"That's AI. F--k you."
Humanity, Critical Thinking, the Environment and Creativity Are Being Neglected and Extinguished.
Though its slop can only be produced by scrapping existing work created by humans, society and culture continue to embrace AI. Even more horrific is that AI is being forced upon us without our consent.
Articles and thought pieces have addressed how nearly every human job will be replaced by AI in the coming years. That must alarm us. More importantly, it must activate us to push back on AI. Does society honestly believe that the world economy and human beings can survive without jobs and paychecks?
What demoralizes me further is that higher education speaks about AI from both sides of its mouth. Faculty is told to prevent its use by students in their essays and other written assignments while also being told to use AI as a teaching tool.
Along with consuming tons of water and damaging the environment, AI damages critical thinking. According to Christine Anne Royce, Ed.D. and Valerie Bennett, Ph.D., Ed.D. in their National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) article “To Think or Not to Think: The Impact of AI on Critical-Thinking Skills”:
Despite the potential benefits, there is growing concern that excessive dependence on AI may erode critical-thinking skills. Studies have indicated that when individuals rely heavily on AI for information retrieval and decision making, their ability to engage in reflective problem solving and independent analysis may decline. Example studies include one published on Phys.org (2025) that addressed cognitive offloading or transferring mental effort to external aids. The study’s authors reported a significant negative correlation between AI tool usage and critical-thinking scores. One important note from this study was that younger participants (ages 17–25) showed higher dependence on AI tools and lower thinking scores than older age groups did. These findings need to be considered as they relate to education and AI use in the classroom.
A recent study published on Phys.org highlighted a concerning trend: Students who frequently rely on AI tools show lower critical-thinking scores. While offloading simple calculations to a tool like a calculator is practical, excessive reliance on AI for complex reasoning tasks could weaken students’ ability to think analytically and solve problems independently.
In science education, this reliance could mean students bypass the essential cognitive struggle of forming hypotheses, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions—skills fundamental to scientific investigation, design thinking, or the engineering design process.
While poorly paid part-time professors, the ones who do the grunt work of teaching core classes, now have the extra work of detecting and preventing AI’s usage in students essays and homework, Purdue University recently made AI an undergraduate graduation requirement. Administrators and other professors (mostly full-time and tenure) often address how AI can be ethically used in the classroom and by students.
The problem is that AI is not being used ethically. In our current dystopia, there remain no legal or professional guardrails. Along with students, the people taking the most damaging hit are artists. Human artists mind you. Not “AI artists.”
This week, the AI tool Seedance created an AI video utilizing the likenesses of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. In the clip that I will not show, Pitt and Cruise physically fight each other with Pitt mentioning that the pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was a good man.
The iconic actors’ images were used without their permission. Cruise and Pitt were also not financially compensated from this violation. Bad enough the AI “actor” Tilly Norwood was created way before this Pitt-and-Cruise slop. AI was the major reason behind the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes from a few years ago.
Before the Pitt-Cruise AI slop video was released, Oscar-nominated director and writer Darren Aronofsky released a trailer for his complete AI series about the American Revolution. The movie review and culture podcast Double Toasted addressed Aronofsky making his AI plunge. The takes from hosts Julien and Martin were not positive. Martin went so far to say, “That’s AI. F—k you.”
Substack is not even immune. Some writers have been accused on Notes of using AI to produce their articles. The AI tells are glaring. In the race to produce “content,” AI cranks out in minutes what it usually takes writers and visual artists hours, days, months, or years to create and craft.
Pope Leo XIV talked about the dangers of AI. He has called for regulation and ethical behavior. Yet companies over centuries have proven that profits mean more than humanity and ethics. The brutality and inhumanity of the Chicago meatpacking industry inspired Upton Sinclair to write his novel The Jungle.
Institutions and government officials need to use their power, legal means, and leadership to enforce regulation and promote ethics. Most of all, the people of the world must recognize that once we lose our humanity and continue to degrade human creativity, intellect and dignity, it means game over for all of us.
What I’m saying is not new. Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest humans to ever live, said the same years ago. Hardly anyone listened to his warning though.