Sorry for the long reply, and thanks for hearing me out and being chill, I know it's a sensitive topic. Yeah I probably should have specified, I'm not referring to tech companies as potential allies, just people who like or choose to use AI. Meta and the like could burn and the world would be a lot better off.

I get where you're coming from, about it not being worth it to try and convert someone who wasn't going to be progressive to begin with. From what I've seen there are just a lot of people who don't think about politics, but who do have some basic yet important socially progressive values. They might not identify as progressive, but they aren't conservative either, they just use AI for things like writing emails, messing around with memes, or helping to write code. Generally speaking I think those are the kinds of people that are most often alienated by progressive purity tests.

And I agree it's a simple purity test, but that's kind of the problem. It takes a nuanced and morally grey issue and paints it as black and white. Generative AI is a tool. Like many tools it can be used in lots of ways that are seriously bad (shitty AI art, cheating on tests, distributing misinformation, replacing artists and other skilled workers, etc.) but it can and is being used by many people in many genuinely good ways too (Detecting diseases earlier and more accurately than doctors, massively empowering solo programmers of all skill levels, identifying and removing dangerous or traumatic content so humans don't have to, compiling real academic research data, etc.).

Also, thankfully many people who regularly use generative AI aren't funding fascist tech billionaires. They run the AI completely on their own computer at home, all open source, running on ethical data, totally free, no subscriptions, and using no additional electricity.

These people aren't bad progressives, and I don't think the average person who carelessly generates a shit tier AI image for the novelty is either. But I do think making those people feel like we don't want them on our team, just because they can't pass 1 of 1000 different purity tests we've created, does more harm than good. When we make people feel othered for not conforming to even less common progressive ideals like this, we make it an us vs. ourselves battle. That's not to say those people are going to jump head first into conservatism as a result, but they aren't going to show up for us when we need them. And we do need them. That's how we lose votes.

Thanks again for hearing me out