I am so fucking sick of AI.

I don't want it writing my books. I don't want it drawing my art. I don't want it composing my music. I don't want it in our workplaces. I don't want it in our schools. I don't want it in our libraries. I don't want it transcribing my visits with my doctor. I don't want it drafting my legal contracts. I don't want it deciding my health insurance claims. I don't want it predicting crimes. I don't want it advertising my products.

I'm sick of tolerating this AI owner class, who are apparently above the law, stealing everything we make and profiting off it, then acting like we're the criminals for needing money to live. I'm sick of everything being so fucking financialized that the art and culture being suffocated by slop aren't even a part of the conversation for these people. I'm sick of them caring for nothing but money, by any means and at any cost. I'm sick of watching them burn tens of billions of dollars to make everything worse, while those of us who are trying to make literally anything better scrimp and save and barely scrape by.

I'm sick of watching people I know slip down the AI psychosis rabbit hole. I'm sick of trying to figure out how to talk about this to the people I care about, when every conversation somehow puts me on defense. I'm sick of feeling crazy for caring about people more than profits, and creativity over convenience.

I'm sick of being called a Luddite. I'm sick of being treated like I'm stupid. I'm sick of them acting like their fancy random number generator equates to intelligence, or even—God forbid—sentience. I'm sick of them not caring one bit that if their AI actually is sentient, then they themselves are slavers.

I'm sick of watching my friends lose their jobs to the vacuous promises of AI and the greed of the owner class. I'm sick of feeling like I can't help. I'm sick of struggling to redefine my own self after my industry crawled so far up its own asshole that it's no longer sustainable or even recognizable. I'm sick of reminding myself I'm not a failure just because some criminals burned my 20-year career to the ground to power their giant pile of linear algebra.

I'm sick of data centers. I'm sick of arguing about “fair use”. I'm sick of “AI readiness”. I'm sick of worrying about their circular financing scheme crashing the economy for the fourth fucking time¹ in my adult life. I'm sick of them cozying up to fascists. I'm sick of the industrial-scale spam and scams their platforms have supercharged. I'm sick of their tech generating everything from non-consensual nudes to outright child porn and nobody seeing the inside of a jail cell over it. I'm sick of the people who unleashed this plague upon the world being treated as untouchable gods instead of the craven fucking criminals they are. I'm sick of everyone minimizing the brazen theft of all the art and culture and knowledge we ever put online as if that's just “water under the bridge”. I'm sick of “AI is inevitable” and “AI is here to stay”.

I'm sick of schools putting AI in front of kids. I'm sick of AI generated event fliers and birthday invites and restaurant menus. I'm sick of AI memes and AI pictures and AI videos. I'm sick of “I just used it a little bit”. I'm sick of “it just helps me refine ideas”. I'm sick of “it democratizes art”.

I'm sick of getting AI submissions to our press. I'm sick of AI scandals spreading like wildfire on social media. I'm sick of the AI “author marketing” emails. I'm sick of Tilly fucking Norwood. I'm sick of Eleven Labs and Ask Amazon and fucking Grok and Muse and Claude (oh my god I am so fucking sick of Claude).

I'm sick of the idea that it's okay for our cultural development to plateau at 2023. I'm sick of “it's good enough”. I'm sick of privacy going out the window as soon as convenience enters the chat. I'm sick of “it's so much cheaper than hiring someone”, especially when it’s so obviously subsidized to hell and back and the owners will turn those screws hard once full dependence has been established. I'm sick of “do you want China to have it?” and the sinophobia that's always, always behind that question.

I'm sick of never knowing if something is real or not any more. I'm sick of sharing something cute or funny and then discovering I was tricked and it was actually AI slop. I'm sick of the witch hunts and the false accusations and the patterns of racism and sexism already being reinforced there. I'm sick of every tool I use cramming AI into every corner of it so that I'm tricked into using AI without my knowledge or consent. I'm sick of Meta slopifying our ads² without telling us and then distributing the slop under our name. I'm sick of worrying whether we've unknowingly worked with someone who hid their AI use, and having that blow up in our faces when someone else discovers it before we do (see aforementioned witch hunts). I'm sick of the suspicion and the fear and the way this tech has sapped the joy and connection out of fucking everything, especially at a time when politically and culturally we are in such desperate need of joy and connection. I'm sick of “move fast and break things” and its unspoken postscript “and take no responsibility”.

I'm sick of AGI. I'm sick of TESCREAL. I'm sick of “AI will fix climate change” and “AI will get us to Mars” and “AI will save humanity”. I'm sick of Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and every other one of these grifter-gods for whom the rest of us are just NPCs in their sociopathic capitalism simulator.

I'm sick of being angry. I'm sick of being afraid. I'm sick of thinking about this. I'm sick of every conversation finding its way back to this. I'm sick of having to declare a side. I'm sick of having to justify myself. I'm sick of the inherent violence in this not being so immediately self-evident to every single person alive. I'm sick of sharing a planet with so many people who think the planet-boiling machine is just fine. I'm sick of living in the torment nexus, and I'm sick of that being a decision that is made for me every single day by a group of men who would all fit in a single conference room that none of the rest of us will ever have access to.

I'm sick of my agency being denied, and I'm sick of there being no accountability or consequences for the people doing this to us, and I'm sick of our elected officials being so fucking useless on this and every other issue.

I'm sick of being polite. I'm sick of taking the high road. I'm sick of being the bigger person.

People's lives are being destroyed. The destroyers aren't taking responsibility, and they're not going to stop. Nobody is going to help us, except for us.

This system must fall.

Further reading:

• Together Against AI — Loads of resources for education and activism.

• Anti AI Movement: Who Is Fighting AI and the Doomers — Mapping out where you can find allies.

• Pivot to AI — All the news the AI world doesn’t want you to know.

• Is AI Profitable Yet? — Live tracker of just how financially upside-down the AI industry is.