Hi everyone. I’m a senior Computer Engineering student and my girlfriend is a senior Mechanical Engineering student.

She is caring, cute, clever and really thoughtful. I love everything about her. But the one thing that always bugs me out is the amount of AI she uses.

When we met 2 years ago the first topic we talked about was about AI and ever since that day I always mentioned her the advancements and dangers of AI. I said how there can’t be ethical AI and any use of it is harmful.

She agrees with me every time and says she will decrease her usage but at the end she uses it still. Projects, reports, homeworks all go through the LLM. She shows me her work and I can’t congratulate her without forcing myself because I know it’s AI.

She has diagnosed ADHD and I think this might be one of the reasons but I still don’t understand. She sometimes spends hours working. If she had spent that time with pen and paper she could’ve reached the same conclusions she did with AI but with more understanding of her work.

I don’t want to upset her but also seeing someone this close to me do this is saddening to me. What should I do? Should I just ignore it?

  • jaschop
    2·
    3 hours ago

    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.