“That’s what’s important to you, and that’s great!”

The above sentence was said to me in response while talking about why I’m opposed to using AI. It’s a popular sentiment. We all have our own morals, and insofar as they don’t cause anyone else direct harm, it’s all fine and dandy. You do what you think is important to you, and I’ll do what’s important to me. Nothing more, nothing less.

But my actions do not just affect me. A butterfly flaps its wings in Vancouver, WA, and causes an earthquake in Addis Ababa. Actions are not neutral. Cause always comes with a subsequent effect.

The personal is political. Whether or not you feel like it is, in the highly globalized and interconnected world we live in, there is next to nothing an individual can do that will not either A) be influenced by their political landscape or B) influence their political landscape.

Even something simple like using social media has political implications. Meta, which owns platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has faced serious backlash about its use of collecting and selling users’ data. In using these apps, users enrich billionaires just by scrolling.

It’s passive, but it’s political.

It is impossible to exorcise the political impact of personal decisions. The only question is if one will be aware of the grander implications of their actions.

As selfish creatures, we want our actions to serve us selfishly. To act without regard for how our actions affect others. And in a society that values individualism above the good of the common man, this is an idea that is rewarded.

It is rewarded in thousand-mile-long highways, where individuals drive shiny cars and park in sprawling parking garages. It is rewarded in cheap, processed, ready-made food. It is rewarded in hundreds of different ways. Some companies will try to take your money, and you are rewarded with convenience and simplicity.

Everything is fast and easy now. It’s easier to take an Uber than walk all the way to the nearest subway station and transfer trains three times. It’s faster to order DoorDash than to drive across town to McDonald’s.

But these actions—specifically these actions—are not just about the consumer. To take an Uber, you have to have an Uber driver. To order DoorDash, you have to have a DoorDash deliverer. These simple choices directly influence the workers.

These companies hold a lion’s share of their respective markets. They can skyrocket prices by charging excess fees and other surcharges. The drivers who contract with, not work for, these companies do not have the same legal protections as employees. Those who create the market these companies rely on get paid fractions of what the shareholders do.

It is nice to have your dinner delivered directly to your door without having to leave your house. It is nice that you can have a package delivered in two days or less. It is nice that we do not have to interact with the factory workers who ship these packages. There isn’t a face to the actions we take. Climate change doesn’t have a face, so it feels fine when you exert tons of valuable resources to feed a prompt to ChatGPT.

I am a part-time student, pursuing a career in journalism. I have taken many online classes that require lots of writing. It’s fairly easy to spot the people who use AI in their discussion posts and responses.

I will not tell you it is not tempting. I will not tell you that I have not thought about copping out and using ChatGPT when I am tired, and I have an assignment, and two pieces for the newspaper due and just finished a full week of work. But it is not about what is easiest. It is about what is best for me, for you, for all.

If every time I got frustrated with a piece, I fed a prompt into ChatGPT to make it longer or give me ideas, what would that do for me? How would that make me a better writer? What would it say about me? Someone who supposedly wants to make a career in writing can’t even make it through a simple response to a classmate? What does it say about where things are going?

Individualism is sold to Westerners as the only path worth walking on. After the Red Scare and the Cold War, collectivism—and anything associated with the detested “communism”—was frowned upon. A man makes his own success. He alone can pull himself up by his bootstraps.

There is no such thing as individualism. The skin cells that slough from my hands become the dust you wipe from your eyes. We are connected to one another. This is what makes a society. 

It is nice to have things fast and easy. It can make you happy. The actions that we take, “political” or not, affect our fellow man. For better, and for worse. We, the collective, the community, must come together. We must see past our own noses for long enough to lift one another up. There are no bootstraps.