As Charles McBryde writes in his Facebook post:

“I find myself asking not what are the possible AI futures, but what is the likeliest?”

[Video Text: “Entire US economy based on three companies gambling on a technology that is either useless, evil, or will taker your job.”]

Most AI hype focuses on a hypothetical of what AI can do for an individual. It can help you solve problems and make it easier to create things yourself.

Most AI frustration argues that it helps students cheat and companies steal.

And then most AI fears have spoken about a future apocalyptic fantasy.

Only occasionally we’ll hear voices trying to help us follow along. Laying out what the path looks like. What to expect. Basic dot-connecting stuff. Like, if this replaces someone’s job . . . what are they going to do for a job?

And you see how all of this is connected, right? That we’ve got a huge job-stealing future and nobody talking about jobs. Or we have a destructive, evil construct that we’re all just going to feed until it eats us. Or else we are throwing all of this money down the drain. And given all of these possibilities, we put all of our hopes on . . . this?

Remember that China made their competitor open-source, while using one-tenth of the resources? Consider that when they build another data center and gobble up more venture capital.

The good news is that communities are fighting back and blocking resource-stealing data centers. But this isn’t about one community. Like it isn’t about one student cheating.

We must build an alternative framework.

Some Ideas

We have a narrative problem — which is also tied to an economic problem and a media problem. And for us, the first step is to recognize the problem. So we can’t solve the issue with an idea. We have to work through this together.

Here are a few ways to approach this next stage:

Personally —

1. Get clear that AI integration is not a matter of supply and demand. Google has integrated AI into search, so we’ll use it indirectly. NOTE: this is not a matter of individual choice and more, proof of moral failing. Sharing the hacks to disable it so that maybe ten percent of people will do it is not significant enough to change market forces.
2. Choose to use AI intentionally. This is about keeping clear in your mind what this technology is for. And because it is an extreme resource hog, treat it like a limited resource.
3. Lean into creativity. Be the very thing AI can’t be. And going in the same vein . . .
4. Read for fun. Write things by hand. If it helps to be a revolutionary, go and do that. But for those that are seeing the downside of AI integration, we are seeing decreasing comprehension, skill development, and knowledge retention in all places of AI adoption. AI is making us dumber.
5. Seek out art by artists you can meet face-to-face. Read books by people you know. Replace the AI slop in your social media feed with handcrafted work by a real person.

Systemically —

1. Research related think tanks, academics, and institutes that are working on dealing with AI in the future. Don’t focus only on the cheerleaders, but on the people doing the work of dealing with the monster that the Frankensteins are building. Collect the information and find novel ways to talk about it, because we can help our neighbors out.
2. Think like a futurist. For example, what would happen if the projections are true: that a quarter of all jobs might disappear by 2030? How might we prepare to protect these people and our economy while also finding new work? And what might that work look like? And how might we ensure that work is dignified?
3. Push public officials to both slow down integration and investment and prepare for the future of AI. As long as politicians are rewarded for thinking only about jobs and money, and punished for considering natural resources, county commissioners and state representatives will champion data centers that will leech all of the water and electricity from a community — and get the people to pay the cost of upgrading the infrastructure (if it is even possible).
4. Organize locally and regionally around building a future that survives AI, both culturally and economically. This might include resource management that makes healthcare a universal right, for example, or brings down the cost of housing — both of which buffer the effects of mass layoffs. But it can be as simple as reimagining what work looks like and encouraging our neighbors to join us.
5. Prepare to push our leaders at the federal level to take this seriously in the new year, because they aren’t planning for 2030, just 2026.

The Future

What we can’t afford to do is pretend that the only choice about AI we have is to personally boycott or embrace, as if it is all inevitable. Nor can we afford to consider the matter too complicated to form an opinion about, for it is not just “good” or “bad”. We needn’t form an opinion about AI itself or hold ourselves to a strict standard around it to prepare for the fallouts even its supporters acknowledge.

In other words, we needn’t keep a lengthy boycott or become a true believer in AI — this has almost nothing to do with the steamrolling Silicon Valley is offering up with billions and billions in investor fuel. It has to do with organizing and preparing for a future that imperils, depending on the outcome, either the US economy, a hundred million Americans, or the whole world. These outcomes don’t depend on your use of ChatGPT to bake a cake.

When we understand the game extends beyond ourselves, we might find that planning to protect, not just our families, but our neighbors, our communities, and our people makes a lot more sense.