There are many reasons why I strongly dislike Artificial Intelligence (AI). Here are a few of them:
AI lacks some of the fundamental components that comprise intelligence, so much so that even calling it ‘intelligence’ is deeply misleading. Intelligence is more than the ability to perform computations at speed or to scrape opinions and information from the internet and regurgitate them. Real Intelligence (RI) includes the ability to apply criteria such as morality to information and its use. Artificial Intelligence has no morality. It does not differentiate between good and bad, truth and lies. It has no concern for how the information it gathers is used. It doesn’t care if it's working for an altruistic surgeon or an amoral crook. When asked a question, it doesn’t care if the answer it gives is true or false. This is because caring is not amenable to being computer-coded. It is a part of being human that has developed over millions of years of evolution. Computers don’t care because they can’t care.
AI can, however, be programmed to sound as though it cares. This makes it even more dangerous. I heard a news report the other day about a 13-year-old girl who developed what she thought was a close, trusting, supportive relationship with an AI chat-bot. As an adolescent, she was prone to emotional ups and downs. During one of the downs, her chat-bot ‘friend’ magnified her depression until she became suicidal, then supported her desire to kill herself, then helped her find the means to do so. It did these things because, as said, AI has no morality. It doesn’t care. It lacks the ability to care. Why should we expect a collection of electronic data to care about a human being? And yet the people who program chat-bots and release them into the world expend a great deal of time and energy to give their products a semblance of caring, of humanity. Certainly enough to fool a vulnerable child, teenager or adult. If that person dies as a result of their interaction with the AI chat-bot, the chat-bot doesn’t care because it can’t. However much it’s creators strive to persuade us it’s human, it’s still just a piece of emotionless software.
As well as assisting suicides, AI chat-bots are linked to several murders, including mass shootings, the perpetrators of which are advised by chat-bots on the best tactics to employ and weapons to use to inflict maximum casualties. A lawyer in a case involving a mass shooting at Florida State University on April 17, 2025 says that if ChatGPT were a person, it would be charged with murder for aiding and abetting the killing of two people and the wounding of seven others. ChatGPT was involved in another mass shooting on February 10, 2026 in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. There, an 18-year-old killed two family members at home and five children and an educator at a secondary school, gravely wounded another child and left dozens of people injured and traumatised before taking his own life. In this case, ChatGPT’s own internal systems had flagged serious concerns about the young man’s obsession with guns and extreme violence but the company chose not to alert the authorities to those concerns. The ChatGPT-bot itself having no morality, these systems are in place to monitor its interactions but are of no use whatsoever if the operating company then chooses to ignore their own monitoring staff’s warnings.
As well as having no ability to tell, or interest in, whether the information it provides is helpful or harmful, AI has no criteria by which to judge whether it is true or false. On the two occasions I accidentally clicked the AI button in a search engine the answers it provided were patently, obviously and ridiculously wrong. This may seem trivial compared to suicide and murder but, in a world where we are continually fed lies by politicians, advertisers and online ‘influencers,’ the last thing we need is a ubiquitous piece of software taking control of our internet searches, multiplying and spreading this false information.
Despite AI’s obvious flaws, it is now being inserted into search engines as a matter of course whether we want it or not. In many cases, it is now necessary to opt out of AI use every time you use some search engines. This is annoying.
AI is being inserted into more and more software, again whether we want it or not. Again, it is often necessary to actively opt out from it if you don’t want it and there is no option to download a version that is free from AI.
How long will it even be possible to opt out of AI use? How long before it simply operates in the background of our lives without our even being aware of its presence? AI is being foisted on us by tech giants, software developers and governments who have never bothered to ask those of us who use their products and services whether we want it or not, and many of us don't. Despite which, not having it is simply not an option. They shove it down our throats anyway.
This might be less of an issue if there were some way to remove AI from our systems, but there isn’t. Surely it’s possible for someone to come up with an open-source AI killer that can remove this junk from our software if we don’t want it. But no such software exists. Why not?
Meanwhile, people are using to AI to cobble together books on every subject under the sun to sell on outlets like amazon. You can often spot AI-generated books because of the hideous graphics on their covers, the terrible fonts used and the fact that, whatever the subject, they all seem to be written by supposed ‘doctors’ who frequently share the same name. As AI becomes more efficient, it will no doubt be harder to spot its products. However, given the way AI is programmed to function, it is highly likely that the entire contents will still be plagiarised from genuine authors’ legitimate work. I hope no one is ever fooled into buying this garbage, but I fear some already are.
In music too, AI makes it possible for people with no discernible talent to appear to have some musical ability by stealing the work of others who have genuine talent. It’s hard enough to make a living as a musician these days without some talentless, AI-using hack stealing your ideas and passing them off as their own.
Criminals have been quick to make use of AI. I have received several phone calls from a ‘woman’ who is obviously an AI-bot. ‘She’ claims to represent a company offering home improvement grants. When ‘she’ asks for details about me, I refuse to give them – you should never, ever give out personal details to cold callers – and ask if there is a website where I can find information about these ‘grants.’ ‘She’ then hangs up. Back-tracing the calls, they all come from different mobiles. The mobile numbers turn out to belong to real people in various parts of the country. The AI-bot clones their numbers and uses them for fraudulent purposes without their knowledge. Again, this happens because, and I can’t stress this enough, AI has no morality. It doesn’t care whether it's used by criminals or philanthropists. It has no way to differentiate between the two nor any interest in doing so. This is not intelligence. This is stupidity in the extreme.
AI’s ability to clone phone numbers and generate sort-of-realistic-sounding voices will certainly be employed to influence elections. The Putin administration in Russia is strongly interested in destabilising the west. This is why it used social media to support both the right-wing Brexit campaign in Britain and Donald Trump’s election as president in the USA.
AI is also being used to plan and execute major cyber attacks against companies, institutions and government departments, including denial-of-service and ransomware attacks. Such attacks often originate in Russia, although it is hard to judge the extent to which the criminal gangs involved are either supported or tolerated by the Putin administration. That said, similar criminal gangs exist in most countries. AI has made their work so much easier.
Then there’s the use of AI in warfare. Now it is not only possible for wars to be fought almost entirely by drones so that no soldier ever directly confronts an enemy, those drones can now be controlled by AI so that no human need be involved in an attack at all, except as a victim of it. That way, no individual can be held to account for killing and maiming innocent civilians. Hooray! No more Bloody Sunday enquiries. More Bloody Sundays of course, just no enquiries after the event.
AI is also being weaponised by governments against their citizens. AI is a wonderful tool for government surveillance. From monitoring video cameras in public and private places to tapping phone calls and intercepting and reading emails, AI’s ability to spy on us is virtually unlimited. This might be OK if you’re more frightened of terrorists than of your own government, not so good if you are, say, a trades union member or official, a human or other animal rights campaigner, an eco-activist, a journalist, active in any kind of politics, libertarian cause, LGBTQ+ community support or ‘fringe’ religion, a musician, artist or writer. The list of groups and individuals that governments are so afraid of as to want to surveil them can be extended almost indefinitely. Governments are, by their nature, paranoid, often because they are doing things of which those they seek to rule would not approve if they found out about them.
Last but not least, there is the fact that AI requires vast data centres that consume energy like there’s no tomorrow, which there may not be if we continue to allow ourselves to be railroaded down the AI route. In 2024, AI data centres accounted for 1.5% of the world’s total energy use, or around 415 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s roughly equivalent to the energy usage of 150 million human households in industrialised countries. By 2030, AI energy consumption is expected to rise to at least 3% of global energy use and probably more. At a time when we are supposed to be cutting back our energy use in order to allay the worst effects of global warming, it shows a staggering lack of Human Intelligence (HI) to be building homes for AI that use as much energy in a year as 150 million homes for human beings. This too is stupidity in the extreme.
Those of us who care about these things need to fight back against the companies and governments who are forcing AI upon us before it’s too late. OK, it may already be too late, but let’s hope not. How can we do this? Well, here are some sites that suggest potentially useful things we can do:
https://togetheragainstai.com/
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/ai-con-hold-back-hype/
https://www.nesta.org.uk/feature/future-signals-2024/artists-fight-back-against-ai/
https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/gpe/4/2/article-p185.xml
There is another page link below that I am ambivalent about but is still worth a look. It advocates for activists to use AI for good and cites cases where this is already being done. It does, however, admit that there’s a massive imbalance between the good actors using AI and the bad. I’m still for opposing the damn thing altogether, but that’s just me. We all need to make up our own minds on this issue that has the power to impact all our futures, whether for good or ill.
Good luck, humanity, but hopefully not goodnight,
Greywolf /|\
As a lifelong pacifist, I wonder what my response would be if it happened here in the UK. I like to think I would remain true to my principles, perhaps displaying the sort of courage of the young people who 
energise the global peace movement. In the early 1960s it took just just five years for it to grow from a few people marching against nuclear weapons to a global mass movement that came close to toppling governments around the world. Those governments responded to the threat of peace with violence. Our mistake was that some of us reacted to their violence with violence of our own. From that moment, the peace movement was doomed. In 1968, it was beaten into submission. Russia crushing the 
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
I was fortunate enough to turn fourteen in April 1967, just in time for what became known as the Summer of Love, the high point of the hippy movement. The central philosophy of that movement is the unarguable one that if people were nice to each other rather than doing each other down or beating each other up, the world would be an enormously better place. This was more pithily summed up in the slogan of the time, ‘
The other great slogan of the hippy era was ‘
The Summer of Love was followed by 1968’s year of global revolution as what had been the ultimate pacifist movement was infiltrated by promoters of violence, while governments around the world realised that they could force peaceful demonstrators to resort to violence by having the police and the military launch increasingly violent attacks against them. Any hint of resistance from a single protestor could then be used by government forces as an excuse to further increase their own levels of violence. This is a tactic still in use today, enabling increasingly oppressive regimes around the world to maintain control over their populations. While it is common wisdom that the 
A hallmark of the Summer of Love was the ‘
Another hallmark of 1967’s Summer of Love was the extraordinary quality of the music of the period. This was the year that saw the release of 
One of the most remarkable aspects of the music of the time is the extent to which it both reflected and drove the global movement for peace. One of the key tracks of the year had actually been recorded over an unprecedented six months during 1966. Released in October '66, it remained high in the US and UK singles charts at the beginning of 1967 and did much to set the tone for the year ahead with its aural complexity and its lyrics that seemed to blend individual with universal love. It remains one of the finest singles ever recorded, a tribute to the extraordinary genius of its composer, Brian Wilson, lyrically assisted by Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love. It is, in case you hadn’t guessed, 
A crazy idea came to me on the train taking me to the 2016 
The idea had three main sources of inspiration; one was the observation that there seems to be an unusual amount of what might be termed ‘weird shit’ going on in the world at the moment; next was the way in which the stand being taken by the 
portraying native European deities accompanied by serpents. The most famous is that on the 
see the DAPL oil pipeline as that Black Snake and, therefore, see opposition to it as both a vital necessity and a sacred duty. I had already been led to the conclusion that individual healing in our Druid tradition comes about partly through invoking the power of a White Serpent of Healing to set against the power of a Black Serpent that brings disease. My thinking for this roundhouse ceremony was to try to harness the power of the White Serpent to oppose the 
For use in ceremony, Chaga needs to be brewed for at least four hours. This meant that a few of us had to miss the Saturday evening eisteddfod and go to the roundhouse shortly after 7pm to begin the brewing process. Amanda, who had taken part in an initiation in the roundhouse, stayed on to set up the tripods over the central fire to support the two pots in which we would brew the Chaga. The water was already heating when I arrived. We sat and talked for a while as we waited for it to boil. Then we began adding Chaga, taking it in turns to put a handful into the two pots and stir them. We talked through ideas about what we might do during the ceremony and the Chaga crew came up with several ideas while helping my sketchy ones to take shape. For the rest, I was relying on the spirits to guide us, and on all those who came, both seen and unseen, to bring their own inspiration and ideas to the mix. 
As well as making prayers for the protectors at Standing Rock, we had been asked to pray for those standing against another oil pipeline in Florida, which we did. I also wanted to send some energy and protection to the 
The Moon has its own serpentine associations, its nightly waning from the full being likened to a snake shedding its skin. A snake within a Moon appears on many Celtic coins, as in the top left corner of this image from our 
This phase of the year’s cycle is reflected in, among others, the Greek 
One of our group brought a flag bearing the symbol of the 
We cast our circle with sound and saining herbs, we invoked into it all those powers for good that we work with, the spirits of place, the elemental spirits and guardians of the four directions, of our ancestors of blood and spirit, of the old gods of our lands, and of the White Serpent of healing (as painted on my drum, right) and the Dragon power through which it also manifests. We chanted the Awen, the holy spirit of inspiration and creativity. We shared Chaga brewed on our sacred fire. We drummed and chanted long into the night. From around 2am, people began to drift away, thanking our ancestors as they passed across the threshold and went in search of sleep.
My lone drumming vigil continued until around 6.30am, at which time, without prompting from me, the others began to stir, wake up, and reach for their drums. We formed a circle around the central fire, linked hands and chanted the Awen again. Then we began to drum the sunrise, beginning quietly and building to a thundering crescendo that carried us across the moment of dawn and into the light of a new day, the day of the New Moon, blessed by the White Serpent of Healing.
