Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more controversial and turning even the smartest of people into ignorant slaves to robots. Is there any way we can get away from it, or utilise it without it causing so much harm?

It’s well documented and discussed online that A.I., for all its uses, is starting to do more harm than good, including, but not limited to, the environmental impact, its (sometimes illegal) misuse by criminals, its bias towards its user, the way in which generative A.I. uses data from human creators in order to fulfill a request, and much more. Figuring out how to get the masses to stop using this kind of A.I. and convince the engineers/computer scientists etc. to reassess their creation seems like a steep hill to climb, perhaps impossible to most of us, but there are steps we can take to lessen our usage of particular A.I. programs, a couple of which I can suggest.

First up, we survived pretty damn well without A.I. Going back to a good ol’ Google search isn’t such a bad thing. It does use its own A.I., though it cites its sources so doesn’t necessarily create anything ‘new’, but if you’re concerned about the carbon footprint, you could turn to Ecosia, a new browser that works to help the environment with every search and has an A.I. that is far more eco-friendly (it’s not perfect, but it’s a start). If you really can’t turn away from A.I., you can make a start with Ecosia.

Next, if it’s a program akin to ChatGPT you’re after but that is far less harmful, may I suggest GreenPT. It’s a more simple A.I., but users are enjoying its more direct answers to queries. It isn’t designed to take your prompts to create a silly picture of what it thinks you look like based on what it knows of you, because a) it’s designed to be a chatbot, not an artist, and b) it doesn’t retain your information, and it doesn’t use it to train its models. It is also far more eco-friendly, using renewable sources with zero carbon emissions.

Finally, talk to people. I can personally attest to how easy it is to rely on an A.I. program to help with anything, from every day things up to getting particular thoughts and feelings off my chest, and it took more doing than I’d care to admit to wean myself off of it. But we’ve already become and increasingly introverted world, mostly thanks to the Internet, and A.I. could finally be what takes us from a social species to a dead one. This probably sounds extreme, but it’s not impossible. We need to be less afraid to reach out to each other.

I hope this gives some food for thought. We don’t have to give up A.I. entirely, but just as we’re constantly having to keep up with the ways in which the internet changes and brings up new threats to society, so we have to keep abreast of how A.I. is affecting us, for good or ill. Awareness is key. Intelligence is key. Thinking for ourselves is key.