Off The Grid: Leaving Social Media 🤖 What AI Actually Costs: Transmuting Shame Into Erotic Self-Respect — with Ayana Zaire Cotton
Apr 1, 2026
Ayana Zaire Cotton, founder of Seeda School and author of the essay on transmuting AI shame, is a teacher of Erotic Engineering — a method for aligning desire with capacity. She explains why she paused using AI, explores the ecological and labor costs of current tools, and outlines practices for slowing down, reclaiming self-respect, and choosing technology that matches values.
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Early Personal Use Led To Deep Questions
- Ayana first tried ChatGPT in 2023 but returned in 2025 when it helped with travel itineraries, plumbing identification, and admin tasks.
- That quick shift from curiosity to using AI for operations led her to question why she was outsourcing tasks that connect to capacity and desire.
AI Extends Capacity But May Undermine Somatic Limits
- AI can extend capacity in ways that make us feel safer doing more, but that may conflict with bodies that want to do less.
- Ayana noticed AI enabled productivity that bypassed her body's call for slowness, prompting ethical and somatic questions.
AI Is Fundamentally A Labor And Extraction Issue
- Ayana reframes AI as a labor conversation about entitlement to unpaid work and who bears extraction costs.
- She invokes examples and commentary suggesting we must reckon with planetary and human extraction behind 'free' AI outputs.
