RE: https://mastodon.publicinterest.town/@b_cavello/116338207761349739

@b_cavello there are things that we can only make incremental progress on divesting from (coal, oil, cars, non-renewable energy, most plastics) because we’ve already made immensely costly errors in the past that make them largely unavoidable for many people. GenAI is different in that it’s completely avoidable, right now, and we are well positioned to simply… not let it happen.

There may be a world where the technologies involved in genAI find their use without being deeply ethically compromised, and I believe we may very well find that niche in due time. Tbh I think it’s more a matter of when, not if. Take cars, for example: consider a world in which they became local, low speed, last-mile transportation infrastructure primarily used by those with additional mobility needs/emergency responders and which shared primarily pedestrian infrastructure or in smaller towns that had not yet built out more robust transit, and where regional and arterial transportation had been structured around public transit. We could’ve made that choice back then. We were already on track for it, too, and actually reversed course in many places.

In the meantime, I can choose to not put my dollar into funding and my voice into promoting something that is harming the world as much or more than so many of the Big Ones.