why ai writing is bad - mina le

Hey kids,

This is the most recent video essay I watched, and I found her approach to the topic interesting. Instead of simply shitting on AI writing (which is easy to do), she points to remembering that even if it wrote well, it isn’t worth using for writing because of everything we lose in the process of outsourcing our thinking. Not to mention all that we are giving up by filtering our entire existences through this technology - I mean, come on, do we really need AI to tell us if we should buy a piece of fruit or not??

I will admit, I got caught up in the genAI hype when it first came out. I was experiencing intense brain fog postpartum, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by trauma, and was trying to navigate my new life as a Mom. Being able to use an “assistant” to help me manage my workload seemed awesome!

Then I learned about the environmental impacts of this unchecked technology, the exploitive and cruel methods of training the models, and the way the wide adoption of AI in fucking everything is contributing to the surveillance state. It also became clear how outsourcing thinking to a bot wasn’t helping me to fully understand the stuff it was “helping” me with. It was a false success.

My relationship with genAI isn’t completely over, there are still occasional tasks I’ll use it for - for example - using it to help me go through a list of doctors to see if any of them take my new insurance. This is a task that would take me hours, but with the use of generative AI, I can give it a list of names and numbers and ask it to go visit each of their websites and determine if the insurance company I have is listed on their website or not.

I’m also a believer that this technology is valuable, however, not at the scale the billionaires and tech companies want us to accept. We do not need AI in our fucking fridges or other appliances, and we certainly don’t need it to be a part of every app created. I do not wish to speak to an AI agent when I’m on hold, nor do I wish to be forced to converse with an AI chatbot in order to get questions answered. There are applications where this technology is making important moves - like in cancer research - but the way it’s being pushed into every facet of life is unnecessary and unsustainable on a planet with limited resources.

Anyway, if you end up choosing to watch this video, I’d love to know your thoughts on it. If you don’t but would like to share your perspective on genAI in general, I’d love to hear that as well.

If you’ve watched another interesting video essay recently, share it with me and maybe I’ll check it out soon and share my perspective.

— Jessica / Snaps