I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the people who use and love generative AI are not evil or lazy (though they can be, obviously), they are deeply insecure.
These people are insecure about the way they look, dress, talk. They're insecure about their knowledge or lack thereof, their test scores, creativity, and critical thinking. They're insecure about their writing abilities, the way they interact with romantic interests, and their relevancy.
This is, as it turns out, completely by design.
Every pro-AI argument boils down to the basic idea of "get on board, or get left behind," which is, at its core, an argument to increase the insecurity of people who are fearing obsolescence. Every AI commercial tries to argue that the tasks you've done for years- such as talking to others, writing emails, celebrating birthdays, writing fan letters to sports stars, reading books, navigating awkward conversations-are things that you don't do well on your own and that you absolutely NEED an AI agent to do it for you.
Social media has been linked to lower body image. Hating yourself and the way you look does two things: it 1) encourages you to buy products to "fix" whatever body image issue you have and it 2) makes you feel lonely, which can make you more likely to be on a screen to distract you. We have already seen that social media companies have ignored signs that their sites are causing body image issues in young people, I would argue because having young people with deep insecurity actually makes the social media sites more money. It is important to realize, that when it comes to social media, we are the product, not the customer. Generative AI is simply an extension of this mindset. We need to ask: who benefits from us hating ourselves? Who benefits from insecurity? It certainly isn't us, the people.
I'm a youth and teen librarian, and the teens who embrace AI are deeply insecure, while the ones who passionately hate the technology are some of the most confident teens you will meet. I run a weekly creative writing club, and we have the teens sign an originality pledge saying they will write their own stories. There have been a handful of instances where the teens used AI to write the story, and I kid you not, every time this becomes an issue, the root cause is the fact that the child was insecure that they would not be good enough, or write good enough. When we build up young people's confidence, they don't feel the need to use generative AI because they know that they will be good enough on their own.
Even when I'm talking to adults who love AI, though, the only thing that consistently comes through in their arguments is how deeply insecure they are. I once had a conversation with a person where they said "I can't draw, so I like generating pictures." This person may or may not feel insecure, I don't know, but that statement reveals a deeply insecure attitude about their own creative abilities, at the very least.
I would argue that having self-confidence and self-compassion makes you significantly less likely to actually embrace AI. If you are confident in your own abilities, you know you can draw, write, talk, or read better than a generative AI bot could. If you are compassionate towards yourself, you will be gentle on yourself if what you put out isn't an arbitrary concept of "perfect" or "polished," and you will also have the courage to try again if you fail. Having confidence and compassion directly compromises the AI's ability to keep you hooked on the machine, which is one of the many reasons it will use very toxic tactics to prevent people from logging off nearly 40% of the time.
The hardest thing about confidence is that the way you build confidence in something is to just do the thing. Talk to that love interest. Write that book. Paint that picture. You will fail, but if you keep trying you will keep getting better, and the better you get the more confident you will get. It is kinda a catch 22 because in order to gain confidence, you have to have at least a little of it to try. That is why it is so important to create safe places where children can build their confidence and practice self-compassion, because children are, generally speaking, super receptive to trying new things because so many things are new to them. And then, because they've built up confidence skills in their childhood, they will have confidence when they reach their teen years and adulthood.
I bet some people are scratching their heads at my viewpoint because, statistically, men are much more likely to like AI than women [Understandable, since women and transgender folks tend to be the ones most harmed by privacy violations]. And men are more likely to have an inflated sense of their own abilities. So why would insecurity be a driving force with AI usage?
While men may be more likely to have an inflated sense of their own abilities, they are still human and as such are still insecure. I have met many insecure men who really over estimated their abilities, it isn't that contradictory of a statement. In fact, I think it is fair to say that many men are being driven to the "manosphere" because of a deep insecurity. Insecurity in the way they look (hello "looksmaxxing") and the number of women they've slept with (incel culture) are all very common traits to see with men in that manosphere. It is worth noting, I believe, that the way that the manosphere markets itself is primarily capitalizing on these insecurities and often targets men who are lonely and isolated. It comes as no surprise, then, that AI is marketed in much of the same way, and lonely and isolated people tend to be more drawn to AI.
Now, to be perfectly clear, just because a person is insecure does not excuse them from the fact that they are aligning themselves with a deeply fascist technology that is currently being used to harm and kill people in the US and abroad. I don't want to infantize these individuals, especially if they are actual adults. We collectively have a responsibility to put guardrails up on all our technology to prevent harm, but we also individually have a responsibility to research the technology we use, and avoid actively harming people, which AI absolutely can and does do. But I will say, reframing the conversation to address the underlining issue of insecurity has helped me, when talking to pro-AI people, be more effective in changing their minds. The first step is often just helping them realize that there is love and acceptance in the real world, so they have a little more confidence to try and put themselves out there.
I recently posed about this very topic on my Instagram page. The tech bros found the post and got frustrated at it. I haven't personally seen a huge amount of people, beyond a handful of studies, labeling AI users as insecure, and I personally think the reason they felt compelled to comment was just because the post touched a nerve of some of these folks. I was told that I was engaging in "purity politics." As an aside, I have been personally seeing a higher amount of people claim that having a political opinion that you feel very strongly about is the same thing as engaging in purity politics. Purity politics can be a genuine issue among labor organizers and left leaning people, no denying that, but having a political stance [such as, for instance, AI is bad] and demanding better from politicians [such as, not aligning themselves with a tech company that is bad] is not the same thing as demanding perfection. It's ridiculous to say otherwise.
If I could say anything to those that have fully embraced AI, it would be that you are so much more interesting, creative, and relevant than you are giving yourself credit for. Believe in yourself!