My stance on artificial intelligence

The rise of artificial intelligence, for better or worse, is a big deal. And it worries me.

I'm not convinced we have the capacity, as a society, to receive this dubious gift right now. Not with the wisdom and patience it demands. Those feel like uncommon virtues here on the cusp of 2025, don't they? Everywhere you look, there's suspicion, isolation, and rage. It’s not permanent, but it sure seems like it when we mostly look at the world through screens.

As the social media post says: “This too shall pass but like holy fuck.”

The only way I can think of to work through my doubt is to engage with the problem. To participate in the process of learning to accommodate this shift in our world. How? By exploring the tools and technology of artificial intelligence. Finding its limits, mapping its horizons. Discovering where it can help, where it may hinder, and where it fails entirely. By investigating how it works, I'll gain the necessary perspective to be skeptical when learning about it, and have the appropriate restraint when discussing it.

I think it's also my responsibility to grapple with ethics of undertaking this exploration at all. But the notion that we can put the genie back into its bottle seems less and less likely to me as time goes on. And if artificial intelligence is here to stay, I’d like our co-existence to be a fruitful and harmonious one.

As I do this, I'm keeping one eye looking past where AI is right now—especially in today's consumer technology—because few innovations emerge into society perfectly formed, efficient in function and cost, solving exactly the problem they set out to solve, and causing no disruption. Hell, half our cool shit comes from the military.

I don’t have to like it, I don’t have to trust it...but I also don’t have to doubt it at every turn. In either case, one thing I categorically can't bring myself to do is to ignore it.

Even if I did, What would my abstinence accomplish? My participation, however, could be challenging and controversial, sure, but ideally also...constructive. For me but, with any luck, also for others who might eventually benefit from my attempts to be part of the conversation. This way, no matter the outcome of this moment in history, I could honestly say I tried to be guided by optimism.

So my stance is this: I choose to seek the good in this new technology rather than be paralyzed by its capacity for harm. I choose to advocate for patience in its development, compassion in its distribution, and skepticism in its interpretation. I choose to criticize its impact on our environment. I choose to oppose its use in manipulating honest people into believing dishonest things. But equally: I choose to be inspired by its potential.

And I hope I’m not the only one, because the other camps seem to be nihilism, greed, and apathy—and we have enough of all that in the world as it is.