I Don't like AI

Maybe it's just a me problem...

I just spent a few hours combing through comments on posts about AI, and I was thoroughly entertained, so I decided to contribute my own little piece. I’ve tried to see both sides. In fact, most of the posts I read were not only in support of AI—they were also written by it. (You can imagine there were a LOT of sentences like that) And yes, I read the articles, not just the comments. I like to form my own opinions. After all of that, I have concluded that, if I could, I would go back in time and make sure that AI was never created.

The main reason that I hate AI is probably the most common reason among creatives. It replaces real, organic work. This is especially painful to watch because I have long dreamed of pursuing a creative career. Since I was three years old I’ve been writing songs, stories, and poems. Now, AI can do all of those things.

Some people say that that doesn’t matter, because writers can still exist alongside AI, but AI often replaces real effort. For example, many friends have spoken about accidentally putting AI songs on playlists. They like the style of music, but don’t know that it was actually copied from a small indie artist, who they would love, but will never find, because music apps are over saturated with cheap rip-offs. Similarly, only 2% of first-time authors are successful at traditionally publishing. Imagine how much harder that will be if AI becomes good enough that agents can’t tell what’s real.

If the AI version is as good as the real version, does it really matter? I would argue that it does. Going back to the music example, take some well-known artists. Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted” wouldn’t hit the same if it was an AI bot singing about dealing with fame as a young person, and being unhappy in the face of success. Even if it sounded the exact same and had the exact same lyrics, it wouldn’t matter, because the whole point would be lost. People who have felt similar things wouldn’t think, Wow others relate to me, they would think Wow, this is a catchy song.

If The Hunger Games was written by an AI, it wouldn’t be the same either. An AI generating a narrative about cruelty in government and the dangers of capitalism wouldn’t be as relatable. AI doesn’t have to deal with those things.

Music, literature, and art are beautiful because people created them. Even though most of us can’t relate to dealing with fame and none of us have participated in the hunger games, we can probably all remember a time when we thought something was going to fulfill us, but ended up empty, or a time when we felt anger towards current government issues. Sure, you could get the same amount of dopamine from an AI creation, but you don’t get that connection.

Many argue that AI is the next step in progressing. We said the same thing about cameras, online shopping, and the internet as a whole. We thought that all of those would ruin life, but they didn’t…

The truth is that progression can be taken too far. As an example, look at online shopping and drop-shipping. Originally, online shopping was great, but then it continued to progress—cheaper clothes, more products, landfills piling up. Websites like Etsy have been overrun with crappy products made by borderline slaves in sweatshops across the globe.

My mom used to be an Etsy seller, creating hand-made clothes while me and my siblings were young. She sewed quality pieces that last, and it really helped our family out of a tough financial situation. Now, Etsy is barely usable—why? It’s not because people need more clothing options. It’s because they want more clothes in general. Now we need to have a clothing haul, outfits that are worn once. Quantity is prioritized over quality, and that’s what’s happening with AI.

I’ve seen some people make the argument It’s always been a dream of mine to write a book, but I don’t have the time. Maybe this will be hard to hear, but if you don’t have the time, don’t write a book. Similarly, my dream can’t be I want to be a doctor, but I don’t have the time get the proper medical training. If I don’t get the training, I’m not a doctor. It doesn’t matter how many procedures I try to perform. It doesn’t matter how badly I want to be one.

And I know that some people genuinely have no time, but I wrote an 80,000 word novel in two months only writing about two hours a day. If you wrote for half an hour every day, it would take you less than a year to finish a full book. If you are genuinely coming up with the ideas yourself, that’s already half of the battle. Why feed them into a robot?

You probably already spend some time on social media (If you don’t more power to you), so use some of that time to learn about writing. There are plenty of free resources. It’s simply not necessary to be writing with AI. If you don’t care enough about writing to write a book, pick a different dream. Besides, writing a book with AI doesn’t have the reward that writing a book yourself does (except for maybe monetarily).

I’m sure many Substack creators can relate to the feeling of finishing an article or book and being overwhelmingly proud of it. You come back to it every once and a while. You want to just revel in it, because it’s yours. You made it. Does entering a prompt into AI give you that same feeling? Probably not, because it isn’t really yours. You can’t lovingly read each word, knowing that you put it there, because you didn’t. It was a robot that stole from other people who were actually brave enough to create something.

I could write about this topic forever, but I don’t want to bore you, so I will end will this short thought. Imagine a world where everything is run by AI. Imagine that the stupid robots that are currently dropping plates and kicking children become actually competent. What do people do? You want to be a doctor? We’re got a robot for that. An author? Our robots now generate whole series in seconds. A singer, a painter, a baker, a construction worker? There are robots for all of them.

What do we do then? Do we just spend hours eating precooked meals in already cleaned homes while watching content created by AI? No one having jobs sounds kind of nice on the surface, but what happens when progression becomes regression?

Students are already growing less and less educated, because they use AI to write papers and answer homework questions. The amount of people reading has stopped growing with literacy rates and started dropping.

I don’t know about you, but when I imagine that mindless world, it makes me really sad. And maybe I’m the problem. Maybe people who have lived longer would rather exist in that reality, but I know one thing for sure, I wouldn’t, and I wish that AI was never invented.