As a retired software engineer and someone who is heavily concerned with both the environment and the current destruction of democratic institutions, I have no mixed feelings about AI. If I can help it, I will not use it.
Companies such as Anthropic and nearly all of the others have their software embedded in such lovely operations as the surveillance of American citizens, the kidnapping of leaders, ongoing rights abuses and murder of citizens and others.
And then there's the well-documented environmental impact. Just the water usage requirements alone are frightening. All of this to line the pockets of tech bros who care _nothing_ about your life.
I refuse to be a part of it.
As far as coding goes, I'm glad I got out when I did. The fun part was always making things, not asking another piece of software to do it for me. In the embedded medical space, it would have reduced the job to being the person who had to figure out the code and creating testing suites, because until the FDA in its entirety is replace by AI (what a terrible, terrible label for what this stuff really is), code still needs to be verified.
I'm very interested in hearing an intelligent counterpoint to this comment, because I am in the same boat. I know a few "level four" people, and they are constantly trying to get me to join in. I have said time and time again that I cannot ignore the environmental devastation that these companies are causing, but is this fight even worth fighting? I'm told that nuclear energy will supply the clean power for these AI engines eventually, but that doesn't ease the guilt of what these companies are doing to our wild, beautiful planet Earth right now.
As with Meta, I refuse to use their services because I refuse to be complicit in their crimes. But I'm not a perfect person; I use Google and Spotify and all sorts of other technology I've sworn to replace eventually, but is this fight even worth it? At what point is my concern invalid? I feel like a crazy person sometimes and I'm constantly looking for answers to these questions.
Would love to dialogue if anyone has something meaningful to add.
Oh, I don't think _anything_ can invalidate your concern. In the end, it's your morality that you want to stay close to.
I'm the same way. And google is a good example. I don't use their search anymore because its usability has really gone down the toilet. Part of that is intended, to increase profits.
But then there's YouTube. During the pandemic we latched onto several very lovely channels that for us anyway, kind of slowed the world down: a man living and traveling on a narrowboat in England, a couple living on the island of Svalbard, a pair of young sisters in Australia running the family farm, and a man from Denmark who purchased a pair of stone buildings in the Italian alps and documented his work on them. This last one in particular has exquisite video work. Slow, meditative, and beautiful. I love the fact that these people are making their way in the world outside of the usual 9-5 office cubicle business (oh, how I do _not_ miss that!). It feels like in their own small way, they're making the world a better place.
But hey, google is involved. It can't be ignored...and I don't know what the answer is.
I don't disagree with you, and from what I know, I have a lot of improvements I need to make in other areas of my life to make better choices for the earth. Diet is just one of the areas I need to improve, and I appreciate you bringing that up.
But from what I understand, the response generation process isn't the main issue - it's the data collection process that's running up the most concerning amount of power. There are hundreds of servers and processors running at full tilt 24/7 to harvest all of the information necessary and process it in a way that LLM's can use later. To me it sounds like by the time you ask AI a question, the damage is already done.
So, in the same vein as avoiding paper to save trees, I avoid using the product to avoid increasing the demand for more, even though the tree has already been cut down to make the paper.
If my information is wrong or not 100% accurate, please feel free to correct. I'm not an expert on these things and I appreciate any knowledge I can glean from others.
Good point! I had not previously considered the training impact, and upon a bit of research you’re right - it is significant and should be factored in.
However the consensus is that it is a one time spike spread across all users (I saw that a bloom model took 20-50 metric tons of co2 to train) as opposed to daily consumption, especially animal ag (typical singular US meat eater will generate about 3 tons co2 yearly.)
And the water use comparison is even more wild if you could believe it.
The numbers required for animals products are truly staggering. I’ve linked an article that compares AI to dairy alone:
Agreed. I really appreciate Substack for allowing people to engage intelligently in online debate.
I'll look through that article today. Generally speaking, I don't eat a ton of red meat just because it's getting so expensive, but I do eat a lot of chicken and I'm sure that area is just as harmful.
If I ever eat red meat, it's generally at a restaurant, and I don't really go to restaurants anymore because my wife and I have a toddler and it can be kind of miserable. Haha.
Are you vegan? How long have you committed to this lifestyle? I've always been interested in doing seasons of vegetarian diets, but I find full veganism extremely intimidating.
Do you think the environmental impact drops once local models run as well as the ones using servers? Will it even matter at that point? Genuine questions btw.
My grandfather was a small part of the Apollo program—and with his love for innovation, he became an early adopter of the personal computer. He, too, would create these little programs on floppy disks that I could play as a child up in the attic of the home where the family's old Macintosh was. I will never forget how he enjoyed watching me play these little games—maybe it was because he had always wanted to have something like this when he was a child in the 1930's. Anyways, I appreciate you sharing this memory, and bringing back some of my own!
While automating certain tasks sounds very useful, I fear eventually we will have automated so much of our lives that we won't have.. well.. lives. I hate to say it, but some tasks that could be considered annoying are a huge part of our existence. Cooking, doing laundry, doing the dishes, writing a message to someone, planning your next vacation, etc. If an AI bot can do everything well and quickly, what will be left for us to do? It reminds me of the movie Click, with Adam Sandler. The main character has a magical remote control that he uses to fast-forward arguments with his wife and other situations he does not want to deal with. Eventually he realizes he has fast-forwarded so much that he has missed out on much of his life. We can't expect everything in life to be fun and amazing, we need to experience hardships from time to time. We need to experience winter in order to appreciate the summer. Life needs to be just a bit inconvenient once in a while.
Good read. I am studying biology, and AI is significantly changing the field. I myself am pursuing a career in bioinformatics and machine learning in biology. I can say that the drug discovery process is going through a major transformation right now that can accelerate the process of treating diseases by a multi-fold speed in the future. It is quite difficult to explain this to non-biology people, but this video on AlphaFold showcases one of the ways AI can help progress medicine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx7l9ZGFZkw&t=938s.
However, I do think it is equally important to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of AI usage as well as the dependence on American tech oligarchs that generative AI can bring about. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t use generative AI at all, but I’d suggest being thoughtful each time you do, to consider whether the time you save is really worth the trade-off.
And it is not only the environment.
An example is how the US Ministry of Defense invested heavily in Claude AI and actually used it for the recent raid on Venezuela. Claude also has a history of copyright infringement, and even more disgustingly, trains their models on users' data without their consent, along with multiple other privacy concerns. Claude AI is also not open source.
There are alternatives, notably Mistral AI and Voxtral AI, though I must admit they might not be able to do everything that Claude AI can do. I do know that it can do vibe coding and create a project by merging multiple chats, similarly to Claude, so it might be worth checking them out :) They are mostly open source, European-based, and do care to at least release an environmental audit last year!
Do you think the environmental impact drops once local models run as well as the ones using servers? Will it even matter at that point? Genuine questions btw.
Would you find in the biological realm that the use of complex computer programming to facilitate work is more common place then what lay people understand and that some of the fear perhaps when hearing about some of the uses today is because of that lack of understanding? I know I find myself questioning the implications but with the knowledge that I don't have a full view of the ethical /legal guardrails in place currently and would need to research further to have a validly formed opinion on such.
Yes, complex computer programming is much more commonplace now in Biology, and it can cause lay people more fear due to a lack of understanding. Actually, within biologists, it also causes fear (and avoidance) since most biologists lack foundational mathematics and computational skills to understand the application of AI/machine learning in the field. But molecular biology as a field is not meant to be easy to understand; it has never been mono-disciplinary, and computer science has already been a huge part of biology for some time.
Things like seeing what a protein looks like is no simple feat. Thanks to AI, we can now predict what ANY protein looks like, but tools like AlphaFold are built on the work of structural biologists who use biophysical methods that are awfully complex—involving either turning protein solutions into crystals and seeing how X-rays scatter through those crystals, then re-building proteins using extremely complex mathematical equations, or more recently freezing them at extremely low temperatures and shooting a beam of electrons to see how it diffracts and rebuilding images from there. All the work of rebuilding images from diffraction involves heavy mathematical and physics knowledge, and hence has been done by computers for some time now.
While this may sound like an info dump from an extremely nerdy person, my point is that molecular biology has never been easy to understand anyway for lay people. What we can do, however, is to nourish an academic environment where people who do understand this field can be critical, have knowledge of those tools rather than just passively using them, keep the creators of those tools in check, and ensure that they are not manipulated for malicious intent. Within this field, luckily, many of these AI tools—like AlphaFold and AutoDock Vina—are fully open-source (unlike closed generative AI), meaning anyone can inspect the code. We still have academics who care and make sure those tools operate within ethical/legal guardrails, though there is definitely a lack of biologists with understanding and control of those tools. If done right, those tools can definitely facilitate faster drug design and better disease insights without replacing human oversight, minimum ethical concerns, and they can also reduce human bias.
The complications of AI usage in the training of students (including future biologists), however, is another topic of concern that would be way too long for me to elaborate ;)
This was a wildly interesting read, Nathaniel! As a level one plateuer, I honestly had no idea the scope of what was available to everyday users. I am still skeptical and cautious, but this was a fun way to learn about what more is being utilized by my peers. I mean, your dietary tracker alone! Incredible.
I fear our dependencies on these advancements while at the same time recognizing how remarkable it is that they exist at all.
This was absolutely beautiful man, thank you for sharing. I listened to the voiceover which was fantastic. Kudos for being so clear on how you're using these tools properly. A lot of people are afraid to talk about it openly.
As I am sure you are aware there is a protest movement in the US to stop subscribing to companies like the one that makes Claude because of the complicity with the Trump administration. It’s not forever but the impact of a minor drop in revenue might wake up tho who stood behind Trump. Still appreciate your insightful article.
Love this piece! I had no idea I could use AI for this stuff and I'm going to think about how I can use it similarly now too.
Also, even though it wouldn't take ages to make now, the human creativity and effort one needs to create games for a kid would still mean a lot. Instead of spending most of the time coding you can collaborate or brainstorm, plug things in, see how it works, add more personalization, etc. To me, the act of doing this feels just as thoughtful and meaningful. You have to know someone to make something for them they'd enjoy.
I don’t normally leave comments on your essays but have been reading and watching for a while. While sometimes I disagree with you this one unfortunately has ruffled my feathers.
Whether you think AI is good for someone’s soul or not (personally I think it’s more laziness and bad for the economy) AI is undoubtedly terrible for the environment and the local communities it touches. I live in Vineland, NJ and ai invite you to come see our data center that when complete will be 3 million square feet. This is the largest data center on the east coast of the US. My community is one of the poorest in New Jersey and is proudly agricultural. So it is hard for me to say yes color coded charts and talking to a robot are worth the destruction of my county’s environment and our local economy. If you have now randomly benefited and have done no work someone else is paying it for you. If with more knowledge about its devastating affects on communities everywhere continue to use it, this seems to be a case of greed.
I hope this response can help you see beyond your perspective that is truly within a small vacuum. If you have any questions about the community effects you should look into Sustain SJ.
I see where it all comes from. I’ve tried using AI for building a routine, meal plans, study plans for myself — and it’s cool. i could have spent hours, but it took around couple of minutes to get the results.
Nevertheless, it makes me feel scared i can’t keep up with it. The speed it developed with — it feels overwhelming. As much as I’d like not to use it, most of the job requirements ask to be familiarized with it.
It’s a great tool to use as additional tool, but not to replace human specialist (my field has been challenged by it so far).
As an artist this topic comes up alot in my circles, people losing work to technology that is cheaper and faster at creating then humans so I understand the fear aspect of it. As a person born in the era of personal computers becoming a thing and having to build and code from scratch to be able to afford it in the beginning, I feel like I've been here already but in a more subtle longer rolled out process. I like to take a wider look at it and think back to all the technological advances in history. Although this seems high tech to us when you contrast it to the industrial age those advancements seemed highly technological to them at that time. As that spark lit the speed at which advancements happened excelled. The scary bit was safety which is where we are now in our era. As things progress communal rules and laws will develop and we will settle back down for this step to become the new normal until the next revolution happens and so on and so on. Already you see the EU implementing laws for personal copyright to make deepfakes illegal, the US is navigating copyright implications for products created with AI. In a recent interview I was asked if I'm scared that AI will impact my ability to be an artist in physical creation and my answer was no because you can see a trend as more technology is infused into our lives the stronger the pull is towards humanity. It's the same cycle that plays out over and over in history and why after 100 years a Monet painting can still pull me across the room and offer me that quiet connection with the human part of life. P. S. I haven't been able to get over that weird feeling of talking to the computer yet lol
As a retired software engineer and someone who is heavily concerned with both the environment and the current destruction of democratic institutions, I have no mixed feelings about AI. If I can help it, I will not use it.
Companies such as Anthropic and nearly all of the others have their software embedded in such lovely operations as the surveillance of American citizens, the kidnapping of leaders, ongoing rights abuses and murder of citizens and others.
And then there's the well-documented environmental impact. Just the water usage requirements alone are frightening. All of this to line the pockets of tech bros who care _nothing_ about your life.
I refuse to be a part of it.
As far as coding goes, I'm glad I got out when I did. The fun part was always making things, not asking another piece of software to do it for me. In the embedded medical space, it would have reduced the job to being the person who had to figure out the code and creating testing suites, because until the FDA in its entirety is replace by AI (what a terrible, terrible label for what this stuff really is), code still needs to be verified.
I'm very interested in hearing an intelligent counterpoint to this comment, because I am in the same boat. I know a few "level four" people, and they are constantly trying to get me to join in. I have said time and time again that I cannot ignore the environmental devastation that these companies are causing, but is this fight even worth fighting? I'm told that nuclear energy will supply the clean power for these AI engines eventually, but that doesn't ease the guilt of what these companies are doing to our wild, beautiful planet Earth right now.
As with Meta, I refuse to use their services because I refuse to be complicit in their crimes. But I'm not a perfect person; I use Google and Spotify and all sorts of other technology I've sworn to replace eventually, but is this fight even worth it? At what point is my concern invalid? I feel like a crazy person sometimes and I'm constantly looking for answers to these questions.
Would love to dialogue if anyone has something meaningful to add.
Oh, I don't think _anything_ can invalidate your concern. In the end, it's your morality that you want to stay close to.
I'm the same way. And google is a good example. I don't use their search anymore because its usability has really gone down the toilet. Part of that is intended, to increase profits.
But then there's YouTube. During the pandemic we latched onto several very lovely channels that for us anyway, kind of slowed the world down: a man living and traveling on a narrowboat in England, a couple living on the island of Svalbard, a pair of young sisters in Australia running the family farm, and a man from Denmark who purchased a pair of stone buildings in the Italian alps and documented his work on them. This last one in particular has exquisite video work. Slow, meditative, and beautiful. I love the fact that these people are making their way in the world outside of the usual 9-5 office cubicle business (oh, how I do _not_ miss that!). It feels like in their own small way, they're making the world a better place.
But hey, google is involved. It can't be ignored...and I don't know what the answer is.
Sorry for the ramble.
Haha, no worries at all. It was a pleasure to read. I appreciate your commentary!
If you want to make some carbon footprint room for the water usage etc - look up the impact from a LLM response vs a singular beef burger
Good thing I don't eat meat!
🙌🏼
I don't disagree with you, and from what I know, I have a lot of improvements I need to make in other areas of my life to make better choices for the earth. Diet is just one of the areas I need to improve, and I appreciate you bringing that up.
But from what I understand, the response generation process isn't the main issue - it's the data collection process that's running up the most concerning amount of power. There are hundreds of servers and processors running at full tilt 24/7 to harvest all of the information necessary and process it in a way that LLM's can use later. To me it sounds like by the time you ask AI a question, the damage is already done.
So, in the same vein as avoiding paper to save trees, I avoid using the product to avoid increasing the demand for more, even though the tree has already been cut down to make the paper.
If my information is wrong or not 100% accurate, please feel free to correct. I'm not an expert on these things and I appreciate any knowledge I can glean from others.
Good point! I had not previously considered the training impact, and upon a bit of research you’re right - it is significant and should be factored in.
However the consensus is that it is a one time spike spread across all users (I saw that a bloom model took 20-50 metric tons of co2 to train) as opposed to daily consumption, especially animal ag (typical singular US meat eater will generate about 3 tons co2 yearly.)
And the water use comparison is even more wild if you could believe it.
The numbers required for animals products are truly staggering. I’ve linked an article that compares AI to dairy alone:
https://bryantresearch.co.uk/insight-items/comparing-water-footprint-ai/#:~:text=As%20the%20world%20grapples%20with,in%20our%20diets%20is%20essential.
Caution! This is a rabbit hole you’ll struggle to get out of.
Side note: what a great platform for respectful debate. Thanks to all.
Agreed. I really appreciate Substack for allowing people to engage intelligently in online debate.
I'll look through that article today. Generally speaking, I don't eat a ton of red meat just because it's getting so expensive, but I do eat a lot of chicken and I'm sure that area is just as harmful.
If I ever eat red meat, it's generally at a restaurant, and I don't really go to restaurants anymore because my wife and I have a toddler and it can be kind of miserable. Haha.
Are you vegan? How long have you committed to this lifestyle? I've always been interested in doing seasons of vegetarian diets, but I find full veganism extremely intimidating.
Do you think the environmental impact drops once local models run as well as the ones using servers? Will it even matter at that point? Genuine questions btw.
My grandfather was a small part of the Apollo program—and with his love for innovation, he became an early adopter of the personal computer. He, too, would create these little programs on floppy disks that I could play as a child up in the attic of the home where the family's old Macintosh was. I will never forget how he enjoyed watching me play these little games—maybe it was because he had always wanted to have something like this when he was a child in the 1930's. Anyways, I appreciate you sharing this memory, and bringing back some of my own!
While automating certain tasks sounds very useful, I fear eventually we will have automated so much of our lives that we won't have.. well.. lives. I hate to say it, but some tasks that could be considered annoying are a huge part of our existence. Cooking, doing laundry, doing the dishes, writing a message to someone, planning your next vacation, etc. If an AI bot can do everything well and quickly, what will be left for us to do? It reminds me of the movie Click, with Adam Sandler. The main character has a magical remote control that he uses to fast-forward arguments with his wife and other situations he does not want to deal with. Eventually he realizes he has fast-forwarded so much that he has missed out on much of his life. We can't expect everything in life to be fun and amazing, we need to experience hardships from time to time. We need to experience winter in order to appreciate the summer. Life needs to be just a bit inconvenient once in a while.
Good read. I am studying biology, and AI is significantly changing the field. I myself am pursuing a career in bioinformatics and machine learning in biology. I can say that the drug discovery process is going through a major transformation right now that can accelerate the process of treating diseases by a multi-fold speed in the future. It is quite difficult to explain this to non-biology people, but this video on AlphaFold showcases one of the ways AI can help progress medicine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx7l9ZGFZkw&t=938s.
However, I do think it is equally important to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of AI usage as well as the dependence on American tech oligarchs that generative AI can bring about. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t use generative AI at all, but I’d suggest being thoughtful each time you do, to consider whether the time you save is really worth the trade-off.
And it is not only the environment.
An example is how the US Ministry of Defense invested heavily in Claude AI and actually used it for the recent raid on Venezuela. Claude also has a history of copyright infringement, and even more disgustingly, trains their models on users' data without their consent, along with multiple other privacy concerns. Claude AI is also not open source.
There are alternatives, notably Mistral AI and Voxtral AI, though I must admit they might not be able to do everything that Claude AI can do. I do know that it can do vibe coding and create a project by merging multiple chats, similarly to Claude, so it might be worth checking them out :) They are mostly open source, European-based, and do care to at least release an environmental audit last year!
Do you think the environmental impact drops once local models run as well as the ones using servers? Will it even matter at that point? Genuine questions btw.
Would you find in the biological realm that the use of complex computer programming to facilitate work is more common place then what lay people understand and that some of the fear perhaps when hearing about some of the uses today is because of that lack of understanding? I know I find myself questioning the implications but with the knowledge that I don't have a full view of the ethical /legal guardrails in place currently and would need to research further to have a validly formed opinion on such.
Hey there, really nice point!
Yes, complex computer programming is much more commonplace now in Biology, and it can cause lay people more fear due to a lack of understanding. Actually, within biologists, it also causes fear (and avoidance) since most biologists lack foundational mathematics and computational skills to understand the application of AI/machine learning in the field. But molecular biology as a field is not meant to be easy to understand; it has never been mono-disciplinary, and computer science has already been a huge part of biology for some time.
Things like seeing what a protein looks like is no simple feat. Thanks to AI, we can now predict what ANY protein looks like, but tools like AlphaFold are built on the work of structural biologists who use biophysical methods that are awfully complex—involving either turning protein solutions into crystals and seeing how X-rays scatter through those crystals, then re-building proteins using extremely complex mathematical equations, or more recently freezing them at extremely low temperatures and shooting a beam of electrons to see how it diffracts and rebuilding images from there. All the work of rebuilding images from diffraction involves heavy mathematical and physics knowledge, and hence has been done by computers for some time now.
While this may sound like an info dump from an extremely nerdy person, my point is that molecular biology has never been easy to understand anyway for lay people. What we can do, however, is to nourish an academic environment where people who do understand this field can be critical, have knowledge of those tools rather than just passively using them, keep the creators of those tools in check, and ensure that they are not manipulated for malicious intent. Within this field, luckily, many of these AI tools—like AlphaFold and AutoDock Vina—are fully open-source (unlike closed generative AI), meaning anyone can inspect the code. We still have academics who care and make sure those tools operate within ethical/legal guardrails, though there is definitely a lack of biologists with understanding and control of those tools. If done right, those tools can definitely facilitate faster drug design and better disease insights without replacing human oversight, minimum ethical concerns, and they can also reduce human bias.
The complications of AI usage in the training of students (including future biologists), however, is another topic of concern that would be way too long for me to elaborate ;)
I would definitely upgrade to Paid to see your video about how you have used ClaudeCode to build your second brain <3
Please make the video!
Please make that video! I want to see how you're using Claude Code for your creative work.
This was a wildly interesting read, Nathaniel! As a level one plateuer, I honestly had no idea the scope of what was available to everyday users. I am still skeptical and cautious, but this was a fun way to learn about what more is being utilized by my peers. I mean, your dietary tracker alone! Incredible.
I fear our dependencies on these advancements while at the same time recognizing how remarkable it is that they exist at all.
This was absolutely beautiful man, thank you for sharing. I listened to the voiceover which was fantastic. Kudos for being so clear on how you're using these tools properly. A lot of people are afraid to talk about it openly.
As I am sure you are aware there is a protest movement in the US to stop subscribing to companies like the one that makes Claude because of the complicity with the Trump administration. It’s not forever but the impact of a minor drop in revenue might wake up tho who stood behind Trump. Still appreciate your insightful article.
People seem to be unaware of both this and the environmental impact….or they just don’t care.
Love this piece! I had no idea I could use AI for this stuff and I'm going to think about how I can use it similarly now too.
Also, even though it wouldn't take ages to make now, the human creativity and effort one needs to create games for a kid would still mean a lot. Instead of spending most of the time coding you can collaborate or brainstorm, plug things in, see how it works, add more personalization, etc. To me, the act of doing this feels just as thoughtful and meaningful. You have to know someone to make something for them they'd enjoy.
Hi Nathaniel,
I don’t normally leave comments on your essays but have been reading and watching for a while. While sometimes I disagree with you this one unfortunately has ruffled my feathers.
Whether you think AI is good for someone’s soul or not (personally I think it’s more laziness and bad for the economy) AI is undoubtedly terrible for the environment and the local communities it touches. I live in Vineland, NJ and ai invite you to come see our data center that when complete will be 3 million square feet. This is the largest data center on the east coast of the US. My community is one of the poorest in New Jersey and is proudly agricultural. So it is hard for me to say yes color coded charts and talking to a robot are worth the destruction of my county’s environment and our local economy. If you have now randomly benefited and have done no work someone else is paying it for you. If with more knowledge about its devastating affects on communities everywhere continue to use it, this seems to be a case of greed.
I hope this response can help you see beyond your perspective that is truly within a small vacuum. If you have any questions about the community effects you should look into Sustain SJ.
Best,
Annalisa
this almost feels like an ad
I see where it all comes from. I’ve tried using AI for building a routine, meal plans, study plans for myself — and it’s cool. i could have spent hours, but it took around couple of minutes to get the results.
Nevertheless, it makes me feel scared i can’t keep up with it. The speed it developed with — it feels overwhelming. As much as I’d like not to use it, most of the job requirements ask to be familiarized with it.
It’s a great tool to use as additional tool, but not to replace human specialist (my field has been challenged by it so far).
As an artist this topic comes up alot in my circles, people losing work to technology that is cheaper and faster at creating then humans so I understand the fear aspect of it. As a person born in the era of personal computers becoming a thing and having to build and code from scratch to be able to afford it in the beginning, I feel like I've been here already but in a more subtle longer rolled out process. I like to take a wider look at it and think back to all the technological advances in history. Although this seems high tech to us when you contrast it to the industrial age those advancements seemed highly technological to them at that time. As that spark lit the speed at which advancements happened excelled. The scary bit was safety which is where we are now in our era. As things progress communal rules and laws will develop and we will settle back down for this step to become the new normal until the next revolution happens and so on and so on. Already you see the EU implementing laws for personal copyright to make deepfakes illegal, the US is navigating copyright implications for products created with AI. In a recent interview I was asked if I'm scared that AI will impact my ability to be an artist in physical creation and my answer was no because you can see a trend as more technology is infused into our lives the stronger the pull is towards humanity. It's the same cycle that plays out over and over in history and why after 100 years a Monet painting can still pull me across the room and offer me that quiet connection with the human part of life. P. S. I haven't been able to get over that weird feeling of talking to the computer yet lol
Sending you some good vibes for your health journey! I hope your see progress soon :)