Fuck AI

Wow, okay so there's some stuff here that probably needs addressing. Just like quick, when I talk about colonialism within the US, I'm referring to stuff like monocrop farming, mining, logging, etc. that was facilitated through the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans and indigenous nations. Though it is certainly relevant to point out that this way of life has negative health impacts on everyone who exists in the world, even those people in the metropole, my concern is more about the fact that this way of life can only exist through the violence and extraction I mention above. Disease, poverty, and pollution are not exclusively linked to capitalism and liberalism, even if they exist more abundantly in the world as a result of it, but that specific relationality of settler-colonialism, indigenous peoples, and commodified land is.

Also, I don't know if you realize the ableism you seem to subscribe to here. "Loss of cognitive ability," in reference to students' use of AI is, quite frankly, harmful. Whether you meant this in a physical way, as in it causes brain damage, or a pedagogical way, as in they are not learning the skills we measure cognitive ability with, this creates a much more powerful and destructive effect from AI that also happens to reproduce the devaluing of people who do not conform to hegemonic ideas of ability. Even if AI was causing literal brain damage to young people, that doesn't mean they're less valuable as people or more of a burden on society, though if it was, certainly that'd be something to address. Except, it isn't doing that, there are just effects on skillbuilding needs since we were already doing that poorly due to the industrious teaching pedagogies schooling in settler-colonial countries have been designed around. It isn't a threat to that ability anymore than the internet, television, or print was. The ease of access to information as well as mis- or disinformation introduces new needs for critical thought beyond the usability in employment (it is also a matter of self-defense), but having access to those skills makes these things powerful tools. I've noticed more of a drop due to the COVID-19 Pandemic as the students who went through that period in their life learning these skills in a cobbled-together online curriculum which was really just adapted from preexisting, ineffective teaching methods. There are students with organizational barriers to learning who find they now succeed more easily in institutions that punish deviation from structure by having AI assistance to do something their brain is not able to and the system will not provide for them, for example. To suggest that a technology that benefits a disabled group and harms an abled group is ontologically evil is to argue that harm is only a problem when it is directed at one of these groups; which happens to be the privileged one in this case.

In the same way, the perceived danger of AI for those of us with mental illness discounts the reality that much of therapy is learning to convert your internal thoughts into language, which then helps you better understand those thoughts for yourself as well as in/for others. Since mental healthcare is by no means accessible even with socialized healthcare, most people who need psychotherapy are not able to get enough of it for their needs. There are people who report benefits from this access, and since we obviously cannot guarantee everyone access to this healthcare, it is difficult to argue that certain groups cannot "handle" having some sort of responsive outlet to process those thoughts as language without also infantalizing them. Regardless of the medical efficacy of these AI therapists, or whatever they want to call them, if it helps people, we cannot discard it out of hand. I'm not sure what "emotional stunting" is in reference to here as well, though I'm sure any example of it would still depend on some normative, hegemonic understanding of maturity and growth that is already foundationally problematic as all normative arguments for human action and behaviour is.

So, yes, I think AI as a system is harmful in the same way every single system under liberalism and capitalism is harmful. The ways we build computers, store data, extract minerals and other resources, grow our food and fabric, and even live on the land beneath us are all harmful because they are ultimately subject to a harmful system. It isn't the technologies themselves, but the relations that determine their distribution and use that is harmful; as always. To suggest otherwise is to accept assertions from that harmful system that you may take for granted as the socialization and culture of that system has dominated your understanding of all things. What you've identified is that it can be used very effectively to target vulnerable groups, including children, who were already targeted by this system due to its fundamentally predatory and dehumanizing nature. Except, what you've identified as the problem is that it makes them deviate even further from an idealized construction of the human body and behaviour, not that this is a new vector for preexisting violence.

Again, there are no good or bad outcomes, as the future is only ever imagined, it does not exist. That means that when we imagine the future, we transfer idealized elements of the present into that narrative along with the unchecked internalized values we hold. There is no way of predicting how that socialization has effected your understanding of the world, only the ability to respond once it has.