Are you using AI? Or is AI using you?

Excited about AI?
Its owners are certainly pretty excited about you.

You’re being trained and entrapped.

Like a little dog that loves the treats he’s fed, not noticing he’s being trained to dress in a tutu and dance in a circus.

Like an unhappy child accepting free drugs at the gates of her school, ignoring the stories of addiction and misery other people tell.

Harsh?
I don’t think so.

The puppy does not benefit from the circus, the circus owner does.

The child does not benefit from drugs, the drug pusher does.

Both get short term satisfaction, but pay a long term price.

This is the playbook for all businesses that addict us to their product.

Remember when Social Media first came along?
I do.
It was amazing!
All free!
No downside!

Once they’d got us addicted, they hooked the other half of their financial model – they made SM indispensable to businesses, community groups, solopreneurs, governments.

When both sides were hooked, they started to screw us all to make vast profits and wield enormous power. We end up with proto-fascist oligarchs buying elections and taking up residence at the heart of governments.

This is the playbook.
This is what AI companies will do.

AI is not being given away because tech-bro oligarchs are nice. It’s being given away so we become addicted.

They want AI at the heart of your business.
They want you to need AI.
They want you addicted.

Then, like a schoolyard drug pusher, they’ll screw you for everything you’ve got.
Prices to buy licences to their technology will skyrocket.
You’ll find you can’t keep up without the latest upgrade.
You’ll see others with shiny baubles you don’t have, and you’ll sell your soul (or your time/health/family/self-respect) to get them.

We are not learning to use AI.
We are being trained.
We are being hooked.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use AI.
I’m saying you should NOT make it essential.
You should NOT put it at the heart of your business.
You should NOT get addicted.
You should NOT forget how to be human, just because you think AI delivers outcomes quicker and easier.

Remember this observation about Social Media: ‘When you’re being given something for free, you’re not the consumer, you’re the product’.

We’re being enslaved – not by AI, but by the tech-bro corporations that invented and own it.

Tech-bro capitalism plays the long game.
It’s training us to be performing dogs in their circus.

Choose how much of your human ability you want to give away: your ability to think, connect, innovate, create, imagine and encounter awe: your ability to use your human intelligence.

You can choose whether to outsource your human capabilities to corporations that do not have your best interests at heart.

You might think I’m being extreme.

You wouldn’t be the first person to justify starting to use addictive substances by claiming you’re too smart to get addicted.