Off The Grid: Leaving Social Media đ¤ 3 Reasons You Feel So Conflicted About AI
Mar 27, 2026
The conversation names three core sources of tension about AI and links them to familiar social media harms. It explores how AIâs efficiency conflicts with personal values and intensifies productivity pressures. The environmental and labor costs behind AI are highlighted. Listeners are offered harm-reduction steps and a suggestion to create a personal AI policy.
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AI Mirrors Social Media Harms
- AI often replicates the harmful patterns of social media companies, like content appropriation and opaque ownership.
- Amelia cites court documentation about Anthropic using books for training and compares platform terms that let companies use user content freely.
AI Feels Good Because It Actually Works
- AI can feel emotionally rewarding because it affirms creators and reliably produces outputs, unlike social media algorithms that stopped showing their work.
- Amelia describes listeners who found social media stopped working but found AI 'works' by writing emails and validating ideas.
Productivity Promise Often Increases Work
- AI is sold as the ultimate productivity hack, but it usually raises expectations and workload rather than freeing time.
- Amelia references early research showing workers who integrate AI end up with more tasks, not more leisure.