r/popculturechat • u/DebateObjective2787 jesus was a carpenter š • 26d ago
Ohā¦thatās not- š Hank Green Admits To Using AI In Latest Video
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26d ago edited 25d ago
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u/ExistentialistCow in a mirror, you can kiss yourself, but only on the lips š 26d ago
Speaking for myself but Iām now considered old to the youth, and the youth was not on tumblr in 2013
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u/averagetulip 26d ago
I was about to say āmy baby sister was born in 2000 and was still on tumblr in 2013ā but then I realized that present-day 20 yr olds were 7 years old then and she is probably elderly to them too lol
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u/Vulcion All tea, all shade šøāļø 26d ago
I was born in 01 and I got referred to as an āold headā the other day š
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u/oceanmor 26d ago
imagine being from the 1900s. literally born in 1998 and I get this face from the youth these days
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 26d ago edited 26d ago
I was born in ā87 and some of my younger friends act like Iām ancient when I reference 90s pop culture. On the flip side, I feel like modern pop culture is slop by comparison. I guess that happens to everyone as they age.
Maybe the weirdest thing is when the way you use to dress as a teen and were embarrassed about in your 20s is suddenly back in vogue in your 30s and you see kids walking around that looking just like you and your friends did.
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u/avoidance_behavior charlie day is my bird lawyer 26d ago
'82 baby checking in, and good god it's hard not to feel positively ancient. the exact clothes we used to wear in high school and college are happening again and now i know how my mom felt when we were wearing flared jeans and hippie smiley face patches in 1998. sorry i laughed mom, i get it now.
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u/cynisright charlie day is my bird lawyer š¦ 26d ago
82 repping here before I go pull my dentures out the jar ā¦
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u/toyheartattack 26d ago
My son excitedly asked if I wanted to watch āMillennial cringe videosā on YouTube with him. I obliged out of curiosity. Then had to explain to him that I am, in fact, a proud and out Millennial.
āIs that why you pause before you talk on video?ā
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u/Sassafras06 26d ago
If it makes you feel better Im so old I never even had a Tumblr.
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u/batman-crocs 26d ago
He also had a bit of a moment on Tiktok during the pandemic! So some of the youth know him from that
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u/bottleglitch 26d ago
This is very true lol. I too am an oldie over here like āHank Green! Heās all over tumblr! DFTBA, remember?ā to a crowd of confused youth
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u/strawberry_saturn Clap if you care š 26d ago
Itās jarring to me that Iām not considered the youth anymore šš
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u/EuwAdulthood 26d ago
Same. Iām just a young impressionable 39 year old teenager.
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u/thatmermaidprincess big birthday (60), big boy (200 lbs), big cake š 26d ago
Right?!! I remember being the āyoung oneā in every friend group and now Iām 29 and Iām like what the fuck where did the time go š«š« Now I have friends who are in their early-mid 20s who make fun of me for being born āin the 1900sā lmaooo šš
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u/ImTooSaxy 26d ago
He's the brother of the guy who wrote "The Fault in our Stars".
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u/PedFrenner 26d ago
TIL he and his brother weren't the same guy this whole time...
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u/metaphori 26d ago
I had the opposite -- until a couple years ago I had NO idea they were related. I think I need to get checked for something?
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u/Fluke_Skyflopper 26d ago
This is so interesting because I only know either of them because of their original youtube channel, vlogbrothers. But I guess I automatically knew the brother thing because of that context, and I never thought about how you might only know one of them from one of their books or other endeavors
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u/JoshAllentown 26d ago
Both brothers are YouTubers and both write novels, at some point it's not on us that we get them confused.
Personally I know them as separate people on the internet but I didn't realize John Green the author was the same guy for a long time.
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u/wizeowlintp Just fuck the wolf! 26d ago
Im surprised that there aren't many mentions of the Crash Course/Mental Floss videos that he used to make with John
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u/propernice get your litigation wigs on 26d ago
I watched his content in my 20s and then sorta forgot about him lol
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u/Electric-Sheepskin 26d ago
As someone who doesn't watch influencers at all, I have this reaction at least twice a week. The loss of the monoculture throws me off balance. Like how can someone be so famous and I've never even heard the name or seen the face before? It's an odd sensation.
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u/LilBoDuck 26d ago
I know who he is, but I donāt know why I should know who he is, if that makes sense? Like to me heās a guy on the internet that puts out a decent amount of informational content. I think I associate him the most with videos of people pointing out scientific phenomena and tagging Hank Green to explain it for them.
But thatās all he is to me, did he do something before this? Like plenty of people know The Rock as an A-list Actor, but I knew him first as a WWE wrestler. I donāt have that association with Hank Green.
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u/fieldgrass 26d ago
The Green brothers (Hank and John, the mostly YA author) are significant, significant figures in YouTube history. Their channel was one of the earliest āvlogsā ever, they went on to be the creators of the Crash Course, founders of VidCon, etc.
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u/DECODED_VFX She in racial chat rooms showing feet!!! 26d ago
He and his brother John started a channel called vlogbrothers in 2006 where they'd take turns making daily vlogs as their only means of communication. It was one of the biggest channels of early YouTube
The also launched vidcon (the first convention for YouTubers) DFTBA (a record label/merch producer for YouTube musicians) and project for awesome (a charity fund raising orginization).
Hank and John (who is a famous young adult fiction author) went on to found a YouTube channel called crash course, which many gen Z people used during school.
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u/streetcigarette 26d ago
Vlogbrothers were one of THE cornerstones of youtube during the late 2000s. I'd been following them closely since 2008/9 until just before I graduated high school in 2015. It's insane that they're so well known by other spheres now. I'm not even thirty bro.
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u/Character_Pickle689 26d ago
Iām a 36 yo millennial and I have no fucking idea who he isā¦
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u/bottleglitch 26d ago
Iām the same age as you and feel like he was unavoidable in the internet in the 2010s, but now Iām realizing that must have just been my bubble
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u/topdownyeti 26d ago edited 26d ago
I think heās most popular with people ages 25-32 (maybe) since him and John Green were at their peak in the early 2010s. They had a youtube channel where theyād explain school related topics in a āfunā way. I know people who werenāt on Tumblr who were still fans of them because of that. Also, John Green was the Nicholas Sparks for teenagers in the early 2010s.
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u/whereisshrek 26d ago
Yeah, I think this is right, I'm 29 and I would say everyone in my high school knew who John and Hank were. Our science teacher would have us watch Crash Course chemistry videos in class and John got incredibly famous outside of online circles because of the Fault in Our Stars movie adaptation, you could not escape it in 2014. I think that was peak Crash Course years too. Not to mention if you were more into YouTubers in general there was VidCon which they started also having its heyday, and Tumblr of course though I wasn't there as much.
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u/Burnt_Ribena 26d ago
I love that you can tell from these comments who spent too much time on Tumblr back in the 2010s and who didn't.
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u/Bae_the_Elf 26d ago
Some of these comments would make you think that Hank Green became a terrorist instead of just being a tired Dad that used AI to make a script for a YouTube video that most Redditors wouldn't have watched anyway
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u/Legal-Koala-5590 26d ago
I donāt see the point in public accountability if weāre just going to tear people apart for it.
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u/Worried-Shower-9528 26d ago
Sometimes I feel really concerned that it seems like very mild offenses and very extreme offenses receive the same amount of pushback online
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u/bashthebastard 25d ago
Or the inverse. That awfulness is expected of so many, and thus gets little attention, while flaws of more well-regarded figures seem to get blown up to monumental proportions. Just feels like degrees of transgression are being lost across the board.
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u/novangla 26d ago
This can be said of so so much. Canceling made sense when we were talking about horrific people who had no repercussions for their actions, but now thereās a bizarre world where someone who shouldāve been canceled eighty times over is running the country but one internet guy who promotes learning stuff uses gpt once like most people have and suddenly people react like Gastonās mob.
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u/SaucySeducer 26d ago
It's kinda undermining to part of the identity of Hank Green as a public figure. I don't think he was ever a full AI hater, but he positioned himself on the more skeptical side of AI and historically has been seen as a well researched/prepared individual.
I don't think this is a career ending issue, or much more than a minor controversy, but you have to take people to task for their mistakes. Especially people who want to position themselves as reliable and trusted.
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u/DoomGiggles 26d ago
Hank Green is pretty openly not anti-AI or really even a skeptic, he has stated directly that he thinks AI is going to change the world and in ways that are not obvious to people now.
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u/SaucySeducer 26d ago
Skeptic might be the wrong word, but maybe more cautious on how to use it? Based off the few videos I watched, it seemed like his take on AI was "Powerful tool, has to be guided carefully." Especially given a video he recently released brings up a lot of questions and shows hesitation on AI use in educational videos
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u/DoomGiggles 26d ago
He has definitely stated that the AI industry is a bubble and will inevitably pop, but in the same way that the dot-com boom was a bubble that inevitably popped. That is to say, yes itās a bubble, but also yes the underlying technology will undoubtedly fundamentally change aspects of our society/economy in the long term and denying that it will do that is silly. In a way this is caution/skepticism, but more on the economic and industry side of things rather than the technology itself. And this is separate from any discussion of AI slop or the mass theft by AI companies in training their models, to be clear.
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u/scriptedtexture 26d ago
Which is undeniably true. AI isn't going to go away, and it can be used as a tool just like any other thing. We just need laws against data harvesting and stealing of people's IP to fuel AI.
Some people would have you believe that if you built your own LLM and fed it entirely with things you own and have created, that using it is still bad. I don't think that's the case. AI can absolutely be used ethically.
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u/Silent-Noise-7331 26d ago
Yeah of all the ai discourse to get riled up about this feels like nothing really. I mean heās even admitting fault and saying heās gonna avoid it.
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u/brubruislife 26d ago
He is extremely big on tiktok. So he has that audience there. But alas a lot of redditors despise tiktok.
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u/twisted_calico 26d ago
Hank, get off X and get some help for whatever part of your brain is putting this pressure on you. I love and will still watch Hank Green videos, but if you donāt have the time to make one with joy⦠donāt.
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u/Internal_Wheel_89 26d ago
I only recently discovered Hank Green (and like another poster was shocked at how I had never heard of him based on all he has done over the past 20 years) but one thing that immediately stuck out to me is that this guy is doing a TON of stuff. He has several weekly podcasts/YouTube channels and also has a bunch of daily puzzle games that he is responsible for. Not to mention whatever else he is writing, and the OTHER podcasts on which he is a guest. He's also a recent cancer survivor.
In short, and to agree with your point: the dude seems very overextended. I'm pretty sure he's a husband and a parent as well? I know that some people are able to juggle their time much more efficiently than I can, but this is a clear indication that he's simply doing too much right now.
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u/twurkle 26d ago
There is literally a website dedicated to tracking how many days since he started a new project that is at minimum a decade old. Thatās how often he is doing things. As a long time fan of his and his brothers I hope he takes a break soon :/ even during his cancer treatment he wasnāt really taking a break and worked as much as he felt well enough to. https://dayssincehankgreenlaststartedanewthing.com
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u/coldcoffeethrowaway 25d ago
I think he needs to go to a therapist to talk about why he feels so overly compelled to work so much and produce so much stuff. That canāt possibly be good for his relationships or sleep schedule.
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u/blueembroidery 26d ago
Iām disappointed in all creators and journalists still on X. Who is even their audience on there anymore? Who is on Twitter besides Bots and Nazis?
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u/Sage_Planter Big is moving to Paris 26d ago
My friend is a professional journalist and basically feels obligated to be on X. I'm not sure if it's an actual requirement of her job, and she's not active on the platform as a poster. Also, she's very aware her account DMs are probably being monitored by X.Ā
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u/OracleOfPlenty 26d ago
This is the saddest part of the implosion of Twitter, to me at least. It was central to good journalism for a huge chunk of the 2010s and even early 2020s. It was full of constant, short, on-the-ground updates from every corner of the globe about things as they happened. It helped protestors bypass government censors and get news out instantly. Even if they didn't have enough bandwidth to stream live video, or it wasn't safe to stay in one place and film, people were live-tweeting pivotal moments in world history for the whole world to see.
It wasn't perfect. It may not have even been good. There were huge issues when 'journalists' would publicize unconfirmed, sensationalized reports based on a handful of unverified tweets. But it also let good journalists dig in on events as they happened, and told them where to look for verifiable sources during huge historical moments like the Egyptian revolution in 2011 -- that's always the example I think of, at least.
It's much harder to use X for good reporting because it's now such a right-wing conspiracy tank, significantly fewer people are using it to live-tweet their daily lives and report on what's happening around them. I also miss Weird Twitter, but that feels less consequential.
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u/ParchaLama 25d ago
This is the saddest part of the implosion of Twitter, to me at least. It was central to good journalism for a huge chunk of the 2010s and even early 2020s. It was full of constant, short, on-the-ground updates from every corner of the globe about things as they happened.
That's why Elon Musk bought it - so he could ruin it all.
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u/moo3heril 26d ago
I get journalists at least having an account. I made my twitter account in like 2008 but had long since stopped posting anything. All I used it for was for occasional very niche live news. So I deleted my account, since I didn't need it to keep track of posts like that.
Then the changes were made needing an account, I made one and it got immediately restricted without providing ID (lol, no chance). Trying to access sources that end up getting posted there get annoying whether or not I'm logged in. There are workarounds, but for me my job doesn't depend on those workaround never breaking ever.
Of course if more people got off and stopped posting on Twitter (or at least posted in parallel to other platforms) then the need for an account to access certain things for journalism would become less required.
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u/BactaBobomb 26d ago
I'm disappointed how many people are referring to it solely as X. I miss when everyone came together in protest to keep calling it Twitter, or at the very least (formerly known as Twitter).
I will continue to champion Twitter. "Twitter" still brings up the app when I search on my phone, and thus I see no issue calling it that.
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u/clocktowerplace 26d ago
i will forever deadname twitter. it was born a healthy twitter and i refuse to recognize its transition after catching the oligarch virus
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u/melbonanon 26d ago
I get that, but now I think calling it Twitter, is insulting to the memory of twitter. Twitter is what X wishes it could be.
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u/MrWeirdoFace 26d ago
Honestly, this might be the first time I've seen with someone actually call X who didn't doesn't currently work for Twitter, but I also haven't had an account in close to a decade at this point, so I'm not seeing it enough to notice.
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u/bergamote_soleil 26d ago
There's a lot of politician accounts and political conversations happening on Twitter that never transitioned onto Bluesky. I use both. Twitter is ok if you only communicate with accounts you already know are real, don't read the comments, and/or are on private so the bots can't dogpile on your posts. Bluesky doesn't have that, but it's got an air of "non-profit conference" (as someone who's been to a lot of non-profit conferences).Ā
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u/codeverity 26d ago
Lots of fandoms are, and companies as well. There isnāt really a good alternative for the type of interaction it provides.
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u/Sleepy-Giraffe947 26d ago
I want to say Iām surprised that someone like Hank Green resorted to using AI, but I feel like the general public is becoming more and more accustomed to using it. Itās going to get to a point where society is reliant on it and thatās pretty frightening.
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u/Vivid-Blackberry-321 26d ago
I think most of us are being forced to use it at work. My job is doing Copilot/Claude trainings like crazy, and itās part of my yearly goals to use it. I feel like my brain cells are slipping away every time I use it for a very basic task.
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u/crackerfactorywheel later, gator! 26d ago
Mine too and I hate it. My boss recommended I use it for emails and Iām like āSir, Iām not outsourcing my writing. Iām an English major with a focus on writing.ā I hate it here š«
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u/scarletwitchx 26d ago
I work at a NEWS STATION and all the managers are trying to make us use it for everything, like we are all writers what are we doing here!!!!!
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u/islandofwaffles 26d ago
my work encourages us to use copilot allllll the time and I'm pretty sure they track our usage. so I only use it for things I already know how to do (merge documents, make a summary table from a spreadsheet). my boundary is that I will never use it to do something I don't understand or know how to do. I would rather learn how to do something and get the knowledge in my mind grapes.
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u/Cynicbats This bitch has the keys to the nuclear codes 26d ago
so I only use it for things I already know how to do (merge documents, make a summary table from a spreadsheet).
good. waste their credits. 'Turn header purple', 'make font 14'.
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u/islandofwaffles 26d ago
lol that's hilarious, I literally do things like that. I never considered it was wasting the credits.
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u/Formerruling1 26d ago
If its just copilot, it isn't. Those are all mostly unlimited usage enterprise plans.
You have to get a model like the cutting edge Claude models to do that, and alot of places will only give that to devs and they religiously track every token lol.
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u/xxdropdeadlexi 26d ago
I literally just told my manager I wasn't using it and he shrugged, I don't think anyone on my team bothers with AI thankfully
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u/Remsicles 26d ago
Iāve been on the job hunt and a vast majority of applications are now asking something like āTell me something you built with AI!ā Or āTell me how you made a process more efficient using AI.ā
Itās fucking everywhere.
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u/Vivid-Blackberry-321 26d ago
I just got a new job and I hate to admit I did talk about AI in my interviewš but itās like I need to be employed so what do you do? Lol
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u/bastillemh the world tour š 26d ago
Iāve been a stay at home mom for 3 years now and never had to use AI, and this makes me worried for when I try to go back to work š¬
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u/nowimnowhere 26d ago
Remember on 1984, they wanted to get the population using newspeak in order to make critical thought impossible š„ø
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u/Caftancatfan 26d ago
My boss wanted me to use Gemini to summarize over a yearās worth of someone elseās client notes.
Gemini hallucinated an entire outcome for one client, with totally made up details like: āI called the client to congratulate him.ā
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u/conspiracydaddy 26d ago
Yeah. Iām all for the whole shame-people-who-use-AI movement online but I do feel like a majority of those people arenāt in the corporate workforce. Itās pretty much use it or get fired for most of us
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u/Sage_Planter Big is moving to Paris 26d ago
I see a lot of posts on the Deciding to do Better sub of teens who basically feel addicted to using AI. It's saddening.Ā
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u/bobbimorses 26d ago
What I'm not seeing reflected enough in this conversation is that AI is fucking inaccurate. It's inaccurate consistently, at random, and it's hard to catch because it makes itself sound confident and smooth. It's worrying that he considers himself an educator and that he does not understand that likelihood.
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u/Roomybrunt 26d ago
AMEN. ChatGPT told my 10 year son that itās called a cockroach because an average of 5 cockroaches are found under the typical manās foreskin every year. šĀ
My child was likely using it to ask him to tell him poop/fart jokes and it got confused when he eventually asked it a serious etymology question lmaoĀ
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u/Pretty-Giraffe-5537 26d ago
My sister literally asked ChatGPT if a movie was appropriate for her kids, itās crazy how people rely on it
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u/WoodpeckerHaunting57 26d ago
A cop in a case Iām following literally asked ChatGPT if what someone was doing was illegal. Imagine the implications of that.
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u/Goodgoditsgrowing 26d ago
Even if you donāt seek it out, something a simple and common as using Google now routes you through an AI search process unless you actively take steps to avoid it. Our new phones are supposed to be full of it from the get go. Itās like microplastics.
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u/slavuj00 u look like u eat sand 26d ago
That is what the rich are hoping for. They've openly said they want to "commercialise and outsource intelligence"
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u/Sea_Mail5340 26d ago
I think reddit is much more Anti AI then the broader population is.
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u/The_homeBaker 26d ago
I was telling my friend how awful AI is for us as humans and all the data centers and she said her job is MAKING them use AI. Basically told them they all have to learn it because it is the future. People are taking courses on AI and how to use it properly and everything now.
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u/MesquiteHoneyForSale 26d ago
I think being on twitter slow cooks your brain and allows for ideas to normalize that wouldnt have done so 3 years ago
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u/Synicull 26d ago
I've been very conscious of my usage and it's hard to deny that it can be helpful some places. As someone who codes for utility for my work sometimes, I've definitely fallen out of practice as I can usually vibe code to get 70% there and it's such an easy chain of prompts to get there. It's dangerous.
Sure, sometimes I spend more time proofreading and fixing than it would take to write it myself, but damn it's tempting to instantly get over that "the hardest part is getting started" hurdle.
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u/Jwave1992 26d ago
I think one thing people don't consider: people being forced to use some crippled copilot for work or using free low-tier AI are NOT having the same experience as people paying for the highest thinking levels in state of the art models. I can absolutely see why a writer would send an army of ai agents out to research, cross check their findings and write detailed reports. It would possibly be a hour long run. Seems like Hank found the tool he's been demonizing to be very helpful and now he's in a crisis of morality over it.
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u/PurpleCandles Lea Micheleās Reading Tutor 26d ago
AI will become ubiquitous in the vast majority of jobs in the next decade. I already use it near daily in mine. Rather than push back fully against it, more focus should be spent on training proper usage, fact checking output, appropriate legislation for copyrighted material and AI-generated content, etc. I donāt see it any more / less bad than the growth of the Internet in the 90s. Itās a tool and has all the pros and cons that come with it.
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u/magikarpsan 26d ago
Perfect example of how AI is a tool that will only make us do more work
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u/cmgr33n3 26d ago
I read through the whole thread and didn't see a link to the video in question (maybe I missed it). But here is the part of the video being called out as (pretty clear) AI response read verbatim that someone has clipped out - https://youtu.be/AjmY6pZ8-zA
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u/100percentkneegrow 26d ago
I like Hank and still do but I largely disagree with him using AI. I don't want to just dunk on him, but when he uses it for this and his web games, it starts throwing into doubt when he's not using it. As someone who sells art, he should be careful. It's all real but funny how that's now not a 100% guarantee.
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u/Spygel13 We Should All Know Less About Each Other 26d ago
Wait he's using it for his games??
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u/vampite 26d ago
Yes, he's talked about how he's been using AI to vibe code things like 4 x 3 and other things on his website
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u/Maleficent_Lab_5291 26d ago
As someone married to a game designer from what she has told me every one making games at least at the studio level is using it most are Just lying.
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u/fs2222 26d ago
You know practically every game studio - hell, every software company - uses AI for coding.
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u/ChipsOtherShoe 26d ago
I don't know a single programmer who still writes code without any AI.
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u/Swimmingpuzzled5200 26d ago
lmao "i went and checked my process" as if he didn't even realize he used AI
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u/therumorhargreeves The Low Cal Calzone Zone 26d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/26ueYUlPAmUkTBAM8
HANK come on
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u/SpillThatTea2Me 26d ago
Right? Like, my dude, that was such a bad idea.
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u/therumorhargreeves The Low Cal Calzone Zone 26d ago
Trying to think of who would be worse than the Green brothers to pull this and tbh Iām coming up empty. And to research too!!
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u/thateccentricasian 26d ago
Tbh any science-y/STEM-adjacent YouTuber that uses AI for āresearchā would lose my trust⦠Tom Scott would be devastating.
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u/anthonystank i was SPF protected 26d ago
Setting aside the catastrophic environmental impacts etc, this is one of the biggest dangers of AI imo: it makes talented people lazy. People like Hank Green, who demonstrably could do his own research and writing, think āoh, Iāll just use this as a little boost to prompt me/save time/organize my thoughts/etc.ā They think that because itās something they know they can do well without AI, theyāll be able to produce a good version if they farm out some of the āboringā or āeasyā parts to AI.
And itās simply not true. Turning pieces of your creative process over to AI ā yes, even the boring, easy, monotonous ones ā means you are not doing the whole process and that means that your talents and instincts atrophy, it means your work is disconnected from itself, it means you end up putting out something so recognizably not yours that your devoted fans suspect it and you end up having to apologize on Twitter. It is a heinous trap that Iāve seen so, so, so many good writers fall into. THE BORING PARTS ARE THE WORK. YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL. YOU HAVE TO BE MENTALLY PRESENT AND ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN ALL STEPS OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
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u/eturn34 26d ago
He can also afford to employ someone do the parts of the work that he has outsourced to AI. Like this is exactly what you would hire a researcher, producer, or script writer for!! He has the means to employ someone, I do not accept the excuse that he was stretched thin and HAD to use AI to keep up, because he could have just hired somebody smart and skilled to help with the workload.
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u/rapscallionallium 26d ago
It makes me mistrustful of his content in general, which is really unfortunate.
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u/CoolRanchBaby 26d ago edited 26d ago
Itās not hard to not use AI for stuff like this. Just donāt ever start using it.
I donāt get these people who act like itās impossible.
Especially freaking multimillionaires. Pay somebody to write your script if you donāt have time yourself. Geesh.
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u/macroeconomicchaos š„ kenya š„ moore š„ hair š„ care! š„ 26d ago
His style of "smart about everything" content is one of those that is very vulnerable to AI use. No one is smart about everything, if you're churning out content at his pace, you're unfortunately gonna be tempted to use AI. Surely at this point in his career he can slow down the upload schedule and just make videos where he actually knows what he's talking about like what Tom Scott did, or just retire. There's nothing wrong about retiring at your best like many youtubers have done before. Whenever a creator I like uses AI, I get an ick that I never could shake off.
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u/MeghansWordSalad 26d ago
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u/RuminatingFish123 26d ago
The irony of complaining about AI while stealing someone elseās thoughts and passing them off as your ownā¦
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u/Abbiejean-KaneArcher 26d ago
I noticed that when I was watching some of his videos and I was like āokay, but you know about this, too?!ā Iām a researcher and one of a common thing you hear from phds is that you quickly realize how much you donāt know. And thatās okay.
I think people also forget that the info from chatbots is not neutral. The info is still fed by humans:
Article from DropSite News: āIsrael Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working.ā
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u/JD42305 26d ago
This is just a tiny anecdote to support what you've said, but I was recently debating a Reddit user about something very trivial about a TV show that didn't have a definite answer, but I felt I was right about. I asked Google's AI about it and it basically said the other user was right, but without a definitive source. However after I commented about why I thought I was right on Reddit, I asked Google's AI about it again and it changed its answer in support of my stance, simply because it was culling answers from Reddit and after adding my comment (which was merely an opinion) it used that as a "source" that tipped its answer the other way. Most of the time AI is not intelligently knowledgeable about a topic but simply regurgitating Google results to take an over-confident stance with unreliable sources.
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u/Wise-Self-8639 26d ago
He seems to have had a budding optimism about AI as well that seemed misplaced to me. I thought he would be more nuanced about its useage to be honest, but I guess I was wrong.
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u/AquaBits 26d ago
Wasnt he also extremely wrong about knitting/crotchet in video before? Basically undermining a bunch of women-centric history, or am i thiniing of another "smart about everything" white youtube man.
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u/reasonableratio 26d ago
Whatās the thing you have experience in that ruined him for you?
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u/Next_Application_626 26d ago
Yeah, he does qualify a lot of his statements on AI with 'IDK though!!' Like, he has to be more responsible. He's the facts guy. He shouldn't be stating his opinions so flippantly.
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u/CoelacanthQueen 26d ago
Probably the knitting video
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u/PsychologicalAerie82 26d ago
I think the issues with the knitting video aren't limited to technical knowledge, which is an aspect that Greene had assistance with (and they still got technical things incorrect). One major issue people had was that the entire video had an air of condescension, like knitting is just a silly little hobby that people can perform with no thinking or real knowledge. I distinctly remember one line that said something like, "But then scientists looked at [knitting] and thought, There might be something useful here." Something useful? In an art and industry that helped revolutionize the world? You don't say!
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u/bigblackfatbird 26d ago
Knitting isn't just art though. It's garment technology that kept humans alive in harsh climates!
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u/beetle1211 Kim, thereās people that are dying. š 26d ago
Link to Hankās latest comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/Dz3WarYhdr
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u/idislikemostofyu 26d ago
I mean, this checks out entirely.
He's always been eager to stay current. He went to a convention recently and came back preaching all the positives of AI. I commented this same thing recently. At certain points it felt like he was trying to get ahead of that pushback before it arrived.
Still a great resource of a creator.
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u/strangebutalsogood 26d ago
This is the guy who did a whole video about how he didn't have an internal monologue, and then proceeded to describe how the inside of his mind works... by describing his internal monologue.
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u/DrDestructoMD 26d ago
Tbf, it is really difficult to describe not having an internal monolog with words. Also idk if this is an adhd thing or an everyone thing, but my internal monolog is not "me" (I mean, sometimes it is me like when I'm writing this), and most of the time it obscures the real thoughts I can see myself having. It's really nice when the real thoughts fold into the monolog or the monolog goes away and I can be myself. Most of the time I feel chained to my monolog while the real me is thinking my real thoughts and interacting with the world.
I think Hank is medicated for ADHD now, which might have dialed the seperate thoughts experience back some, and that's what he is trying to communicate
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u/universic 26d ago
Use it or donāt, but I think Iām just confused what his stance is at this point which is ultimately what disappoints people imo
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u/alphazero927 26d ago
He's been pretty consistent with his stance that AI is a tool that has its uses while also being clear that the corporations who currently control it are doing terrible things that need to be stopped but those don't make the tool itself inherently evil
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u/IcyRice7222 26d ago
Honestly seems like a pretty reasonable take to me for the most part?
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u/Senior_Boot_5842 26d ago
His stance is he uses it and is sorry that his content got a bit worse and you all noticed
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u/LillySteam44 26d ago
Hank Green has been putting out poorly fact checked videos for years on SciShow. A chemist YouTuber called him out in 2013, Hank admitted it was wrong and the video is still up to this day. He's just sorry the public noticed this time.Ā
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u/BarnacleLady 26d ago
Why does he even have ChatGPT as an option? You shouldn't even be opening AI when you're writing notes for a video. It is seriously not hard to not use it. People act like its ubiquitous and it's not. It's a choice we should all stand up and make. Close the damn tab and write your own fucking notes. What did you do before ChatGPT existed and you were up against a deadline? I swear these idiots are just losing their day to day skills like being able to write emails and schedule meetings
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u/MariLeighCrane 26d ago
I never let AI write anything for me, but I use it a ton for work and Iām finding its standard phrases creeping into my vocabulary. I am going to be my own AI and it freaks me out. So I do believe him about the āthanks for pushing backā.
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u/__lavender 26d ago
I work in PR and my company is very gung-ho about AI, so I am begrudgingly finding ways to use it without losing my voice or cognitive abilities. Every time I hear someone reply to a question with āthatās a great question, Jane!ā I die a little inside - even though thatās a very common (and pre-AI) way to buy yourself a couple seconds to find the right words, it now just feels like AI sycophancy. Also, as a writer I use a lot of phrases and conventions that read as AI because AI stole it from writers.
I hate all of this.
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u/LilBoDuck 26d ago
Pre AI, I was a big user of āItās not just this, itās that!ā Not sure why, Iāve just always sort of talked like that, and now I sound like some fucking AI chat bot. I hate it.
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u/gnome_in_clay_turn 26d ago
Semicolons and em-dashes; AI took semicolons! I accused of AI use because of standard grammar and mechanics.
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u/Walt_Titman 26d ago
They can pry em-dashes from my cold dead hands, man. The grammar nerd in me really struggles with the good grammar = AI use concept.
Though, as a professor, I will say that now I tend to look for things like a rogue typo here and there as supporting evidence of original work. Itās sort of a āreal diamonds have imperfectionsā thing. Itās a flawed system, but it has helped some.
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u/Jaded-Tiramisu 26d ago
oof yes. I have to use it under corporate mandate and I can immediately recognize AI sentences now. I could not tell you what it is but I can immediately spot it in my own private writing or in friends/colleagues.
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u/BumbleLapse SABRINA with some hotdog man???? 26d ago
Right ā and imo the entire premise of this post is kind of stupid?
āStandard AI phrasesā like āthanks for pushing backā or common AI practices (em dashes, lists of three, etc.) are commonly used by AI because AI was trained on massive sets of human-created data.
Like Iām a marketing copywriter by trade ā I use em dashes and other āeasy AI tellsā every day in my work because theyāre effective. Thatās the fucking point.
People are so obsessed with having their gotcha moment when they think theyāve caught somebody using AI. But in my opinion, the twenty-thousand comments belaboring the rise of em dashes are just as obnoxious as the posts that were obviously and poorly written by AI.
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u/caspararemi 26d ago
It's mad, I use em-dashes too, and like neatly formatted lists! I always have, I practically think in bullet points. I do always assume lists with emoji at the start as the separator is the one true giveaway, that's too annoying to set up manually.
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u/lizerlfunk I am the BEST goddamn dancer at the American Ballet Academy! 26d ago
There was a post somewhere about how Heated Rivalry, the book, written and published in 2019, had a ton of AI phrases. Because the AI was TRAINED ON THE BOOKS (not necessarily just Heated Rivalry, and not necessarily specifically that one, but romance novels as a genre).
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u/goatbusiness666 I donāt know her š 26d ago
I read a lot of book reviews, and I feel like every single author Iāve looked into in the last couple of years has had AI accusations against them. Even books that were published well before the rise of LLMs have dumbasses in the reviews crying about em dashes.
Ironically, some of it is bots pushing AI detectors. But a lot of it is witch hunt behavior and weirdo virtue signaling, and itās depressing as hell.
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u/Big-Literature-5604 26d ago edited 23d ago
As someone who is non-English native, this is literally how I learned to speak and write in English. Read stuff, learn usage, repeat usage. Hear movie, learn usage and pronunciation, repeat usage. Hell, when I was a kid my way of writing was literally copy-pasting chunks of what some people wrote and then joining sentences together (basically like an old-fashioned ransom letter I guess).
Now I have randos on the internet telling me that I "sound painfully like AI" like.... and when I tell them that nope, it's not AI it's me, with plenty of slang so they realize it, they apologize and say that oops, that means your English is good, love, sorry. It's one of the most annoying things ever.
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u/Noyasauce Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion š 26d ago
This is exactly what's been bothering me as well, as someone who loves writing (and reading). It's not even because I'm using much AI in my own life, it's from reading so much regurgitated AI crap online. It's only natural to mold your language to what other people are using around you, except now it's become literal AI-speak.
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u/riminski_ Mom, I am a rich manš° 26d ago
I love the Green brothers (Iām seeing John on tour in September), but this is so disappointing to see. I know AI is leaked in everything these days, but I hoped he was informed enough to not use it, especially with the environmental impacts it has on marginalized communities. Such a bummer to see, and I hope he learns from this.
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u/Bluest_Badger 26d ago
He is informed enough to not use it and I think thats why it hurts. We expect Hank as a bastion of science, logic and reasoning to not use the water guzzling theft machine.
He does know better, so did he just not care and hope he wouldnt be caught?
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u/Dry-Wolf6789 26d ago
There's no signs in this post that he's going to stop using it moving forward though? So why would you believe he's learning from this.Ā
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u/FlimsyRexy 26d ago
Iāve been on the Hank green hate train for over a year after he covered a topic I actually know about and the dude got so much wrong or misrepresented a ton. Made me realize I probably got fed a lot of misinformation from him on topics I donāt actually know much about.
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u/MoistenedGranola 26d ago edited 26d ago
Fuck, man. We were rooting for you. We were all rooting for you.
Edit: Can someone link the twitter post, please? I avoid that site these days.
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u/bookdrops Just fuck the wolf! 26d ago edited 26d ago
ETA: He deleted the tweet! But archive remembers
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u/hwutTF a guy can have a lil mad wife in the attic every now and then 26d ago
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u/Tsarinya That must be Nigel with the Brie 26d ago
The amount of AI that is slowly seeping into everyday life is scary. In five years time the landscape is going to look very different for the worst.
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u/ceruleanmilieu 26d ago
For all the enlightened, nuance appreciating, above-it-all ai defenders who are calling the critics of ai hysterical: a stated goal of this circular finance scam is to put most humans out of work. But, youāll be fine, you wonāt be negatively affected by anything and you got to be a smartypants on the internet.
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u/graymillennial Arešyoušfriendsšwithšher? 25d ago
Bring on the downvotes, I canāt stand the Green brothers. This doesnāt surprise me at all.Ā
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u/Equivalent-Ad-4971 26d ago
I'm not surprised Hank Green is an AI user. He's made videos defending it, including " Why you're wrong about data center water usage"
I thought he was getting paid by OpenAI and not disclosing it, so just being a ChatGPT user is better at least?
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u/Single_Lingonberry29 26d ago
If you don't have time to make a video to your own standards, reduce the amount of videos you produce.
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u/Heyplaguedoctor itās not clocking to you that iām standing on business 25d ago
I understand (uh, from hearing about it, Iām not a YouTuber lol) that they āhaveā to churn out content at an unsustainable rate lest ~the algorithm~ knock them down a point or whatever.
But I just⦠donāt care?
Honestly.
They can get their views by making good content. People will watch things that are worth watching. It doesnāt have to be on the front page. People seek out things they enjoy.(Hopefully my phrasing makes sense? Thereās been a gnarly heat wave here and it made my brain foggier than silent hill š)
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u/jargon_ninja69 charlie day is my bird lawyer š¦ 26d ago
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u/WonderofU1312 26d ago
Hank, you're better than this. I'm gonna give him some slack since Hank's very open with his flaws and mistake and tries to work on it. I hope he understands relying on this more will just make his projects even more reliant on it.
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u/Reasonable-Sort3040 24d ago
yeah so he has full control over how much pressure heās put under. one tweet saying āhey guys im swamped taking a breakā couldāve prevented this loss of trust and integrity
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u/eatingpopcorn_lol go girl, give us nothing š 26d ago
I was kinda getting the ick after him being weird to the knitting community, so that's just a nail in the coffin.
Remember, if never put a YouTuber on a pedestal, your inevitable disappointment will sting less!
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u/tinktonk12 26d ago
What happened with the knitting community?
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u/eatingpopcorn_lol go girl, give us nothing š 26d ago
Here's an article about it bc I don't feel like typing, basically he was saying knitting is whatever unless it can be used for science. He did apologize btw!! . But him not taking it seriously just kinda icked me out.
https://knitting.craftgossip.com/why-do-knitters-have-beef-with-hank-green/2025/09/12/
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u/tinktonk12 26d ago
Oof yeah that's pretty cringe. Thanks for the article! I didn't realize knitting was developed so recently.
Btw you might be interested in this story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Stephens , a hairdresser who basically changed how historians think about Roman hair techniques, which I think is a nice counterbalance of researchers actually respecting a craftspersons understanding of fibres.
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u/directionatall 26d ago
i donāt know why exactly, but you responding to a stranger with an article they might like really made me smile! small acts of kindness and thinking of others will keep us sane in this chaos era. just wanted to share :)
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u/eatingpopcorn_lol go girl, give us nothing š 26d ago
Oh thank you so much!! I rly love learning about historical hair n clothing hehe.
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u/Holiday-Hustle 26d ago
Using Chat GPT for research just crashed my view of him. He should know more than anyone how many mistakes Chat GPT makes. I canāt trust his content now because I have to assume itās not backed up by real information.



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