FUCK AI FOREVER

The letters 'AI' crossed over in a cut-and-paste style I'm no stranger to the tech luddite mindset. In fact, early on I was called "a boomer" (!) for rejecting Spotify, Facebook and the likes. My stance on this whole data feudalism age is also quite clearly stated in my manifesto, so if you want to read where I'm coming from, check that out.

Of course, then, do I look on AI with disdain. There are no upsides to this hellish invention.

Quick summary of why I hate AI

AI does not only fuck up the planet, it also steals our jobs and lets venture capitalists and the "magnificent seven" (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) monopolize on the sum total of human intellectual and creative work while letting us deal with the unavoidable consequences.

The environment

Large-scale AI is housed in huge data centres. Data centres which take insane amounts of resources to build (for example, producing a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw material), and the materials often include rare earth elements mined in environmentally destructive ways.

Then we have the water situation. Data centres require a lot of water, both during production and to cool components while in operation. Globally AI-related infrastructure consumes almost six times more water than the entirety of Denmark, and that's right now, not a future estimation. That doesn't go well with the fact that a quarter of humanity lacks access to clean water, does it?

Add to this the sheer energy required to run these data centres, energy which in most places comes from fossil fuels - and the fact that data centres also produce a lot of electronic waste which often contains mercury and lead and it's quite clear how the situation as it stands today is unacceptable.

The jobs

A big man stands on sacks of money, on his vest the words 'big business' are written All professional artists, illustrators and digital creators have already been noticing a decline in clients. Businesses around the globe are adopting an AI-first mindset, which has lead to tens of thousands of layoffs and things will only escalate. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic predicts that AI will "replace up to 50% of all jobs, period". Sure, he admitted himself that as an AI provider he "has to say extreme things to gain attention and instill FOMO", but he's probably not far off, and his statement makes perfect sense since it aligns with the theory of capitalist hype (I'll get to that in a bit, put a pin in it for now).

Here's a good article containing stories from laid off workers in all sorts of areas. From content moderators and software engineerers at Google, Dropbox, Adobe, TikTok and the public sector, to tech workers and programmers in general.

The argument goes that after the removal of these jobs - new jobs will take their place, where a workforce is needed to supervice AI. And that sounds like absolute crap. A few years ago I read David Graeber's brilliant book 'Bullshit Jobs; A Theory'. In it, he discussed the existence of jobs designed to simply keep us in line. Jobs that were bullshit and could easily be removed without any impact on society at large and even to great relief of the people having them. I imagine being an AI strategist is one of the future bullshit jobs.

The capitalism

Capitalism always enters speculative cycles designed to accumulate capital and offload risk onto the public. The railroad mania. The dot-com bubble. And now the AI bubble, except extraction is called innovation and substance has been replaced with hype. This is the latest demonstration of how capitalism has failure built-in and how it regularly keeps letting common people, and societies at large, take the hit. It's not a matter of if this will happen, it's already happening. I quote Justin Kollar: "Don't be fooled - the AI bubble is the strategy".

How to minimize AI in your life

There are various areas where AI will pop up going forward, and even though it's getting trickier it's so far relatively easy to minimize it. From knowing how to do web searches and which browser settings to use, to keeping an eye on the development of the programs and platforms one uses.

Search engines

Since an AI search consumes 10 times the electricity of a non-AI search I always use noai.duckduckgo.com, which is a version of the search engine DuckDuckGo that, you guessed it, doesn't use or present results generated by AI. You can either just bookmark said url - or, if you search straight from the address bar like me, you can add it to your browser's list of default search engines. In that case, use the url "https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" and name your added option something like "No AI DDG" to be able to quickly identify it in the list.

Browser settings

Sadly, most of the big browsers out there does not allow the end user to disable the AI features. There are various reasons for this, such as AI being part of their overall philosophy (Chrome/Alphabet) and AI being a core part of the entire operating system (Safari/Apple). Edge allows disabling some AI for now, but with Microsoft's next iteration of Windows being completely focused on AI I doubt this will be the case for long.

If you are on any of these three big browsers I recommend you switch, personally I use a combination of Firefox (can have all AI turned off) and its fork LibreWolf (doesn't come with AI to begin with).

Software and platforms

Be on the lookout by carefully reading the release notes for updates, and always opt out of anything AI related. You do best to assume they implement AI changes on an opt out-basis, so if you haven't actively said no to AI, you're probably letting them use it somehow. Don't be afraid to switch software and leave platforms doubling down on AI, if voicing your concerns doesn't help. If they embrace AI even after the user base has made it clear it's not wanted - then good riddance.