AI companies are parasites

Cory Dransfeldt argues that AI companies operate as parasites on society: they scrape the internet without compensation, train models on stolen data, sell metered access, and repeat until the host is killed. The old bargain of traffic for indexing is gone, replaced by scrapers that overload infrastructure, collapse clickthroughs, and destroy communities. Licensing deals like Reddit's still depend on human-generated data from flagging communities. Data centers bring pollution, higher utility rates, and few lasting jobs. The result: stilted prose, derivative images, and incomprehensible code.