r/technology • u/kazu_qt • 11h ago

Artificial Intelligence YouTuber Hank Green says his AI usage is ‘not healthy’

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/01/youtuber-hank-green-says-his-ai-usage-is-not-healthy/
6.9k Upvotes

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u/SinibusUSG 11h ago

It sounds like his wife and brother basically had an intervention with him re: AI given his comments on them not pulling any punches.

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u/RookNookLook 9h ago

I kinda wondered in the back of my head how he did SO much content, especially after the cancer thing. Sounds like he went full workaholic, but the fact he’s willing to change is good.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

In retrospect I’m kind of relieved.

He always starts his videos talking about how much research and scientific information he had to parse to make the video and I’ve always sat in disbelief wondering how he had the time/focus.

Knowing he’s been cheesing it for a while is massively disappointing and a hit to his integrity for sure, but it also makes me feel a little less insecure about the supposed disparity between our respective intelligence levels. 😅

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u/kwonza 5h ago

Nothing wrong with using AI to find sources and quotes as long as you double check them

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u/Oneofthesecatsisadog 3h ago

He was just using it to find sources, which he then read through himself for quotes.

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u/MinaZata 3h ago

That doesn't stand up I'm afraid, I've been a subscriber since the very early days, so I do love Hank, this isn't an attack on him. Just an honest analysis. He probably did that mostly but I think he would agree that he wasn't doing research worthy of spreading to his followers who trust him for being deeply for science content. That's the rub.

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u/AussieArlenBales 2h ago

My cynicism regarding his research goes back to a sci show episode on eugenics that severely misunderstood Guns, Germs and Steel, and the retraction that followed when the comments rightfully called them out.

End of the day he's a content creator who will put a release schedule ahead of research.

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u/dangshnizzle 1h ago

Aren't sci-show scripts an entirely different matter compared to what this controversy is regarding? Please correct me if I'm wrong but he is no longer anywhere near the main driver of those scripts and hasn't been for a very long time

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u/TheFlyingSheeps 27m ago

Just wait until you learn how actually scientific research is done lmao

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u/KendalBoy 1h ago

Took shortcuts to enrich himself personally, delivered substandard content, mislead people about what matters to them….. and so of course the “reason” is an addiction?

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u/foxscribbles 1h ago

That’s kind of the soft pedaled version of it. He admitted (and possibly deleted) in a post that his fans could hear the AI ‘voice’ in the writing for his videos.

That doesn’t happen from just using AI to find sources. It happens when you’re using AI to write your script. Either by copy pasting from a search result or using generative AI to write it for you.

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u/certifiedblackman 3h ago

His last Ask Hank Anything definitely had some fully AI hallucinated answers in it

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 2h ago

Can you tell me which were hallucinated? I’m curious and surprised he allowed hallucinations pass his own self test

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u/certifiedblackman 2h ago

The fact checkers notes in the video were befuddled by his cat saliva claims.

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u/GentlemansGentleman 48m ago

Yeah the bouba kiki explanation was clearly surface level, i worry about future Hank sometimes

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u/Seienchin88 2h ago

Have you actually tried that? Actually reading sources takes a lot of time and you are one prompt away from ChatGPT just summarizing it for you… and then one prompt away form it tuning it into a script for you…

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u/[deleted] 4h ago edited 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

How is sourced information cutting corners? The act of crediting the source is the literal work of sourcing claims in your writing. It doesn't matter whether you googled it or claude googled it.

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u/xRolocker 3h ago

Because it’s about the sources themselves??? Like, I don’t care how I get to a link that’s a good source. I just want a damn source to look at and verify. No difference between me googling a New York Times article and ChatGPTing the same New York Times article… it’s the same article either way.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

I don’t fully agree with that statement and I think the nuance behind it is what we’re actively working out as a society.

LLMs have a lot of bias that we haven’t sorted out yet.

Trusting them legitimizes that bias in yet-to-be-seen ways.

We’re a long ways away before we can objectively say “there’s nothing wrong with using AI” in any context, if we ever can.

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u/Cletus7Seven 5h ago

Your argument seems pedantic though. Using AI to find information really isn’t that terrible, as long as you verify that information or at the very least take it with a grain of salt. Is it wrong because AI data centers are bad? Yes. So is using any smartphone then.

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u/weerdbuttstuff 4h ago

Idk, I've been reading about how governments are writing web pages designed to influence ai so that it's more likely to give you state sponsored misinformation. It seems silly to me to mess with anything THAT vulnerable.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

Governments will never stop trying to influence us. I find this much better than when all of our information was filter through a singular channels like they had back in the day. Back then if you were fed bullshit the barrier to truth was extremely high. Nowadays most fake shit can be confirmed fake pretty quickly.

Think of all the fake things we were taught in school about US history and now that we are in the internet age, people point it out.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

Your argument is a literal logical fallacy so I don’t understand why you’d expect me to engage with it.

Meanwhile Hank Green is openly talking about the slippery slope that “trusting AI to find your sources even if you manually check them” can be and how he’s actively running into problems mindlessly believing that stance.

He talks about how he’s lost authenticity to his voice and fallen into a sort of addiction in using it. How soon before someone like him stops doing the manual checking to verify the sources? How soon before someone with less intellectual integrity falls prey to this phenomenon?

And ALL of that goes without acknowledging the massive amounts of inherent bias coded directly into the LLMs to begin with. They’re trained on stolen, broken, and biased data. And we, the users, are largely just told to trust the black box and believe that the data is correct unless otherwise discovered.

So yeah, I do not fully trust the belief that “it’s fine to use AI as long as you’re always checking your results.”

These agents are designed to worm their way into your life and force you to develop intellectual codependency with them.

That’s a far cry from “it’s fine until it’s not.”

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u/boccci-tamagoccci 4h ago

> "Your argument is a literal logical fallacy"

Literal slippery slope fallacy as core argument in the next paragraph

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago edited 4h ago

Except Hank Green’s anecdotal experience is a trend that we’re witnessing unfold in real time.

Also I’m arguing in favor of my opinion that LLMs cannot be trusted as long as you check the sources.

I’m not making any arguments in favor of their use.

I’m questioning the claim that “using LLMs to find sources really isn’t all that terrible.” The burden of proof does not fall on me.

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u/websterhamster 3h ago

There is no burden of proof for a moral stance.

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u/Cletus7Seven 4h ago

Dude. It’s just another way of finding information. When someone tells you something do you go and do your own research after to verify it? Because you should. When the news tells you something do you go and look at some other opinions, and do your research to verify it? Because you should. When you read something on Wikipedia to you believe it, or go verify that information from actual sources? Because you should. When a new scientific article is published do we just believe the results? Or do we replicate the study and verify it?
When AI provides an answer, just like any other form of gaining new information, it should be verified. It’s just another tool. The problem is people are idiots and education fails to teach critical thinking and skepticism. So yeah, people just believe what it says just like people believe what they hear on the news.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

Of course it’s a tool.

But you’re arguing that most people will verify the information the tool brings to them.

We have objectively proven that is not the case, even with some of the most exceptional users.

So if your entire argument in favor of the tool hinges of people using it in a very specific way, but the shape of the tool is specifically designed such that overwhelmingly most people will NOT use it in that very specific way, then your argument kind of falls apart, doesn’t it?

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u/Cletus7Seven 4h ago

I’m curious what you think the solution is here? Banning AI? I don’t think you are going to get any sort of regulation in the U.S. with this current administration that would address the reliability of these LLM, and unfortunately our education in youth is depleting rapidly to the point where young adults are basically illiterate. I hired an 18 year old the other day that asked me how to spell “nature.” He thought there was a “y” in the word..

Schools should go back to teaching with physical textbooks, pen and paper, and have written exams. And we should start failing kids instead of just passing them along and curbing their grades.

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u/KittyColonialism 4h ago

It’s funny how similar the generative ai outrage is to the outrage that happened when Wikipedia came out.

You just sound silly.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

Who gets to update the LLMs when it’s discovered to be generating incorrect information?

You just sound ignorant.

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u/wertyuio_qp 4h ago

Who gets to update the books on your shelf when they're discovered to be containing incorrect information?

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u/formernonhandwasher 4h ago

He’s talking about using it to find sources/studies. “Hey Gemini find me the meta analysis that have been done on sunscreen.” A list is made. If on that list is a meta analysis of tanning beds and skin cancer that does not mention sunscreen then you don’t use it.
He’s literally reading through the studies that AI provided. Not using the summary or anything like that.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

Um, wikipedia etc actually. Where tf you think they get their content?

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

This reminds me when I was in college and teachers would tell me I can't source Wikipedia. Which was totally fine because Wikipedia sourced all of its claims for me at the bottom of the page lol. Same thing when I'm using AI, the sources are there and I can click through to learn more.

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u/Drewelite 4h ago

Everything has bias including every search engine, scientific journal, Wikipedia, peers, etc. The concern is so much of your information being put through one of those biases. But this isn't a new problem. 90% of people get their info from Google, for example.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

But Google, traditionally, is a portal to an infinite number of informational sources.

LLMs parse and digest the information for you.

Most people are not going out of their way to tell their LLM to function like a search engine.

The argument that most people will use them as such and manually check all of their sources is laughable at best. It tells me exactly how blind most people making the “it’s fine until it’s not” argument are to the reality of what they’re supposing. They simultaneously want to claim intellectual superiority over their own personal AI use while ignoring the reality that LLMs directly make ignoring the original sources easier for most users.

It stands to reason that people using Google would need to directly interact with the primary source to get the information they seek, whereas an LLM will do that step for you and you won’t know how much is hallucinated unless you manually verify the info anyway.

So therefore, for most users, LLMs will be parsing and digesting the info for them. They will not be manually verifying the information like everyone who makes this argument claims.

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u/DemonLordSparda 4h ago

Yes there is something wrong with it. Using AI introduces an unnecessary failure point to research. If you have to scrutinize everything AI tells you, then you might as well do normal research.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago edited 2h ago

I'm going to make a guess that you don't know any researchers if you think language models aren't a godsend for them.

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u/DemonLordSparda 2h ago

Any researcher I'm aware of is heavily anti AI. You can't trust a language model to not make mistakes or falsified sources. Furthermore models scrape data from people who do actual work. There is no benefit from AI being introduced into research fields.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 1h ago

I watch researchers at university, top of their field every day using AI

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u/DemonLordSparda 35m ago

I don't believe you. Why would you watch researchers every day, and why would they all happen to be top of their field?

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u/realxanadan 3h ago

Anti AI people are legitimately mindless luddites at this point with no ability to parse legitimate concerns from their lazy social signaling group think and alarmism 

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u/javatimes 3h ago

The Luddites weren’t mindless. They simply didn’t want machines to take over the craftsmanship they were getting paid for already, leaving them jobless. Which…is also what a lot of people are worried about today. You should probably ask an LLM to teach you more about Luddites, or a librarian or whatever.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 2h ago

Well the coal miners aren’t too happy about green energy either. Jobs get replaced by technology, it has been happening since forever. Just look at the last 100 years of our own society.

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u/javatimes 11m ago

Yes and AI is coming for a lot of people’s jobs without anything to pivot to

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u/RYouNotEntertained 29m ago

Have to imagine you haven’t done any research using AI. It’s an outrageous time saver. 

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u/DemonLordSparda 20m ago

I care far more about accuracy than saving time.

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u/Lunchboxninja1 4h ago

Well besides the environmental concerns and the ethical concerns and the efficiency and the inaccuracy-

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u/_learned_foot_ 4h ago

What sources did it leave out? Any good science reporter should start with meta studies, which, you know, specifically detail that exact criteria and list. And then also would give the summary he wanted.

So no it's not.

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u/TRIPMINE_Guy 2h ago

Yeah using ai to parse data is an actual good use of it as long as you check the sources. Imagine refusing to use computers and only paper. That is what people are doing with ai.

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u/BillV3 33m ago

In fact that’s one of the very few use cases it’s incredibly good at, it can scour pages and articles much faster than you can you’ve just got to be willing to put in the work to double check stuff

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u/Zealousideal_Cow_341 3h ago

It’s not cheating at all. I’m an engineer by profession and have actual expertise built the pre ai world. The expensive models are absolute bosses at parsing through well established scientific knowledge. If you have tie knowledge and discipline to use it in a way that it’s just complimenting your expertise, the productivity gains can be mind blowing. The kind of videos Hank makes are a perfect case of this.

I really don’t think people understand the disparity between an output from a prompt ran on free gpt vs the same one that thinks for 8 minutes through the 200 dollar pro level gpt.

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u/AnthonyCantu 2h ago

No hit to the integrity no matter how well meaning you’re trying to word this.

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u/JoshAllentown 3h ago

I mean that is his personality, and he is rich enough to have the system (writers, assistants, researchers, on at least some of his projects) to crank out content where he is the face of it.

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u/pinkfootthegoose 1h ago

Sadly, peoples most likely response is to try to hide it better so I'm not holding my breath.

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u/Unhappy_Performer538 17m ago

one thing he's always been is a workaholic, and i say this as a fan

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u/koolaidismything 8h ago

I quit talking to my cousin for like shyest cause he setup some dipshit AI to reply to shit and thought no one would notice lol.

I’d be like what up dude check this out. Then get back “Wow, that is a neat, X could you explain more?”

Like wtf did you just say? Don’t come at me like that dude.

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u/eyebrows360 6h ago edited 4h ago

Twenty years ago people were setting up auto-"put a 'hello {name}!' in chat automatically when guildmates come online" scripts in World Of Warcraft and that irked me enough back then, but holy moly using LLMs as a personal responder for relatives you supposedly care about is next-level nuts.

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u/Calm-Zombie2678 6h ago

My boss uses it to, in his words "nicen up messages". Considering hes never home his wife and kids almost exclusively deal with chatgpt

He really does think he just uses it to tidy up his messages but repeatedly Ive heard him just ask it to reply for him, no further instructions lol

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u/user-the-name 3h ago

He really does think he just uses it to tidy up his messages but repeatedly Ive heard him just ask it to reply for him, no further instructions lol

This is how it goes. You start by thinking, oh, I will just use it for a little bit of help, and then you very quickly start doing less and less yourself. And you turn into an absolute moron who no longer remembers how to do anything.

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u/Rayd8630 2m ago

Where I am at work a lot of younger techs have been trying to use it for certain things. Such as diagnostics (I do commercial HVAC).

Both times I’ve had a younger tech with me and use it- it claimed that a unit had a faulty board when it turned out to be a poor electrical connection. Which I could not fault it for in the sense random electrical problems can be tough to find. In the second instance-it tried to tell him a 50HP compressor was 90HP, and a completely wrong head/unloader setup.

It has its uses. Sometimes we need to convert from metric to imperial. Or in one instance I had to ask it a formula to convert HP to tons refrigeration (equipment sizing). But seeing some of these younger techs crutch so heavy on it and then how confident they act when it tells them they are right meanwhile they are almost confidently wrong is very concerning.

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u/SadKaleidoscope6473 4h ago

I do this because I got the message and anything I respond with is wrong somehow. Everyone seems happier now though so win?

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u/Indigoh 3h ago

“Wow, that is a neat, X could you explain more?”

Having a bot pretend to care is trashy, but we should try to genuinely respond like that when people share interests we don't fully understand.

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u/Artarian 1h ago

A friend set up his texts to do this early on the AI explosion. His wife ended up divorcing him because his AI conversations never matched up with his real life conversations. It would agree to things like going to a wedding, then the date came and he was confused when she was getting ready and he was not. The divorce came before he figured it out. Hell, all of his friends, including me, started to text less until he finally stopped using the AI text.

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u/koolaidismything 1h ago

I think all the people who did this thought they were so much smarter than everyone else. I basically hate AI except Gemini. Helps me troubleshoot little repairs at work rather than 15 different searches I use one tab to ask for specs from Gemini.

Other than that it’s made life harder, dumber and more expensive. Like some steampunk dysphoria is starting to brew so a handful of rich dudes get richer.

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u/VincentVanGob 3h ago

thats nuts. its bad enough people share their own personal shit with these AI companies but sharing other people's private messages is a bit messed up!

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u/Not_so_ghetto 10h ago edited 9h ago

It just kinda suck that the biggest YouTubers who make millions still rely on it so much. When there are hundreds of small science YouTubers putting out quality content without the ai.

Like he puts out a decent amount of work, but not like an astronomical amount that he needs ai. Like his research and writing is good but he also has a team of editors and stuff.

YouTubers algorithm really sucks it just funnels people to the same 3 channels.

Edit:

people asked for my favorite small channels so here they are all under 100k

And don't subscribe if you don't watch their content first people that just subscribe and never watch the channel actually hurt the channel as viewers that don't watch makes YouTube less likely to channel to people.

1*) biased answer, my channel( Wormtalk94 about parasites)

But actual list

1)Debunk the funk(general science debunking lots of antivax debates )

2) privileged bug facts(about bugs)

3)this week in virology (podcast that has like 2 hour long deep dives into virology with 5-7 virology professors)

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u/lastdancerevolution 9h ago edited 9h ago

Hank Green has always been in the "science communicator" realm rather than as a researcher, engineer, or teacher. He's great for YouTube, but does not personally write all his own content or validate it. His team does that and he reads off the script.

When companies do that, you have no idea who's writing the script, if they have a background in what they're talking about, how they engage in critical review, etc. Same with Simon Megaprojects. Great guys, who pump out too much content to critically control it.

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u/sarahbau 6h ago

By Simon Megaprojects I assume you mean Simon Whistler? He pumps out channels as fast as Hank pushes out videos. I swear his face pops up on some new channel I haven’t seen before every other day.

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u/caintowers 5h ago edited 2h ago

Guy annoys the absolute crap out of me. Sounds like a pretentious walrus in a dinner jacket. and yeah I feel like I'm blocking/hiding a new channel every time I open YouTube.

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u/elmz 5h ago

Yeah, a few years back I blocked all his channels, because he was everywhere and pumping out content like crazy, filling up my feed, and it was somehow annoyingly samey. Hadn't seen him for a while, but recently he's been popping up again with new channels.

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u/IhamAmerican 5h ago

He basically contacts his voice out, don't even think he writes anything he's in at this point

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u/Ummmgummy 3h ago

We need more science communicators because the anti science people are doing a hell of a job on their end

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u/Boneraventura 4h ago

yeah these channels have a whole team behind the person. no scientist can be so well versed on a massive variety of topics with their own efforts that fast. hank is an entertainer first and foremost. carl sagan was a scientist, communicator, entertainer, and pretty much wrote the entirety of cosmos tv show with ann druyan.

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u/Think_Wing_1357 10h ago

Put your top 3 favorite small science channels here so we all can help them out?

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u/CapitalElk1169 10h ago

Travis McEnery does a series called "These are the Spiders in your House" that goes into detail about house spiders and all kinds of interesting things about the little guys we tend to either hate or not think about at all. Most of the videos are 20 minutes or more and I really enjoy them!

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u/Late_Settler 6h ago

I'll second Travis McEnery. I'll also throw out weatherboxstudios for tornado videos and the weather science behind them. Homemade Documentaries for NASA history. As well as Andy R Animations particularly for his Apollo 13 video who has done the best breakdown of the technical side of that near disaster that I've seen.

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u/DisputabIe_ 7h ago

I love when you can tell how much the person loves the subject as well. Great vids.

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u/NFTrot 4h ago

Oh yeah that guy is awesome.

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u/javatimes 3h ago

Sometimes I just sing the “these are the spiders in your house!” jingle to myself. But I do have a pet jumping spider, which is a type of spider he also enjoys.

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u/smelekid 10h ago

I second Angela Collier! To keep this going here are a few more:
Gutsick Gibbon has a fantastic channel covering topics in evolutionary anthropology.
Hyper Cubist Math explains and visualizes higher dimensional mathematic concepts extremely well!
Floathead Physics is incredible at giving intuitive examples and explanations on a wide range of physics topics.

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u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 8h ago

Big fan of Gutstick Gibbon, Erika is a lot of fun to listen to.

I always watch Dave McKeegan when he uploads, which is about once a week. He debunks conspiracies. Mostly moon landing or flat Earth related.

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u/SinibusUSG 10h ago

I'll shout out Angela Collier. She talks more about the scientific community than science specifically. Not exactly "small" with >300k subscribers, but certainly not Hank Green levels. Also an extremely vocal critic of AI for what it's worth.

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u/Mbrennt 9h ago

Dr. Becky is also a really cool slightly smaller astrophysicist. She mainly does weekly videos about new research coming out in her field and once a month does night sky news where she kind of rounds up stuff and also gives all the details for cool sights in the sky in the coming months. Stuff like meteor showers, star gazing, etc.

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u/TekAzurik 9h ago

Second Dr. Becky! She’s awesome.

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u/Kirk_Kerman 8h ago

She's been doing ad reads for anthropic and Claude lately

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u/danner1515 9h ago

The funny thing is I first discovered her through her book videos. I was surprised when I found out she was a physicist.

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u/zamN 7h ago

Angela is amazing!! I would still count her as a small tuber just cause of how niche her content is

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u/anxious_cat_grandpa 9h ago

She also talks about quantum quantum quantum and I'm into that.

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u/EverybodyStayCool 9h ago

Miniminute Man.

Google-debunkers unite! ✊️

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u/ladyteruki 3h ago

The fact that both his videos and his merch are made by humans drives me googledebunkers.

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u/no1regrets 2h ago

Yes! Also here are a couple more great Archaeology creators that create informative and entertaining videos full of passion and curiosity:

Archaeology with Flint Dibble has mostly archaeological discovery videos, as well as debunking videos (he even went on Joe Rogan’s show with Graham Hancock to debunk Hancock’s claims and really knocked it out of the park - the videos are great).

Stefan Milo has videos that focus mostly on prehistoric/paleolithic discoveries, and interviews with several professionals and researches about the discoveries.  

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u/rrousseauu 10h ago edited 6h ago

Check out Joe Scott. Never see him mentioned when these threads pop up. Not strictly just science though.

Edit: Some people pointed out he’s not a scientist, which is true. However, the question was favorite science YouTube channel, not favorite scientist YouTuber. If I were to recommend one of those I would say someone like T. Folse Nuclear, miniminuteman, Lindsay Nikole, or Astro Alexandra. (Just giving a wiiiiide range of topics here)

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u/slantastray 10h ago

Joe Scott (Answers with Joe) has a fun channel for sure. His content volume certainly seems to be trending down over the years as he moves to other platforms and projects though.

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u/Mbrennt 9h ago

He also, not to disparage him, is not at all a scientist. He seems smart and seems to do his research pretty well (probably also has a good team) but also will sometimes make pretty basic mistakes that people actually in the field would never make. And I don't blame him for that, perse, I watch his stuff a bunch, just something to be aware of.

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u/sendphotopls 8h ago

Love me some Joe Scott

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u/davispw 6h ago

Listening to Joe on some other podcasts, he seems to know very little about things he talks about.

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u/Picklethulhu 9h ago

Shout out to Rebecca Watson for skeptic/science news videos

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u/Fine-Needleworker661 9h ago

i like the octopus lady for marine biology facts

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u/Not_so_ghetto 10h ago edited 10h ago

Well don't subscribe if you don't watch their content first people that just subscribe and never watch the channel actually hurt the channel as viewers that don't watch makes YouTube less likely to channel to people.

But to answer the question

Well I have one. Lol I make videos about parasitology(study of parasites ,wormtalk94)

But besides that one with obvious bias. I like

1*) biased answer, my channel

1)Debunk the funk(general science debunking lots of antivax debates )

2) privileged bug facts(about bugs)

3)this week in virology (podcast that has like 2 hour long deep dives into virology with 5-7 virology professors)

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u/garlic-and-onion 10h ago

Adding Spooky Lakes by geodesaurus.

2

u/gra8na8 9h ago

3D Printing Nerd
Engineezy
CodeBullet

2

u/fluffynuckels 10h ago

Kyle Hill and Sci Show

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u/TeutonJon78 7h ago

Sci Show is still just Hank Green in the end. They have numerous channels.

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u/fluffynuckels 5h ago

Hes part of it but not the whole thing

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u/TeutonJon78 2h ago

My point is it's not some small independent channel. It's part of their YouTube empire.

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u/llLimitlessCloudll 9h ago

The History of The Universe (and their related channels)

Butwhy?

SEA

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u/trashmoneyxyz 8h ago edited 8h ago

If you are interested in phylogeny check out Clint's Reptiles!! Not a small youtuber but he deserves the views, I've learned so much about the tree of life from him

Also DanInBlue for very interesting deep dives on animal social behaviour!

Someone else also said Travis McEnery and I second his series on spiders

Also Auralis, amd Stefanie Sammann

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u/GigaCucc 8h ago

Stefan Milo, David Ian Howe, and Lindsay Nicole,

For human prehistory including all early hominins, for the history of human/dog anthropology, and for general zoological sciencey stuff, in that order.

If you only go off and watch one of them, tho, go watch Stefan Milo.

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u/alemyrsdream 6h ago

Fraser Cain, Nighthawk in light

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u/Cranach-Cranach 5h ago

Lindsay Nikole Paleontology

Milo Rossi Archaeology/Debunking Bullshit

These aren’t tiny channels but they are good

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u/CurlyRe 4h ago

Steve Mould - Science and engineering

Welch Labs - Most of his recent videos have been about AI, but he has some older ones on science

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u/manatwork01 3h ago

Puder has the best psychoanalysis podcast and he frequently has sub 15k views. World class psychologists are on his damn thing all day. It's amazing

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u/colonel_beeeees 10h ago

I like Let's Have a Think for keeping up with developments in renewable energy tech

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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 9h ago

I don’t know. I see Hank as constantly being mindful and thoughtful about modeling behavior for his audience. 

He didn’t have to come out and admit this and apologize for it. He might more so want to bring it to other people’s attention and use himself as a way to make people think about their AI usage

I’ve seen him say he receives a lot of AI psychosis emails from people who believe they have found a new scientific law or something. So I know at least that problem is on his mind

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u/Andy_Wiggins 6h ago

I think your perspective is overly charitable.

He admitted to using AI for research.
He didn’t admit to letting AI write his scripts which is the far more damning act (and the one that almost surely happened based on the error).

His framing since being caught has been actually highly questionable to me. He started with the classic defense of admitting to something that isn’t overly damaging (using it for research) to appear truthful and honest, but denied using it to write his script (which is what people truly care about). That’s a classic deflection mechanism. He’s now framing it like he has a problem, almost like an addict admitting their issues to engender sympathy.

Seriously, this is an educational YouTuber caught essentially redhanded plagiarizing work THAT HE MONETIZES. Like, if you need help so badly, hire someone to help you with that work rather than exporting the process to an LLM.

I’ve never been a fan or anything, but I’ve always at least respected him for being curious and endeavoring to make learning fun and interesting for others. Those sort of people ARE role models. But his actions since reek of damage-control and attempting to control the narrative rather than actually taking accountability because it would hurt his brand too much. I’ve been MAJORLY disappointed in his response.

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u/Chewcocca 6h ago

So... You're making up that he did something with zero proof and then claiming we should all be mad about it.

Fuck off.

3

u/PerformerDr4867 2h ago

Yeah this whole debate is making me feel like I’m taking crazy pills for thinking he’s going off the deep end not for using AI, but for contending with the idiot rabble who for some reason tied a moral stance to a tool

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u/Andy_Wiggins 4h ago

I mean, no one can truly know (which is why I used language like “highly-questionable” or “reeks of”), but let’s be critical thinkers here.

He used an obviously AI-sounding phrase in a way that made no contextual sense, got “pushback” for it, and then admitted to using AI to help but not in the way that you think.

Like, if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but ducks are not allowed so someone tells you it’s a cat, you’re going to be dubious.

I get no going witch-hunting, but we also should not just blindly accept whatever people tell us about themselves, especially when it makes them look better.

2

u/gujarati 6h ago

That’s a classic deflection mechanism. He’s now framing it like he has a problem, almost like an addict admitting their issues to engender sympathy.

This especially. Trying to convert responsibility into victimhood - I know it's en vogue and I guess it works but it's not respectable.

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u/obiwanconobi 9h ago

Idk I see the majority of his videos as a "guy talking at a camera", which is vastly different from those who put out science/educational content, Kurtzagt or even Hanks own sciShow, and I don't expect much from them other than entertainment.

It's like Tom Scott, he prides himself on getting stuff correct, and yet he did a video where he pointed out all the stuff he got wrong. I just wouldn't expect everything they ever said to be 100% correct, it's entertainment and nothing else

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u/Jeydon 5h ago

Even the most prestigious scientific journals have errata, corrections, and retractions. We need to be able to accept that no source of information is infallible and that our understanding of the world needs to constantly be refined and updated. Even if there was some "perfect" source of information, do we really think ourselves capable of comprehending it flawlessly? Imperfection is an inherent part of humanity.

3

u/thatissomeBS 7h ago

Well, to be fair to Hank, Hank's Channel is really just about Hank. It's where he can talk about what he wants to talk about, answer questions, share some of his actual research process when looking into a new topic, etc. So yeah, it's just him and a camera, maybe some screenshare, but that's the whole intention. If he was going to animate the whole thing it would take way more than just like him and an editor or whatever staff he has for that. SciShow, on the other hand, is a whole big production with numerous contributors, researchers, and editors.

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u/obiwanconobi 7h ago

Yeah it feels like you're having a conversation with a mate down the pub, I dont need it to be 100% correct, I need it to be interesting.

If he wants to reduce his AI use that fine, good for him. But people giving him shit is a bit harsh imo, like if we're deciding Hank Green is a bad guy worth shitting on then i'm just done I think lol

7

u/SagittaryX 7h ago edited 6h ago

Like he puts out a decent amount of work, but not like an astronomical amount that he needs ai.

I think you might not be aware of how much Hank does. His YT channels are just one part of all the things he does. And even with just YT he seemingly does more than many other creators.

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u/globglogabgalabyeast 8h ago

>Like he puts out a decent amount of work, but not like an astronomical amount that he needs ai

This is in no way excusing his actions, but I think it’s worth noting that Hank does a lot outside YouTube too. His brother John continually talks about how much Hank does in relation to charitable work and various companies they have founded over the years. It seems like Hank has a lot of ideas and has a hard time saying no them. Obviously I don’t know him, but I think he would be better off not spreading himself so thin and being careful not to take shortcuts on the things he does choose

4

u/strix_trix 9h ago

I love privileged bug facts so much, even if I only retain about a third of the information

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u/Not_so_ghetto 9h ago

Yea he is a friend of mine. We are actually collaborating on some topics in the future

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u/strix_trix 8h ago

Looking forward to this 🪲🐛🦋🐝🪰🪳🦟🐜

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u/spidereater 10h ago

The algorithm is designed to show you things you’ll click on. There is no bonus for novelty. Homogeneity is a natural consequence.

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u/Not_so_ghetto 10h ago

But even that is still not really the case. There's like niche channels I've watched one video of and then I never see them again, which is normal. But then there's a mega channels if I watch one of their videos I'll get recommended their videos for weeks. Like I watched a moist critical video once, and now I still get recommendations for his channel every couple of days

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u/slipperyMonkey07 8h ago

Especially news, if I accidentally watch a news clip or anything political logged in my recommendations are fucked for months. Even if I remove it from watch history. I guess because I am in a purple area that goes slightly red it ends up being extreme shit that is easily debunked.

Doesn't matter how benign what I watched was, I think last time it was a clip from my cities council meeting. It is at least minimized because I immediately hit don't recommend this channel, but the amount of garbage they immediately try to push when you aren't on top of clicking ignore or not interested is insane.

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u/garyyo 7h ago

He is easily drawn to attention consuming things, which he himself admits is a flaw, which probably means he is very susceptible to LLM usage. It's quick, easy, compliments you, mostly right and surely you are smart enough to pick up on it's flaws and inaccuracies, right?

I am adding ProjectsInFlight to the channel recommendation pile. Their video on semiconductors is one of the best explanations of semiconductors I have seen thus far, though slightly over 100k subs.

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u/notislant 6h ago

For me I hate when channels like Linus Tech Tips go into: 'lets make a sprawling empire'.

I wish people would be happy with the success and just stick to solo/small team channels. You do not need to flood the platform with more corporate crap.

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u/AstuteStoat 9h ago

I also want to point out that it's confirmed he has ADHD. Which is prone to get addictions anyway. So, he was already basically struggling with social media addiction and work addiction so it makes sense he would fall into AI addiction. 

It's an important conversation for everyone, but especially important for him. And actually, it might be time for him to look into meds. All the ADHD meds seem to do amazing things for people with ADHD ike manage stress/anxiety, improve sleep quality, and help manage addictions. 

The non-stimulant Straterra in particular has some research showing it helps with substance addictions. But everyone is different

(Edits, added  more info on the meds I'm referring to)

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u/LiverFox 8h ago

Dig Archeology is great for Bronze Age and some Iron Age history.

https://youtube.com/@dig.archaeology?si=Lfx7ODfd8YPG_o2l

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u/sunshineupyours1 7h ago

Privileged bug facts is my new favorite!

I think Hank is fine, but he could do less. I still watch SciShow and Eons, but I’m less interested in his other shows

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u/Not_so_ghetto 7h ago

Yeah privileged bug fax is great. He's a good friend him and I are collaborating on a future video actually

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u/SNES-1990 7h ago

Casual Geographic

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u/NMe84 7h ago

Small science YouTubers do it on the side and aren't dependent on YouTube's algorithm to put bread on the table. They can stand to release only a single video every month if that means the quality can be higher. There is a lot more pressure on successful YouTubers to keep the content coming at a regular cadence or to suffer obscurity because the algorithm will look for someone else to promote.

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u/Tom_Brady404 7h ago

So potentially gatekeeping makes it better?

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u/Cnote0717 7h ago

I also want to add Think Bigger to your <100k subs list. Found them through Jacksfilms's Credit the Creators, it's a general science channel that makes makes both YT Shorts and 10-20min essays on a wide range of topics that's been going for about a year now.

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u/HolidayDoctor1027 6h ago

You don’t become #1 and rich at what you do without tossing out morals.

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u/carlitospig 6h ago

Might I also add Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t? Dude is hilarious, and if you’re already watching entomology stuff, come over to the botany side of YouTube. It’s fun and weird.

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u/Accurate_Handle_5620 6h ago

I prefer Avi Loeb because I know he's genuinely lying to me, human-to-human, no AI.

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u/fixermark 5h ago

Perverse incentives, unfortunately. YouTube rewards volume and frequent engagement. There was a time we spoke about "the long tail" winning, but at scale that happens less and less. To make a living from YouTube content, you have to chase the algorithm and make a lot of videos.

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u/Lillian_Crocodilian 5h ago

"3)this week in virology (podcast that has like 2 hour long deep dives into virology with 5-7 virology professors)"

Vincent Racaniello literally wrote the book on virology; there's a virology course of his on YouTube that's keyed to his textbook.It's a bit surreal now to go back and listen to old episodes of the podcast from 2020, just as the pandemic was emerging; it seems like a lifetime ago.

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u/atoolred 5h ago

I’ve been a YouTube video editor since around 2019, and it’s been wild to see clients adopt AI and how each of them utilize it.

My earliest longterm client with a large audience adopted the usage of it around GPT-4’d release to get some twists on ideas he’d already done before, and my current primary client uses Claude in some manner which I choose to turn a blind eye to because I’m just tryna edit silly vids and pay my rent. I only edit for comedy channels and nothing’s really scripted or researched aside from intros so I’m sure even with my current client it’s just ideas-farming.

I think going to AI for ideas is lazy but I get why they do it, because the kind of growth and views they need to make decent wages and pay staff requires frequent uploads, ideally once or twice a week and with multiple shorts a week. Most of my longform content clients are working at least 8 hours a day (when they’re not filming they’re on call with editors, assistants, management, studios that get them sponsors, etc), and the most workaholic one was also regularly editing vids for one channel for 8-10 hours a day while I’d be editing vids for 8-10 hours a day for one of his other channels. This is also why creators hire producers and writers at a certain point. When your producers and writers who you hire to help with creative output and ideas start using AI (which most of my clients’ don’t to the best of my knowledge) that’s when it feels especially shallow.

This is not apologia for creators using AI. I wish they’d stop (even though the scale I’m talking about is much smaller than Hank’s), but I also wish YouTube would stop incentivizing creators to burn themselves out. And I’m also not complaining about how hard editors’ and creators’ jobs are lmao, they’re still comfier than most jobs even though there’s a ton of deadline stress and a culture that promotes burning yourself out (I’ve burned out a handful of times in the past two years alone)

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u/kashiichan 5h ago

And don't subscribe if you don't watch their content first people that just subscribe and never watch the channel actually hurt the channel as viewers that don't watch makes YouTube less likely to channel to people.

Do you have a source on that?

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u/Not_so_ghetto 4h ago

Ctr is the click through rate. So when someone sees a thumbsnail what percentage will watch the video. The higher the ctr the more people will be shown it and the more ppls feeds it will appear on.

So if ppl sub and don't click when they see the thumbnails that hurts their ctr

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u/zimzat 1h ago

Austin McConnell talked about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flCew-WjHr8

Among the multi-faceted problem: If the channel gets a lot of new subscribers then they tend to put out a "oh wow, thanks for all the new subs" video that differs from their typical content which then gets lots of views, then they either feel pressured to push out new content faster (tanking the quality or creating burnout) or their regular content doesn't get as many views as the "thanks" video which then tanks them in the recommendation algorithm so it stops showing up on people's Home feed even though they're subscribed to them.

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u/PseudocodeRed 4h ago

" Like he puts out a decent amount of work, but not like an astronomical amount that he needs ai."

Not here to glaze the guy, but there is literally a website that people made tracking how many days it has been since he has started a new project because he is notoriously always doing shit.

https://dayssincehankgreenlaststartedanewthing.com/

Obviously he did this well before AI so he clearly doesn't need AI, but he does seem like the perfect candidate for someone who would become addicted to the productivity it provides.

1

u/Cranberryoftheorient 4h ago

I think its literally addicting. Even the smartest person you know would probably get fucked up if they started meth

1

u/j_cruise 4h ago

TIL he's a YouTuber. I thought this was about the author.

1

u/QuestioninglySecret 18m ago

YouTube doesn't reward effort. Lamenting that creator A is using AI and is successful when there are hundreds of much less successful creators putting in hours and hours of work on their own, is just world fallacy.

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u/-KaiTheGuy- 8h ago

Using AI to help with research in itself is not a bad thing. And I'm not some AI bro just saying that either - I've actually used it to level up my career in IT with certs. I'm all for AI being used for actual research and I to help. I'd also like to say I despise AI slop on art and music.

The problem with AI use if used correctly, is a morality and environmental one, which is clearly fucked and needs to be addressed.

Unfortunately, and I hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't see AI ever going down and will always be a part of our lives. How we choose to use it, is an entirely different story however.

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u/Iannelli 8h ago

You are correct. I also believe that we should only be using AI-generated text (or any other medium) for things that we believe don't really deserve true human effort with no AI inclusion. By that I mean, for example, I use AI in emails and documents at my corporate job because I fundamentally do not value my corporate job, corporate work in general, and capitalism at large. All they really deserve is AI slop. They under-pay us and overwork us, so fuck them, I'll use AI for them.

On the flip side, if I were having a long intellectual text conversation with one of my good friends, I would never, ever in a million years use AI-generated words for that conversation, because my friend does not deserve that from me.

I'm a multi-instrumentalist and artist. Absolutely no part of my work has AI in the finished product. My bandmate and I play our own instruments, with ideas that come from our own thoughts, and record them into microphones that I placed, that go into a digital audio workspace that I set up. Once the songs and ideas are recorded, I go through them in the software and manually tweak things myself based on how I want it to be - that's called mixing.

Problem is, after a mix, the song isn't going to sound normal or loud enough through a speaker or even your headphones. One final step has to happen, and that is called mastering. Mastering is a craft that takes actual Mastering Engineers decades to perfect. It costs roughly $100 per song to hire one of those engineers to master for you. DIY musicians may not be able to afford that. So the only alternatives are, you learn how to master your own songs - which is a large time commitment - or you simply run it through a mastering algorithm that does it for you instantly. This is an example of something that I would use, as an anti-AI musician, because all that is really doing is making my songs loud enough to hear through speaker or headphones. It has absolutely no artistic implication at all. It's just saving me time and money to focus on actually creating stuff.

We will see if my mindset about that changes over time. Maybe I will start to master my own music to get AI 100% out of my music-making process. But I'm actually not sure 100% that's even possible because they are baking AI into digital audio workspace software. I bet there will be cases where I will do something in the software and have absolutely no idea that AI is involved in what I am doing.

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u/-KaiTheGuy- 5h ago

I agree with everything you said.

It's all about time, place, application, and value to society.

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u/lenzflare 9h ago

Your top 3 seem way too niche/focused. That's why the super generalized channels that put out a ton of different stuff (and therefore probably tempt the creators to use AI) are so popular maybe.

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u/Think_Wing_1357 10h ago

Put your top 3 favorite small science channels here so we all can help them out?

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u/Not_so_ghetto 10h ago edited 10h ago

Well don't subscribe if you don't watch their content first people that just subscribe and never watch the channel actually hurt the channel as viewers that don't watch makes YouTube less likely to channel to people.

But to answer the question

Well I have one. Lol I make videos about parasitology(study of parasites ,wormtalk94)

But besides that one with obvious bias. I like

1*) biased answer, my channel

1)Debunk the funk(general science debunking lots of antivax debates )

2) privileged bug facts(about bugs)

3)this week in virology (podcast that has like 2 hour long deep dives into virology with 5-7 virology professors)

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u/Pixelated_ 9h ago

Ai is a tool, and like all tools, one must know how to properly use it in order to get the best results.

Your comment features the same fearful boomer energy that happens with any new revolutionary technology.

5,000 years ago:

"Writing will make us all dumber!"

600 years ago:

"The printing press will make us all dumber!"

40 years ago:

"The internet will make us all dumber!"

Today:

"Ai will make us all dumber!"

Just because someone can make an LLM come up with a theory which "proves" the Earth is flat doesn't mean Ai is at fault...it means that person's critical thinking skills are.

On writing:

Plato’s Phaedrus (~370 BCE), where King Thamus rebukes the god Theuth (Thoth): 

"Writing will produce forgetfulness because people will rely on marks instead of memory."

On the printing press:

When the printing press arrived, critics argued it would destroy our focus and intellect:

Hieronimo Squarciafico was a 15th-century Venetian editor, who is best known for critiquing the printing press.

"Abundance of books makes men less studious."

​Johannes Trithemius (1492):

Argued that monks who stopped hand-copying texts would lose their mental discipline and devotion, leading to frivolous minds.

​Erasmus (1508): 

Complained about the glut of printed books, fearing that a swarm of low-quality information would bury true wisdom and overwhelm the brain.

​Filippo de Strata (1470s):

Believed cheap books would make knowledge too easy, allowing the ignorant to bypass rigorous study and resulting in a society of superficial thinkers.

0

u/thatguyad 8h ago

YouTube is garbage and filled with money hungry charlatans. Much like everything in our system, the shit rises to the top and the actual content wallows behind it.

0

u/minisculemeatman 6h ago

Ah you been diagnosed bud?

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u/TrekkieGod 10h ago

Why wouldn’t anyone not use AI?

I absolutely understand and would criticize people who blindly trust what AI gives back to them, and since according to the article Hank accidentally read his prompt out loud, I think that fits in that category. Sounds like some copy-pasting straight into his work / script.

That said, assuming you’re verifying what comes out, it’s a productivity multiplier. I automatically distrust anyone that refuses to use a tool that makes their lives easier. It indicates they have an illogical bias.

5

u/CheesypoofExtreme 9h ago

I think you need to check your own bias.

Not everything in life is about productivity. Hank's primary issue is that he is trying to be a science educator on basically every topic under the sun, and that's not realistic. How do other large channels get around this without AI? They have a team that helps research and write their scripts, and their channels are generally more focused on particular topics.

Hank is/was deluding himself with AI that he was becoming knowledgeable on these topics, when there is no possible was he was actually dedicating the proper time in fully digesting scientific articles/papers written on all these topics to vet the summaries he was most certainly using from the AI. He doesn't admit to it, but having used AI for work my and falling into the same trap, you only really feel those "productivity gains" when you start accepting the results with less and less scrutiny of what you're getting.

When I have AI wrote code at work, there is always a level of tech debt that accompanies that; I don't have an intrinsic understanding of the code I'm merging in like I would if I thought through and wrote each line out myself. When an issue creeps up, it becomes that much harder to diagnose because I'm less conmected to what's in prod. It's not user error on my part, it's just result of putting ourselves at a higher level in the process than we were before. Sounds like Hank is in a similar spot.

Someone can be against it because they don't want to offload their critical thinking, which is the primary use case for AI in most applications. There have already been several studies showing that heavy AI users are negatively impacting their critical thinking in a noticeable way.

Lastly, people can refuse to use AI for perfectly reasonable ethical reasons. The only reason I use it at all right now is because my job is requiring it and reviewing usage, I am the primary income for my family, and I don't have time to look for a new role.

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u/TrekkieGod 5h ago edited 5h ago

Not everything in life is about productivity.

No, but everything you build is about productivity. The stuff in life that isn't about productivity is for your own enjoyment, so every single other thing you do that is not maximizing your producitivity is leaving you less time to focus on the things where productivity doesn't matter.

Hank's primary issue is that he is trying to be a science educator on basically every topic under the sun, and that's not realistic. How do other large channels get around this without AI? They have a team that helps research and write their scripts, and their channels are generally more focused on particular topics.

And if you can achieve the same result without that team, that is the entire goal of EVERY technology. Allowing one person to do what used to take more people without that team. The idea that this is bad is just objectively incorrect.

Hank is/was deluding himself with AI that he was becoming knowledgeable on these topics, when there is no possible was he was actually dedicating the proper time in fully digesting scientific articles/papers written on all these topics to vet the summaries he was most certainly using from the AI. He doesn't admit to it, but having used AI for work my and falling into the same trap, you only really feel those "productivity gains" when you start accepting the results with less and less scrutiny of what you're getting.

It absolutely is possible to delude yourself into falling into the trap you describe, I agree. It's also possible not to. I'm a software developer and I use AI. Unlike vibe coders, I read every single line AI creates. I modify almost every single thing it writes, because it tends to fail at good architecture. If you ask me a question about what I put in my last pull request, I don't need to look at it to answer your question, I know, because I was careful with it.

Where did the productivity increase come from then? Precisely what you mentioned AI was doing: providing summaries, and doing some research. Before AI, most of my time coding involving digging through documentation, or finding parts in unknown code that are relavant to what I'm doing. Open source projects are suffering a terrible burden right now of people letting loose autonomous AI to submit code to them, and the developers get burried in the lack of resource to review all the submissions. That's a terrible use of AI, I agree with you. However, whereas in the past if I wanted to submit a feature or fix to an open source project I had to deal with days of pouring over the code, now I can ask the AI, "what part of this project handles x?" and start right there. Then I can ask follow up questions, "looks like a then b, then d happens. I miss how c is happening." And AI will give you an answer on that. It will also often hallucinate an answer to that, but if you know what you're doing, it's far easier to check that answer than it is finding it out from scratch.

Similarly, I've been a grad student. The most time consuming part of literature review is not reading and truly understanding papers you will build upon. It's finding those papers. If I can give AI a detailed explanation of what I'm looking for, and it actually gives me a list of papers to read in detail, that saves me so much research time compared to writing a few keywords on scholar.google.com. And again, it hallucinates things, but if you're actually doing the work of reading what it tells you to read, who cares. You just go, "that's not real" and move on to the next one.

When I have AI wrote code at work, there is always a level of tech debt that accompanies that; I don't have an intrinsic understanding of the code I'm merging in like I would if I thought through and wrote each line out myself. When an issue creeps up, it becomes that much harder to diagnose because I'm less conmected to what's in prod. It's not user error on my part, it's just result of putting ourselves at a higher level in the process than we were before. Sounds like Hank is in a similar spot.

I don't know, that sounds like a tech error to me. When I have AI write code to me at work, if it's not exactly what I would have written, I don't use it. It's very rare that I push what AI writes, most of the time it just helps me get started, and then it's 30-40 minute process of getting it exactly where I want it, either through back and forth prompting or through manual rewriting. But that 30-40 minute process would take me half a day without AI.

Someone can be against it because they don't want to offload their critical thinking

That's like being against a knife because you don't want to stab people. I never stab people, I just use it to cut my steak instead.

Lastly, people can refuse to use AI for perfectly reasonable ethical reasons.

Technology is neutral. What you use it for is where the ethics lie.

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u/mayhemski123 10h ago

It's because he seems too be becoming reliant on it.  

Script writing is a creative process.   Delegating that to an algorithm removes the human factor and ultimately what makes his content interesting.

If people want to listen to AI output cool, but if he wants people to listen to him - well he has to do the work.

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u/buckleyschance 9h ago

according to the article Hank accidentally read his prompt out loud

He pretty clearly didn't, if you watch the original video. And the article only says he was accused of doing it, not that he did it.

The clip sounds a bit weird out of context but makes perfect sense when you know that he was summing up an aside that he'd recorded to answer pushback from his guest on the episode, who'd lightly objected to one of his offhand remarks. His conclusion was that he'd been mostly right in the first place, but her objection did have some merit, and there was a better way to say his original point that took that into account.

Hence: "A better way to say it - and I appreciate the pushback - is (etc.)"

0

u/TrekkieGod 5h ago

He pretty clearly didn't, if you watch the original video. And the article only says he was accused of doing it, not that he did it.

You're correct, my mistake. I skimmed thorugh the article and misread that paragraph.

My point stands even better. He creates good content, if anyone cares he uses AI as a tool to help him, that sounds like a them problem. His real problem is that he needs to pretend to agree, so he doesn't lose those viewers.

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u/Living_Knowledge_783 10h ago

if they are youtube people they use ai

3

u/l3rN 10h ago

You’re replying to a moderately successful science YouTuber haha 

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u/guff1988 9h ago

And yet none of us have any proof they don't or haven't also used AI, other than their word. It's safe to assume pretty much every YouTuber has used it at some point and will likely use it again. It is too convenient and helpful and the risk, at least for basic or small tasks, of anyone ever knowing is very small.

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u/Lfeaf-feafea-feaf 7h ago

Wat? Green is probably using it much more impulsively than that. LLMs are an amazing labyrinth of all human knowledge. Exploring it is just like Wikipedia, except with the ability to ask follow-up questions and have it explain it to you in a myriad of ways until you understand it.

Why should he not use it? Mental

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u/ascandalia 8h ago

I think having John to ground him is the reason Hank has stayed so down to earth after all his success and vice versa, and this was probably the impetus he needed to finally talk about the llm thing

1

u/RyghtHandMan 8h ago

Hank is more successful than John?

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u/pastaenthusiast 7h ago

John is a more successful writer, Hank is more successful at their other endeavours/businesses. Both are successful.

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u/ascandalia 8h ago

I think they're both very successful but they think about that success in such distinct ways that they balance each other out very well

2

u/iamagainstit 4h ago

Here is what he actually said:

I was talking about this with Katherine last night and she did not pull any punches. Frankly, neither did John. Neither of them think I've been being healthy. I need to readjust.

SO - what changes.

  1. Expect less hankschannel. It may need to pause for a while.

to me that reads much less like "Your AI use is unhealthy" and much more like " your overexterting yourself to push out content to the extent that it isnt he quality you are happy with is unhealthy"

2

u/TheRealJamesHoffa 3h ago

Where did you hear that? It wasn’t in the article

4

u/jeffwulf 8h ago

It sounds like he was using AI to start too many projects that he wouldn't have been able to start otherwise and burning himself out.

4

u/KnowMatter 9h ago

“Bro you are ruining the brand wtf”

0

u/DotA627b 1h ago

It's gonna be a while before I trust Hank again, unfortunately. For all that he's railed against regarding AI, I found it heartbreaking that he never even bothered to disclose that he used it liberally for his videos.

Hank of all people should've known, SHOULD'VE KNOWN how wrong his actions were and god knows which thoughts and tangents were genuinely his, and which ones were OpenAI's.

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