AI promised us a better way to work and live.

But 4 years since I first started using it, my excitement around it has worn off together with my optimism.

To me, the benefits most of today’s AI use brings to the wellbeing of humans seem far offset by its harm.

For the first time, AI-powered machines are killing humans autonomously and big tech monopolies are developing nuclear-powered datacenters. Both use cases result in fields of electronic waste that pollute the planet while AI-generated slop pollutes the internet. Against all evidence, the promise of a post-scarcity utopia is driving history’s biggest stock bubble and creating the first trillionaires.

In return for this disruption of our ecology, economy, and society, most of us don’t work less or more easily. A lot of jobs are simply changing from human creation to mundane curation, or disappearing altogether.

The obvious solution is to stop the development and adoption of AI technology. But no matter how disruptive it is, no civilization in history has ever stopped developing tools that increase productivity. You can delay or control new inventions, but you cannot stop them.

That’s why instead of fighting against AI, it’s more productive to fight against its harmful uses:

• Against generated ideas and content presented as human-made.
• Against AI and algorithms designed to addict or manipulate.
• Against datacenters polluting nature in exchange for inflated stock.
• Against weapon systems created to kill humans autonomously.
• Against profit-first businesses putting human wellbeing second.

Like any other tool, AI is only as harmful as whoever uses it.

So instead of trying to stop the tool, it might be easier to change humans.