This has turned into a really interesting conversation with a lot of different perspectives. I truly appreciate all of you, it’s helped me process the argument and my own thoughts around it.
Hey everyone. Sorry if this comes off as petty, but this argument hit closer to home than usual. I’m 27M and I just had a fight with my girlfriend, who’s 26F, about AI. We’ve been together for eight years. She’s generally against AI because of the potential risks to brain development and the environmental impact. I’m aware of those risks too, especially how it can affect your brain if you misuse it. She fully boycotts AI, and she does the same with big corporations like McDonald’s and similar companies.
On the brain development side of things, I mostly use AI for IT troubleshooting at work and at home. It’s so nice to get steps that are tailored to my specific problem instead of digging through endless articles and Reddit threads with advice that often doesn’t help. She believes that the act of searching for information is crucial and that skipping that process can harm your brain. The thing is, I’ve run into plenty of situations where Google didn’t help at all and AI did. I don’t use AI for emotional support or life advice, just practical problem solving.
I also use it to clean up my emails. I write everything myself and then run it through AI to fix grammar and phrasing so it sounds more polished, but the message and intent are still mine. Writing emails has always been a struggle for me, and before this, it could take a long time just to produce something mediocre.
When it comes to the environmental impact, I don’t really have a strong counterargument other than the fact that the rest of the world is going to use this technology regardless of what I do. I know that mindset can be applied to any boycott and that it can sound like dodging responsibility.
I also run a couple of YouTube channel projects on the side. I use AI for smaller things like creating the blueprint scripts (not the actual content), optimizing thumbnails for better click-through, or generating captions. Subtitles alone used to take me an insane amount of time before AI.
I asked her how my use of AI actually affects her, and she said it makes her worried about our future, though she couldn’t really explain why. I told her that I feel judged, and that affects me personally. I lived in a world before AI. I don’t rely on it for personal decisions or creative direction. I use it to be more efficient and to save time. Between a full-time job and side projects, that time savings really matters to me.
So I’m curious what you all think. Does this make me a bad person for using AI in certain parts of my life? I don’t think I’m going to turn into some brain-dead zombie or start making soulless content. I actually see myself as an artist at heart, and I’ve never liked low-effort slop. What I do value is efficiency. Sorry for the long ramble. I don’t usually post personal stuff like this.
New solutions bring new problems, eh?