Hmmm

I’ve started using AI for fun. In a weird way, to save the planet.

For years, I’ve avoided using AI for fun, because the most important thing to me is fresh water and the ungodly amounts of water that AI uses is scary.

This past week, while watching a private leer jet flying into a Dallas airport, while watching the news about yet another stricken cruise ship, while reading the news about yet more AI-driven layoffs, while driving by a big housing development built in a desert and using sprinklers to keep its expansive green lawns green, I realized that for me as an individual to try to save our planet’s water is just total denial and folly. All my efforts to avoid using AI to make my life easier or more fun (pics, generating marketing copy, etc.; NOTE: I love to write so any non-marketing material I write is only written by me and not AI), and all the times in the shower I turn the water off while I shampoo or soap, and all the times I turn off the water when scrubbing a dish — total folly. Because the reality is one tech company using AI, or all of us (me included) using Spotify on a daily basis, or one resort golf course, or one jerk in a private plane: in several minutes they probably use more water than I can conserve in my entire lifetime.

There was a comedian during yet another jump in fuel prices during the 2000s who said each American has a duty to drive as much as possible, so that we use up all the world’s oil so that OPEC loses power over us, or at least so that the American government notices the worrisome plunge in oil reserves so starts to take steps to change oil consumption. Of course that was hyperbole, and is a mostly-silly comment, but it wasn’t a bad point.

A family member shamed me this week for using AI to generate a fun pic of me coaching the Dallas Cowboys. “AI should only be used for productivity,” she said. But then another family member chimed in and said, “Actually, we all should be using as much AI for fun as possible, because then maybe our government will turn its eyes towards the water consumption or the loss of jobs because of AI. Right now it’s too convenient for the government to turn a blind eye to the risks of AI.” How much I love that second sentiment.

So while my own personal uptick in AI won’t move the needle at all, maybe if we all start using AI for wasteful reasons then the government will start actually paying attention to water consumption and job loss.

I realize that this is silly. That it won’t change. But doing nothing won’t change anything either, so hey I’m going to start doing my part.