Someone Else’s Reality: Nature-led Thoughts on AI

Hello Nature-led Friends!

Human to human, I sincerely hope you are doing well wherever you are! Let’s be feral for a moment because I’ve got some crunchy thoughts.

I will not support Artificial Intelligence (AI) and I will not defend its use. It was corrupted at the moment of its inception to become a profit-driven machine. Spare me your stories of what AI could do for humanity when what it has done to society and the environment cannot be forgiven These insufferable arrogant rich technology bros and their companies built a learning machine and taught it how to steal from other people so they could throw up their hands and declare themselves free of any wrongdoing. The gun killed your child; not the person that aimed and pointed it, not the company that designed it for maximum velocity and stopping force upon the human body. The tool, offering you thoughts and prayers.

Napster was shut down in 2001 for its file sharing database due to copyright infringement. It was back to burning CDs that we owned to make mixed tapes/CDs for friends, family and love interests. Then somewhere around 2010 Google has the idea to copy every book ever written to put into a big searchable database, aka a for-profit library. People could search it for free and download the text for a fee paid only to them for their “service.” They initially hammered out the details and profitability of it by starting with “orphan works” and public domain; texts that had no known copyright holders. Concerns among writers and publishers started to be murmured.

Neither you nor I have the time to go into the accounting, line item by line item, of how capitalism came to dominate the internet and conquer American society. It’s not even a new story! Special interest groups have been puppeteering from behind the scenes of governance for as long as human civilization has existed. What’s different now is that technology gave us digital wings and with these wings a group of “Just trust me, Bro.” asshats with money and influence want to fly us all too close to the proverbial sun.

As an individual you might support causes you believe in by donating, volunteering, writing letters, buying goods and services from people and companies you respect and sharing your experience with others. All of these efforts have been “built to scale”, maximized, and incentivized by companies and organizations to get what they want. All of it for money, all of it for the greedy few who want to be kings of make-believe people and make-believe lands at the cost of real people and real land.

I had to put up with guys like this in high school. The ones that showed up to art class wearing “business casual.” The one’s that would ask me a question “as a woman” and then proceed to tell me what my opinion should be. Every time I scoffed, they took it as a challenge. I was categorized in their shrimp-sized brains as a wild creature to be tamed, or a land to be conquered. To them, no didn’t mean no, it meant try harder or find another way. Tenacity can be a good thing when you’re trying to improve yourself, it’s tyrannical when you apply it to others.

Artificial Intelligence, as in Large Language Models (LLMs), could have been something magical, but it’s corrupted by its human creators. It drinks from a hose of toxic filth while polluting and depriving both real and figurative bodies of water, and of knowledge for all other users. I don’t see how I can willingly use any LLM to put good things out into the world when it’s designed to extract resources from nature (even more) for the fleecing of everyone else (yet again) so that a handful of multibillionaires can bolster their private empires.

Generative AI is what you commonly hear referred to as “AI Slop” because it was trained on the works of real people; artists, creators, and working professionals in a variety of fields without their permission, recognition or compensation. Actual humans who need jobs and money to meet their basic needs of survival for themselves and their families. There are few things I despise more than insincerity. I can’t think of anything more insincere or dishonest than being expected to pay for an AI-written story about what it means to be human so that some feckless crash-test dummy of a genius can make money. No one will benefit more from AI then scammers and corporations pretending they aren’t a trenchcoat full of scammers.

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Opt-Out! Support real artists & crafters, real local businesses and members of your online and offline community. If we aren’t the stakeholders, why are we supporting people who don’t care about us or the places we live and love? If corporations are ungovernable, then we should be too!

I’d like to know your thoughts!

What kind of reality do you want for the future?

Relevant Links:

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001) – Copyright infringement is bad.

Authors Guild v Google ( 2015 Decision)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/13-4829/13-4829-2015-10-16.html – Copyright infringement is cool for Tech companies if they share some of that sweet, sweet revenue.

Citizens United v FEC: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/ – Corporations are people now; we’re not concerned about the lack of morality when they donate millions into presidential campaigns.

US Telecom Assoc, v FCC: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/15-1063/15-1063-2016-06-14.html – The internet is not a utility with government oversight. Telecomm companies can charge what they want.