is willing to pay anywhere near that). Assuming that all goes down the way I’m hoping, at that point your girlfriend may well basically lose access to LLMs. (Running LLMs locally is a little cheaper in the long run, but there’s a steep effort curve and a steep up-front-cost curve (not to mention ongoing power usage bills) to get anything that even the boosters would call acceptable results. I doubt any significant portion of people using LLMs today will undertake such and effort or cost.) All that to say, there’s a strong possibility she’ll quit using Generative AI just by virtue of an impending massive bubble pop.

I dunno. I probably am not one to take advice from when it comes to relationships (or economics, for that matter). You’ll have to decide how to address and/or deal with this issue yourself. I told you what I did and what resulted. I think boundaries, done properly, are generally a good thing. I didn’t think it would work for me to pretend I was fine with being force-fed slop frequently and it worked out. But whatever you end up doing, I hope your situation resolves similarly positively. Good luck.

Perhaps address the impact this will have in the future in her career. From decades of experience in the mechanical field, I will tell you that if she doesn’t have the knowledge in her head she will get laughed at and fired. AI has not really penetrated the mechanical field. Yes, there is AI in CAD and other software, but at best it is for tinkerers and not scalable. Without the knowledge she won’t last a month in a mech eng role, assuming she manages to even get one.

I’m sure enough people have told you to yeet her into the sun. I empathize if you decide you want to work this through with her. I have had issues like this with my own partner.

I found this video essay by Dr. Fatima helpful to empathize in my case. You agree on some of the fundamentals it seems. She has a habit and somewhat agrees that it’s bad. But due to stress or whatever reason she can’t kick it. So try to help her to work on this. It’s good to keep in mind that even half-measures can do lots of good. Maybe she isn’t super principaled in her AI abstention like you, but there’s a wide range between occasional indulgance and full-on dependency.

One seemingly small thing that reduced a lot of conflict for us was me replacing her search widget on her android. She kept quoting AI summaries from Google at me and I kept getting annoyed until I offered to help by changing it to DuckDuckGo. Maybe you’re better skilled in configuring your devices and can offer to protect her from addictive design patterns she is barely aware of.

Commenting just to reiterate what a lot of the other comments are saying. It’s ok if AI use is a dealbreaker for you, it would be for me. I personally have a list of companies I boycott and if my partner didn’t care enough to also boycott them then in my opinion we just wouldn’t align enough to stay together. That being said, you can also just decide that not using AI is important to you but you will tolerate it in a partner. My main advice if that’s the route you go would be to be clear that you don’t personally use it and draw clear boundaries. It’s ok to say for example “if you use AI for a project I’m not interested in reviewing/discussing it”. Maybe that’s a dealbreaker for her, I don’t know, but I’d just sit down with yourself and determine 1) if it’s a dealbreaker or not and 2) if it’s not a dealbreaker what your boundaries about it are. You just have to be ready for whatever her decision is regarding that. If you tell her it’s not a dealbreaker then you should just let it go. No one likes being nagged. But you also don’t have to support it, just be clear about that and keep consistent with whatever you said you were/weren’t going to do when she brings it up.

Also, I think the comments calling you controlling are out of line. You can have preferences regarding your partners behavior. It only becomes controlling in very specific conditions. If you’re unclear about your desires and then retaliate against her without her knowing why that would be one way of being controlling. If you’re open and honest and communicate that you have a preference and are open to her response then you’re probably perfectly fine. The most important thing is clear communication and respecting each others boundaries.

All I can tell you is that had I been you, I would have told her that her brain is every bit as beautiful as the rest of her, and that I’d hate to see that beauty eroded by her outsourcing her ability to think to a jumped-up Markov Chain.

I’d say it’s about the same as other issues in relationships. People ain’t perfect. I have a few habits which don’t really resonate with my partner at all. And I see other people discuss other stuff as well. The amount of partying someone does, friends, kids, doomscrolling and TikTok addiction, chores, leisure time, relationship to someone’s parents… There’s a million things to fundamentally disagree on.

Somehow you need to work it out. Talk. Make up your own mind, think about where to compromise, what are hard limits for you. And what’s more important to you. That thing or her. And where do you all want to go. And then find a effective ways to talk. Seems to me what you’ve been doing is talk, but from the description, it doesn’t seem like it’s all that effective.

I personally don’t think policing someone’s work is the job of a spouse. I’ll ask my partner what’s up with their job, take interest, empathize… But I don’t tell them how to do their work. On the other hand I have expectations for personal life. I wouldn’t like it at all if someone brings AI slop into the shared living room. I might be able to compromise on some of it, especially if I disagree on the way to do it but there’s no bad consequences. But there’s hard no’s for me. And you do you.

I think most important is to come to some kind of agreement which makes everyone comfortable at least to some degree. If you wanna make the relationship work, that is. But I feel if she’s saying one thing but does another… There’s still some things to work out. Either you’re not really communicating and she just says yes to make you stop. Or she’s struggling to pull it off. (Might not be easy at all to quit AI?) Or you both have different opinions and avoid conflict.

Edit: Maybe another option is to remove your own opinion for now, and just listen for a while. Find out what she wants. Where she’s at and where she wants to go with this? Maybe she feels like she’s okay with AI? Maybe it’s some proxy for something else? Maybe she wants to quit, maybe she doesn’t? I feel that’s all important information for any further considerations. (I mean your post is mainly you writing down what you want. That’s perfectly alright. You also write what she does but there isn’t really anything about what she wants. So we’re missing a substantial chunk of the equation here.)

It’s AI, not heroin. Hating AI is great but shouldn’t lead all the way to serious relationship trouble IMO, as long as she doesn’t use LLMs to talk to you directly or something. You can try to understand why she uses it and how it helps her. You can also tell her it feels wrong to you or bothers you that her work is done with AI, or that you don’t want to read it, but at the same time you can still accept that it’s working for her. Dogma doesn’t fair well in relationships

Play some games / do activities together that don’t involve internet / computer or any technology and best if it require focus and attention. ex yoga, board games, but also cooking from physical book or just experimenting in kitchen.

Honestly I get you, I hate the world GenAI is making… but you can’t control what your partner does. You’ve told her your stance on AI, and that you don’t like how dependent she is on it - but it’s her decision and responsibility as to whether she acts on what you’ve said.

If her rampant AI use is a deal-breaker to you, then act on that. Otherwise, if she refuses to stop - then it’ll have to be something to disagree on. Draw the line on things you do together.

She is caring, cute, clever and really thoughtful. I love everything about her.

Accept her for who she is. If you can’t, move on.

Personally that is a dealbreaker for me, but honestly- no one here can tell you what to do. And this is true about anything you can ask of complete strangers online.

Every time she gives you a paper to review, quiz her on the content within it.

You don’t need to ignore it. She should understand your stance on AI. You don’t need to come off strong with pure hatred, but she should understand your dislike of AI. On the topic of her homework, keep it light. You don’t need to fixate on it, just say it looks good (if it does). I don’t know if you can help her reduce her usage. Maybe someone else here can figure that out.