Is There an Ethical Way to Use AI?

I can't answer that for you, but here are some guidelines.

I’m an AI optimist.

I even write a newsletter about AI.

You’re reading it right now. How meta!

I believe in AI’s potential to change our lives for the better by making us more productive, creative, informed, and other rosy things.

At the same time, it’s hard to turn a blind eye to all the decidedly less rosy things: AI content that’s borderline plagiarism, questions about how LLMs are trained, and more.

We’ve seen a growing number of legal challenges and court cases with AI companies being sued by artists, journalists, and actors.

And—as any other powerful technology—AI also helps shitty people be shitty at scale, whether it’s deepfakes, spam, or scams.

In a world where all of the above is true, can using AI at all be ethical?

I think so.

You might not.

But what we think is largely irrelevant.

Judging by the way the AI train is chugging along, we’re slated to see more AI in our lives, not less. It’ll become ubiquitous in every digital product you use.

In the medium-to-long term, I’m sure we’ll fi…