The Elephant... Part Two

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

{continued from Part One}

4. Playing Robin Hood
  
Wealth inequality is a hugely divisive issue. The rich are getting obscenely rich, and the cost of normal living continues to rise for the rest of us. On social media recently I saw someone post "If AI can do so much, can't someone make a Robin Hood style AI to take money from the rich and give to the poor". 

Yeah, we have. And have been doing so for the past three years. 

My wife Rachel and I, during the day, are fundraising consultants. We work to help nonprofits across the world. And Rachel was one of the first to see the potential of AI in terms of wealth inequality. 

A year and half ago, at the height of the DOGE cuts in the American government, a series of awful things happened. First, USAid was ended. Completely gone. One of the largest nonprofits globally, that helped millions of people live. But it didn't end there. The entire mechanism of federal giving collapsed. The federal database was purged, as Trump and Musk's minions search for anything they didn't like. Funding towards equity, funding in supposedly blue states, funding towards science or the arts and humanities... all of it vanished. (And no, none of this saved US Taxpayers money- in fact, the defecit continues to spiral thanks to tariffs and the Iran War but that's another story). 

There was a lot of news when USAid ended. And the vast majority of Americans and people globally did the same thing in response. They posted angrily on social media. And then forgot about it by the following week. 

Rachel and I never forgot. And we actively moved to help. 

We built CharityScribe.io - an original AI system (Rachel designed the AI agents all herself) based on our fundraising expertise to move money from the rich to the poor. From opportunities that were harder than ever to find, straight to those programs that can make a difference. 

Development is writing. And writers are supposed to hate any form of AI, I know (more on that later- I warned you this was a long post), but for those who have never been in development the type of writing is technical and sort of BS. It's a form of legalese often ten to twenty pages worth per application, all to move money to nonprofits from corporations or foundations with extra wealth. 

The AI tools we built are contained. They train and learn from the organizations data. And they're necessary. Some of these nonprofits were dumping their info into ChatGpt and Claude (zero security- their data is now freely on the web) and others were struggling to prospect or grant write at all. And we saw astounding results. A food pantry that doubled its revenue in a year. A preschool able to raise over 35,000 in the first week of a campaign. An equity firm that landed their first 200,000 dollars in only four months. This is modern day Robin Hood stuff, right there. 

5. But What About the Bad? 

Hold on, you say... using AI for a good cause? To help the world? That's irrelevant, because AI is bad... 

​Well, as I mentioned, AI is a bad name for a product shoved on you in a bad way. But is AI inheritably bad? Is any tech bad or good? Or is it just how people use it? 

For starters, my Robin Hood example is how we use AI, and I'm proud of it. In fact, on THIS LIST of seven uses of AI for Social Good, AI For Nonprofits is actually number 1.  But there's plenty more. From helping people with disabilities to cancer screenings, to research on nuclear fusion, AI has the power to help us as a species. In fact, scientists are currently using AI to attempt to speak with dolphins, who have language, in an experiment that might be the first true inter-species communication ever. 

That's not to say the big tech companies haven't done some very horrendous things. The recent news about the destruction of rare books is awful, and frankly- completely unnecessary. They could buy and scan the books without destroying them, but it would be far slower. Yes, speed solely for greed. It's nauseating.

And the theft of IP is real as well. In fact, if you've used Claude at all, you can thank School of Deaths  which was among the pirated books Anthropic stole. Yes, I'm in the class action lawsuit, still waiting for my check. 

However... a lot of the "bad" is misinformation or spin. 

In fact, I'd argue that the biggest, legit bad about AI is the blur between what's real and what's fake. The glut of fake news and fake videos and downright lies is simply depressing. But let's look at one of the biggest spins that you're familiar with... the environmental impact. 

Don't get me wrong, AI isn't the best for the environment. But it's also far from the boogeyman you've heard. Yes, AI centers use water... but theyre nothing compared to a far more devious culprit. A culprit that has decimated the environment, been one of the leading causes of carbon in the atmosphere, and has used far more water than AI ever will... I'm talking about factory farming, especially the meat industry. 

"AI data centres are projected to use about 1 km³ of freshwater a year by 2028. Livestock farming already consumes around 228 km³, roughly 200 times more, and most of that goes to irrigating animal feed, not to the animals themselves." Read more HERE But that's just the beginning. An astonishing third of carbon emissions contributing to global Climate Change are attributed to agriculture, particularly factory farming. The cycle is brutal. Forests are chopped down (including the rainforest), cattle and other animals are grown in tight communities that require massive amounts of water and electricity. Then even more electricity and energy is used to freeze/cool the meat after slaughter, during transport, and on to sale. And eventually the land becomes unlivable, starting the cycle fresh. 

Yes, my family's vegan, but the truth is I don't care if you eat meat. All I ask is that you think a bit before wielding the water and environmental sword like a bludgeon towards anyone who's ever used AI. If you're ok with burgers, but blame AI for water issues... you are not thinking critically.

​To be concluded in part three...

Photo by David Sjunnesson on Unsplash