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Antonia Malchik's avatar

A lot of the problems go hand in hand with David Graeber’s “bullshit jobs.” When people give examples of how AI helped them write something, it’s almost always something that if you’re really looking at things from an anti-capitalist or at least skeptical-capitalist lens, doesn’t really need to exist in the first place. Like I worked trail crew with a real estate agent who uses it now for all his property descriptions. Okay. But if we’re looking for a world that’s just and good and whole, the buying and selling of property and descriptions for that purpose is something I’d question in the first place. Mission statements are another example. For more creative work, I don’t really understand why anyone would *want* to use it. Creativity is by nature messy and inefficient and painful and joyful. Why do it at all if you don’t love the process?

Not to mention the energy use. Every time someone uses AI to, say, generate an image, it used as much energy as charging a phone. Scaled up, it’s staggering. But that’s true of the digital world across the board, not something people consider often enough.

Thank you for contributing to clearing the Luddites’ good name! They fought for a better world and deserve recognition for that. 🫶

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Colleen Windell's avatar

I think one of the most important points you implicitly made was that when you re counted your process, you noted what each person contributed. AI does not do that. Antonia's point about how much energy is used to generate a piece is something I hadn't thought about. (Being me I will have to check her facts be fore I quote them). I do use some AI to help me write (spell check and Grammarly, the free version) but I always reread my text to see if the suggestions correctly convey my thoughts. Sometimes the suggestions don't, so I ignore them, even if the sentence is long.

As far as the rest of AI, I don't even know where to start on using it, because like you, I can communicate effectively enough to ignore it. So I will continue to live in my advance AI ignorance, taking forever to write my own words.

Once again, thanks for making me think in the morning.

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