Since the release of ChatGPT in 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) has gotten a lot of attention. The possibilities of AI are endless and it can even replace jobs. But dispite all those advantages, I don’t use AI for this personal blog. And I don’t think I ever will in the future. Let me tell you why I don’t use artificial intelligence for this blog in any way.
This blog is personal
The first and foremost reason is that this is a personal blog. It is my personal journey towards, and in, an eco-positive lifestyle. If it’s written by someone (or something in this case), I don’t feel like it’s my personal blog anymore. Sure, AI can write much better texts than I do. The English language will probably be better too. But for me that’s not what this blog is about. It sounds self-centered, but the truth is that this blog about me. It is a good reflection of me and my lifestyle and I want to keep it that way. I often read old articles.
It’s my hobby
The next reason is that this blog is a hobby of mine. I do it because I love to do it. I want to write my thoughts down and inspire others. But I can imagine other people using AI for their professional work. This enables them to do this work more efficient and for a job this is nice (since most people have a job because they have to, not because they voluntary want to). But this blog is not my professional work. I don’t earn money from this blog in any way. In fact, it costs me money (the hosting). If I don’t want to write articles anymore, I will quit. I would never make AI write articles for me just because I want to publish something.
And to be clear: I don’t use AI for anything on this blog. Not to write texts, but neither for inspiration. I know a lot of professional content creators do this, to come up with ideas for titles or entire articles. I don’t do this. When I don’t have inspiration left, I’ll quit writing.
The value of this personal blog
With the advances made in AI, I do sometimes wonder if my articles still add as much value as before. If someone wants to know how to buy sustainable clothing or how to travel from Copenhagen to Amsterdam by train, they can easily ask an AI that. Less and less people will use search engines, that’s what I personally think. Less use of search engines means less views on my blog. But that’s okay. People eventually get the help they need and that’s what it’s about. So maybe in that senss my articles provide less value.
However, I think the personal aspect of this blog is what makes it unique. People can read about my personal journey and that may inspire them. I feel like I am doing as much as I can to inspire others to live more sustainably. And that makes me feel good. I am certain that I inspire some people that I meet or come in contact with. People have told me that themselves. That’s why I am confident that my blog still adds value, even though AI could replace many of my tasks.
Ethical complaints about AI
Maybe you would have expected that I don’t use AI because of ethical complaints. That’s partly true, I do have ethical complaints. But only for AI that creates visual content. My complaints are about the workers training the AI’s that make visual content. Part of training an AI model is teaching them what harmful content is. Things like suïcide, selfharm, violence, rape and more. Human workers have to watch these things to teach the AI to identify them. The human workers teaching the AI are usually poor people who have little other work options. They suffer from PTSD, depression and more. And that’s unethical. If we want to use AI for visual content, someone has to do this job. I don’t want anybody to do such jobs. Therefore, I will never use visual AI models. But textual machine learning is okay for me (like ChatGPT).
What I think of AI in general
I am not an expert in the field of AI of course. But thusfar, I think of AI as something positive. That’s because machines can give us freedom. If they do the work, we have to do much less work we don’t want to do. That leaves more room for the jobs we actually need humans for, but also for more free time. I think it’s a good think if we’d all work a little less and spend more times doing other meaningful things like spending time with loved ones, hobby’s, exercise, play and fun. But creating such a future is not up to AI alone. We’d need to change to rules of society to do that and I expect this to take us decades. But AI gives us the opportunity to slowly create more freedom and I think that’s a good thing.
Yours sincerely,
Romee