We’ve recently put together a company policy regarding the use of AI in our business and for client work.
It might feel like AI has been thrust upon us overnight, but the truth is it’s been in development for many decades and around – and available for use – for more years than most of us realise.
I’m sure that the people who worked on the first AI projects didn’t do it for nefarious take-over-the-world-and-make-billions-from-the-sweat-of-others-backs reasons – but here we are.
I’d like to say that we’ll never use AI but as things stand right now we don’t have much choice. Every single program and app we’re using has incorporated some form of AI so that even if you don’t want its deeply unhelpful prompts or summaries, a message will pop up with monotonous regularity and I can see why most eventually succumb to the seductive promise of saved time, saved effort, saved money.
But what I’d like you to ask yourself if you work in a not-for-profit and are seriously considering whether to replace staff with a bot or your copywriter with ChatGPT is this: By doing so, are you contributing to the very problems you exist to solve? And not just contributing to, but amplifying, increasing, making worse?
Because I can pretty well guarantee you that the mental health issues you’re dealing with will get worse as people lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their reason for being.
Homelessness will be on the increase as even more people lose income and can no longer afford to pay the rent.
The human rights issues you’re dealing with will not improve as power and money continue to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer people and the rest of us have less and less control over our data, our IP, and our means of earning a living wage.
Abuse and exploitation of children is already increasing as AI serves up more targeted and heinous content.
Migrant-blaming is escalating as algorithms amplify our prejudices and stoke the flames of division and hate.
And don’t get me started on the environmental havoc that AI usage is wreaking.
Am I being overly pessimistic? I sincerely hope so.
But I’d still like you to think very carefully about the world you want to live in, your obligation to not only the people, animals or habitats you help but all the souls in your network – staff, suppliers, their families and loved ones (and your own); and if you’re seriously thinking about canning even 10% of them because ‘AI can do a better job’ – I hope you know what you’re in for.
