AI Manifesto

How I’m currently using and thinking about AI

I thought it might be helpful for myself and others to outline my guidelines for AI use on this website, and then I found someone who was doing just that at a much larger scale. To see how others are implementing AI, visit slashai.page/.

I’d generally describe myself at the moment as a “skeptical practitioner” of generative AI technologies. I’m still weighing the drawbacks and benefits of the technology, and I’m not prepared to dismiss it outright. However, as with any technology, I do believe that thoughtful adoption which centers human flourishing has to be the approach we take. I like how Pope Leo XIV puts it in the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas:

Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control and exclusion. For this reason, they must be evaluated by asking a crucial question: Do they truly help individuals and peoples to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?

These are the set of guidelines I currently follow around the use and implemention of generative AI in my work, particularly on this site.

I use AI - to help me maintain structural aspects of this website. - for coding projects - for administrative tasks - for formatting or converting between \(\LaTeX\), Markdown, etc. - to search and summarize the internet, and point me towards primary sources.
- as a starting place for learning and troubleshooting.

I don’t use AI - to generate writing that I publish
- to assess or review work that isn’t mine - to do what I’m trained to do (physics)

The writing on this page is mine, and image sources will always be cited.1 The value that I see in writing is largely about the process, rather than the product. Writing sharpens my mind and helps me work through ideas. I’d rather go through that process myself than outsource it.

Footnotes

  1. I have used image generators in the past as I’ve created community-focused projects (such as my Whisk(e)y Advent Calendar) for the odd ridiculous thing such as a mink nursing a dram of scotch.↩︎