Top Three Reasons Why I Don’t Use AI
A blog post written by a real human!
This week I’m sharing my personal reason for why I don’t use AI.
Photo by Vishnu Mohanan on Unsplash
Have you heard? AI is big right now. Large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude and image generators like DALL-E or Midjourney certainly have their uses, but personally, I can’t get on board with the hype. Read on for the three main reasons why I don’t use AI tools.
Reason #1: The Environmental Impact
Data centers are necessary for AI services, and they use a huge amount of energy. According to this article by Business Insider, the largest data centers can consume as much power as a city and up to several million gallons of water per day. All that energy use is only going to increase as more and more people use ChatGPT and Midjourney for everyday tasks.
Euronews states that a traditional Google search uses about 0.3 watt-hours, compared to a ChatGPT request which uses 2.9 watt-hours. Multiply that by about 9 billion daily searches from people around the world, and that’s a whole lot of energy consumed. According to this Mashable article, using generative AI to create a five-second video consumes the same amount of energy as running a microwave for an hour. I could use that time and energy to re-heat 40 bowls of leftover pasta, which I would almost certainly enjoy much more than a five-second AI-generated video.
Reason #2: Poor Quality
AI-generated images are usually just…bad. I know not everyone has the resources to hire a designer or an artist, and in some cases the quality of the artwork may not matter all that much to the person who needs it, so using something like DALL-E or Midjourney works for them. However, when quality is important, hiring an artist to create what you need is worth the investment of time and money. I’ve worked at a couple of different jobs where I was asked to fix flawed AI-generated art by replacing illegible and nonsensical text, recreating smudged and uneven lines, and adjusting inconsistent colors. Most of those issues could have been avoided by hiring a human in the first place.
Online spaces that traditionally offered quality human-made art have been overrun with what’s known as “AI slop,” which is basically low-quality artwork, and some people are using it to try to make a quick buck. From ebooks created with ChatGPT to misleading crochet patterns sold on Etsy that don’t actually result in the object shown in the listing, AI slop is everywhere. Most of the models used to make generative AI art were trained on artworks made by real humans that were then scraped from the internet without their consent, which is – there’s really no other way to put it – theft.
Reason #3: The Human Element, or Lack Thereof
There has always been a human element behind everything we as a species have created. From hand prints painted on a cave in Spain more than 60,000 years ago to someone’s personal story behind their potato salad recipe on a food blog in 2023, there’s a kind of comfort knowing that there’s a human behind it.
There’s certainly a use for technology to help with day-to-day things, and I take advantage of it too, like using my computer to make digital illustrations, or asking Siri to set a timer from across the kitchen when I’m cooking dinner. Even as I write this, I’m occasionally using the predictive text suggestions to auto-complete words. In general though, there are a lot of things I just like doing myself, especially when it comes to creating art. Sure, making an illustration or writing a blog post myself takes more time, effort, and brain power, but personally, I like the challenge of the artistic process and the creative fulfillment it brings. Every time I make a new piece of art or finish writing a blog post, I feel a sense of pride, because I put a little bit of myself into everything I create, which is really important to me!
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, these AI tools are just some people use to get a job done. Sometimes tools work, and sometimes they don’t. If you need help with your busy workload, and you have the same reasons for not wanting to use AI, or you just don't have much confidence in the tech, I'm an organized, detail-oriented human who can help you out!
What are your thoughts on AI? Do you use any AI tools in your workflow, and if you do, how do they compare to a real human?
