A lot has changed on the internet since the days of dial-up, but one thing has been constant: drama. Social media groups, in particular, are notorious for drama.
I’ve seen people become absolutely vicious over disagreements about sweater patterns, composting, and the best way to care for curly hair. But even the groups with a long history of peace and goodwill are fighting over the same thing: AI.
I saw one gentleman tearfully quit a PG Wodehouse fan club after 15 years because people were mean to him over an image of Jeeves he prompted AI to concoct. Even though the specifics can feel a little goofy, I think it’s worth fighting over.
AI is indisputably changing the world. But do we have to let it?
That’s the question that ignited a little drama on my own social media page. I asked if anyone had access to a new, intriguing Korean fire chicken recipe that was behind a paywall.
Someone responded by posting a ChatGPT recipe that fit that description, and I responded rather rudely, “yeah, we don’t do that.” Meaning, “Me and my pals are too good for AI recipes.”
He was rightly annoyed, and responded that asking for a recipe that’s paywalled is also unethical (which I dispute. I just wanted to make dinner for my family, and I would just as readily ask for a single recipe from someone who had purchased a paper cookbook).
He also said that disdaining AI while on Facebook is pretty hypocritical. AI uses Facebook constantly, if invisibly.
All social media uses it. The whole internet does. The whole of society does, at this point. It’s a pretty empty gesture to get up on your high horse and go, “We don’t do that.” When in fact, like it or not, we do. This argument gave me pause. I really do loathe hypocrisy, and when someone accuses me of it, I take that seriously.
Do I really have the right to sneer at people openly and unapologetically using generative AI, but letting myself off the hook for participating in it behind a few layers of technology?
First, let’s establish my reasons for sneering at it at all.
Generative AI works by stealing. That’s literally how generative AI functions. Stealing is bad!
I also hate how AI wastes water and despoils vulnerable communities. But most of all, I hate it because it’s fake human thought and fake creativity. It does to real creativity and real human thought what chemical weapons do to unarmed villagers.
The road to hell has been generated by AI. But yes, I’m on Facebook.
I also shop online and look things up and use GPS constantly, and I’m fairly sure that the surgeon who is going to remove the tumour from my brain in a few weeks will be assisted by AI, and God bless him.
AI is baked into so many aspects of my daily life, and I benefit from it (and am exploited by it) constantly, literally every day. I could opt out of organisations that openly use AI in their operations, but I’d still be plugged into the ones that do it secretly.
So what is even the point of saying “no” to some tiny part of it?
I refuse to use it to make flyers or images, or to write anything for me, or, God forbid, to act as a companion; but I’m still using it, and I know it. What’s the point? There are two points.
One has to do with cooperation with evil. The church has long acknowledged that there are different categories and levels of how we participate in something we know to be wrong, and it’s not possible to opt out of all of it.
I’m pretty secure in my judgement that there is no sin in, for example, using a GPS system that shows me how to get to a museum via a route that currently has less traffic, even if the AI involved in that ends up harming someone.
The second point is along the same lines, but it’s more of a personal formulation, which I think of as the Nestlé sacrifice. I refuse to buy Nestlé products, by which I mean goods that have the Nestlé brand name on them.
I do this because I know a little bit about their EGREGIOUSLY evil business practices, and I don’t want any part of it. So if I want chocolate chips and all the store has is Nestlé, I’ll make a second stop, or use butterscotch chips instead. It’s a teeny, tiny sacrifice, that makes absolutely no difference to anyone but me.
They are not going to change their horrendous business practices because they’re losing a few dollars of Simcha Fisher revenue per annum. I am the one who is changing my business practices.
I still haven’t read The Gulag Archipelago, but I often think of the quote: “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.“
I knew perfectly well that Nestlé owns over 2,000 companies, and even the tiny, insignificant boycott of things explicitly labelled “Nestlé” isn’t really boycotting Nestlé.
But you have to draw the line somewhere, and this is where I have drawn it. That’s it. That’s how I have decided to handle this one particular overwhelming evil in the world. By doing one tiny little thing that matters to me.
Because while it’s true that my actions alone will not change the gargantuan evil in the world, I do have the choice about whether or not I will live with that reality 100 per cent of the time, or only, say, 98 per cent of the time.
In that two per cent of resistance, I am keeping a little crumb of humanity. It means something to me!
Same principle with AI. I can’t fight all the battles, and, in all honesty, I’m not dedicated enough to fight even all the battles I could reasonably fight. But that doesn’t mean I need to fight no battles at all.
I will write my own awkwardly phrased letter using my own brain; I will make a poster that looks rough and unpolished; I will pass up the chance to share a funny cartoon I thought up, because I don’t have time to draw it myself.
And yes, I ended up fudging my way through a Korean fire chicken recipe, cobbled together from various recipes I found for free from actual human chefs, rather than using the AI-generated one.
And it was not bad. It tasted like gochujang, soy sauce, garlic, and a soupçon of human ethics. Good enough for the likes of me.
