This is your brain on AI

Remember those ads, "This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs"?

Yeah well, as far as I'm concerned, generative AI, same same same.

That's the number one reason I am so violently against generative AI myself -- because by outsourcing all of our analytic and creative labor to these machines, we are starving our brains of the exercise they need to stay limber and strong.

I deeply believe that the moment we stop learning, we start dying.

Yeah, that’s a bit dramatic, but it’s true. Our brains are plastic, and they stay stretchy as long as we keep stretching them. For instance, reading fiction staves off dementia.

How's that for a pitch to join our 2026 Battle of the Books?

Join Battle of the Books

I'm fifty years old. I am deep into the stage of life where I can't remember names, and find myself unable to recall vocabulary. I wander into rooms with no idea what I meant to do there.

But I will not hasten the process by outsourcing my brain -- my beautiful, creative, elastic work of a miracle muscle -- to a robot built by technocratic death cultists in Silicon Valley. These guys crow about killing jobs, about disempowering women, about hollowing out our democracy and media, with glee.

No thanks.

I’ll be your accountability partner. I’ll keep you writing, reading, and getting your work out there in the world —

even as it falls apart.

Now add the costs of AI data centers to the argument against the AI of everything:

Consider the energy they suck, the water they steal. The temperature in the localities around data centers rises by several degrees. But they're also a huge hit to our wallets. All those costs are being passed on to us in taxes, in energy and water bills. There is a reason ERIN BROKOVICH is fighting AI data centers. ERIN BROKOVICH, people!

I am actively seeking ways to protect my work from data scraping at every possible moment, because I don't want to feed these robots on my content if I can help it.

My own efforts to fight the power are these:

I never make the "easy" choice to use AI instead of my brain. 

I don't take on clients who use generative AI in their work, and I never use generative AI in mine.

I moved my email to Proton, and my search to Vivaldi, to avoid AI search and AI scrape.

Yeah, it's less convenient and I miss some Gmail / Chrome bells and whistles, but I can live with that.

I spend as much time off line as humanly possible. 

When I'm working, I keep my phone in another room to avoid the inevitable doom scrolls through the AI landmines of Instagram and Threads. (The next step is getting off socials once and for all but I'm not there yet.)

I read and I write with abandon, because the life of the mind is our revolution.

Viva la revolucion.