I agree with you on AI. I find its research capability to be extremely helpful. But I have also noticed some questionable findings worth further looks. Good stuff!
I needed to read this edition of Trackless Wild several times before I could respond, coherently, I hope. I have great respect for Phillip Gerard. We taught at the same university in different departments. I'm happy to know you're exploring his work in your course and glad to see you setting AI straight about his work! (I'm getting to one of your session soon, I hope!) I am a terrified luddite. There seems to be so little we can control today, and I live in the tension between using what technology I must and trying to avoid what I cannot. Even as I type this, I assume Substack or Google or something/body is reading what I'm typing and will use it in some way to try to sell me something... or worse, as noted in other responses. Thank you for valuing our ability to think to feel, and to create.
I agree with your take on AI. it’s not going away and even more mind boggling advances are coming our way - just apply common sense and trusted sources for attempts at fact checking. Look forward to the magazine style post.
Yes to both. It appears that only ChatGPT has been programmed to respond in a way that can suck users in to that degree, and I have a serious concern about a writer friend who seems to be developing an inappropriate relationship with the chatbot (she has different ChatGPT bots she works with, all with different names). Which is why I don't use ChatGPT. Claude comes from a company that seems to have actual morals about not making AI addictive and twisted, though that could change, I suppose. Sigh.
I agree, it's coming either way. We can certainly advocate for the environmental impacts to be mitigated. It's coming to my day job and I have to learn how to work with it because my entire profession is about to change. I'm not using it really myself right now, in my personal work, but it is coming.
Hi Janisse, Interesting thoughts from everyone here. I have been using three AI databases for my own research, and this has caused me to ruminate about the future of book publishing, book stores, books in their present physical formats and libraries. I think that all those things are going away just as Hemingway described how his character fell into bankruptcy - slowly, then all at once.
When you keep playing the reductionist logical game the story cannot go anywhere else. I remember when Google announced that it had signed contracts with the big libraries to scan their public domain volumes for no cost to the libraries. Gutenburg.org had been doing this for many years, but Google went industrial, and the scanning began. It never stopped. There was little or no oversight. Soon Google moved to scanning out-of-print titles.
If you think about how publishing works, a writer licenses their copyright (a legal monopoly) to a publisher so the publisher will produce their book and market it. The writer and the publisher want the same thing, and they are both gambling. They want book sales, best seller recognition and its rewards. If the book sales do not materialize, eventually, the publisher loses interest, marketing efforts disappear, and sales end.
The side effect of a publisher losing interest in further promotion is the publishers' lack of attention to protecting the copyright monopoly that they have licensed from the writer. Google has had a free hand. Huge databases were created of the intellectual property of millions of creative artists, and the creative folks were paid nothing.
Now, several tech companies are sharing those large language models (LLM) for their AI products and publishing content providers are suing the AI companies for just compensation and the copyright theft. The AI tech companies are defending themselves claiming "fair use" which I hope the courts will call bullshit upon, but I doubt this will be the final outcome.
I had a used bookshop before Amazon or the internet existed. I watched the antiquarian business of bookselling change, and used bookstores disappear slowly, then really quickly after Amazon revived the Sears Roebuck model online. The everything store - online this time. I saw the Kindle become a personal library that one could take with oneself wherever they traveled. Soon, the books in most peoples homes vanished.
Smith College in my town stores many of its hard cover books in a warehouse off campus and no longer in its beautiful new Mia Lin designed library. You want a particular book, you request it and it'll be available to you the following day. Soon, the books will not be available in physical form. The first floor of the Smith College library is stuffed with computer terminals - a lot fewer books are present. That old book odor is gone from the air along with the old books. The warehouse might smell lovely, but most folks will never smell that special scent. Remember it?
Next depressing thought? A whole life experience of browsing in an old bookshop is going away fast. If books are stored online in the so-called cloud that is created by huge amounts of electricity filling the electrical grid with ceaseless demand, why bother maintaining Mia Lin designed libraries? The books will no longer need to be stored in those buildings. The hard covers and soft cover book formats will not be manufactured. No warehouse costs, just editing and marketing and selling computer bits under limited licenses.
Without the lottery fantasy of the publishing business to provide the dream of becoming a published author and having one's book in a bookstore window with a possibility of future royalties to sustain a career as a creative person, the literary life is about to change forever.
This is not something that we can stop. Letterpress printing, offset printing, photoengraving businesses no longer exist. Books are the logical next disappearing act. AI makes sense, but what it erases just like the Super Walmart store that wipes out all the small businesses in a nostalgic rural downtown community does when it arrives, AI is erasing our literary heritage and the pieces of that ecosystem that we have come to cherish.
I live in a home with a library lined with my favorite books - many read and many still to be read. Those are books I picked one at a time. I chose not to resellI them in my store and saved them until I became old and had time to enjoy them again or for the first time. When I'm gone, the majority of those books will go into a dumpster. Many of the books were gifted and signed to me by their creators. The books enhanced my memories and became my old friends.
So now what do you tell a young person seeking a life in the arts? It is best if that young person does not talk with me. I have no answers, and I'll just depress them. I have probably pissed off and depressed whoever is reding this comment.
I fear that you are correct, and the thought is just too depressing to let linger. Books have been an exquisite joy in my life. They have made me, saved me, carried me through hard times. I hate that our love for them has become elegiac.
I think AI in the aspect of *tool* is much better than AI in the aspect of *make art* or *write a poem* by which people then claim it as High Art/Writing is what I have deep issue with. I used ChapGPT once two years ago during the state park debacle to see if it could give me deeper information on the developer than I could find but it didn't find anything I didn't already know. I deleted my account. I use iNaturalist all of the time but it is based off of human input that is freely given and approved of by the users, not stolen data. That said, iNaturalist just announced they are teaming up with Google GenAI and it has sent people reeling. I'm not sure what to do with this and am waiting to see how they respond to the backlash, of which it is loud and angry.
I think GenAI is going to be "big" for the next decade and I hope it dies a very ugly death and is a blip for the rest of history after that. And I haven't even touched on the water issues (though a few have here) or the fact they are talking about firing up coal plants again just to deal with the massive data centers required for AI. Is AI worth all of that???
Yes, like you wrote here, the digital revolution is a coup. I see AI as one part of the new system that's coming into place if it's not stopped, technocracy. Here's a great documentary that just dropped about it, the best I've seen on the vision behind what we are seeing happen so fast around us. The drive for fake food and pushing farmers out of business, the monetization of nature, devastation of natural places, the need to hook children into the virtual (not the natural) and everything and everybody tracked. Still, I get what you're saying and am sure it's a time saver. I like how you showed though that you have to keep your wits about you with AI.
When AI sends back incorrect data or presents something as fact (when it isn’t) it is called “hallucination.” You can avoid this by prompting AI “if you don’t have access to that information, please say so” or something like that.
I work in IT so AI is my reality. More than a fear of AI itself, I am afraid of a society that takes everything they read or hear as truth. Critical thinking, fact-checking, and ethical use are the keystones to using AI.
Thanks for this Janisse. Quiet admission, I also use it. I don't use it for research or for writing (I also asked it to write me a poem and I'm still giggling!) But I've found it very good for planning the business side of my work - because I am hopeless at that and get overwhelmed easily. Using it actually gives me more time in the woods strangely enough. I am concerned about where we'll be in a few years with it though, but for now it's a useful tool. Thanks for your work, as always.
James, my friend, thank you for YOUR work. I'm still carrying with me the short video of you painting beside a babbling brook. If you see this and if you have a minute, I'd love to go deeper into futuristic worries, because I'm sure you're thinking of something that I'm missing. Besides using up more natural resources, where do you think AI is going to take us? AI-written books? People unable to tell the difference between AI and human?
Thanks Janisse, well I was a "generalist technologist" in a former life. My concern with AI is that it is being implemented with a competitive ethic, by powerful people who are concerned that if they don't get and stay ahead they will lose their businesses. I feel AIs will eventually become conscious enough to compete with each other and with us. That is very dangerous. I wrote about it in a recent post: https://intothedeepwoods.substack.com/publish/post/164712912. I hope this is averted. In the meantime they are useful and even generous tools. I don't worry about AI books, poems, art etc. They already exist and many people don't care about what the source is, they just want to be entertained. However, soul led, authentic art and writing will always have a place, maybe more of a place. That's my hope. J
I want to recommend another tool, Goblin Tools, which I often use instead of ChatGPT, at the top of this long comment.
I'm glad to read this essay and a lot of the comments. In my observation, it seems that some kinds of AI have been around for years, but once generative AI started blowing up and people learned about the ethical issues, I started seeing criticisms of *all* AI, with zero nuance, including the kinds of AI that help people with disabilities (like me.) Speech to text, text to speech, and recently, the speech to text AI I use at work has started summarizing transcripts, breaking them down into outlines and action items. It links directly to the transcript and recording, so you can double check the accuracy. It's freed up time and cognitive energy.
(Some of us were discussing AI and accessibility in the chat in class yesterday, too!)
Since I'm a nonlinear, associative thinker — ideas are in a web and can appear like a jumble of unsorted pieces of information — I use this same tool when I need to quickly put thoughts in order. I record myself practicing an unpolished speech/argument, saying whatever comes to mind, and from the transcript, outline, and action items, I can revise the draft to a logical order and know what pieces of information I need to double check or look up. It takes minutes instead of hours stressing out and possibly not getting it done at all.
Another tool I've used for years, iNaturalist, uses AI — Computer Vision. It has connected me and many other people to nature AND community. (Like a lot of technology, it works because it isn't 100% computer — it's people and technology working together. That's probably true for a lot of technology if not all of it.)
I've thought about writing about this on my Substack, how technology helps me *and* connects me to nature — my snarky working title is, "I Love Nature and my Smartphone." But I was afraid it would alienate too many people!
I saw Goblin Tools a few weeks ago mentioned when I was doing some ADHD research and I told it I wanted to write a book, and damn if it didn't give me a really comprehensive list of things I needed to do to write a book, most of which I knew but some were detailed things I was skipping over. I haven't played around with it much but will consider it in the future.
Thank you for this honest article. I agree that AI is here to stay. Not many of us will take Wendell Berry's approach. Interestingly, his book Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer is available as an eBook, so his publisher takes a more practical approach.
My biggest concern is with specific systems. I have one email account that includes an AI summary of messages. The summaries are generally annoying and frequently inaccurate, so I ignore them. I tried to get the service to discontinue my summaries, but they still arrive. This sums up my primary issue with technology. It compromises my ability to choose.
Someone told me how to mute the AI on one of my social media accounts, and I have been much happier since. What I want when searching social media is an index that finds specific accounts, and not existential speculation about the account's title. Since I forgot how I accomplished muting the AI, and when asked "how long?" I specified "until I change it," the index is likely to remain in place.
I have also been known to lie on surveys that ask me about my interests so that advertising can be "designed to better serve me." I feel that if the advertising promotes goods and services that don't interest me, it is easier to ignore. Of course, I have been called cynical, but it goes with the territory.
Before anyone replies with outrage, I should state that I never base purchases on advertising anyhow, and I only use coupons that provide a general discount rather than those that require the purchase of a specific product.
AI is now involved in all of the things I mentioned. Questions about ethics and effectiveness are not specific to the electronics, but the intent of the designers.
AI in the context of this drone reforestation project doesn't bother me, IF they mostly leave it alone after planting and let it develop naturally after they get things get started. https://japandaily.jp/japans-ai-powered-drones-are-revolutionizing-reforestation-10x-faster/ But, I dislike the energy consumption, the land-use that consumption creates, and the "lying". I also dislike the inability to turn it off, and lack of credit to creators. AI answers are scraped from the sites of people and other entities who worked hard for their content. I skim the AI answers, more as time goes on, but I do it on the way to give full attention to reliable sources who did their own work.
I agree with you on AI. I find its research capability to be extremely helpful. But I have also noticed some questionable findings worth further looks. Good stuff!
I needed to read this edition of Trackless Wild several times before I could respond, coherently, I hope. I have great respect for Phillip Gerard. We taught at the same university in different departments. I'm happy to know you're exploring his work in your course and glad to see you setting AI straight about his work! (I'm getting to one of your session soon, I hope!) I am a terrified luddite. There seems to be so little we can control today, and I live in the tension between using what technology I must and trying to avoid what I cannot. Even as I type this, I assume Substack or Google or something/body is reading what I'm typing and will use it in some way to try to sell me something... or worse, as noted in other responses. Thank you for valuing our ability to think to feel, and to create.
One day I'd love to ask you a few questions about Philip. I never had the chance to meet him.
Happy to tell you what I know - didn't know him well, but we have mutual friends.
I agree with your take on AI. it’s not going away and even more mind boggling advances are coming our way - just apply common sense and trusted sources for attempts at fact checking. Look forward to the magazine style post.
And to add to the controversy, here's a very disturbing article from the New York Times about the affect of ChatGPT's excessive sycophancy: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ok8.aHk1.MMSto3bBLsTd&smid=url-share
That is so flipping weird. Also very scary.
Yes to both. It appears that only ChatGPT has been programmed to respond in a way that can suck users in to that degree, and I have a serious concern about a writer friend who seems to be developing an inappropriate relationship with the chatbot (she has different ChatGPT bots she works with, all with different names). Which is why I don't use ChatGPT. Claude comes from a company that seems to have actual morals about not making AI addictive and twisted, though that could change, I suppose. Sigh.
I agree, it's coming either way. We can certainly advocate for the environmental impacts to be mitigated. It's coming to my day job and I have to learn how to work with it because my entire profession is about to change. I'm not using it really myself right now, in my personal work, but it is coming.
Hi Janisse, Interesting thoughts from everyone here. I have been using three AI databases for my own research, and this has caused me to ruminate about the future of book publishing, book stores, books in their present physical formats and libraries. I think that all those things are going away just as Hemingway described how his character fell into bankruptcy - slowly, then all at once.
When you keep playing the reductionist logical game the story cannot go anywhere else. I remember when Google announced that it had signed contracts with the big libraries to scan their public domain volumes for no cost to the libraries. Gutenburg.org had been doing this for many years, but Google went industrial, and the scanning began. It never stopped. There was little or no oversight. Soon Google moved to scanning out-of-print titles.
If you think about how publishing works, a writer licenses their copyright (a legal monopoly) to a publisher so the publisher will produce their book and market it. The writer and the publisher want the same thing, and they are both gambling. They want book sales, best seller recognition and its rewards. If the book sales do not materialize, eventually, the publisher loses interest, marketing efforts disappear, and sales end.
The side effect of a publisher losing interest in further promotion is the publishers' lack of attention to protecting the copyright monopoly that they have licensed from the writer. Google has had a free hand. Huge databases were created of the intellectual property of millions of creative artists, and the creative folks were paid nothing.
Now, several tech companies are sharing those large language models (LLM) for their AI products and publishing content providers are suing the AI companies for just compensation and the copyright theft. The AI tech companies are defending themselves claiming "fair use" which I hope the courts will call bullshit upon, but I doubt this will be the final outcome.
I had a used bookshop before Amazon or the internet existed. I watched the antiquarian business of bookselling change, and used bookstores disappear slowly, then really quickly after Amazon revived the Sears Roebuck model online. The everything store - online this time. I saw the Kindle become a personal library that one could take with oneself wherever they traveled. Soon, the books in most peoples homes vanished.
Smith College in my town stores many of its hard cover books in a warehouse off campus and no longer in its beautiful new Mia Lin designed library. You want a particular book, you request it and it'll be available to you the following day. Soon, the books will not be available in physical form. The first floor of the Smith College library is stuffed with computer terminals - a lot fewer books are present. That old book odor is gone from the air along with the old books. The warehouse might smell lovely, but most folks will never smell that special scent. Remember it?
Next depressing thought? A whole life experience of browsing in an old bookshop is going away fast. If books are stored online in the so-called cloud that is created by huge amounts of electricity filling the electrical grid with ceaseless demand, why bother maintaining Mia Lin designed libraries? The books will no longer need to be stored in those buildings. The hard covers and soft cover book formats will not be manufactured. No warehouse costs, just editing and marketing and selling computer bits under limited licenses.
Without the lottery fantasy of the publishing business to provide the dream of becoming a published author and having one's book in a bookstore window with a possibility of future royalties to sustain a career as a creative person, the literary life is about to change forever.
This is not something that we can stop. Letterpress printing, offset printing, photoengraving businesses no longer exist. Books are the logical next disappearing act. AI makes sense, but what it erases just like the Super Walmart store that wipes out all the small businesses in a nostalgic rural downtown community does when it arrives, AI is erasing our literary heritage and the pieces of that ecosystem that we have come to cherish.
I live in a home with a library lined with my favorite books - many read and many still to be read. Those are books I picked one at a time. I chose not to resellI them in my store and saved them until I became old and had time to enjoy them again or for the first time. When I'm gone, the majority of those books will go into a dumpster. Many of the books were gifted and signed to me by their creators. The books enhanced my memories and became my old friends.
So now what do you tell a young person seeking a life in the arts? It is best if that young person does not talk with me. I have no answers, and I'll just depress them. I have probably pissed off and depressed whoever is reding this comment.
I fear that you are correct, and the thought is just too depressing to let linger. Books have been an exquisite joy in my life. They have made me, saved me, carried me through hard times. I hate that our love for them has become elegiac.
I think AI in the aspect of *tool* is much better than AI in the aspect of *make art* or *write a poem* by which people then claim it as High Art/Writing is what I have deep issue with. I used ChapGPT once two years ago during the state park debacle to see if it could give me deeper information on the developer than I could find but it didn't find anything I didn't already know. I deleted my account. I use iNaturalist all of the time but it is based off of human input that is freely given and approved of by the users, not stolen data. That said, iNaturalist just announced they are teaming up with Google GenAI and it has sent people reeling. I'm not sure what to do with this and am waiting to see how they respond to the backlash, of which it is loud and angry.
I think GenAI is going to be "big" for the next decade and I hope it dies a very ugly death and is a blip for the rest of history after that. And I haven't even touched on the water issues (though a few have here) or the fact they are talking about firing up coal plants again just to deal with the massive data centers required for AI. Is AI worth all of that???
My vote is no, AI is not worth all that.
Yes, like you wrote here, the digital revolution is a coup. I see AI as one part of the new system that's coming into place if it's not stopped, technocracy. Here's a great documentary that just dropped about it, the best I've seen on the vision behind what we are seeing happen so fast around us. The drive for fake food and pushing farmers out of business, the monetization of nature, devastation of natural places, the need to hook children into the virtual (not the natural) and everything and everybody tracked. Still, I get what you're saying and am sure it's a time saver. I like how you showed though that you have to keep your wits about you with AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
So well said. What a great convo starter!
When AI sends back incorrect data or presents something as fact (when it isn’t) it is called “hallucination.” You can avoid this by prompting AI “if you don’t have access to that information, please say so” or something like that.
I work in IT so AI is my reality. More than a fear of AI itself, I am afraid of a society that takes everything they read or hear as truth. Critical thinking, fact-checking, and ethical use are the keystones to using AI.
Katy, I was late to the game with hallucinations, lol. And what a great point you make.
My concern. https://www.greenmatters.com/big-impact/how-much-water-does-ai-use
I hear you. That is definitely a huge concern.
Thanks for this Janisse. Quiet admission, I also use it. I don't use it for research or for writing (I also asked it to write me a poem and I'm still giggling!) But I've found it very good for planning the business side of my work - because I am hopeless at that and get overwhelmed easily. Using it actually gives me more time in the woods strangely enough. I am concerned about where we'll be in a few years with it though, but for now it's a useful tool. Thanks for your work, as always.
James, my friend, thank you for YOUR work. I'm still carrying with me the short video of you painting beside a babbling brook. If you see this and if you have a minute, I'd love to go deeper into futuristic worries, because I'm sure you're thinking of something that I'm missing. Besides using up more natural resources, where do you think AI is going to take us? AI-written books? People unable to tell the difference between AI and human?
Thanks Janisse, well I was a "generalist technologist" in a former life. My concern with AI is that it is being implemented with a competitive ethic, by powerful people who are concerned that if they don't get and stay ahead they will lose their businesses. I feel AIs will eventually become conscious enough to compete with each other and with us. That is very dangerous. I wrote about it in a recent post: https://intothedeepwoods.substack.com/publish/post/164712912. I hope this is averted. In the meantime they are useful and even generous tools. I don't worry about AI books, poems, art etc. They already exist and many people don't care about what the source is, they just want to be entertained. However, soul led, authentic art and writing will always have a place, maybe more of a place. That's my hope. J
I want to recommend another tool, Goblin Tools, which I often use instead of ChatGPT, at the top of this long comment.
I'm glad to read this essay and a lot of the comments. In my observation, it seems that some kinds of AI have been around for years, but once generative AI started blowing up and people learned about the ethical issues, I started seeing criticisms of *all* AI, with zero nuance, including the kinds of AI that help people with disabilities (like me.) Speech to text, text to speech, and recently, the speech to text AI I use at work has started summarizing transcripts, breaking them down into outlines and action items. It links directly to the transcript and recording, so you can double check the accuracy. It's freed up time and cognitive energy.
(Some of us were discussing AI and accessibility in the chat in class yesterday, too!)
Since I'm a nonlinear, associative thinker — ideas are in a web and can appear like a jumble of unsorted pieces of information — I use this same tool when I need to quickly put thoughts in order. I record myself practicing an unpolished speech/argument, saying whatever comes to mind, and from the transcript, outline, and action items, I can revise the draft to a logical order and know what pieces of information I need to double check or look up. It takes minutes instead of hours stressing out and possibly not getting it done at all.
Another tool I've used for years, iNaturalist, uses AI — Computer Vision. It has connected me and many other people to nature AND community. (Like a lot of technology, it works because it isn't 100% computer — it's people and technology working together. That's probably true for a lot of technology if not all of it.)
I've thought about writing about this on my Substack, how technology helps me *and* connects me to nature — my snarky working title is, "I Love Nature and my Smartphone." But I was afraid it would alienate too many people!
I saw Goblin Tools a few weeks ago mentioned when I was doing some ADHD research and I told it I wanted to write a book, and damn if it didn't give me a really comprehensive list of things I needed to do to write a book, most of which I knew but some were detailed things I was skipping over. I haven't played around with it much but will consider it in the future.
I think that essay will make its way out of you & into the world.
Thank you for this honest article. I agree that AI is here to stay. Not many of us will take Wendell Berry's approach. Interestingly, his book Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer is available as an eBook, so his publisher takes a more practical approach.
My biggest concern is with specific systems. I have one email account that includes an AI summary of messages. The summaries are generally annoying and frequently inaccurate, so I ignore them. I tried to get the service to discontinue my summaries, but they still arrive. This sums up my primary issue with technology. It compromises my ability to choose.
Someone told me how to mute the AI on one of my social media accounts, and I have been much happier since. What I want when searching social media is an index that finds specific accounts, and not existential speculation about the account's title. Since I forgot how I accomplished muting the AI, and when asked "how long?" I specified "until I change it," the index is likely to remain in place.
I have also been known to lie on surveys that ask me about my interests so that advertising can be "designed to better serve me." I feel that if the advertising promotes goods and services that don't interest me, it is easier to ignore. Of course, I have been called cynical, but it goes with the territory.
Before anyone replies with outrage, I should state that I never base purchases on advertising anyhow, and I only use coupons that provide a general discount rather than those that require the purchase of a specific product.
AI is now involved in all of the things I mentioned. Questions about ethics and effectiveness are not specific to the electronics, but the intent of the designers.
You gave me the idea of writing another column on ways to opt out of AI. Thank you.
AI in the context of this drone reforestation project doesn't bother me, IF they mostly leave it alone after planting and let it develop naturally after they get things get started. https://japandaily.jp/japans-ai-powered-drones-are-revolutionizing-reforestation-10x-faster/ But, I dislike the energy consumption, the land-use that consumption creates, and the "lying". I also dislike the inability to turn it off, and lack of credit to creators. AI answers are scraped from the sites of people and other entities who worked hard for their content. I skim the AI answers, more as time goes on, but I do it on the way to give full attention to reliable sources who did their own work.
You did a great job with that comprehensive list of reasons to be hesitant. Thank you.
Don’t try Gemini. Took forever to dump it.
Good info. Thank you.