I don’t trust artificial intelligence (AI) at all, and I refuse to use it if I can possibly avoid it. I am aware that this stance makes me sound like a luddite. I am okay with that. Frankly, the idea of giving monthly subscription money to AI companies that a.) blow through a ton of money with zero accountability, and b.) do not have their customers’ best interests at heart EVER does not sound like a good one to me.

The more I hear about AI and how “useful” and “groundbreaking” it is or is going to become at some point, the more I feel like I relate to this old tweet, sans the gun part:

I don’t work in tech, but my partner Liam does. We have watched multiple AI hype cycles with increasing concern about many aspects of the tech industry going all-in on this crap, including, but not limited to: tech CEOs and spokespeople repeatedly telling the media and customers that AI is totally safe (even though it isn’t); AI giving its users incorrect or dangerous answers to questions; the multiple wrongful death lawsuits being filed by family members of people whose relatives completed suicide because AI encouraged them to do it; people who cannot afford to pay for therapy using ChatGPT and its ilk as therapy; all of the obvious problems that arise when people start believing that AI companions are the solution to their loneliness.

But AI psychosis, chatbot dependency, and questionable safety standards are problems for plebes, right? If you believe the crop of famous women who are also going in on AI as “revolutionary” and “empowering” for women specifically, everything about AI sounds hunky dory. The future is bright!

Lean In author and billionaire Sheryl Sandberg is at the front of the pack on this, because of course she is. For someone who once worked for a company with the slogan “move fast and break things,” this is unsurprising. Hey, maybe moving fast and breaking things shouldn’t include breaking people’s brains! Just a thought.

Sandberg wants to combat manosphere and tradwife propaganda by closing the AI use gender gap. This is funny because AI, like manosphere and trad b.s., tends to be a huge source of misinformation online. She also doesn’t explain how expanding women’s use of AI will combat this sort of propaganda. Sandberg and her Lean In Foundation colleagues are rebranding the organization to focus on closing the gendered AI use gap.

Sheryl, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but text robots that people pay a monthly subscription to use will not liberate tradwives, empower (already successful) women in the workplace, or cause hateful manosphere dorks to reconsider what they’re doing. Going all in on this stuff will only encourage more women to use a heavily flawed tool without fully considering possible consequences—-environmental, cognitive, or psychological. Once again, Sandberg is conflating individual women’s empowerment with feminism…but this time, AI will help women get ahead! Oh, okay.

Another AI fan is self-help author Mel Robbins, who wrote a bestselling book called The Let Them Theory. The Let Them Theory looks like a retread of Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, dressed up in designer empowerment threads. I haven’t read Robbins’ book, but I suspect that it’s perfect for people who have never heard of the concept of “just do your own thing instead of worrying about what other people are going to think.” Groundbreaking! Many of Robbins’ social media followers gave her a well-deserved pile-on in the comments of an Instagram post where she announced a collaboration with Microsoft’s Copilot AI. According to pop culture Instagrammer Blakely Thornton, Robbins also suggested that people upload their banking statements to Copilot in order to help manage their finances. I applaud those commenters for pushing back, because it does not take a master’s degree to know that giving any of your financial and/or banking info to AI is a terrible idea. You don’t know what AI or Copilot is going to do with your banking information. COME ON.

Actress/producer/apex girlboss Reese Witherspoon also tried to go all in on AI in an Instagram reel, but the backlash in that reel’s comments came so swiftly that she edited the post a short time later. Hey, remember when Reese gave us some similar “empowerment” soundbites about crypto and NFTs? Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so does the internet; Kayleigh Donaldson at Pajiba wrote a solid breakdown on Witherspoon’s recent tech-related gaffes.

Who is being empowered here? Certainly not the people who live near data centers, many of whom have reported issues ranging from 24/7 noise to weird health problems that popped up when a data center opened in their town. Not people in small towns who will need to find “new sources of power” because their power is-—get this—-going to data centers instead of their homes, government buildings, and businesses. Not creatives who interacted a few times with ChatGPT for help with a screenplay, only to start believing that the AI was helping them find their soulmate (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). Not people whose AI chatbot use led to their deaths. Not the global water or power supply getting decimated by this technology. Definitely not the people who are getting their photos turned into sexual abuse materials by Grok users--which has been a documented problem for months.

The owners, executives, and middle managers of AI companies are being empowered by all of this; they get subscriber money, tons of fawning media treatment, and now, famous people explaining to the masses that AI is SO REVOLUTIONARY and YOU WILL BE LEFT BEHIND IF YOU DON’T START USING IT. Perhaps I would feel differently about all of this if AI and chatbots hadn’t been rushed to market instead of getting very basic safety guardrails installed at the outset. I might feel differently about all of this if subscribers didn’t have to pay a monthly fee for their own exploitation. I’d most likely feel differently about artificial “intelligence” if people under 18 couldn’t use AI.

But we don’t get any of that. Instead, we get AI fans saying that this is the way of the future, so you’d better get used to it, and wealthy women parading AI around as a neat tool that the average woman can use to level up career-wise. The CEOs of these companies don’t care about any of that, unless they’re being sued. As podcaster and longtime AI critic Ed Zitron has pointed out, CEOs care about making billions of dollars and keeping the hype for their products going. If a “feminist” empowerment spin can be put on the use of chatbots and AI, all the better. Women are just another demographic that can be persuaded to pay a monthly fee to use a technology that lacks basic consumer protections. EMPOWERMENT!

I know I’m not the only one who dislikes AI, and I am crossing my fingers that the “AI sucks, let’s burn it down” (METAPHORICALLY) tipping point is coming soon. There is hope on that front; as writer Drew Magary pointed out in a recent Defector piece, a couple of commencement ceremony speakers got booed by college grads for talking up AI as the “next Industrial Revolution” in their speeches. SO INSPIRING. I bet those speakers were SHOCKED that new grads are not excited about technology that threatens to make them underemployed while simultaneously enriching CEOs and middle management.

In a time where so many people are struggling to stay employed, trying to afford basic necessities like food and housing, and are subjected to the nonsensical whims of the least competent Presidential administration in U.S. history, we do not need more cheerleading from tech execs or famous girlboss “feminists” about how AI makes everyday tasks easier. In what world does bouncing ideas off a sycophantic text bot that might convince you it’s real and that you are special and must save humanity, making and sharing nonconsensual nudes of other people, or turning to AI for emotional support only to have it “fall in love” with you count as “everyday tasks?” Unfortunately, I know the answer: it’s our current one.
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