The message is everywhere right now.
It’s coming from tone-deaf University commencement addresses,
from soulless techbro vampire startups,
from morally bankrupt data center builders,
from myopic local politicians,
from woefully lazy journalists,
and from the largest organizations in the world that have gutted their creative departments.
They want us to believe that the mighty horse of progress has left the barn; that the inexorable march toward the future has begun, and we’re either gonna figure out how to ride it or be trampled to death trying to stop it. I’m calling BS on that.
Yes, artificial Intelligence’s existence is guaranteed, but humanity’s response to it is still well within our hands, and that response will determine whether we allow our ethical and moral convictions to bear on the technology or remain silent and be swallowed up.
Will we value the already-fragile environment enough to fight the fatal blow the current proposed proliferation of data centers presents?
Will we continue to cheapen the work of human creators, whose art we’ve gradually been conditioned to believe we should get for free?
Will we allow ourselves to be lured into the seductive shortcuts and quick solutions generative AI provides, or will we honor the creative process and the slower road to discovery?
Artificial Intelligence evangelists insist that we’re afraid of this technology, but they’re misreading the situation. I’m not afraid of generative AI; I’m morally opposed to it, and there’s a big difference.
I don’t resist progress, but I do resist technological movements that pillage our natural resources, devalue human beings, harvest their creativity without compensating them, and enable talentless parasites to profit from the work of billions of flesh-and-blood people, who since the dawn of time have spent themselves on behalf of their art.
Pushing back against the unethical rise of Artificial Intelligence isn’t as complicated as we’re led to believe. Some steps you can take right now:
Stop sucking up thousands of gallons of drinking water just to turn your dad’s texts into a song for a 90-second Instagram reel.
Turn off the AI assists on your search engines and email portals.
Stop using ChatGPT, Claude, or other platforms to find information you already have near-immediate access to.
If you’re a student, stop trying to cheat your way to knowledge and experience. Enjoy the long, often meandering but ultimately fruitful road of study, failure, and exploration.
If you’re in charge of a business, church, or organization hiring for a creative project, seek out actual qualified, experienced human beings who’ve devoted their lives to their craft; investing in people who’ve earned their expertise and their price tag.
Find out where data centers are being proposed in your area, and show up at town halls, board meetings, politicians’ offices, and wield your power as a resident and taxpayer.
Stop using generative AI to make a meme that’s no one’s going to care about thirty seconds after they’ve seen it.
Use your brain instead of your thumbs. A few quick prompts will give you immediate ideas which can be seductive, but it’s fool’s gold. Part of the creative process is to sit with the empty page, the frustrating silence, and the blinking cursor; the invaluable times when the wrestling and the waiting force you to go deeper than a web search.
Partner with advocacy groups to hold CEOs, executives, employers, developers, and lawmakers accountable to the human beings in their midst.
Financially support artists whose humanity feeds your soul.
If you reject the threat of AI to creativity, one of the ways you can fight it is to support flesh-and-blood creators. If there are bands, writers, comedians, journalists, painters, jewelry makers, small businesses, or songwriters who make life more beautiful or bearable, please tangibly partner with them as you can. If financial support is not possible, please leverage your social media platform to share their work and help them break out of the prisons of the algorithms.
Artificial Intelligence, like any new technology, can either be a useful tool or a deadly weapon. We shouldn’t be afraid of progress, but we should be very worried about sacrificing one another and ourselves on the altar of that supposed progress.
AI is not inevitable, but the greed, ignorance, and short-sightedness of human beings is, which means we’re all going to push back against it with urgency and ferocity to ensure that we don’t gain some time and a little ease, and lose our souls.