The Ethical Dilemma of AI

I'm no expert in AI and I am only this >.< much more knowledgeable about ethics, but I am very knowledgeable about DIY. And by that I mean, highly experienced.

My whole life I have been a roll-up-my-sleeves and do it myself kind of person. I've taken pride in hauling pieces of furniture up flights of stairs alone, lived on my own since I was 20, made my own clothes, and built my own business. Not always ideal but I've had my back against the wall more times than I can count and it's been my own ingenuity that has pulled me through most of those times.

AI is taking over everything and it's got me worrying. It's become so sophisticated it gets difficult to tell the difference. Not so long ago we were counting fingers on deformed hands and other oddities that signaled we were looking at AI. But now it can be nearly indistinguishable from the real deal.

Not only that though, it is tantalizingly... expedient. I've remarked with patients who are professors how shocked I am that, in a creative writing class, a student would hand in something written by ChatGPT. Why be in a creative writing class if you don't intend to creatively write? That, however, assumes the "writer" gives a $#!t about writing anything at all.

I currently find myself needing to do some marketing again. As I look ahead at my calendar for January 2026 I feel a familiar drop in my stomach and a flutter in my chest that tells me the coasting I have been enjoying for the last 6 months has come to it's natural end and it's now time to paddle (hint hint, book an appointment and soothe my anxious heart!)

Blogging + content writing on social media have both been really helpful for building my business and as marketing strategies, they both play reasonably well to my strengths (ok social media posting/content creation does feel a bit like putting forks in my eyes with the graphic design but writing a solid caption? I gotchu). I've always been a writer. Maybe even a semi ok-ish one. It's, like, the one innate artistic skill I was born with. It's always been important to me to be able to communicate clearly. Through writing, I often find I can structure my thoughts and feelings in ways verbal communication can be a struggle. It can be a happy place and a comfort. Example: right now, 2025-12-09, 11:11pm, the waves of anxiety I have been feeling this evening seem to be washing up on some other shore and I feel confident and connected with the present rather than obsessively fretting over the future. And it's because I am writing.

So the dilemma. AI uses an incredible amount of possibly finite resources that humans need for basic survival. The water consumption alone is astronomical and if redirected could probably fix some (many? Most? All?) of the boil water advisories on many reservations in Canada. It also basically consumes human made art and prose and slops out some regurgitated facsimile of the same but less good material. I mean, even new music and "bands" being played via streaming services are turning out to be... fake. If that doesn't feel like being stabbed in the soul I don't know what does. Connecting and being moved by something that turned out to be basically vomit is actually frightening. If we can't have music and art made by people speaking to us about the human condition so that we, thousands of miles away, perhaps centuries apart on the timeline, could feel less alone in the overwhelm of the human condition then... what's the point anymore? Like really, why bother if the most human thing about us is being turned into that? Anyway, I'm digressing a bit there but the point is AI, while it could be a useful tool, currently costs all of us WAY too much to be truly practical

And yet... it could make some things about my life right now, easier. I could tell AI to write me a pile of blogs, one for each month, and schedule them to post over the course of 2026. I could do a quick review to ensure it's not hallucinating (what???), tweak the language a bit so that it kinda sounds like me, and probably have a year's worth of content written and scheduled in a few hours. Maybe less.

It makes me sad while at the same time offering me an ease and release of some of my time that I otherwise am going to be spending on marketing, writing, and content creation.

No this wasn't about massage therapy. No it probably won't do squat for my SEO. But probably no one is gonna read it anyway so maybe this post is for me. Writing it has helped me feel a bit better, less consumed with anxious reverberations in my chest and gut. I won't be using AI in the future. Ethically I just can't. It is one choice still available to me as a human that I can exercise for the good of myself, my fellow humans, and my non-human fellows.