1930 Illustration of John Henry by Eben Given, from commons.wikimedia
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Almost everywhere, I notice Artificial Intelligence.
After A.I.s from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google kept recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations, Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei said his company would not help the U.S. surveil unwitting civilians or deploy killer drones. In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said contractors don't get to tell the government how to do its job. Dario Amodei stands by his belief that the decision to kill people must remain a human one.
The Peace Corps has started a new department: The Tech Corps. The Tech Corps' volunteers will promote American A.I. abroad at farms, hospitals and schools. (Will anyone help people relate with robots and other living creatures?)
San Francisco's school district bypassed its Board (and disregarded students' privacy concerns) to approve a contract with OpenAI. Los Angeles and San Diego school districts have also agreed to surveillance of students. No comprehensive federal or California law governs how K-12 schools may use generative A.I.
Then (while I need weeks or months to organize a substack and years to write a book), several colleagues now have A.I.s "write" their scientific reports and political essays and poetry translations in no-time at all. I have to admit that the work these A.I.s generate is admirable.
Paul Kingsnorth has initiated a Writers Against AI Campaign. To support it, a writer must pledge: #1: I will not use AI in my work as a writer. #2: I will not support writers who use AI in their work. #3: I will support writers, illustrators, editors and others in related fields whose work is entirely human-made.
I can agree to #1 and #3. I can't promise about #2-- even when A.I. weakens human brainpower.
Plus, every A.I. activity engages the energy-intensive, water-intensive global super-factory that designs computers and LLMs; requires mining, smelting and refining of ores; manufactures chemicals, generates toxic waste from cradle-to-grave; and requires assembly plants, intercontinental shipping, building and deploying access networks, building and deploying data centers, et cetera.
A.I. threatens our existence.
Faced with A.I.'s profitability, Tech Bros (and users) don't pause, notice consequences or adjust technology use to respect the ecosystems on which life depends. They speed forward with upgrades and corporate protections.
WHAT OPTIONS DO WE HAVE FOR THINKING ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
There's fighting it. I think of John Henry. Born into slavery in 1848, a giant of a man, John Henry worked for the C&O railroad. In 1867 (post slavery), the company delivered a steam-powered machine to drill through Big Bend Mountain near Talcott, West Virginia. Afraid they'd lose their jobs to this machine, John Henry's crewmates challenged him (their strongest worker) to race against the machine. The steel-driving man nearly doubled the amount of rock that the steam drill cut.
After winning, John Henry collapsed and died.
Taoists advocate for being in concert with reality and other people.
I do not know how to be in concert with A.I.
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