AI ethics

an extremely thorough conversation is due on this topic. for now, i'm just going to point out a few starting resources.

a few very good introductions to the theme (all from different angles and emphasizing different aspects of it):

• daniel schmachtenberger's interview at the great simplification - Artificial Intelligence and The Superorganism
• zak stein's interview at the center for humane technology - Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis and his AI psychological harms research coalition
• metarelational.ai's: From Assumption to Inquiry: Mapping the Ontological Terrain of AI (both of the above are powerful and can be a bit dense, but this one might be even more challenging and mind-bending)

kate crawford's 2021 atlas of AI remains a key resource, along with other works with vladan joler, like 2018's anatomy of an AI system and 2023's calculating empires.
karen hao's investigative journalism on empire of AI has also (of course) become subject for heated debate. much like shoshana zubboff's work on surveillance capitalism and the attention economy. it's a good starting point.

more resources to come, but to jump into a very simple summary, let me share joep schuurukes' generative AI harms' checklist, to build upon it and explain a little bit of my somewhat contrarian position on it:

On the acceptance of GenAI

— Joep Schuurkes, 5 April 2026

By using GenAI:

• I accept the models were trained on stolen data.
• I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers.
• I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models.
• I accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company.
• I accept these companies don’t have a viable business model.
• I accept that I am granting more power to big tech and their vision for the world.
• I accept that I am granting more power to the United States.
• I accept that all this effort could have been spent elsewhere.

If any of these facts are new to you, you haven’t been doing your due diligence.

I have the deepest respect and sympathy for people who are forced by circumstances to accept these things.

I acknowledge that people’s ethical behavior is neither deterministic, nor consistent.

But yeah, GenAI radicalized me.

it's clearly an arms race. everyone's trying to hoard chairs to sit when the music unavoidably stops.

i resonate with the metarelational.ai perspective. our individual or very intentional organizational use of it (with all its due precautions) is a very small subset of the harm that's already being caused.

if we (wide-boundary/wisdom-oriented folks) can, through this tool*, gather power, resources and optionality that would otherwise be concentrated in the hands of a few corporations/individuals, it can be argued that we actually have the responsibility to do so.

*AI is clearly not "just a tool". it's a tool and many more things at the same time. see: Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design.

related:

• school of wise innovation's embodied ethics in the age of AI