Is AI Inevitable?

Or or we selling our souls to a knowledge thief?

When I was in San Diego, I took an Uber with a chatty and charming, young, queer driver. Among many other topics, we talked about the best places to eat and visit, what brought us to California, and how long they’d been Ubering.

“It’s pretty new to me,” they said. “I finally left Corporate America, and I’m doing this until I figure out what’s next for me.”

“What did you do in your former work life?” I asked.

“I was a systems engineer for a big corporation,” they said. “It was kind of killing me, but it was hard to shrug off those golden handcuffs. My wife and I decided we’d make it work because my health and our happiness was more important.”

A systems engineer. Damn. This young person made a shit ton of money at their day job, and they made the brave decision to leave for a life that was better than what money could buy them.

Breaking away from the golden handcuffs is tough in a capitalistic society. We all have to eat. To keep a roof over our heads. To pay our electric bills. To try and afford our outrageously priced health insurance and healthcare costs.

I’ve been thinking about attempting an escape from the golden handcuffs a lot lately. I have a job that pays well—albeit in contract form versus full-time work, which always feels a little dicey—but every morning I sit down at my desk to log into my day’s tasks, I feel my soul dying a little death. The work is tedious and repetitive, and I’m definitely not changing the world in any meaningful ways.

In fact, I’m pretty certain the length of my contract is only going to be long enough to adequately train AI to take over my position.

The multi-million dollar company I work for is so AI-focused now, it’s the subject, in some capacity, of the majority of meetings I attend.

What can we do next with AI? Where are you innovating with AI? What can AI write faster than you? What can it design? What repetitive tasks can we use AI to accomplish? What are your most effective AI prompts?

Like any giant corporation, we’re all about “speed,” and “efficiency,” and “optimization.” Corporate America is big on optimization. We’re all going to optimize ourselves out of jobs and real relationships and meaningful lives.

Although I work with some colleagues who are excited about the potential of AI, I also work with some who stand unapologetically beside me, eschewing the use of AI at every turn.

Yes, I’ve used AI at work. I’m required to. But I use it as little as possible, and every time I do, I feel dirty.

Why?

Because I firmly believe that AI is just thievery disguised as progress, and one of the Ten Commandments that was pounded into my head as a kid is “Thou shalt not steal.” And what AI is doing to our planet—and to the most vulnerable communities in our country—is criminal. AI data centers have a massive environmental impact. Massive. The amount of energy it takes to run them and the water it takes to cool them is astounding. In areas where data centers have been built, many are already experiencing water scarcity. Listening to the stories of humans impacted by AI data centers moving into their towns is harrowing. The noise pollution, the land loss, the soaring electric bills, the toxic chemicals being sloughed off into the air they breathe, the high-intensity lighting that keeps them awake at night … it’s all too much.

Last night, I was catching up on “Hacks,” and I almost jumped off the couch when Ava pushed back against an AI comedy app developer trying to convince Deborah to train its model with her stand-up routines. What really resonated with me was Ava’s line about about AI being a “forced inevitability.” It most definitely feels like it’s being forced on us. I mean, if the LGBTQ+ community is accused of pushing our gay agenda on others, what in god’s name is the AI community pushing every time a prompt pops up on a screen asking if you want to go into “AI mode?”

My brother-in-law, who teaches at marketing at his local college, told me last year that if I didn’t embrace AI, I wouldn’t have a job for long. He’s not entirely wrong about the job situation because my writing and design colleagues are losing jobs at a frightening speed, but I am intent on pushing back with all my might.

I have to ask myself every single day: Am I going to embrace AI in a professional capacity? And every single day, my answer leans more and more toward: “Hell, no.” If that means I’m left picking beans at 75, then I guess I’ll be a cranky, old bean picker with an even shittier back. But I’ll go to my grave knowing I didn’t sell my soul to the billionaire overlords and the late-stage capitalism that tried to convince me that speed and efficiency > creativity and heart.

In my capacity as a writer of fiction and memoir, AI usage is a huge “HELL, NO!” for me. Every. Single. Day. Full stop. There’s a reason I loved writing research papers in high school. There’s a reason I studied English in college. There’s a reason I’ve been drawn to pen and paper before I could spell correctly.

That reason is art.

It’s humanity.

It’s heart.

It’s soul.

Here’s the thing: I love the mental and creative backbends it takes to mull over a story, to contemplate the characters and the setting and the twist. I revel in standing in the shower until the water runs cold while I work out a scene in my head. I will always keep my phone or a notebook beside my bed so I can wake up in the middle of the night and jot down notes that came to me in a sleepy haze.

I’ve been thinking about my next novel for months now. It’s been all-consuming. But the only true thing I’ve had in my head so far is my main character. That’s it. I know who she is, but I don’t really know her well yet. And I certainly don’t know her background, her family, her story, or her future. But over the past few days, it’s been coming to me in little lightbulb moments. She is taking shape, slowly but surely, and so is her story.

I never want to give that power and beauty and process over to a machine. These little discoveries, to me, are the heart of my work. How can my work have a heart if I don’t give it my own?

Writing a book is like putting a puzzle together. Piece by piece by piece. If that piece doesn’t fit, you try another one. Eventually, they all snap together to create something that didn’t previously exist. Something beautiful. Something lovingly created by human hands. Would you want a machine to complete your puzzles for you? The fun, the entertainment, the art itself … that’s all in the process.

And what is to become of our world if we allow it to be run by machines? I suppose in a perfect existence, machines would take care of our basic survival needs, and we’d be left to paint and garden and sew and write and create community. But I’m pretty sure this isn’t the future that Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are building. I’m guessing their future is more about amassing additional zeroes behind their net worth numbers than creating a Kumbaya campfire life for the rest of us.

Perhaps I’m rushing headfirst into curmudgeonly “Get off my lawn” territory in my AI beliefs, but I’m okay with that. I don’t want my world to be run by robots. Or billionaires. Or fascists. Or anyone willing to sacrifice this beautiful planet to environmentally-devastating data centers.

I don’t want my art to be built on stolen goods.

I want my writing—and my life—to be heart-centered.

I want the legacy I leave behind to come from my soul, not from a server.