misinformation

Generative AI is a billionaire enrichment scheme built on theft and plagiarism; it’s accelerating environmental destruction at an alarming rate, training us out of our ability to think, and destroying our collective sense of truth.

Sure, there are places where generative AI is useful, but I can think of no use cases that justify the enormous environmental and societal cost.

Plagiarism  

The large language models (LLMs) that form the basis of current AI models have been trained on the pirated work of professional authors, including my own. I’m talking about all the big technologies; not just the model developed by Meta using pirated work, but ChatGPT as well as the models developed by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Authors have not given permission for their work to be used for this purpose, nor have they been compensated.

Until the tech bros have paid for what they stole and sought retrospective consent, I don’t believe the use of LLMs or image generators in the publishing process can be ethical: they are a tool created by flagrantly ignoring the copyright law on which our industry depends.

Environmental destruction

AI data centres guzzle huge amounts of land, energy and water, competing with humans for those resources and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The industry is growing at an exponential rate and the impacts are growing with it. We simply can’t afford this. The planet was already struggling, and AI is pushing it downhill faster.

There are environmentally friendly ways to manage energy and water consumption of AI data centres, but there’s currently little regulation and no incentive for the people behind AI companies to invest in them, so they’re not.

Societal chaos

Misinformation, deepfake-enabled sexual crimes, chatbot-induced delusions and increasingly sophisticated scams are just a few of the known and accepted side effects of AI. People are being manipulated into doing harm to themselves and others. Then there’s the destruction of the academic sector, where students are outsourcing their ability to think (and therefore to learn) to a machine.

We no longer know what’s real, who to trust. As a society we’ve lost our collective sense of truth. How are we just sitting down and letting this happen?

What to do about it

There’s an old proverb about having the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I no longer buy into this.

The inevitability of AI is a myth, a marketing ploy sold to us by those who stand to make trillions if it works, and lose as much if it fails. The same type of myth that tells authors they need to belong to a Meta platform if they want to reach an audience.

The tech bros driving this bleak future have made AI (and Meta) almost impossible to avoid—you can do it, but it takes commitment. I’m not just talking about choosing not to use ChatGPT, I’m talking about how hard it is to avoid the ubiquitous AI in everyday life. I pay for a non-Google browser and search engine, I’ve gone into the background settings on all my programs to turn off AI features, and have downgraded my app software where I can. I complained to the ACCC last year about Microsoft forcibly upgrading me to CoPilot and charging me more for the privilege (the ACCC subsequently took the software giant to court about this). 

I’ve also left all Meta platforms and Twitter, because the same tech bros profiting from generative AI are the ones derailing society with their social media sites.

I have no hope of combating this kind of wealth and power. But this is my line in the sand: maybe I can’t change the presence of generative AI in our society, but I can fight against it. And it needs to be fought against.

~ First published as a guest blog on the Writing Off Meta substack.