StopGenAI: Mutual Aid for a Coming Age
Activists from StopGenAI.com provide a litany of reasons why they think we should be ridding ourselves of this pervasive technology altogether: Its environmental impact, privacy concerns, exploitation, and even detrimental impacts to our individual and collective abilities to think or create.
It is also replacing jobs at incredible rates, albeit inadequately. But this is of no concern to the technocrats pushing GenAI or the politicians prioritizing it.
This is where mutual aid comes in. Guests Kim Crawley and Neha share the creative ways they're also raising funds for folks most impacted by the expansion of GenAI.
Hosted by: Jessa McLean
Call to Action: StopGenAI Fundraising Initiatives
Previous Episodes with Kim Crawley:
- COVID Conscious Under Capitalism, looks at individual human behavior, the response of our governments and how the greed of our 'capitalist overlords' plays into it all.
- To Vote or Not to Vote, where Kim talks about her political transformation from libertarian to an NDP Convention delegate to someone disillusioned with the entire system.
More Resources:
- StopGenAI.com
- Book Review: Palo Alto – A history of California, capitalism, and the world - Northern California Section of the American Planning Association
- Stop Gen AI mutual aid charity bundle 1 - itch.io
- AI Job Crisis is Here by Brian Merchant
📺YOU CAN CATCH US LIVE EVERY FRIDAY AT 12pm E.T. on our YouTube Channel.
All of our content is free - made possible by the generous sponsorships of our Patrons. If you would like to support our work through monthly contributions: Patreon
Transcript
Welcome to Blueprints of Disruption, a podcast dedicated to amplifying the work of the grassroots,
Speaker:sharing their knowledge, and hopefully encouraging others to build power wherever they're at.
Speaker:I am your host, Jess McLean. This week's episode is all about AI, Gen. AI to be exact. But
Speaker:don't worry if you don't know the difference. I didn't either until I spoke with Neha and
Speaker:Kim from StopGenAI.com. Now I had heard rumblings that this rapidly expanding technology was
Speaker:bad for the environment and I could obviously see the pending problem of widespread job replacement,
Speaker:but I had no idea just how detrimental GEN.AI is to our communities. It's no wonder the world's
Speaker:technocrats are desperate to incorporate it into everything we do. On top of educating
Speaker:people on the perils of GEN.AI and how to avoid it, Our next guests also share some really
Speaker:creative approaches to mutual aid. After you're done listening, there's more information on
Speaker:all of this in the show notes, as well as ways you can help support their work and ours. Let's
Speaker:get to it. Can you two introduce yourself to the audience, please? Yeah, so I'm Kim Crawley.
Speaker:I'm a returning guest. And since my last appearance on the show about a year ago, talking about
Speaker:COVID and the importance of respirators and whatnot. Now, I am a professor at the Hope
Speaker:and Institute of Technology. And while we'll see how much longer I'm on their faculty. And
Speaker:I teach enterprise cybersecurity to masters students there. And I'm still a very passionate
Speaker:anti-COVID activist who wears respirators all the time. But... I recently founded an organization
Speaker:called Stop Gen. AI and my friend Nija here is a very important member of that organization.
Speaker:And so our objective is to counter the menace of Gen. AI. And so the most important defensive
Speaker:measure immediately right now is for us to raise mutual aid funds so that we can financially
Speaker:support people who have been thrown into poverty because our oligarch overlords think that
Speaker:they can replace all human labor with gen.ai. Hi, I'm Neha. I currently work as a machine
Speaker:learning software engineer and I am aware of the fact there is good purposes for AI, but
Speaker:gen.ai is not one of them. The fact that it takes the work from creatives and violates
Speaker:copyright is incredibly unethical to me. And I feel there's not enough people in tech speaking
Speaker:out about the harms of gen.ai. And that's why I chose to join the Stop Gen.ai organization
Speaker:to be a voice for those creatives. And I myself am a hobbyist creator. I create watercolor
Speaker:paintings and do pencil sketches. And I see so much value in that. And art is such an outlet
Speaker:for me. And everyone deserves to still have that and not be replaced by Gen.ai. I myself
Speaker:as well. I'm also an advocate for COVID prevention. I've suffered from long COVID symptoms for
Speaker:over a year now, and still continuing to see my friends and family minimize COVID while
Speaker:I'm suffering alone is very hurtful. And I want to be a voice in that space as well. Well,
Speaker:thank you both for joining me. And you're about to take me to school a little bit because I
Speaker:do not know the difference between AI. and Gen AI. Can you, one of you two, give us a
Speaker:broad overview, you know, for the lay person, what that means and why specifically it's
Speaker:more harmful than AI? Yes. So in the past, I have done research using machine learning,
Speaker:which is a subfield of AI to predict diagnoses of healthcare. And I was basically given permission
Speaker:to use an anonymized patient data set, which included a bunch of different features, including
Speaker:different patient demographics, their medical test results, and so on. And this was essentially
Speaker:inputting it into a machine learning model that's like all coded up. didn't need to write any
Speaker:of the code for the model per se. I just imported the library and used that model to predict
Speaker:the diagnosis. So this type of Machine learning is very useful for many different applications
Speaker:and it's the fundamentals of it. It's based on math and calculus and linear algebra and
Speaker:doesn't steal from anyone. It's just any data that's inputted into the model. I take good
Speaker:care to ensure that it was collected with consent. But what GenAI is different is that it's regurgitating
Speaker:creations, quote unquote, based on information that exists. So it's beyond just analyzing
Speaker:the data and coming up with predictions. It's actually generating its own thing and that
Speaker:leads to hallucinations. It uses so much more energy and in so many ways is bad environmentally,
Speaker:stifling creativity and so on. And that's why I think it's important to make that distinction
Speaker:because everyone's like, oh, like AI is so bad and they generalize it. But I think giving
Speaker:that distinction and educating more people, especially around AI ethics. It's so important,
Speaker:especially now. Absolutely, because I'm starting to see, you know, pushback against AI. It's
Speaker:not the strongest narrative at the moment, right? Like I shared a CBC article with you folks
Speaker:just before we recorded. you know, our national broadcaster is hyping it up. Our prime minister
Speaker:is saying it is the future of technology. But On top of the loss of creativity that hopefully
Speaker:we can expand on a little bit, there's the concerns of job replacement. But at the same time,
Speaker:even people who know these trappings exist, almost everything that we use has this AI
Speaker:feature. You know, it's offered, it's something you can turn on or off with certain applications.
Speaker:I don't even know when it's being used, to be honest, in all of the applications that I
Speaker:end up using throughout my day. And it's hard to know how to approach that day to day. But
Speaker:what can folks be doing to be more cognizant of what they're using and whether or not that's
Speaker:harmful? I have gone to great lengths to rid my everyday life of Gen. AI. We'll get into
Speaker:it later, but my main motives for avoiding Gen. AI are not wanting to contribute to know,
Speaker:environmental destruction, not wanting my privacy to be evaded by these big tech corporations.
Speaker:Basically, I think of Gen.A.I. I think of the world being set on fire and people's brains
Speaker:atrophying. That's another reason why I avoid Gen.A.I. because Gen.A.I. has been proven to
Speaker:atrophy people's ability to think critically and to come up with new ideas on their own.
Speaker:Like, basically, it kills a part of your brain if you keep using it. So what do I do? I had
Speaker:Windows 11 on my laptop for the longest time and I have Windows administrative experience.
Speaker:So every time there'd be a new Windows update and it would make Microsoft Co-Pilot. Microsoft
Speaker:Co-Pilot is a Microsoft application of Gen.ai and it has this really nasty feature called
Speaker:Recall that takes a snapshot of what you're doing on your computer every 10 seconds or
Speaker:so. and shares it with Microsoft. So that's really disturbing. I would go and I would go
Speaker:into the Windows registry and I would do what I had to do to get rid of Copilot every time
Speaker:there was a new Windows update. And then eventually I came to the conclusion of I can't keep doing
Speaker:this. Microsoft is gonna keep shoving Copilot onto my computer if I keep using Windows 11.
Speaker:And this is an uphill battle. I thought I needed Windows for PC gaming. But it turns out that
Speaker:all of my favorite Windows games are well supported in Linux now. So I got rid of Windows 11 and
Speaker:I installed Kubuntu Linux, which is a type of Linux. There's not just one Linux operating
Speaker:system. There are hundreds of Linux operating systems. So the one that I have on my laptop
Speaker:is called Kubuntu. And then there was my phone and I had an Android phone like a lot of people
Speaker:do. And Google kept trying to shove Google Gemini onto my phone, which was very disturbing
Speaker:for me. really Google monitoring what I'm doing, Google trying to think for me. It was starting
Speaker:to disturb me when I was text messaging people that instead of just letting me type what I
Speaker:wanted to say, there'd be like, oh, do you want to say this? We've got like a gazillion of
Speaker:things that we're predicting that we think that you might want to say to these people.
Speaker:So if you have a If you have a Google Pixel phone, then it's possible to replace vanilla
Speaker:Android, which is the version of Android that comes on your phone, with a modified version
Speaker:of Android, which doesn't contain all of the evil Google stuff called Graphino S. And Graphino
Speaker:S is only supported on Pixel phones. But if you have an Android phone that isn't a Pixel,
Speaker:there are... other alternative operating systems. That sounds daunting. It's the same with,
Speaker:it's very similar to our COVID conversation, right? Where there are many kind of individual
Speaker:ways folks can do this, but it's not without some effort and some knowledge needed and
Speaker:sometimes resources. So I'm guessing. Because I already feel like daunted. I'm like, oh my
Speaker:gosh, OK, I can do that. I think I can do that. I know someone who can help me do that. So
Speaker:I imagine some listeners are feeling the same way. But this collective that you've begun,
Speaker:I suppose, is to push back against its use at all. Do you think you can stop Gen.ai,
Speaker:as the name suggests? Specifically, Gen.ai should be removed. resisted and abolished completely.
Speaker:there any politicians kind of picking that up or is everyone because you know we just appointed
Speaker:a new minister of AI but? Absolutely not because all of our politicians under capitalism are
Speaker:servants of capitalism. They want more hyper capitalism and capitalism is destroying the
Speaker:planet and destroying everyone and they want more and more and more of it more and more
Speaker:of that destruction and part of that destruction is gen AI. And so no, we don't have a single
Speaker:politician who is oppositional to Gen. AI, not one. I'm sure if Olivia Chow heard about
Speaker:it, she'd be like, woohoo, where's my next fat check? Because obviously she has shown that
Speaker:she governs just like a conservative. I do not have any faith in any politicians or any
Speaker:party or anything like that. And I feel like it's all a scam. We should get rid of all politicians.
Speaker:send them to the Hague or whatever. Yeah, I'm not looking to them as a solution either. I
Speaker:was wondering also, you know, what the pickup is on this idea. Like, I feel this perhaps
Speaker:isn't on a lot of people's radar yet. Neha, what do you think? Yeah, I personally haven't
Speaker:heard of any politicians for or against Gen.ai. I just feel they don't know about it yet, or
Speaker:it's not in their scope. But I feel like if they did, they'd probably have partnerships
Speaker:with those companies as so many of the tech companies already work with the military. It's
Speaker:only to be assumed that because those tech companies are proponents of Gen. like Microsoft and
Speaker:Google with their own models that they're going to fight to have it be implemented in government
Speaker:systems. So I do not have any faith that there will be pushback from politicians. The reason
Speaker:why our capitalist overlords drool so much about Gen.A.I. is one, they have this dream of replacing
Speaker:all human labor so they don't have to pay any human being through their labor ever. That
Speaker:is their dream. And they might sometimes lie and say, no, no, no, we're just trying to make
Speaker:you productive. But then sometimes their mask slips and they make it clear that yes, we're
Speaker:trying to replace every single one of you. And in a world where As proletariat, we need our
Speaker:labor income in order to survive. That has absolutely devastating consequences to think about. And
Speaker:it doesn't matter. I went into the programming subreddit and I was talking about, for instance,
Speaker:O'Reilly Media is now pushing this bullshit. A lot of the programmers were seeing eye to
Speaker:eye with me. But then there are also a lot of programmers who were saying, Oh, but my job
Speaker:is safe because I've seen what GenAI does and it can't replicate what I do. It just produces
Speaker:nonsense code that we always have to fix. So our jobs are secure. And then I said to them,
Speaker:no, you're incredibly naive. It doesn't matter how lousy the quality of presumably GenAI generated
Speaker:code is. They will still... want to replace you with it. doesn't matter how much stuff
Speaker:gets blown up because of it. Just to make it clear to listeners, Gen.ai is not smart. Gen.ai
Speaker:is not smart. It's not intelligent. It's not making inference. We human beings, we think
Speaker:of words and concepts and ideas, and we think about it and we have like a thinking process.
Speaker:That's not what Gen.ai with large language models does. You probably remember when Google started
Speaker:putting autocomplete in their search bar like 20 years ago or like 15 years ago. And you
Speaker:could type something like, for instance, Toronto is. Yeah, some people have fun, you know, figuring
Speaker:out what the most popular response is. Exactly. And it could auto populate with Toronto is
Speaker:capital Canada. And we know that Toronto is not the capital of Canada. but it's a popular
Speaker:misconception. So very likely autocomplete could suggest Toronto is capital of Canada. One
Speaker:example that I give on the StopGEN.ai homepage is chat GPT and a lot of these other applications
Speaker:of GEN.ai will just say that everything that you're saying is correct and go for it, no
Speaker:matter what you say. Because it's just imitating language. It's not thinking, it's not smart,
Speaker:it's just imitating language, that's all. So you type in something like, for instance, since
Speaker:tomatoes is the capital of Asia, what is the capital of tomatoes? And GPT would say, well,
Speaker:tomatoes, the largest country in Asia, the capital is tea. So the capital of tomatoes is tea.
Speaker:So the capital of the largest country in Asia is tea. Yeah, I think people understand some
Speaker:of the flaws. You sent me an article though, Kim, Brian Merchant there, and he talks about
Speaker:Duolingo. Duolingo? You know, the app that people use to learn different languages. And
Speaker:he talked about workers like you described there, felt somewhat secure, knew they were training
Speaker:AI. I pretend I know what that means. don't, but you know, they were working with AI. The
Speaker:company wasn't slick in, you know, introducing it. Uh, but they thought, yeah, it would be
Speaker:years and years before their jobs were, were replaced for the very reasons that you mentioned,
Speaker:because it just wasn't doing the job. Like it wasn't there yet. The technology wasn't there.
Speaker:And Brian gave a lot of examples of it being used in circumstances where it wasn't adequate,
Speaker:but it was replacing workers anyway at incredible. rates. He also uses the example of Doge, that
Speaker:way of looking at federal employee, a lot of white collar workers as just completely
Speaker:replaceable by inadequate technology. The implications of that to the economy, like forget about the
Speaker:individual for just a moment, right, because we will get there on how we can navigate that.
Speaker:But The economy as a whole and like the livelihood of so many folks or, you know, especially from
Speaker:that particular tax bracket, do you folks have any other examples of Canadian companies
Speaker:that are heavily using AI and seeing job replacement? I would presume that most of them, especially
Speaker:in tech and industries like journalism are probably trying to shove most of us out.
Speaker:I can't name specifically Canadian companies, although Canadian companies are definitely
Speaker:doing it. But recently, I believe it was, was it the Washington Post or was it another,
Speaker:or is it Chicago? No, it was the Chicago Sun-Times published an article of summer book recommendations.
Speaker:And none of the books that the article was recommending existed. existed yet or at all
Speaker:like, did not like this, this book will be published in the future. Like the books did not exist.
Speaker:The gen AI was like making up shit basically. Not that I've seen losses in this industry
Speaker:yet, but I have seen people using like chat GPT or other gen AI tools as a therapist or
Speaker:as a friend to talk to. And that's so disturbing because This is just a machine that essentially
Speaker:just regurgitates whatever it decides to come up with. And as we can see that it hallucinates,
Speaker:like it hallucinated book titles that did not even exist or will not ever exist. And the
Speaker:fact that people are turning to these tools for major life decisions and crises is something
Speaker:we should be very concerned about because this is just a regurgitator machine. It has no qualifications
Speaker:on giving advice or anything. You're right. have seen a lot of people using it and boasting
Speaker:about the benefits of using it for all sorts of things. Zoom has an AI function that I've
Speaker:seen folks utilizing and, you know, I wonder every time I go, this ethical? this? Yeah,
Speaker:no, no. Like, and I didn't mention it when I was talking about like the factors, but you
Speaker:reminded me, I think, the environmental impact. think folks just know it takes up more resources
Speaker:for some reason, but like, can you just again for the layperson, why is AI and gen AI
Speaker:so resource heavy? Yeah, so without getting into the computer science too much, that's
Speaker:for my sake, just like just like blockchain and cryptocurrency attached to it, it uses
Speaker:mathematical calculations and all that of stuff in a very inefficient way. It's like instead
Speaker:of, I remember when I was a little kid Tiny Toon Adventures, there was a segment where
Speaker:an entire tree was buzzed down to make one tiny toothpick, right? You could make like hundreds
Speaker:of toothpicks out of a tree, if not more, right? But the cartoon was showing MaxMillionMax or
Speaker:whatever using an entire tree to make one toothpick. And it was like 1990, 1991 where environmentalism
Speaker:was trendy back then. So that's kind of the computing thing for how Gen.AI uses computing
Speaker:power. Good computer programmers will brag about how efficient their code is, how they can get...
Speaker:A good software application to a good programmer is... you fulfill your objectives for that
Speaker:computer program with as few lines of code as possible. You don't have a lot of extraneous
Speaker:lines of code that aren't producing something useful. Gen.ai is just incredibly, incredibly
Speaker:inefficient as far as computing power is concerned. You could be doing a lot more with those CPU
Speaker:cycles and all that RAM, but it's producing much less with it. And it's not an argument
Speaker:of making it better because there's detriments beyond its inefficiencies, right? Like, let's
Speaker:say we could make it more efficient, even clean the energy up that we use to run it, right?
Speaker:Dream world, dream world circumstances. There's still aspects of it. One of them you mentioned,
Speaker:Nihai, maybe you want to expand on it, is the loss of creativity. I'm a hobbyist artist.
Speaker:That means you make art without selling it, is that right? Yeah, that's the definition
Speaker:I use. Okay, good. So like, how would that impact me? Yeah, so I think right now when I share
Speaker:my creations with people, they're like, oh, wow, like, you're so talented. That's like
Speaker:so creative. And I think if there is a chance that GenAI art quote unquote got better and
Speaker:was able to replicate human created art better, think that wow-ness would go away and then
Speaker:kind of the appeal of having artistic or creative hobbies would go away as well. And I like the
Speaker:quote, the earth without art is eh, would just ring so much more because we need human created
Speaker:art, especially now more than ever. Here's why even if you do not make money from your art,
Speaker:you should be concerned. First of all, the artists who do make a living from There aren't, they
Speaker:are supported by an infrastructure. When DeviantArt, the website, the social media platform came
Speaker:out, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago, that was a platform created by artists to share their
Speaker:visual art on the internet and their artist portfolios. And although a lot of artists
Speaker:on DeviantArt never make any money from their art, the... platform thrive because there
Speaker:are also people who did make money from their art, like professional illustrators and tattoo
Speaker:artists and stuff like that. And under a capitalist system, the artists who make a living from
Speaker:their art do provide an infrastructure that hobbyist artists can use as well. There are
Speaker:stores that sell paints and art supplies and stuff like that. A lot of the people buying
Speaker:paint and art supplies and all that are buying it for their hobbies, but there are also professionals
Speaker:who are buying that stuff and under capitalism, that stuff would be less available to hobbyists
Speaker:if people couldn't also make a living doing that sort of thing. And then there's the other
Speaker:thing of artists are always inspired by other people's art, always, whether they're consciously
Speaker:aware of it or subconsciously aware of it. If people stop producing art, whether for
Speaker:money or as an unpaid hobby, then there's less art to be inspired by. Right? And what Gen.
Speaker:AI produces is not art, right? Art requires creativity and human thinking. And the human
Speaker:experience. Right. Computers can be used to make art. Like I've written novels and word
Speaker:processors and artists use Adobe Photoshop and stuff like that. But if the computer is coming
Speaker:up with all the ideas, then that's not art anymore. has to be a human being coming up
Speaker:with the ideas and then the computer just being the equivalent of paintbrushes and a canvas.
Speaker:You've made the argument, you know, to stop Gen-AI. So how are you going to do it? Okay.
Speaker:Well, first of all, like our immediate concern is to raise money for people who are becoming
Speaker:unemployed. Like for instance, my, even though The last time I spoke with you, wasn't a
Speaker:college professor, now I am a college professor. Believe it or not, I make a lot less money
Speaker:than I did, which is very, very scary considering how expensive my rent is, because my evil overlords
Speaker:are convinced that they can replace me with Gen. AI very badly, by the way. It's not just
Speaker:me that that's impacting, obviously, like if you see Bryant Merchant's Blood on the Machine
Speaker:blog and whatnot. it's coming to millions of us millions and millions of us unemployment.
Speaker:Yeah, so how so our mutual aid fund is intended to give people immediate survival money. And
Speaker:anyone who donates 10 US dollars or more per year is eligible to get a stop gen AI webmail
Speaker:account. And the bet there are two benefits to that the first being your email address
Speaker:shows the world that you oppose Gen.ai, like a kind of like a vanity license plate, right?
Speaker:And then the other benefit of that is our servers are hosted by a company called 1984 Hosting.
Speaker:Iceland, yeah, funny name, And it's based in Iceland and they're very rebellious against
Speaker:the big tech industry. But what's most important about 1984 Hosting is they are in Iceland.
Speaker:And Iceland isn't subject to a lot of the trade deals that would make them have to share information
Speaker:with the United States. So we know right now that the United States and probably Canada
Speaker:pretty soon is fascist. And in the United States, especially with Silicon Valley, big tech and
Speaker:fascism have commuted like All those like Microsoft, Google, they're all cooperating 100 % enthusiastically
Speaker:with ICE and with Doge and all that kind of thing. So it's very important for me that
Speaker:our website be hosted on servers that are outside of American control. But also you can get an
Speaker:email address that is hosted by email servers that are outside of American control. which
Speaker:is very good for like better protecting your own privacy from the fascism that's coming.
Speaker:That's very clever. Yeah. So we'll give you webmail that you can use just, just, and cause
Speaker:if you got Gmail or Hotmail that's under American control, right? So we offer an alternative
Speaker:to that. If you donate $10 a year to us. So there's that. We have this fundraising initiative
Speaker:that we launched recently. There's a PC gaming platform called itch.io. And itch.io is a platform
Speaker:online where indie game developers share their games with the world. And not just indie games
Speaker:now, but also independent novelists and comic book creators and tabletop RPG creators and
Speaker:people like that. Now multiple mediums of creativity are using itch.io for indie distribution. So
Speaker:sometimes people on itch.io create bundles of different PC games or different comic books
Speaker:or different themes. There was this tech company called Humble Bundle that would sell a bunch
Speaker:of indie games for cheap in one bundle and it would raise money for a charity. They do that
Speaker:with itch.io too. So we are creating our own bundle on itch.io. with a bunch of indie games
Speaker:and books and stuff like that. So we're at the stage right now where we are collecting people's
Speaker:art to be sold in the bundle. So everyone who contributes art to the bundle, whether it's
Speaker:a game or a comic or a book or whatever, gets a cut of the bundle revenue. And then whatever
Speaker:money doesn't go to itch.io, it doesn't go to contributors to the bundle, goes to our anti-GEN.AI
Speaker:mutual aid fund. So we need to raise money in our funds so that we can give it to people
Speaker:who need immediate financial aid because they're being displaced by GEN.AI. We are accepting
Speaker:new items into our bundle until I believe June 20th. So you got until June 20th, 2025 to contribute
Speaker:something to our bundle. And if you contribute something to our bundle, you get a cut of the
Speaker:bundle revenue when we saw the bundle. And then the bundle itself will go on sale probably
Speaker:from late June. And that's going to be a fundraiser for our mutual aid fund. Another initiative
Speaker:is to educate people. So to educate people about why they want to avoid GEN.AI and how they
Speaker:can avoid GEN.AI. So that's going to be very, because you see the thing is the big evil tech
Speaker:companies right now, Google, Amazon and Meta and Microsoft and Apple even. They're all shoving
Speaker:this stuff down our throats because they know that GEN.AI actually isn't really good and
Speaker:we're not going to, unless we're like tech bro types of drunken McCool-aid, a lot of us
Speaker:are not going to willingly turn on GEN.AI features. So they're trying to trick people into using
Speaker:it just like malware. is malware as far as I'm concerned. And then some of the other things
Speaker:that I do to avoid GenAI include I never use Microsoft Office Suite. I never use Google
Speaker:Docs, right? So then I don't have to worry about GenAI being shoved into that. I don't use
Speaker:meta social media. So I don't have an Instagram account. I don't have a Facebook account.
Speaker:If you have to have a Facebook account or an Instagram account, You got to at the very least
Speaker:be very careful about what you're doing. But if you can possibly avoid those platforms even
Speaker:better. But yeah, that's going to be one of the most important things to educate people
Speaker:because you're also killing the planet. And you're killing your critical thinking skills.
Speaker:So people's brains are starting to atrophy. So instead of coming up with their own ideas,
Speaker:they're like, OK, I'm going to outsource my thinking to this glorified autocomplete. So
Speaker:that's really concerning as well. And then every time they do that, a forest burns down. And
Speaker:all the Gen.ai that Elon Musk and Sam Altman from OpenAI and all these other evil tech billionaires
Speaker:want cannot be supported by our power grid. If we put a bunch of new oil plants and decommissioned
Speaker:nuclear power plants back online, that's still not going to be enough power. to satisfy their
Speaker:demands. So what we're going to see is we're going to see parts of our power grid blackout
Speaker:here and there. If we all remember the great blackout of August 2003, those of us who were
Speaker:there. We all had to direct our own traffic. Imagine that happening a lot more frequently
Speaker:in those blackouts lasting for long. There are things like, for instance, a new data center
Speaker:that has been put up to support JNAI. is they put these things near neighborhoods that marginalized
Speaker:people are more likely to live in. So there are neighborhoods in the US that are predominantly
Speaker:black, and they put a data center nearby, and it's poisoning their air, and it's giving the
Speaker:people who live in the area cancer and stuff like that. Another reason is, do you want to
Speaker:be on the same side of an issue as Elon Musk? Not just Elon, right? Karney, like I've mentioned,
Speaker:is extremely gung-ho about AI. And I want to go back to something that Neha said about
Speaker:tech not, or people working in tech not sounding off alarm bells enough. And I wonder, even
Speaker:if it's not for the environment and for all the many, many, many reasons that you folks
Speaker:have given, surely for their own preservation. And I'd also maybe like to pick both of your
Speaker:brains about why folks aren't making this connection the same way we do for self checkouts. You
Speaker:know, I know there's, it's a lot more complex than that, but it does make me think of, you
Speaker:know, something that's just so obvious in replacing someone's livelihood in a political
Speaker:economic climate where unemployment insurance is not even on the table for reform. know,
Speaker:like the liberals won't talk about it. The conservatives won't push for it. So, you know. Yeah. And
Speaker:I think the huge reason that we don't see like the majority of tech people that are on social
Speaker:media talking about these issues is that a lot of them in their bio say that they work at
Speaker:Microsoft or Amazon and they have to be proponents of the tools they're working on or working
Speaker:with, especially which is ironic that I was talking to someone that they had to be a proponent
Speaker:of the AI tools at their company in order to keep their job. And when you're kind of trapped
Speaker:in that double bind of the job market is really bad for software engineers, but yet to talk
Speaker:about something that you may not necessarily completely agree with. It's like, what is a
Speaker:person to do? Like everyone's still at the end of the day has bills to pay. And it's like,
Speaker:what battles do you want to pick with that? Also, lot of people in the tech industry are
Speaker:tech bros who drink the cool air. Yeah, yeah. What Neha said just kind of right goes back
Speaker:to what you folks are doing at stopgenai.com is providing mutual aid when needed, but also
Speaker:feeding into spaces where folks maybe don't have to work at Microsoft and Amazon and Apple
Speaker:and all the villainous corporations out there that that Maybe there is a space to still
Speaker:make a living doing these types of things outside of that market, right? And that's common to
Speaker:a lot of movements that try to create space where people can survive outside of capitalism
Speaker:to a degree, right? We're all still impacted by it. What else has StopGen.ai focused on
Speaker:doing? That's a good question. So if you go to our homepage right now, there's a bunch
Speaker:of citations. for the various ways that GEN.AI is incredibly destructive, killing the planet,
Speaker:killing humanity basically. We'd like to have more information about all that stuff and then
Speaker:make it accessible to people. So I need a lot of help with that. But one thing that we don't
Speaker:have on our website right now that I think is really important is tips for people on how
Speaker:they can avoid GEN.AI. And they might not be able to... Avoid it completely, unfortunately,
Speaker:but as much as they possibly can avoid it, they should. So I'm going to we're going to offer
Speaker:tips on alternative software, for instance, alternative ways of doing things with computers.
Speaker:I know a good comrade who has a Linux. It's a bit of a help group, but also a social group.
Speaker:So I will link that also with the other resources that folks have mentioned, as well as your
Speaker:website. in the show notes for sure so folks can see it for themselves because yeah there
Speaker:are and like I said there's a lot of apps where folks maybe if you look a little closer you'll
Speaker:realize that some of the features are certainly gen AI and they can be turned on or off but
Speaker:they do try to I understand what you mean but like they're shoving it down your throat because
Speaker:it's always popping up are you sure you don't I think in Canva you know there's a feature
Speaker:are you sure you don't want to use this? And I'm like, no, I mean, a part of me does, right?
Speaker:I'm like, I would love to see what you would put together for me. And are you going to save
Speaker:me time? Because convenience is one thing. But I think some people, know, Miha mentioned
Speaker:therapy or friends. There is this aspect of what it provides that people are clearly missing,
Speaker:right? Whether it's companionship, access to therapy, the ability to figure things out,
Speaker:even though, There's the answers. They're trusting the answers coming back a little too
Speaker:implicitly Yeah When you were talking about copilot and Gemini Gemini Anyway, I'm learning
Speaker:all of these things as we go obviously but you know the Bill C2 I'm trying to keep track
Speaker:of all these awful fucking bills going through all of our levels of government, but one
Speaker:of the It's a xenophobic mass deportation bill but Funnily enough, there's the added bonus
Speaker:of a loss of privacy. Canada Post opening mail, yada yada. It's really not part of this
Speaker:discussion, but part of it is internet privacy and the ability for the federal government
Speaker:to take that kind of information, those snapshots that you were talking about, and to be able
Speaker:to order. that kind of information straight from the provider with very little oversight
Speaker:like less and less and less oversight and meaning courts and whatnot. I wonder you know beyond
Speaker:or maybe it's with the use of gen AI I'm not sure but do you want to comment on that in
Speaker:the way that governments are going like will that with all the steps that you're taking
Speaker:you know on your computer and your phone would this undermine that? It overlaps only a little
Speaker:bit. I am decreasing my surveillance surface by not using GEN.AI because GEN.AI is just
Speaker:taking people's creativity and their actions and all that and storing it so we don't have
Speaker:any privacy anymore. One of the immediate threats of GEN.AI to people's privacy is, for instance,
Speaker:it's a complicated computer science concept, but I'll try and keep it simple. You can't
Speaker:have gen AI keep training on gen AI output, because then it will explode much quicker.
Speaker:It's like it's like incest basically, if you got gen AI training on output produced by other
Speaker:gen AI, it's incestuous. It'll replicate mistakes as well as information. Exactly. So they need
Speaker:fresh human ideas to keep training the gen AI and that they're running out of that on the
Speaker:internet because they want to Yeah. So one of the reasons why Microsoft is pushing Copilot
Speaker:in Windows and for instance Google is pushing Gemini in Android is because they want to
Speaker:train on the things that we do on our computers and on our phones. And so training on the things
Speaker:that we do on our computers and our phones is violating our privacy. Right? then there's
Speaker:so yeah, there's so many like it's evil in every conceivable way. And the only reason
Speaker:why people are going along with it is because they're ignorant. They don't know what's going
Speaker:on and they're taking the path of these resistance. Another thing is like, you know, you're probably
Speaker:you're you're definitely neurodivergent. Right. But you like reading books and you like listening
Speaker:to other people's podcasts and stuff like that. Imagine instead of reading a book, instead
Speaker:of listening to a podcast, instead of listening to this podcast in a normal way, oh, I don't
Speaker:have time for that. I just want Gen.ai to like regurgitate it as like a 30 second summary.
Speaker:So first of all, you're losing a lot of the information in the context from the book or
Speaker:the podcast or the movie or whatever. And then secondly, the way that the JNAI could be summarizing
Speaker:it could be inaccurate or bias. Yeah, losing a lot of context and ideas that you could have
Speaker:gotten if you listen to the podcast in normal way. That's why I don't edit a lot of what
Speaker:the guests say, because sometimes I feel like, maybe they're repeating themselves. Maybe this
Speaker:information isn't important. Like I might think it to myself. But then I'm like, but I shouldn't
Speaker:be that filter. I will let the audience decide or maybe you when you look at the bigger picture
Speaker:this was a very important point to them to somebody else and so I generally just leave it all on
Speaker:there even when I feel that way and I feel like that's that I always question that like those
Speaker:results that you get there's a certain filter to decide what 30 seconds like how you summarize
Speaker:something you leave a lot out and what information aren't you getting from your chat gpt results
Speaker:but sometimes I see folks just relieved by the ease that it's brought them somewhere, you
Speaker:know, and I know you can make the argument that the results that they're getting aren't optimal
Speaker:and could be even wrong. Again, going back to that self-checkout, like you're in a rush,
Speaker:you have screaming children with you, you need to get in and out and now they only employ
Speaker:one cashier, right? And so, you know, journalists, you have deadlines. There's less time, less
Speaker:money, less opportunity. Like maybe you're starting to use tools that you know you shouldn't and
Speaker:whatnot. like folks also are driven by material need that they didn't create too, right? Or
Speaker:like this pressure or lack of access to therapy, right? Again, we'll go back to that. Like
Speaker:there's no other way. They don't even have any other way to maybe talk to somebody. And so
Speaker:yeah, they're using this because they've been pushed to a point where they feel they need
Speaker:it or maybe, you know, they do need it. How can we get folks to realize, to kind of pull
Speaker:back a bit on that? Yeah, I think a huge part of it is the social conditioning that it's
Speaker:framed as a replacement for a search engine and not just, you know, a tool that should
Speaker:be used cautiously, that instead of people now using internet search engines like Google or
Speaker:DuckDuckGo, they now just go straight to ChatGPT. It's like, ChatGPT will just regurgitate what
Speaker:I need to know. I don't have to go through dozens of web pages to find what I'm looking
Speaker:for. And especially with tasks that people don't like to do, like, oh, make me a grocery list.
Speaker:like, which is kind of disturbing, but like, I see where it comes from that like, you know,
Speaker:the going through the process of thinking through, what meals do I want this week? Like, I want
Speaker:a nutritious diet, I can just, you know, tell that to chat DPT, and it'll give me some ingredients
Speaker:with recipes. And also going back to the point on kind of how this impacts minorities is
Speaker:a lot of this gen AI isn't even run by computers, it's run by people in the global south. And
Speaker:There was recently one company that Microsoft invested in and they weren't doing so well
Speaker:and it turned out that their chat bots were just people in India giving the responses.
Speaker:So not only is it impacting marginalized communities with the data centers polluting their air,
Speaker:but literally what's running or powering the tool could be these people from the global
Speaker:south and developing nations across the globe, which continues to highlight why gen.ai is
Speaker:so bad. Yeah, no, I started off, think, in my notes with like three points as to why Gen
Speaker:AI is bad and my my notepad is now full with arrows and some points and like I don't think
Speaker:there's much arguing it. I think the question just still sits with how do you get more folks
Speaker:to come around, you know, to understanding. not just the harmful nature, because then there's
Speaker:a step beyond that, right? Even once we realize where there's climate catastrophe is here,
Speaker:it's like they need to know how in as easy way as possible, they can play a role, right?
Speaker:Because people are overwhelmed too, with many other battles on the horizon or already here,
Speaker:right? So I think sometimes when folks point out that one, especially the one thing that's
Speaker:people were kind of getting excited about it was accessible to everybody and it seemed to
Speaker:be, you know, boosting their productivity. And then then they're told actually this has
Speaker:all the same trappings as many of the other things that you've had to battle. So scrap
Speaker:it. You know, it's like your family finding out there's just one more thing to boycott,
Speaker:one more corporation, one more thing we can't do because of X, Y and Z and the system that
Speaker:we're living under. So I guess the idea is to point people again back to stop jena.com.
Speaker:Check the show notes for sure for many ways to engage with these folks and to help with
Speaker:the fundraising activities or get involved yourself. Are you onboarding volunteers? Absolutely.
Speaker:All you got to do, the information is on our website, stopjena.com. But if you find my email
Speaker:address or my signal username and message me, that's all it takes. There is a document of
Speaker:shared values that people in our group have. The most important shared value other than
Speaker:being against Gen AI is you have to be anti-capitalist because capitalism births Gen AI. And so you
Speaker:cannot effectively oppose Gen AI if you're not anti. I don't know you and I, because we're
Speaker:leftists, we know, for instance, that liberals are not left. and stuff like that. And we know
Speaker:that Marxist-Leninists have debates with Trotskyists and stuff like that. We're not so picky about
Speaker:your flavor of anti-capitalism, whether you're a communist or a narco-communist or Marxist,
Speaker:but you have to be anti-capitalist in some way. I'm feeling that requirement. I feel like a
Speaker:lot of even climate justice organizations are getting there. Yeah, you cannot, you cannot
Speaker:be okay. You cannot tolerate any amount of capitalism and be a member of like an environmentalism
Speaker:organization or stop gen AI. Yeah. Cause capitalism is the cause of these problems. Absolutely.
Speaker:And then we know what the problems with like social democracy and stuff like that, because
Speaker:that tolerates capitalism. So that can be, we also don't tolerate bigotry. We're very passionate
Speaker:supporters of trans rights, we've got lots of trans people in our group, for instance. We're
Speaker:passionate supporters of neurodivergence and we've definitely, I'm neurodivergent, we've
Speaker:got lots of neurodivergent people in our group. And then another really important value is
Speaker:to support free Palestine. And then a lot of the evil Gen.A.I. shit that Microsoft and Google
Speaker:are doing, they're doing it for the benefit of Israel as well, for them. They're using
Speaker:their Gen.A.I. bullshit partly they think it's helping them genocide Palestinians. So yeah,
Speaker:it's clear to us, you have to be anti-capitalist and you have to support the liberation of Palestine.
Speaker:Absolutely. I don't know how many guests we've had on here where they're listing these issues
Speaker:from data servers near marginalized neighborhoods to job replacements and the exploitation of
Speaker:the global south. And I always think like, yes, there's all these other steps that we
Speaker:we need to take to get there, but then also just like fucking smash capitalism. That wouldn't
Speaker:be a problem. They wouldn't be allowed to put those data centers there and they wouldn't
Speaker:be able to operate them like that. Like there'd be so many other like, well, that only happens
Speaker:because we're living under this shite socioeconomic system. So, but we're not there yet either.
Speaker:So this is how we mitigate through this disaster and take care of each other as well until we
Speaker:get to the other side. Right. Absolutely. And so when people choose to use GEN.AI, they're
Speaker:also training the replacements. And it's not like we live in a world where people have the
Speaker:things that they need and automation just makes everything better. We live in a world where
Speaker:people depend on their labor income in order to survive. Yeah, I think that article I shared
Speaker:with you mentions CARNI planning to up to $15,000 for workers to start training on AI.
Speaker:And I thought that's pretty cheap. Some people will look at that go $15,000. Well, like I
Speaker:can get a lot of training done with that, but you are training your replacements. And so
Speaker:that is actually quite cheap for the feds to invest $15,000 one year with the possibility
Speaker:of replacing a few people's jobs by the time that year is done. again, yeah, it happens
Speaker:a lot faster. than people expected. So I'm glad that you folks came on here to help, you know,
Speaker:raise the alarm and the profile of the issue. Neha, do you have anything you want to say
Speaker:before we sign off? Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of parallelism with different issues. Like
Speaker:there's very similar trend regarding taking COVID-19 seriously that nowadays it's not very
Speaker:common to wear a respirator in public. and continue to avoid COVID that now the norm is, hey, like
Speaker:we have vaccines, like it's fine despite the fact that there's so much research that shows
Speaker:that COVID-19 affects every organ in the body the same way there's so many articles and research
Speaker:around how gen AI impacts the environment. And it's easy to just, you know, use gen AI like
Speaker:everyone else, be unmasked like everyone else. And that is an internal barrier to overcome
Speaker:that, you know, we all want social approval, but doing the right thing is so hard and just
Speaker:educating yourself and even taking little steps, step by step. don't have to, you do everything
Speaker:at once and slowly kind of condition yourself to be like, like this is the right thing despite
Speaker:what everyone around me is doing. is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption.
Speaker:Thank you for joining us. Blueprints of Disruption is an independent production operated cooperatively.
Speaker:You can follow us on Twitter at BPEofDisruption. If you'd like to help us continue disrupting
Speaker:the status quo, please share our content. And if you have the means, consider becoming a
Speaker:patron. Not only does our support come from the progressive community, so does our content.
Speaker:So reach out to us and let us know what or who we should be amplifying. So until next time,
Speaker:keep disrupting.
