Everywhere Foist Upon Us

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K. Le Guin When I began writing this, I intended to make the case that there is no responsible use of “AI”. I was motivated by three separate encounters in a single morning of people arguing that the path forward is to adopt “AI” and find a way to do so responsibly.123 In the course of writing, however, I discovered that my real disagreement with this position was that it is predicated on the belief that “AI” is here to stay, that it is inevitable. I loathe the term “AI” because it is so broad as to be practically meaningless. There is obviously a difference between using ChatGPT to read or write your emails versus using machine translation software to translate something into a language you can read, although both can be said to use “AI”. Hence my insistence on using scare quotes whenever I use the term. As I began writing, I realized that the arguments I make for why there is no…