Friends,

First, so many of you have told me that you’re forwarding this on to friends—thank you! It means the world to know I’m not writing into the void. If you want to read what I have to say every week, you can subscribe!

This week, I’ve been thinking about macro and micro versions of the adage “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism,” especially after reading 404 Media’s excellent and horrifying account of the Kenyan workers who are compelled to watch porn and roleplay as sexbots to create what the Wall Street Journal, of all places, is calling a “sexy suicide couch” (somewhere JD Vance’s ears perked up…)

On a smaller scale, over on my other newsletter where I primarily talk about writing and editing, I mused about the importance of insisting on apprenticeships and mentoring in the age of AI. You can read about it here (and of course feel free to subscribe!) But you don’t have to take it from me—check out this week’s Blood in the Machine to read educator’s accounts about how AI is taking over their jobs: “If AI is writing the work and AI is reading the work, do we even need to be there at all?.”

Friends, as your know—we do not want this future for our kids.

Love people, critique institutions

One of the most lasting impacts that Jan Kubik, my dissertation advisor, had on my thinking was the idea that states and structures, rather than people, are worthy of your scrutiny and scorn.

Mél Hogan writes this week in D/sjunct/ons (It’s long, but worth reading carefully): “The rage against DEI and the humanities is part of the ongoing project of building up the logics of AI and metrics as the great authority…

This is why white supremacy, transphobia, and incel culture, alongside anti-intellectualism, anti-scientific authority, anti-expertise thinking, and being against higher education, and the arts and humanities more generally, have been required as groundwork for AI — and why it can be understood as a fascist project. In other words, it is not a mere coincidence that AI is entering the world now, as it has. Fascism is the ideological choice that tech CEOs make and help shape because it makes them richer, of course, but also because it allows them to manipulate and observe the world at a distance — like a model or a simulation — to see how things play out. It is perhaps best thought of as a dark kink of the Oligarchs — so bored and empty that they shake up the stock market to make themselves feel something… Clearly, it’s worth analysing their motives as political and psychological, because the problems do not necessarily lie with computers, or even with AI, but squarely with them.”

Blame the system

The internet has been very loud this week about people who use AI for legal and medical advice. The fools! Don’t they know that these products hallucinate, steal your data, aren’t protected by attorney/client privilege/etc? And it’s all true.

But you know, we live in a country where we don’t provide access to health care or legal advice. What would it look like to live in a country where we spent money on providing excellent access to mental health care and real legal protections for consumers? To start, maybe we should tax the rich.

I know it’s not that easy, but it’s also that easy. We need to be done accommodating the oligarchs and tech broligarchs as they take over our lives without consequence.

Mother Jones ran a story this week by Emily Tate Sullivan called “This is Your Kid’s Brain on AI Slop.” And it’s terrifying—tens of thousands of videos of AI nonsense being pushed into the algorithms of children:

At first, the video seems harmless. The song is upbeat and informative. The animation aligns with the promised subject.  Except, hold on a second, did those lyrics just say, “Red means stop, and green means right”? The article is full of terrible examples of AI slop freely available to kids on the internet…you should read it, and weep.

Sullivan notes: “The cognitive decline associated with the consumption of AI slop—such as a shortened attention span, decreased focus, and mental fog—is sometimes referred to as ‘brainrot’ But when the audience is children, there’s not much to rot, [pediatrician Dana] Suskind said. Because a child’s brain is still in its early development, still being built, what you get instead, she said, is ‘brain stunt.’”

This is bad! Legislators should regulate this, and YouTube should moderate this content.

I know you know-generative AI is not inevitable

I haven’t yet, but I’m excited to read Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser. As he says in an interview, “another crucial driver of AI refusal is AI’s reshaping of what it means to be human. Not only is AI altering how we work, how we think, or how we create, it is reconfiguring what it means to live a meaningful life. The kind of life deemed meaningful, within the AI narrative, is one that is efficient, fast, and intelligent. This is simply unconvincing to many. For them, AI promises not emancipation or new powers — such as that of superintelligence — but a further diminishing of their ability to be in tune with what actually matters to them: community, care, growth.“

I’m still trying to figure out what this looks like for myself—resistance to AI is easy, but I’m deeply entangled in the Google/Amazon universe and would like not to be…but I know a first step is thinking about how to reclaim my attention as my own. And this is on us—we should probably turn off all notifications on our phones. Or, you know, get a flip phone or throw your phone into the sea (I want this in every language and will be making a trip to Mr. Boddington’s soon).

Join our coalition!

In happier news, we had a great event at the chancellor’s listening tour last Saturday.

My son gave the chancellor our petition (1400 signatures and counting! please share it with your people! Help us get to 1500!)

My daughter, on rollerblades, gave flyers to the NYPD, who the DOE called on us (eye roll)

Audrey Watters (!!!) came out with us and wrote about it in her fantastic newsletter.

And on our way home, we encountered this street art, which I also would love on a totebag or coffee mug:

We need folks to attend future stops on the chancellor’s tour to bring up the dangers of ed tech and AI. If you can go to one, email me and I can send you some ideas and talking points and get you set up! The next one is on March 24 at Dewey in Brooklyn. They have snacks—and are more fun with friends!

Also, if you have a story for me, I’d love to hear it! Let me know what conversations are happening around you!

Take care,

Kelly

www.parentsforaicaution.com