ai agreement

*note: the expand feature ^ is known to not work in some browsers.

my brief dabbling in generative ai

generative ai has never settled well with me, though i’ve tried to use it. for example, i’ve used it to tweak my resume to better align with job descriptions. and, i’ve been in group containers and purchased programs that unapologetically relied on generative ai to write website copy and content, tweak website code, and integrate human design into my business. for a hot minute, i tried using their trained chatbots and fed them prompts. chatgpt even called me ‘sister.’

the results have always—at best—been sub-par, and aside from my decision to keep a few of their suggested grammar tweaks to content i’d already fully written on my own (without ai tools) none of the text on this website is ai-generated.

i do use stock images on this website, and my gen-z daughter—who has an eye for identifying ai-generated images—called me out for using a few. i initially defended my inclusion of these images (all sourced from a spiritual stock photography website) because i couldn’t find any relevant non-ai alternatives. but despite my defenses, using ai-generated imagery has never settled well with me. and so, i’ve replaced those that i either knew or suspected to be ai-generated. i don’t believe that any imagery currently on this site is ai-generated.* not surprising, i suppose, given how bereft of images this current iteration of my website is!

i’ve also—on a few occasions with a previous iteration of this website—used a generative ai coding tool to tweak a few website formatting issues i’ve encountered and needed to trouble-shoot. i am no longer using this tool, and none of the codes i’ve written rely on generative ai.

*i will humbly remove any that are, should i learn otherwise.

my beef with generative ai

and why i’ve stopped using it and actively avoid it*

my biggest problems with generative ai are that it is horrific for…

1. mama earth and our current climate crisis

2. communities that don’t have the resources to stop the development of data centers ‘in their backyards’

3. life that can be indiscriminately ended by its use (for example, by the Pentagon or as the result of our worsening climate crisis)

4. artists and writers whose work is stolen to train llm

5. artists and writers whose work is stolen by people aiming to profit from their work through cheap replication of it

6. millions of people whose jobs are disappearing…without replacement

7. privacy. this is a much bigger problem than i’d realized—all the more so now that the us has become an authoritarian state.

and yes, I’m also pretty horrified at how it’s ‘enshitifying’ the internet and ‘dumbifying’ people.

and as someone who has a neurodivergent brain (and who has taken on a huge number of responsibilities), i still don’t believe it’s my right to exploit these horrors simply because generative ai technologies offer me more ease in moving through the world. i have never understood why a relatively privileged human feels entitled to experience more comfort and ease at the expense of a less-privileged person’s right to survive…or for that matter, the right of other species that inhabit our planet to survive.

and so, this whole notion that “i’m not using it, but to each their own!” falls flat for me.

i’m not interested in ‘othering’ anyone or pissing people off, though i’m certain i just did both. and yet, i’m okay with that being the result because this is truly an epic problem for our planet and even humanity’s survival. [not in isolation, of course, but let’s name it as one of the technologies that is directly imperiling our ability halt climate change.]

i’m also not interested in policing anyone, and unless someone initiates a conversation with me about ai, they’re not likely to hear my views. and yet, when i encounter generative ai—say, an ai-generated image accompanying a substack post or content that appears to be ai-generated—my policy is to stop reading and unsubscribe or unfollow the content.

my hope is that this becomes ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’ for someone reading this.

that they won’t go down the shame rabbit hole for having used it, as i don’t think that it’s at all helpful. (as for me, the shame i feel comes from having continued to entertain using ai after i learned just how awful it is for artists and mama earth).

another hope is that it gets readers to consider how their own relative privilege feeds the justification for using it.

in the west, we have a tendency to put our own interests above the collective’s (and by collective, i’m referring to both our local and global communities—especially the global south). i would love to see us do less of that.

here are a few resources and ideas to reduce or even extract yourself from generative ai…

1. listen to this episode of off the grid. it’s about going ‘ai sober,’ and it’s really sobering how much information we voluntarily give to authoritarian governments (like the us) via what we feed into gpt, authorize google to do, etc.

2. use kagi for a search engine without ai summaries or ads. you have to pay a nominal monthly fee for it, but that’s because they aren’t tracking and selling you data or making money on ads. i am pretty sure that you get your first 100 searches for free, so you can test-drive it.

3. if you use notion, email team@makenotion.com and ask them to remove ai from your account. they are very friendly and responsive!

4. if you’re a content creator, humor us by using old school stock photos. maybe even include in your caption what the ai-generated version of this image would look like…had you used it. this signals to the growing contingency of those of us who refuse to read content with an ai-generated featured image. i mean, if you used ai to generate your image, did you also use it to write your post for you? i don’t want to read ai-generated posts for many reasons, so this has become a quick filtering mechanism for me.

5. swap proofreading with a friend. if you use ai to edit or proofread content, resumes, etc., consider asking a friend to proofread it for you, without ai tools. then, reciprocate. in the age of ai, when i see an occasional typo, i smile because it suggests that a human is more likely to have created it without ai.

6. simply don’t use ai tools. like, unless you are literally addicted to ai, this is an option.

that is all, for now. thank you for caring enough to read this page.

in solidarity,

kristi

*because generative ai has become completely baked into so much of the tools we use in our day-to-day (web search summaries come to mind…like how tf do you avoid these unless you’re using kagi for a search engine?!), i know that some of my actions are still feeding ‘the machine.’ i am working to extricate myself fully from generative ai, but in this day and age, and i don’t know if it’s possible without completely eschewing the internet. maybe it is, so please consider this page to be a working document. i intend to update it as i deepen into my own anti-generative ai journey.

i would love to learn about any resources you may know of that can help with this. and if you know of non-generative ai resources that can make work and the internet more accessible, please please please share them with me! I would love to turn this page into a resource for conscientious humans rather than a quasi-manifesto. Thanks!