Is it ok to use AI for spell check? What about grammar? Writing image captions? Smoothing transitions between paragraphs? Translating from other languages? SEO? Is my email auto-responder some kind of AI? If I accidentally click an ad for an LLM targeted to me by Anthropic, am I feeding the war machine?
Listening to the ways that writers are haggling with ourselves about AI reminds me of what Claire Dederer once wrote on the art of monstrous men:
“How can one watch The Cosby Show after the rape allegations against Bill Cosby? I mean, obviously it’s technically doable, but are we even watching the show? Or are we taking in the spectacle of our own lost innocence? … Do we vote with our wallets? If so, is it okay to stream, say, a Roman Polanski movie for free? Can we, um, watch it at a friend’s house?”
By all means, let us define the distinctions. There is surely a spectrum of ethical AI use. A lot of it is obviously, hyperbolically, materially bad. Some is closer to watching Rosemary’s Baby at a friend’s house. The latter end is what your average writer is likely up to when checking their grammar. But the only way for a person to stay away from it completely is to take an abstinence policy. And yet if you are reading this on the internet, you are not 100% abstaining. You are strapped in a chair, eyes squinting but not closed, watching Roman Polanski.1
Arguing against AI use on individual day-by-day, case-by-case grounds is largely missing the point of how it works and what it is doing to us. It’s a misunderstanding of the way certain types of automation are embedded in most facets of our lives and of how exploitation happens. And it’s distracting from the issue of how we should be organizing against it en masse.
