Why I Don’t Want AI to Do My Chores

Or much else for that matter

I.

When a post goes viral on social media, further republication should be prohibited by law. This sort of absolutist measure would improve the online information ecosystem:

1. Grifters wouldn't be able to spin up lucrative businesses by sharing other people’s viral posts every two weeks, using slightly different wording (that invariably ruins the joke), only to bypass dumb plagiarism programs that may conflict with their engagement farming methods. The laws of Chaos theory say that every grifter you beat is one more butterfly flapping its wings in Kathmandu. Win-win.

2. Furthermore, those with better intentions but equally harmful tendencies, would be forced to forward the source, just like you'd do with any authorship-bind manuscript, like a book, an essay, or a scientific paper; the original author would enjoy the credit (and perhaps fame) they deserve and the web’s copyright regime would remain free from the most dangerous form of pollution: intellectual property theft (the newfound favorite pastime of Silicon Valley companies).

3. We might even grow a much-needed collective awareness of “link rot” (Wikipedia defines it as a phenomenon by which hyperlinks “cease to point to their originally targeted file, web page, or server due to that resource being relocated to a new address or becoming permanently unavailable”); orphaned URLs are the ultimate night terror of epistemic hygiene pundits, but it rarely haunts non-autistic netizens because republication exist!—Well, it wouldn't under this regulation.

4. And, most importantly (this is the actual reason why I'd lend my name to back up such a controversial policy): I would never have to see again that damn quote about AI doing my writing when it should be doing my dishes and laundry, and whatever physical chores software algorithms are, for some elusive reason, unable to partake in just yet. As far as I know, the international order won’t grant me this wish, so you will excuse me for reproducing here the quote in full for your convenience, and against my own desires.

II.

I know where author Joanna Maciejewska is coming from: why are AI companies focused on “solving” writing and art (there are not enough quotation marks in this world) instead of lifting the burden of housekeeping? And I respect it (I even agree to the extent that I'd never entrust ChatGPT with separating my bright and dark clothes when it can’t tell me whether this dress is white and gold or blue and black; and that’s even though “laundry buddy” is my favorite of ChatGPT’s nicknames!).

So that’s not the reason I dislike the quote; in fact, I prefer that sentiment to the opposition's stance:

You see, there's a non-zero chance that AI will be smarter than the smartest human and then it will help us invent a machine that washes the clothes and does the dishes autonomously; even if the Dyson Sphere that powers the machine absorbs the energy of our sun to exhaustion, you will agree that climbing the Kardashev Scale is unironically worth not watching the sunrise ever again, right?

My refusal to join the 88,000 blessed souls who hit the like button (it was 35,000 when I started writing this, holy moly) doesn’t come either from the indicting fact that you do have access to dishwashers and washing machines; I understand that Joanna's criticism is about appliances not executing the entire job—automation loses its meaning if I have to carry myself the dirty dishes to the dishwasher and out into the drying rack—I just don’t find her argument particularly compelling: do you want robots to do literally everything for you?

Unless you're disabled, I don't see why; disabled people would love to fulfill their duties! They know, better than anyone else, that there's a hidden joy in doing chores when you don't see them as such; when you realize they are the most common manifestation of your agency in a world that does its best to deny it.

My fundamental grudge comes from a deeper place than ideology, semantics, or ableism; it stems from a different interpretation of Joanna’s message, one that reveals a self-damaging perspective—at its core, the anti-AI sentiment clings to this motto: things are not to be judged for what they are but for what they are not.

I appreciate her meaning and revel in the parallel wordplay like any other narrative device enjoyer, but I sense a deep ontological mismatch between her stance and mine. Optimists are an active force of creation; pessimists, a reactive force of modulation, which makes them both necessary. However, when they take it too far—which they always do because the modern intellectual climate entails an inexorable gravitas toward the most extreme versions of things (nuance, measure, restraint, composure, temperance, poise, and equanimity are words not in the Twittersphere commentariat’s vocabulary)—the latter becomes arguably uglier.

Constantly calling out the missing details of an onerous project when you're not putting up (even when your complaints are correct!) is unlikeable in a way that delusional enthusiasm is not.

I’ve poured quite a lot of words elsewhere mocking AI over-hypers, the optimist sorts that, when they enter failure mode, tend to think that anything is the panacea. That’s their category error, their occupational hazard. But then, what’s the equivalent failure mode for the pessimistic camp? (Don't think that critics and skeptics, by virtue of their nature, won't overextend their disposition.)

It's not right to call this problem “under-hype”; under-hyping something that shouldn’t be hyped in the first place is a good thing, as is denouncing an idea or a behavior that’s causing measurable harm on the excuse of unfulfilled promises. No, it’s more like an absence of desire; while optimists are wired to get excited at the thought that everything can be amazing, those who label themselves realists—as I often do when I’m feeling overwhelmed by hyperbole—get relief at the thought that nothing is enough.

They enjoy toppling extravagant buildings on the basis that they're not sufficiently tall, as much as the others enjoy erecting extravagant buildings where standard ones would have sufficed.

III.

Let me be specific.