Maybe its me but I had to look at the term sealioning and for context for other people

According to merriam-webster, sealioning/sealions are:

> 'Sealioning' is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the other debate participant with no intention of real discourse.

> Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter. These questions are phrased in a way that may come off as an effort to learn and engage with the subject at hand, but are really intended to erode the goodwill of the person to whom they are replying, to get them to appear impatient or to lash out, and therefore come off as unreasonable.

The point isn’t that people who’ve worked for Google aren’t allowed to criticize. The point is that someone who chose to work for Google recently could not actually believe that building datacenters is “raping the planet”. He’s become a GenAI critic, and he knows GenAI critics get mad at datacenters, so he’s adopted extreme rhetoric about them without stopping to think about whether this makes sense or is consistent with his other beliefs.

"Fuck you I hate AI" isn't exactly a deep statement needing credibility. It's the same knee jerk lacking in nuance shit we see repeated over and over and over.

If anyone were actually interested in a conversation there is probably one to be had about particular applications of gen-AI, but any flat out blanket statements like his are not worthy of any discussion. Gen-AI has plenty of uses that are very valuable to society. E.g. in science and medicine.

Also, it's not "sealioning" to point out that if you're going to be righteous about a topic, perhaps it's worth recognizing your own fucking part in the thing you now hate, even if indirect.

I think Rob gets a pass, yes, due to his extensive contributions to software.

And he is allowed to work for google and still rage against AI.

Life is complicated and complex. Deal with it.

> cares about the craft

Craft is gone. It is now mass manufactured for next to nothing in a quality that can never be achieved by hand coding.

(/s about quality, but you can see where it’s going)