Tl;dw: Yes, but much like the idea of individual carbon footprints, putting the blame on individuals also directs away the the actions of those who invest in, direct, and (don’t) regulate AI companies. Individuals will have little-to-no impact unless there is collective action to regulate AI companies and hold them accountable for their destruction.
Yes
A 35 minute video, when the answer can be summed up in three letters.
Except it isn’t because the point of the video is in large part, that individual users have little influence over the AI companies. AI companies, as well as their investors and those meant to regulate them (not that those two are separate groups) don’t particularly care about the miniscule current revenue to be made. They’re collectively gambling rule of law, money, the environment, ect. on the idea that they will make huge amounts of money when AI becomes a true general-purpose artificial intelligence. The way to fix this isn’t to not use AI (not that it doesn’t help), its to collectively stand against them and actually hold them accountable for their destruction.
The question is: Should I feel guilty about using AI? Regardless of the rest of the video, the answer is Yes.
On top of all the issues you mentioned, AI is a plagiarism machine that is diluting Art and Language. It has infected academic writing and is being used in fields where its hallucinations could be fatal.
AI is a massive drain on our environment, what with the amount of energy it uses every time someone asks it to draw another naked anime girl with 12 fingers. But people use it daily for the tiniest task, because being too lazy to read an email is a great reason to fuck the planet.
I 100% agree that we should stand against the people who are delivering us this slop, but to say we shouldn’t be ashamed of being a part of that is wrong.
Should you be ashamed of using AI? Yes. Absolutely.
My point, and the conclusion of the video is more of a “Yes, but…” As he discusses, AI use isn’t completely insignificant, but much of the cost (in all aspects) is in R&D and hardware, rather than the results it produces. Its in the same vein as how yes, you should probably feel guilty for using a paper or disposable platic grocery bag over a reusable one, but even if everyone in the world did so, it would make little difference when companies (who do 99.99% of the damage) will continue doing the exact same thing at every opportunity. As AI is driven by speculation rather than by product sales, not using it doesn’t stop their IP theft, it may reduce their energy use but likely not a lot (esspecially factoring in human cost to complete a task), and it doesn’t stop these companies from manipulating our politics and walking over our laws.
While, technically the video does agree that the answer is ‘Yes’, the majority of the video is about why that Yes needs a half-dozen asterisks. Simplifying it to just a ‘yes’ shifts blame away from the ones doing 99.9% of the damage onto individuals who do a tiny fraction of the damage, and who have much less understanding of or influence over the technology.