I would like to make myself clear:
I do not want to use, and I do not think my work needs, any use of generative AI (genAI) tools such as Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, or any other large language models (LLMs), especially those that are free to use and packaged as “productivity” or “educational” tools. These generative AI tools are not neutral and have been built by scraping stolen data that was processed through extractive and abusive labor practices, particularly from workforces in the Global South. Furthermore, these tools rely on physical data centers that consume a significant amount of resources from the public, and has consistently shown harmful and excessive environmental and human damage, including an irreversible amount of water consumption that has led not just to a global water scarcity but has been directly connected to water bankruptcy worldwide. These technological systems of violent and abusive extraction does not benefit the greater good; nor does it benefit humankind. The technology exists in the hands of private equity and technocrats who do not have our best interests at heart, as it has been proven that these technologies have been able to destablize free and fair electoral processes, impede due processes in institutions of justice and law, and negatively impact medical services.
As a children’s literature scholar and as a teacher, I am deeply invested in both the present and future(s) of children, and I think that generative AI tools have jeopardized the world that children stand to occupy in the future, particularly because of the free and unregulated access to AI chatbots. We can already see this in the significant decline of cognitive abilities in students, the systemic degradation of educational standards, and the deterioration of mental and physical health across demographics. These tools have contributed greatly to the rise of deepfakes, online bullying, sexual abuse, suicidal ideation and even death. Generative AI has greatly undermined our systems of verifiable information by actively promoting misinformation, and has consistently and constantly failed at doing the work it is supposed to do — to the point where it actively hallucinates statements and consistently promotes hateful, abusive, racist, and violent rhetoric especially against marginalized people.
Similarly, as a writer, I adamantly refuse to use a tool that has been built on stolen creative work that was taken without consent from the many, many creators whose artistic practices were fed into a “black box” machine that puts words in front of each other in a predictive pattern without any kind of animating thought or meaning. Generative AI is inauthentic, flattening language and removing the creative and critical processes necessary for people to communicate and make meaning with each other and with themselves. I do not want to provide my data to a machine that mindlessly consumes my words, my thoughts, and my labor. I do not think generative AI has any kind of mainstream usage beyond specific and narrow applications in particular fields that should require mindful and ethical ways of accessing these tools.
I hope it is clear that I do not give permission to any individual, entity, or institution to use my scholarly or creative work to be scraped or used as training data for these LLMs.
- Credit to Prof. Julia Steinberger (@jksteinberger.bsky.social) and R.A. Meenan (@zyearth.com) on Bluesky for sharing the repository of resources that I used for much of this statement.
Sometimes Sunlight 