First things firstโฆ
๐ ๐ ๐๐ฐ ๐๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ ๐ก๐ญ๐ฌ ๐๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐.๐.
I love new technology. I grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, and Little Debbieโs Star Crunch snacks, always imagining what new advancements we would have in THE FUTURE.
I love science. I binge watched Carl Saganโs โCosmosโ several times as a kid. I had a poster of the solar system hanging in my room, long before Pluto got demoted from planet status. My view on A.I. is not and will never be about being โanti-technology.โ
There was an optimism in the 80s (and earlier) about โthe world of tomorrow.โ Now all that optimism is gone with the rise of A.I.
The more I learned about A.I., and particularly who is behind it, the more suspicious I got about it. Now I want nothing to do with it. Thereโs too much to discuss here, but there are good reasons to be concerned about A.I., from serious environmental and economic concerns, harmful psychological effects and how A.I. can be weaponize by corrupt people in power.
People can pretend to be artistic by taking credit for work they didnโt create, and real artists have to deal with accusations and assumptions that their work is A.I. and not genuine.
A.I. generated CSAM is a reality, which means any pictures of our kids online can be used to create such material without anyoneโs consent.
And speaking of consent, some weirdo can take your photos off social media and create videos of you doing… whatever they type into the prompt. Eventually Hollywood will be able to pressure actors – women actors in particular – into doing certain scenes or taking certain roles, because if they refuse, they can be replaced by an A.I. actor. Consent gets thrown out the window.
(Not that Hollywood has ever really cared about consent, but yeah.)
Determining whatโs real and whatโs A.I. is getting more difficult. Soon we wonโt be able to tell the difference. The older generation already can’t tell the difference. That means fake videos can and will be used to sway public opinion, bolster prejudices, or frame someone for something they didnโt say or do (or to take credit for something they didnโt do, like when Trump posts A.I. images of himself in a military uniform).
And theyโve already found that A.I. isnโt as easy to predict and control as they had hoped. Itโs like weโre living in the prologue of the Matrix or Terminator movies. And the technology is advancing way faster than our laws can keep up.
โTechnology is neither good nor bad,โ some argue. โWhat matters is how itโs used.โ Sure, but technology is never neutral. Things are created for a purpose. Stuff doesnโt just emerge from the earth naturally. We create the stuff, we create the stuff for a purpose, and the stuff we create is meant to help carry out the purpose for which the stuff was made.
The people behind A.I. and the rise of data centers arenโt creating new tech for altruistic reasons. They want more power and more control. They want more surveillance and more invasion into our private lives. They want their will to be done regardless of the effects their actions have on the world and her people.
I believe in the power of human creativity and ingenuity over having a machine do our creating and our thinking for us. A.I. can steal humanityโs intellectual property, but it cannot copy our heart and soul.
But A.I. can also steal our natural resources and our jobs. And if we let it do our thinking and creating for us, A.I. will also rob us of our ability to think critically and our creative skills will atrophy.
What do we do? We speak out. We delete Chat GPT and Grok and whatever else is out there. We avoid A.I. slop on the internet. We demand transparency from the privileged class. We promote real artists and give zero support to people and organizations who back the development of A.I. and data centers.
That’s what I can think of. I need someone smarter than me to answer that question any further.
As I’m writing this I just googled, “how can we fight against data centers and A.I.”, and the built-in “A.I. Overview” (or A.I. Overlords as I call them) offered a bunch of suggestions.
Reality is so weird right now.
