Thoughts/Anxiety About AI and Setting Boundaries

This is a sadrant/hoping to find solidarity post. But if you want to respond with a mean comment, go ahead I guess. It is called /aiwars after all T _ T

For context, I'm a creative hippie who works in Big Tech (it's just how it turned out, and I'm trying to segway my life in a direction that's more aligned with my values even though I know it'll mean less financial security). I come from a working class (actually, very poor) background, but jumped a few socio-economic rungs in my 20s and now find myself surrounded by fairly privileged, metropolitan professional types who work in tech, finance, and the like. I'm a casual communist who finds herself deeply embedded in a capitalist society. As such, I often find myself at odds with the people around me and with mainstream narratives in general.

The advent of genAI has taken a toll on my mental health. I have a basic grasp of LLMs and AI in general, and I'm not afraid of the technology itself. But I have a deep wariness about how this technology will be used to further exploit and undermine the working class. Not to mention its environmental impacts (data centers are carbon-costly and no, I'm not fooled by the argument that "AI will help us model climate solutions" - we HAVE climate solutions, what we lack is the political will to fight fossil fuel lobbyists, and AI can't help with that). On top of that, I see genAI as the next step in humanity's self-destructive mission to outsource all of our inherent mental capacity - for creativity, memorization, learning - to machines. Never has a society with so many resources at its disposal been so DUMB, and I'm afraid it's getting worse.

With all this in mind (and I've not even touched on the debate about plagiarism, but as a writer you can guess where I land on that), I've been frankly disgusted by the overwhelming, unconditional enthusiasm EVERYONE seems to have adopted with regards to genAI. I understand – it's a shiny new toy, it does genuinely cool things. It's one of those 'advancements' we're not going to be able to remember how we ever got along without. I'm definitely not in the camp of people who thinks it's useless or just a fad, don't get me wrong. What I find disturbing is that everyone is suddenly such a simp for it, everyone is suddenly an expert. My friend groups are WAY more interested in discussing every minute detail about DeepSeek than in, I don't know, the million horrifying things that are currently taking place in global and US politics.

I've had friends tell me "people who are complaining about AI are just delusional and need to get with the program." And these are people who are high enough on the socioeconomic ladder that they don't really need to worry about losing jobs because of AI. They are the people who will be exploiting AI to make even more money than they already do, probably also laying people off in the process. And they act... almost AROUSED by it. I find it totally disgusting, tasteless, and inhuman that they're welcoming this tech with such unquestioning enthusiasm, totally unconcerned for the very real impact it's going to have on people not in their social class. On the planet.

So I guess in summary, my sadrant is: I feel super alienated socially ever since AI became THE trending topic, I notice myself getting triggered and angry or zoning out when it comes up in conversation (and it always does), and I've started to express boundaries with people to steer conversations away from AI, but I don't really think this is the right solution as I am in general against policing other peoples' behavior, but I don't know what else to do. Find new friends? Leave society and join a tech-free commune? I've tried expressing my views to open up dialogue but people are just NOT interested. It's like if you're not jerking off to the latest AI development, your opinion isn't valued. I know I come off as a naive rosary-thumber. I know, trust me. Guess I'm just wondering if anyone else feels the same frustration and if they've been able to do anything to ease their mental distress.