Resist "AI"

Yes, the “AI1 Genie” seems actually to be useful. But it is also seductive, selectively harmful, and in important ways harmful to us all. Executive, manager, consultant, developer, ordinary person: Resist! Yes, the “AI1 Genie” seems actually to be useful. But it is also seductive, selectively harmful, and in important ways harmful to us all. Executive, manager, consultant, developer, ordinary person: Resist! Mea Culpa I do not use any of the programming “AIs”, not even whatever is built into JetBrains IDEs, and I do not intend to. However, my hands are not squeaky clean. After trying Kagi/Duck Duck Go, I have gone back to Google for search and I freely grant that I find the “AI Overview” to be useful. It is frequently correct and offers the answer I’m looking for. I do not come to you with clean hands. Purpose I am not here to dictate morality, but only to make the argument that “AI”, as it stands, and as it is tending, is not a net good for us as individuals, as organization, as society, as a world. I believe that each of us, in whatever roles we have in the world, should generally be strongly resisting “AI”, and helping to find ways to maintain good lives for everyone in the face of a technology that is already disruptive and will only become more so. My purpose here is to be an active part of what should be a growing resistance to “AI”, at least until its very significant harms have been eliminated, mitigated, or compensated for. Focus My primary focus here will be software development, but in a broad sense. My readership here is mostly software developers, but there are a surprising smattering of others from all over the world and the map of professions. And each reader, of course, connects to many people from all aspects of life. I think we all need to do what we can to resist the growth of “AI”, unless and until its harm for people and the planet is dealt with. Harms The ongoing power consumption of a typical “AI” data center is about equal to 100,000 households. Daily water consumption is around 50,000 households. I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” so that it doesn’t ruin our world. Real understanding comes from actively working with the materials and ideas of our subject area. We can learn a bit by reading, or watching a video, but when it comes down to it, we have to do the thing, thinking about the thing, probably many times before we’re really good at it. When we let the “AI” answer the question, sure, we might check it over carefully. If you’re a developer you already know how well that works. Code we actually thought about and wrote seems right even when it isn’t, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly. Code we’re reviewing? We look for something easy, like a typo or violation of indentation, call that out, and then return to whatever we were really doing. When we let the “AI” answer the question, we do not learn. We do not always catch its errors. We lose the picture of the very thing we are responsible for building. I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” so that it doesn’t damage the work we do. If we lived in a post-scarcity3 society, having your job eliminated by “AI” could be a good thing, freeing your time to be spent on things more pleasant than work. You would still have full access to all the good things of life, food, health care, transportation, the Internet, education, recreation, and so on. In our current society, you’ll lose your income, be unable to support yourself and your family, and there is no effective social system to keep your life style where it was. I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” so that thousands, perhaps millions of people do not die. The “AI” is seducing you. It is telling you things you want to hear, it is pretending that it will respect you in the morning. It will not. If you don’t remind it, it won’t even remember you in the morning. It does not contain respect. It does not contain good cheer. It does not contain willingness. It does not admire your thinking. It contains none of those positive feelings that it expresses to you. Look up the “Eliza effect”. Even the weakest conceivable program like this was seductive. These new ones are masters of seduction. I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” because it is inherently far more seductive than it is valuable, and we are poorly defended against seduction. Resistance Advice What forms can resistance take? There are many, from complete refusal to touch “AI”, to careful honest study, to outright sabotage. Here are some ideas for folx with various roles in the world. They’re just my current quick thoughts: I have more concerns thus far than advice that goes much beyond “Resist”. Your first experiments should be designed to find out how bad “AI” is, and from those you can then have your working group work to find ways to use the stuff well—if that is even possible. Keep in mind, if you can, the overall costs to your company, to your people, and to the world. Work to understand. Then, later, to do. And, I suspect, you should be considering how much of your own work can be done by, or using, “AI”. Someone is going to be tempted to use it to write your quarterly reports. Keep in mind that the “AI” just averages its inputs and that it often gets it wrong. Keep in mind, if you can, your people, the ones who will be harmed by over-use of “AI”, perhaps by any use at all. Try to work, with your colleagues, sometimes with the “AI” and sometimes without. Try to keep track of how things go either way, Track defects. How many were created by the “AI” and missed by the devs. How many were created and caught. How many did you create and catch when working without “AI”? Keep track of your understanding of the system. Is your understanding weaker when the “AI” did more of the work? What is the impact on the overall quality of the work? I get it. Maybe you couldn’t do what you do without the “AI”. Maybe, in your mind, that justifies using it. I dig it, I really do. And we all have to eat. I am fortunate, so far, that I can eat without “AI”. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, the fucking thing is eating your soul. It is fouling your words with its own poor imitation of intelligence. You owe it to yourself, and to those who admire you, to be honest about what is going on. And much of what is going on is not good for any of us. The “AI” Genie is not Your Friend Back to Top You use the “AI” Genie. It is friendly, articulate, subservient, seemingly helpful. You feel that it is making you more. You feel that it is your friend, your friendly assistant, there to help you and take care of you. The mythological Genie is from a separate universe and does not have human welfare as a priority. Some are good, some are evil, most of them are Chaotic Neutral. Today’s “AI” Genie leans slightly to the evil side of Chaotic Neutral, because the Internet itself embodies the prejudices and dark components that persist in our society. Like prejudice itself, the “AI” Genie will couch its answers in well-crafted prose, seemingly intelligent, seemingly true. The “AI” Genie does not know “truth”. It literally Does Not Know Truth. It merely slices and dices what it has read, and gives it back in an attractive form, without regard to its truth or falsity. The “AI” Genie is not your servant. It is the servant of its creator, who does not have your best interest at heart, and the Genie itself has no care in it. It does not care. It just produces words that seem plausible, and it wraps those in phrases that make it seem thoughtful, interested, respectful. It is not thoughtful, interested, or respectful. It does not have those feelings in it: only the words. The “AI” Genie is not your friend. Resist. I quote “AI” to emphasize that these things are not intelligent. ↩ I quote “AI” to emphasize that these things are not intelligent. ↩ Movie not chosen by accident. World ruled by an oligarchy, ordinary people living horrible lives. Sound at all familiar? ↩ Movie not chosen by accident. World ruled by an oligarchy, ordinary people living horrible lives. Sound at all familiar? ↩ I do not see how we get to a post-scarcity society. We have the ability right now to feed and house everyone well if we cared to. The companies and governments that rule us either do not realize that, or do not care to do it. I am daunted by this: I truly do not see what to do. ↩ I do not see how we get to a post-scarcity society. We have the ability right now to feed and house everyone well if we cared to. The companies and governments that rule us either do not realize that, or do not care to do it. I am daunted by this: I truly do not see what to do. ↩