AI: For the Power of Good or Evil?

Sunrise View of Sand Mountain From Pearl Lake - July 2024

​When I first started listening to podcast pieces about Chap GPT a couple years ago, I felt one part fascination to nine parts dread. After all, I’d seen the Terminator movies. I knew where this was all heading. AI was about to take over the human world and run it for themselves - we didn’t stand a chance.

AI isn’t all Hollywood evil. It has helpful applications in small businesses, for example, doing the grunt-work of writing things like grant applications, proposals, etc. It can free up those in small businesses for more human-skilled tasks. AI can be used to polish resumes and cover letters, acting as a personal editor to some degree. On a broader scale, AI is used to improve efficiency of energy grids, and can help address the complexities of the climate crisis. When used for the power of good, the promise of AI is a more sustainable future.

On the flip side, AI raises environmental concerns. To name a few: the use of water for building and then cooling the electronic components, the high use of electricity to power AI, the large land area accommodate AI centers, the electronic waste produced as innovation results in obsolete technologies, and the negative impact of mining the metals used in AI. These concerns could be addressed by thoughtful policies - indeed, over 190 countries have agreements regarding ethical use of AI, but environmental concerns are not, at this time at least, included in these agreements. There is also the possibility that AI could be used to generate misinformation about the climate crisis. (UN Environment Programme: AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.)

What about the implications of AI for writing? From some poking around on Google, the jury is out as to whether or not using AI to generate an essay or other written piece is considered plagiarism. Some state it is unequivocally so, while others take the view that since a specific work is not being directly copied from, using AI is not plagiarism. Consider, though, that AI is digitally sprinting around the internet gathering information from bazillions of human sources for its responses. Those human authors do not receive credit. AI, by lifting those author’s words directly, is certainly plagiarizing from their work, as is the person utilizing AI for their essay, however indirectly.

While it is true that AI has useful and meaningful applications, I continue to be a member of the Chat GPT resistance when it comes to writing. I think much of my resistance stems from the fact that I am a writer. 

One of the most frustrating and ultimately rewarding things about writing is working through the words, sentences, and paragraphs to say what you really want to say. Constantly checking a thesaurus, re-working, deleting and sometimes starting from scratch, are the ways I sift through to the essence of what I’m trying to get across. Mostly, writing is distilling many ideas to the truth.

Is the finished product perfect? No. Would it be more polished if I “ran it through Chat GPT?” Very likely. But here’s the thing. My finished work is written by a human (me) for other humans. AI can not ever write from the truth of human experience because it is not human. If it poses as human, the writing is dishonest. And one of the basic tenets of writing is honesty. It is one human’s truth of experience that resonates with another human. 

AI has real promise. AI has some maturing to do, and some ethical and environmental boundaries to be laid. While all that is going on, I’ll be writing my own words, from my own truth.

Sources/Learn More

• UN Environment Programme: AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.
• SEH (Short Elliott Hendrickson): Will AI be Net Good or Net Bad in Terms of Sustainability?
• Gravel to Gavel: AI Needs Critical Materials, Fast! But From Where?