The hardest part of Conscientiously Rejecting AI is that humanity has already gone way beyond the point where dealing with the problem that Artificial Intelligence is creating could be resolved with a simple YES or NO.
AI is already embedded within our digital lives and is set to take over more and more of what we ask from technology.
Because many are so unaware of the role that AI already plays, unless technology were quite literally no longer able to run or exist, the reality we face is that there are very few people who will willingly or voluntarily give up the use of every functional element of AI, wherever it already exists – Whether or not it is already prejudicing or restricting their freedom in some way.
Even if you already accept the threat that AI and further reliance upon AI and Artificial Intelligence poses, you are unlikely to accept it as being practical to reject your own use of it, wherever within your life it already exists.
We will ultimately need to reject many of the current uses of AI, along with many more within our lives, IF we want to live lives where we have and maintain the genuine freedom and right to choose.
You wouldn’t normally go up to a complete stranger on a bus, ask them for life-changing advice or information that could affect your future in some way, and then act upon it as if they were guaranteed to know the answers and be a 100% accurate source.
So why do exactly that, each and every time you use a smart phone, tablet, computer or other tech device?
Very few people consider that we feel naturally disposed to ‘trust’ tech over people already, even when the tech in question is neither a person that has even the potential to know and understand what is important to a person. Not only that, but most importantly, its behaviours, priorities and boundaries are all being set or programmed by a stranger that we are very unlikely to know or ever meet.
IF you want to know and understand the truth in anything and find yourself able to access every bit of information that can genuinely help – rather than disadvantage you, treating the Internet and any form of AI that you use as if it were a complete stranger, will be a very healthy way for you to live your digital life.
AI is most likely to create buy-in from the masses by behaving like a drug-dealer handing out a free-giveaway. Every opportunity it provides for you to ask it to do your work for you is the opportunity for you to get hooked.
It won’t matter one bit if your work or task is study, research, newsletters, social media posts, presentations, animations, videos, content creation, writing books, or even translating what you or someone else has said: IF you ‘instruct’ AI to do any of these things for you, you will not be doing them yourself.
By not doing them yourself, you will not be learning. You will not be developing your skills. You will not be extending your experience. You will not be sure of the credibility of whatever the AI creates or whatever it writes. You cannot be sure that the integrity and meaning of the original material will still exist.
Yes, you can check the work. But if you have to check it, you will also need to check it properly.
So, if you are in a hurry anyway, it could well end up taking you a lot more time to deliver the work you gave it, if you had simply completed the task yourself, first.
It is truly alarming just how many adverts for books and websites that make promises such as ‘People are already using AI to earn $120K a year’ – when the opportunity to even use it has not even existed for as long as a few months.
People are genuinely falling for the lie that everyone can get rich by doing absolutely nothing other than setting up a program or chatbot themselves, when the only way to make good money using AI as a business in itself, is to sell a guidebook or formula on how to use it, and make a lot of money from a lot of unsuspecting and lazy people looking for an easy life who will enthusiastically part with the charge.
The only way that AI can make money for anyone, is by making the roles and the jobs that other people do redundant, or by playing the markets and the gambling games which raise the prices of everything, that people who have no morals, ethics or care for others already do.
Don’t fall into the trap of teaching yourself or anyone else that you no longer have any use. Because sooner or later, you will indeed become useless, and that’s how your future will feel and will be seen.
Have the integrity to do your job and do your job to the best of your ability, whatever your job might be. Your destiny will remain in your hands, and will not be at the mercy of someone, somewhere else who is only aware of you as a number and simply doesn’t care.
Can you remember what it was that first drew you into using social media?
What do you use social media for today?
Are the answers to these two questions the same?
I would like to place a BIG bet that they aren’t.
The reason that we supposedly use social media is contained within its name. Social media is a form of media where we can be social. i.e., we can interact with our friends and the people that we know.
IF being ‘social’ with all the different people we know or have known in the ‘real world’ – even if they live on the other side of the world today – was all social media was still about, social media wouldn’t:
Be as addictive as it is.
Be anywhere near as popular as it is.
Yes, we all love to watch puppy videos and films of cats and other animals doing ridiculous things. But we don’t need to watch videos of these things or anything like them to meet our real or genuine needs.
In fact, the ease with which this attention junk now arrives in or on our social media feeds is a dangerous distraction that only takes our attention and time away from the activities that are healthy for us, that would be meeting a genuine need.
The social giveaway sprat to catch the media and big-tech payday mackerel.
Each and every time you click on something that you see on a timeline or social media feed, you are providing data about what you ‘like’ and what ‘interests’ you, to someone somewhere who can use that information either to sell directly, or to use as a way to sell your attention as an advertising space.
You are quite literally being fed the treats that you like, so that somebody somewhere can make a profit from the trojan horse offers that are almost always attached or hidden within everything that we see.
It doesn’t stop there either. The reality is that every action you take online, even if it is just the search of the spelling for a single word, will be telling someone somewhere something about you that they can make money from.
Not because it’s something you are doing wrong. But because we have all been funneled into the same trap where we are already behaving exactly the same way.
Until such time as we have Politicians, Government and legislation that deals with the ethical vacuum that surrounds the harvesting and use of our data, along with the manipulative ways that so many of us are being duped into giving it up, the risk will remain that anything we do online or by using any equipment or technology that is connected to the internet, will result in the surrender of information and data that is personal to us in some way.
You don’t need any of the things that appear on your feed. But you believe you want them.
This is where the very bad taste should begin to appear in your mouth, when you begin to realise and then understand that there isn’t any magic involved in the way that the things that interest you, or the things that you might like to buy, so miraculously appear.
Yes, we’ve all had that ‘wow’ moment when we see something appear that relates to something we’ve discussed or been thinking about. But that’s because what you’ve been doing online or somewhere where an algorithm can identify you, is triggering someone somewhere and telling them that they or someone somewhere else that they can sell advertising or make a sale – if they get a link or many links to confirm the magic that makes it all feel so easy when things find you, that you literally don’t need to think.
It’s time to remember that when we have a genuine need for something, we already know where to get it, or we already know a way to look for it that will provide us with options that genuinely make a lot more sense.
Even if you really do believe that you genuinely need something that has appeared in a feed, you should at the very least undertake your own, fully conscious search of the options that are available and preferably buy from someone you can physically meet or visit – even if you actually buy online.
By becoming dependent upon systems that are creating wants, rather than servicing our basic needs, we are actually funding the development of the technology and the AI systems that are set to make the pathway from human freedom even worse.
Every rejection of the opportunity to click is a step away from the digital dependency that somebody somewhere wishes to create. Not because it will help you. But because it helps them.
Your future and your freedom will come from reasserting your independence from these systems; by quite literally moving away from them and physically moving and looking around.
You will become a part of that system, each and every time that you get plugged in.
Adam Tugwell 