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AI is Warping Humanity, But It's A Larger Problem [1]

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Date: 2025-05-07

The title may lead you to believe that this is another patented K.C. rant against imitative AI. And it is, kind of, but the problem is much larger, I think, than merely imitative AI. And, to be fair, Ed Zitron actually owns the patent on anti-tech rants. Essentially, we do not think about systems, including human systems, when we build, think about, regulate or refuse to regulate too much of our technology. We think of technology as a thing unto itself rather than continuations of existing human patterns. And we all pay the price for that choice.

Rolling Stone has an article out on how some people are ruining their lives by listening too deeply to the outputs of imitative AI chatbots. The people in this article are convinced that the word calculators love them in the worst cases. Even in the less egregious cases, people who use the tools a great deal have come to depend on them to do their work, a certain percentage of their thinking, and even become emotionally dependent upon their interactions. It should strange, but it should not have been a surprise.

People anthropomorphize things all the time. We ascribe human emotions and decision-making capability to all sorts of things, from pets to appliances to cars to computers. We put a human, thinking face on almost anything that shows even a touch of independent behavior. Why, then, should we be surprised that things that can talk back seemingly of their own will would generate such intense attachments? In fact, some imitative AI firms created bots meant to replace therapists and psychiatrists. It was insane, but perfectly legal. And here we are — with chatbots that fawn over their users in realistic seeming fashions to the point where people lose connection with reality and even take their own lives.

And we let it happen.

Tech leadership did not question if it was wise to let loose bullshit machines onto the general public, despite warnings. We allowed children to access these tools, and we allowed them, so far, to be built on the backs of other people’s work — work the AI hypers have not paid for. But we have always done these things.

We didn’t tax internet companies because to encourage the internet, as if being on the internet did not make you a store. We allowed firms to take people’s private data and use it to manipulate them and sell them things, creating a panopticon nightmare. We allowed companies to be shielded from all liability via Section 230, even knowing that liability is one of the few means of reigning in abusive companies.

We just don’t think. about how these tools and products interact with society nearly enough. We take the words of the hypers and owners and let them cow us into believing that because it is new or on the internet, it is different than anything that has come before. It is not. Chatbots are just products, and we have known how to regulate and prohibit harmful products for generations. We simply choose not to because it’s hard or because it contradicts the comforting myth that business will protect us all.

Now we have world calculators that encourage children to commit suicide and breakup families. We have social media that manipulates people for their own engagement ends, regardless of the cost to society. We have online firms that have become monopolies on the backs of our policies, devastating local retailers and economies. We believe the conflicted owners of these firms rather than our own eyes and history.

There is nothing especially special or noble or honest about businesspeople. They are subject to the same biases and temptation to self-dealing as anyone else. The internet is not a special land, filled with unicorns and free money for everyone, including the unicorns. By forgetting these simple things, we opened ourselves to abuse and the degradation of civil society. We need to stop assuming every new thing that comes along is a special snowflake and its investors wise and venerable sages. There is precious new under the sun, and everything new almost certainly as a historical analogue. We know how to protect society form bad actors. We need to act like we care if we are ever going to dig ourselves out of these messes.

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