An AI Skeptic’s 10 Simple Rules For Productive and Ethical AI Usage

Nice piece by Will Leitch, a 50-something guy (like me), after he caught himself "going on some sort of rant ... about the evils of AI... their overarching attitude... was one of a bemused pity, like they were watching a guy ... who was about to be left behind".

He's OK with that, but not "in being a scold", so for his own sanity he wrote his "personal 10 Rules of AI... to clarify my own thinking", something I frequently do myself.

And I have to say these rules find an echo with me:

• it's often not AI, just a calculator relabelled AI "Because AI has become such a corporate buzzword"
• "Using AI to do basic organizational tasks or fundamental coding is perfectly reasonable" but you should double-check it so "how much time are you actually saving?"
• AI usage makes you lazy, until you "just blindly accept whatever it says, without ever checking any actual sources, and use it for every task, even those for which is isn’t inherently designed. To outsource everything is to understand nothing"
• hence never use AI to replace thinking: "Relinquishing decision making... to a bot, is to relieve yourself of the consequences of your own actions ... have something else to blame. Your life is yours. Live it.
• it's theft: "When you are having a bot make something for you, you are actively stealing"
• AI builders don't seem to care about its inaccuracy; worse: "Wanting something to be correct ... makes you a Luddite"
• CEOs probably don't "believe AI will make their companies better or improve their products ... it will reduce their workforces ... It becomes a death spiral... the enshittification of everything"
• "your AI chatbot is not actually your friend ... [it's] a robot whose only programming is to serve and to flatter you ... You will never have a meaningful relationship with your blender."
• "If you use AI to write something for you, it is meaningless and we’d all be better off if you had never said anything in the first place... Writing is meaning... If you ask a Chatbot to write something for you, you are being fundamentally unhuman and foundationally dishonest"
• "You only get to live this life once... be an active participant ... not a casual, passive semi-observer. AI is ... looks to me like it’s only making everything numb"