I'm right there with you, and it's been my core gripe since ChatGPT burst onto the stage. Believe it or not, my environmental concerns came about a year later, once we had data on how datacenters were being built and their resource consumption rates; I had no idea how big things had very suddenly and violently exploded into, and that alone gave me serious pause about where things are going.

In my heart, I firmly believe in the ability of technology to uplift and improve humanity - and have spent much of my career grappling with the distressing reality that it also enables a handful of wealthy people to have near-total control of society in the process. AI promises a very hostile, very depressing, very polarized world for everyone but those pulling the levers, and I wish more people evaluated technology beyond the mere realm of Computer Science or armchair economics. I want more people to sit down, to understand its present harms, its potential future harms, and the billions of people whose lives it will profoundly and negatively impact under current economic systems.

It's equal parts sobering and depressing once you shelve personal excitement or optimism and approach it objectively. Regardless of its potential as a tool, regardless of the benefit it might bring to you, your work day, your productivity, your output, your ROI, I desperately wish more people would ask one simple question:

Is all of that worth the harm I'm inflicting on others?

Some person asked this same question about computers back in the day.