AI Luddism
Communities across the country and party lines are engaged in important conversations about the encroachment of data centers on land, utilities and availability of clean resources. Preceding and paralleling the rise of data centers is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
As communities fight back against the strain and misuse of resources for these energy leaching behemoths, so too should they face and address the impacts of AI on very human resources. Skills like critical thinking, long form reading and writing, and creative problem solving are increasingly offloaded to AI tools in the name of workflow efficiency and time saving. While the positive impacts of AI are evident – improved health screening and trauma triage come to mind – the negative effects are increasingly clear.
AI is integrated into the most-used apps and websites around the world, frequently without the option for users to opt out of the technology. Defaulting to AI overview on Google, AI summaries in communication, and Co-Pilot for generating emails reduces the ability to discern accurate information sources or comprehend and compose longform text. For those of us who didn’t grow up with AI supports, it seems like a distant possibility that we could create an underclass of AI dependent proletariat, but the reality is that generation has already been born.
Gen Z is more likely to engage with AI on a regular basis than any older generation, heightening the likelihood that they will become more dependent on AI tools to complete basic workplace and life tasks. Gen Alpha is being raised with AI as a daily tool. There is a real, current threat of a permanent AI underclass created by the forced and consensual adoption of AI into daily life. Careers in law, human resources, transit, freight, manufacturing, middle management, customer service, finance and accounting, writing and more are under threat as corporations shift resources to AI tools instead of employees. Studies show that using AI rapidly depletes our abilities to consider difficult concepts with nuance or critical analysis, and those who employ it as a work tool often cannot even explain the concepts in that work. Children have taken their own lives after expressing ideations to AI chatbots, and the AI companies responsible have faced little to no consequences. What will it take to take action?
The current federal administration is contracting with AI companies who will acquiesce to their every request, from AI generated war targets to AI supported surveillance. Super corporations like Amazon are already laying off tens of thousands of workers in favor of AI substitutions while reaping financial benefits and continued tax breaks. And we are being left to foot the bill – the scarcity of resources due to energy draining data centers, polluted air and water, depleted cognitive abilities, broad layoffs – which funds the wildest dreams of the elite 1% who dream of an automated workforce and lives as trillionaires due to the cost savings. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans, of the world, reap no benefit.
Looking at the bigger picture, conservatives have pushed the privatization of education since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s to resegregate schools, and are now bending to billionaire power by allowing AI to run rampant on our communities and economic wellbeing to keep us uneducated, unskilled and unable to critically think. It is actually an apparent and natural progression of their policies. So of course few Republicans pushed back when Trump issued multiple executive orders and the One Big Bummer Bill deregulating AI and limiting the ability of our government to rein in this under researched and unprecedented technology. The Epstein class wants nothing more than to reserve good paying jobs for their offspring and box all others out of economic mobility.
Like privatizing education and funding that privatization with public dollars, which is not financially responsible or sustainable, AI companies are getting Americans hooked on their products and then throwing up paywalls. So they are demonstrating the value of their products, getting workers addicted to them by destroying their cognitive skills, and then peddling that same product to the C-suite at the company as justification to fire those same workers. And by and large, folks are complying.
What kind of world do we want to live in where workers are replaced with AI? Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) would have us believe that this supplantation will allow us all free time and maybe universal incomes. We should know better than to believe the contrived fantasies of (yet another) fanciful billionaire. Our government can’t even provide us healthcare and education – how would they provide universal income to tens of millions of potentially displaced workers?
Yes, our representatives need to fight back. But so do we. We must eschew broad adoption of AI with a firm hand to retain our skills. We must rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge, expertise, and curiosity not sparked by an AI prompt, but by nature, conversation, and pure imagination. Beyond nurturing your wonder, there are simple solutions to big tech oligarchs shoving AI down our throats. For those equally frustrated with Google search results that start with an often inaccurate AI generated overview, try adding “ -AI” to the end of your search (don’t forget the space between the last letter of your search and minus symbol). Surrendering the multiple Google searches many people complete daily to AI reduces ability to discern relevant information. Check your apps to change the default AI settings and reduce your AI exposure – think Gmail, Instagram, Facebook, and Outlook. Talk to your friends, family, and community about the risks of regular AI use. Write with a pen and paper. Research a topic in the library. Read a whole article, blog or book about a new topic.
We do not need to march willingly into the dark of a cold, automated world. We can forge a better future than the one some freak billionaire dreamed up in his sterile McMansion.
