AI Resistance

If you talk to anybody long enough about AI tools, you’ll very often hear that they’re “inevitable”, or that they’re “already here” and now is thetime to “get used to it” or we’ll “get left behind”. We don’t think any of that is true! We see the adoption of AI tools making a whole lot of things worse, and we’re teaching, learning, doing our jobs, and living our lives without using any of these things! We were told that cryptocurrency, the metaverse, google glasses, virtual reality were the future, and none of those things have changed our lives?

What do these technologies have in common?

Tech billionaires! Every one of these technologies suddenly became the future when a bunch of venture capitalists dumped a bunch of money into them waiting for a big payday. Most of these things didn’t pay off! Facebook rebranded to Meta to tell us they were the Metaverse company and they completely abandoned that, so now they’re stuck with that goofy name.

Whey not use AI?

There’s so many reasons that we don’t use AI tools, here are a few:

They’re really bad for the environment and people are building a lot of data centers that are taking up electricity, straining the power grid, making electricity more expensive, and making people nearby sick.
They make us worse at our jobs, and they make us more replaceable.
They make our skills worse, mess with our critical thinking, and isolate us from other people.
They miss the point: we don’t go to school to turn in homework or write assignments, we go to learn stuff.
They took a whole bunch of things that were free on the internet (and other things that weren’t free), and sell them back to us. We want to see more art in the world, not richer billionaires.
A lot of the work that goes into training AI tools really sucks, is harmful to the people doing it, and pay really bad.

If you want to know more, here are some more collections of reasons:

How do we resist AI?

There are so many ways to resist AI, and it’s all about finding out which ways work for you. The easiest way is to just say not! If you’re in school or at work, try saying no and explaining to whoever is telling you to use it what your reasons are. Sometimes that’s all it takes, sometimes you have to dig in. Tell other people in your lives why you don’t use AI tools, and tell them abouot what you care about, ask what they care about? Sometimes it can feel like AI is everywhere but a lot of people really don’t like it, and those conversations can happen anywhere.

The companies that sell AI products are booking huge amounts of data centers that, if you live near one, will make your life and the life of your neighbors worse! Find people who are organizing against data centers and work with them!

Show people in your school or work how LLMs make things work. You don’t have to accept slop. Let people know!

Here are some other things that people are doing to resist AI: Resist AI List