This morning, I received this from a reader:
Hello to everyone at the Seeker,
I have been a long time Seeker follower and I just wanted to share my concerns regarding the use of ai on social media platforms. I’m sure it’s likely for engagement, but I’d like you to please consider that ai data centres are using up our freshwater supplies and the areas around those data centres are dealing with increased temperatures. This is happening in real time. Please consider turning off the ai prompts or allow your followers some way to opt out of your ai prompts. I would like to continue supporting my local media, but not at certain expenses.
If you follow me on Substack, you know that AI is something I’ve been critical of. AI is drastically changing the world we are living in, and at this point nobody knows if this will be for better or worse. It could go either way.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use AI. AI has made my life so much easier by considerably reducing the amount of time I spend on boring repetitive tasks, and freeing time for my creativity to literally explode. I’ve accomplished more as an artist in the last year than in the 30 years before that, because I had the luxury of free time. It also gave me the space to volunteer more, giving more of myself to our community. So it’s not all bad. But I do realize this free time comes at a cost… A cost that will be shared by all of us.
The fact of the matter is that AI is taking over the world. It’s everywhere and anywhere you look. I can’t stop it. You can’t stop it. Nobody can stop it. There is too much money involved. Businesses have been slowly implementing it in their day-to-day operations, and it is getting harder and harder for human interactions to be kept untainted by AI in some way or another.
And often, these are behind-the-scenes interactions. By that, I mean that your doctor likely uses AI in helping with diagnosis… The press releases you read are most likely written by AI… AI may be used in managing your investment accounts… Your kids’ teachers or professors might be using AI to grade them. It’s everywhere. It’s here to stay. So what do we do now?
You can’t change a behavior on something you don’t know is happening. But in our case, here at the Seeker, the use of AI on our Facebook group, pointed out by this reader, is something we absolutely have control over. Sure, the AI asking fun little questions every two or three days kept things friendly and created good engagement — but can’t I do that myself?
Yes. Yes I can.
I’m not preaching not to use AI at all. I’m just saying avoid where you can, point out what is avoidable, reach out to those who do to raise awareness. Moving forward, we will do the same.
So thank you, reader, for sharing your concerns, pointing our the hypocrisy in our actions and keeping us honest.
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