On Ai

Originally Posted 07/20/25

image of a human hand coming up from the bottom left, touching a robotic hand coming down from the top right, with their index fingers

The Force-Feeding of Ai on an Unwilling Public

I just read through the article "The Force-Feeding of Ai on an Unwilling Public" by Ted Gioia, and had some opinions.

Overall, I agree with Ted's premise - Ai is getting pushed into everything, and seemingly most people do not want it. But, because monopolistic companies want Ai to succeed, they just continually put it in everything. I think Ted talks about this well in the article when he uses the following example:

There's another reason why huge tech companies do this—but they don't like to talk about it. If they bundle AI into other products and services, they can hide the losses on their income statement.

That wouldn't be possible if they charged for AI as a standalone product. That would make its profitability (or, more likely, loss) very easy to measure.

Shareholders would complain. Stock prices would drop. Companies would be forced to address customer concerns.

But if AI is bundled into existing businesses, Silicon Valley CEOs can pretend that AI is a moneymaker, even if the public is lukewarm or hostile.

It's like a restaurant selling granite rocks for dessert. Nobody will buy them or eat them—so the product fails miserably. But if a popular restaurant adds a dollar to the meal price, and gives every customer a rock with their bill—well, then they can say that:

  1. Every customer gets rocks for dessert.
  2. Every customer pays for it.
  3. Their business is more profitable because of the tasty granite rocks.

This is how AI accounting works in Silicon Valley.

That said, there's also a lot of specifics I disagree with in his post.

My Opinions

My personal opinion on Ai is whenever I see Ai put in anything it makes me want to drop that service and search for another one, or avoid that service as much as I possibly can. I spoke about this a bit in my blog post about leaving Wordpress when they started enabling Ai. It bugs me to no extent how Facebook, Microsoft, and Google continue to push Ai into all of their products. The biggest one that gets me is that Notion does it, as I don't have a good alternative to it (I've looked into Obsidian, but the last time I've looked you can not access your info via a web browser, which is the thing I need as I use it also for note taking at work, and I do not want to download the whole vault onto a work computer). And there's seemingly no way to opt out to these things either - you just have to be okay with your data being used to train Ai. Hell, even having this website means I have to be okay with some bots / Ai models scraping it for info. It sucks, but what else can you do about it? There is no real choice to avoid it. The biggest issue to me is that the only way Ai is able to train is by using a ridiculous amount of data pulled from the open web, without the consent of the people making such content. I know some people would make the argument that "Everything posted online in a public space is for the public to access - so the Ai's accessing something that is already freely available to the public is not stealing or wrong", but I'd argue that they're sort of taking advantage of the social contract that has existed previously. I'd argue people made their work freely available because they wanted to share with other humans, not to train Ai models.

Of course too, that's assuming you just have a website and that's where the data is pulled from. Bigger corportations changing their terms of service that you "agree" to, that then give them the rights to all of the data you put on their sites, which they then sell to the Ai companies, is a whole different thing. It reminds me of the Ben Wyatt quote from Parks and Rec:

A gif of Ben Wyatt from the show Parks and Rec saying 'A person should not have to have an advanced law degree to avoid being taken advantage of by a multibillion dollar company'

Michelle and I were at a Pecha Kucha Night recently, and someone presented on ai. You can watch the presentation online here, but around the 3:32 mark the presenter shows an image from his local doctors office - on the wall is the terms and conditions you agree to, and in front of him is a digital signature pad to accept the terms and conditions. How many people really read the terms and conditions before signing? But with that signature, you're giving them a ton of access to your data. But what are you going to do? Say no? Then what, you get no healthcare? That's how a lot of these options with Ai feel, or even with things like accepting cookies. Like, yeah, technically you could choose to not use things like Microsoft products or refuse to use something like Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook if you're concerned about the data being harvested. But, for me at least, my job uses Microsoft Office, and so I must as well. All of my friends are on Instagram / Snapchat / Facebook, and so while I could remove myself from it, I'd then lose contact with my friends. I could choose not to use Notion, but then I don't have a note taking app. So while you can technically say no, you realistically can't.

The one area I do use Ai is with ChatGPT and coding. It's really useful when I'm trying to figure out how to do something coding related, or figure out why something isn't working, to have instant feedback of things to try, or have it explained in a different way than what I'm finding online.

The Issues I Have with the Article

Everybody Wanted Previous Inventions

Before proceeding let me ask a simple question: Has there ever been a major innovation that helped society, but only 8% of the public would pay for it?

That's never happened before in human history. Everybody wanted electricity in their homes. Everybody wanted a radio. Everybody wanted a phone. Everybody wanted a refrigerator. Everybody wanted a TV set. Everybody wanted the Internet.

They wanted it. They paid for it. They enjoyed it.

I really, wholeheartedly, disagree with the examples here. I can't speak on everybody wanting a radio, however I know for wanting a phone for example, my parents were extremely against smartphones. Now, maybe the author meant landline telephones, but even then I have to imagine it was not something "everbody wanted". It seems to me whenever there's a new leap in technology, there are plenty of older generations who talk about how the new technology is going to ruin things, and people shouldn't jump to the new techonology, as then you'll lose the skills of the old technology. For example:

Quote from Plato

And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

As you can see from the above quote, even in ancient times people complained about the new technologies. It honestly concerns me when I complain about things like Ai, or people not having computer literacy, if I'm just one of those older generations now talking about how this "new invention is going to ruin everything", when in reality it doesn't matter. I can remember growing up (and still) people making a big fuss about kids not learning cursive, whereas I have not needed cursive outside of school except for my signature my entire life.

A quick aside, as I was looking for that Plato quote, I came across this one which I also find amusing and an example of how the older generations have always complained about the younger ones:

Kids These Days

“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching,” attributed to an Assyrian stone tablet of about 2800 B.C.

You Don't Get to Choose

You don't get to choose. You're never asked. It just shows up. Now you have to deal with it.

  • I don't want AI customer service—but I don't get a choice.
  • I don't want AI responses to my Google searches—but I don't get a choice.
  • I don't want AI integrated into my software—but I don't get a choice.
  • I don't want AI sending me emails—but I don't get a choice.
  • I don't want AI music on Spotify—but I don't get a choice.
  • I don't want AI books on Amazon—but I don't get a choice.

If they gave people a choice, they would reject this tyranny masquerading as innovation.

What happens if we decide to boycott AI? The sad truth is that we can't. It's already too powerful.

If I wanted to boycott AI, I would need to give up

  • My email account
  • All Google searches
  • My word processing software
  • Also Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
  • Amazon and many other online retailers
  • Spotify and any other music streamer that allows it
  • Contacting customer service at many companies
  • Etc. etc. etc.

That's bad news—because most of us need some of those things to live and work. But it will soon get much worse. Just wait and see.

So, while I agree I think people should have more choices and Ai should be opt-in rather than opt-out, where I disagree is the idea you don't have choices. You do. Let me go point by point:

I get a lot of my answers aren't the best - the complaint is "I don't like that the thing I'm using is changing in ways I don't like", and so my solution of "just don't use the thing then" doesn't really solve the problem, since what the person wants is the thing they like to not suck anymore, or change in ways they don't like. I do also get this is part of a broader trend of the Enshittification of the Internet, and that it's becoming increasingly harder to avoid Ai at all. But, I do really think, that we do have choices we can make to try to avoid it where we can. I truly believe that voting with your wallet matters, and if you're not paying for something with money then voting with your time or engagement or focus on something is also important. An example being, if there's a social media site you hate being on, then stop being on it. Even though you're not paying them, you being a statistic they can point to when they say "this is how many people we have using our site" does get them paid. This is, for example, a reason I've never downloaded the Epic Games client, or bought from them.

Wrap Up

Overall, the mass implementation of Ai concerns me, and I really wish opt-in would be the default, rather than opt-out. It truly feels dystopic for these sort of things to just be forced on people en masse with really no good options to avoid it, without really having to devote a lot of effort to it. I get worried personally, for example, there's no good Operating System alternative to either Windows or Apple for most people. Windows and Apple have both implemented Ai into their systems and that's sort of just how it's going to be. Linux of course exists, but it's not really user friendly enough where I'd be comfortable recommending almost anyone to use it full time, unless they're techy to begin with.

Would love to know other peoples thoughts / suggestions though on Ai and how to avoid it.