AI Policy

TL;DR: none of the content on this site is AI-generated. My photography is not AI-generated. None of the content on this site is written by or edited with AI. Everything here is 100% generated by me. If you’re curious about the very limited ways in which I use AI in my work on this site, then read on.

These days it seems like you can hardly do anything on the internet without having AI shoved down your throat. I personally have some very mixed opinions on “AI”. Or, more accurately, I have very mixed opinions about what people mean when they currently refer to AI.

You see, the field of AI has existed in some form since the 1950s. These days, when someone says AI they’re almost certainly referring to LLMs. For the remainder of this page, I’ll be referring to LLMs when I say “AI”.

The Problems with AI

There are many problems with AI, far more than I could possibly hope to cover here. With that said, here’s just a sampling of the problems with our current AI technology:

• Modern LLMs were built by unethically stealing the work of many millions of people without gaining any sort of consent or providing any kind of compensation.
• This theft of data continues with complete disregard to the privacy laws that are supposed to protect us from this sort of thing.
• The technology is being used to directly harm people. Everything from encouraging harmful behavior to minors, rapidly accelerating disinformation, and even producing deep-fake videos of non-consenting individuals.
• AI makes all writing that utilizes it feel flat, boring, and completely devoid of any human characteristics.
• It completely devalues labor in a large number of categories to enrich the ultra wealthy even more than they already are.
• LLMs use an unimaginable amount of power and resources. The amount of harm being done by this point alone is staggering.
• This technology can actively atrophy our ability to be creative and think critically.
• This technology can harm our social relationships.

Overall, I have a great deal of concern over where we’ll end up with all of these problems. It’s my hope that the current hype-bubble will eventually pop. When it does, I truly hope that we end up in a world where AI can be used responsibly in the areas that it’s actually useful and helpful without it being used to continue harming us.

Unfortunately, I tend to lean towards the cynical side, which means that I don’t think this is where we’ll actually end up.

When I absolutely do not use AI

I will start by mentioning the times that I will absolutely never use AI:

• I do not use AI for my photography other than the very limited use of masks (see next section).
• I do not use AI for my writing.
• I do not use AI for creating my YouTube videos.

In summary, I generally refuse to use AI for my creative endeavors. It is my very strong opinion that AI has absolutely no place in anything classified as art.

AI “art” is not art! No, I have no interest in hearing your opinions on how it is.

Times that I might use AI

Despite being largely opposed to AI in most areas of my life, there are instances in which I might utilize AI:

• I will, from time to time, utilize the AI features in Lightroom and Photoshop for the purposes of selecting areas to apply a mask. The AI use here is purely for making selections, not for generating parts of an image.
• I will, in very limited circumstances, use the generative fill options in photoshop when cloning something out (such as a piece of trash I missed when taking the photo). While this isn’t much different from using something like the clone stamp tool, it is technically a use of generative AI in my photography. This is the one and only circumstance where something in one of my photographs might be AI-generated.
• Helping me research information. One thing that LLMs are great at is helping you surface information and finding related sources for that information. With the continued enshittification of services like Google, this is often a much preferable way of finding information as compared to using a search engine. It’s worth noting that I always verify the information I find in this way (I don’t just take it at face value).
• Software development. As an engineer, I have to admit that LLMs have a lot of utility in the software development space. For the purposes of this site, this really only applies to the website itself - I may utilize LLMs to assist with the development of the underlying code that powers this website. I have some very strong stances on how I do and don’t utilize AI for software development, but those are outside the scope of this site. If you’re interested in that, you can check them out here.