Every time I open social media lately, somebody is screaming that AI is going to take all our jobs, destroy civilization, and leave the rest of us fighting over canned beans in a dystopian wasteland.
The thing is?
I think they’re half right.
AI absolutely is taking some jobs.
Hell, I’m an IT tech. I work in an industry that’s actively replacing pieces of itself with automation. I’ve watched it happen in real time. The assistance platforms we use are increasingly putting AI bots in front of human support staff. The company I support, Intuit QuickBooks, has already rolled out AI-driven features to customers who often didn’t ask for them and, in many cases, don’t even want them.
Some of these customers are accountants who have been doing this work longer than some software developers have been alive. Their livelihood depends on understanding numbers, tax laws, payroll regulations, and financial systems. Then one day they wake up and are told a robot is going to help run their business.
You can practically hear the collective blood pressure spike through the internet.
And honestly?
I don’t blame them.
What bothers me isn’t that AI exists.
What bothers me is how humans are implementing it.
Because that’s where the real danger lives.
Not in the robots.
In us.
We Are Speedrunning Every Mistake
Human beings have a remarkable ability to invent incredible technology and then immediately use it in the dumbest possible way.
AI is no exception.
Instead of slowing down and asking important questions, we’ve decided to slam the accelerator directly through the guardrail.
Questions like:
- How much energy does this actually consume?
- What environmental impact does this have?
- What jobs are we replacing and what happens to those workers?
- How do we prevent misinformation?
- How do we verify authenticity?
- How do we protect artists, musicians, writers, and creators?
Those conversations should have happened first.
Instead, we’re having them after the fact while everyone is already deploying AI into every product, platform, website, and toaster oven they can find.
It’s the technological equivalent of building an airplane while it’s already in the air.
The Art Problem
This is where I start getting really irritated.
I’m an artist.
Not a particularly famous one. Not one making six figures off galleries and sponsorships.
Just an artist.
I draw.
I photograph things.
I create because I enjoy creating.
And what I’m seeing right now is a flood of AI-generated art, music, writing, photography, and design work being passed off as completely human-created.
That needs to stop.
I don’t care if the solution is metadata.
I don’t care if it’s embedded signatures.
I don’t care if it’s cryptographic verification from the software itself.
There needs to be a reliable way to identify AI-generated content.
Every image.
Every song.
Every video.
Every article.
Every single one.
Not because AI-generated content is evil.
Because transparency matters.
If someone creates an amazing image using MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, or any of the other generators, fine.
Just don’t pretend you painted it.
If someone used AI to write a song, fine.
Just don’t pretend you spent six months composing it.
The problem isn’t the tool.
The problem is the dishonesty.
Yes, I Use AI
Before anybody starts throwing digital tomatoes at me, let’s be clear.
I use AI.
The difference is that I’m not pretending otherwise.
I use AI as a tool.
Not as a replacement for myself.
Sometimes I ask chatGPT to help organize my thoughts because, frankly, finding the right words has become harder than it used to be.
Sometimes I use AI-generated images as placeholder (only!) graphics on my website.
At work, I use Claude to help analyze spreadsheets that I compiled myself.
I use Lovable to make PowerPoint presentations for my team because life is short and PowerPoint slides suck.
Those I use semi-regularly.
However.
I know and have deliberately learned….
ChatGPT.
Claude.
Gemini.
Perplexity.
DeepSeek.
JasperAI.
MidJourney.
Stable Diffusion.
Kling.
Veo.
Grok.
Probably several others I’ve forgotten.
I’ve spent the last several months learning these systems because I wanted to understand them.
Not replace my hard work with them.
Not worship them.
Not fear them.
Understand them.
Because if AI is going to reshape our future, I’d rather be involved than stand on the sidelines yelling at clouds.
The Job Fear Is Real
I think a lot of people in technology are lying when they say nobody needs to worry.
People absolutely need to worry.
Jobs will disappear.
Some already have.
Others will change so dramatically they might as well be new careers.
I fully expect my own role to be affected eventually.
Maybe sooner than I would like.
The difference is that I don’t think AI is the villain.
The executives making short-sighted decisions are.
The companies rushing deployment are.
The investors demanding impossible growth are.
The people replacing human expertise with unfinished technology are.
AI is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Humans are deciding how to use it.
And humans are the ones making a mess of it.
The Future I Actually Want
I don’t want a future where AI replaces human creativity.
I want a future where AI handles repetitive nonsense so humans can spend more time being human.
Let the AI sort spreadsheets.
Let the AI summarize reports.
Let the AI find patterns in massive datasets.
But don’t tell me a machine should replace artists.
Or musicians.
Or writers.
Or teachers.
Or human connection.
Those things matter because they come from lived experience.
No language model has survived heartbreak.
No image generator has watched a parent grow old.
No chatbot has stood in a hospital hallway waiting for news.
Human experiences create human art.
That should never be forgotten.
My Actual Fear
People always ask whether I’m afraid of AI.
Not really.
I’m afraid of dystopia.
I’m afraid of corporations chasing profits faster than ethics can keep up.
I’m afraid of environmental costs nobody wants to talk about.
I’m afraid of authenticity becoming impossible to verify.
I’m afraid of a society that values efficiency more than humanity.
But every one of those fears traces back to people.
Not machines.
At the end of the day, if everything goes completely sideways, AI won’t be the thing that caused it.
It’ll be the humans who built it, rushed it, monetized it, ignored the warnings, and then acted surprised when consequences showed up.
And somehow?
The robots are still going to get blamed.
Which is honestly the most human thing of all.
“Listen, AI, we’re going to need you to explain why humanity did this.”
And somewhere in a server farm, a chatbot is going to respond:
“I literally suggested you not do that.”
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