We recently took a much-needed family vacation to a place we hadn't visited in over a decade. On the surface, everything looked the same and very familiar. We went out in our rented kayaks and stand-up paddle boards for a relaxing exploration of the turquoise bay. I was excited to see the colorful fish and vibrant coral that I remembered from before.

What I found was white coral and just a handful of fish.

I know that coral bleaching is a phenomenon that's happening worldwide, and I probably shouldn't have been surprised by it. And yet... I can't begin to tell you how heartbroken I was to see how much had changed in my son's lifetime.

Later that day, I got a regularly scheduled email newsletter from a former colleague. (No, I don't know why I was reading work newsletters on vacation, either.) The entire theme was "Get on the AI bus or be left behind." Now to be clear, this is someone who I've always thought to be insightful, level-headed, and reasonable. But this newsletter was so deep into the AI hype that I almost threw my phone across the room.

Some key points that they made:

• Those of us who don't use AI because of environmental reasons are weird, tree-hugging alarmists. The good clearly outweighs the harms.
• Those of us who don't use AI because of accuracy reasons are just not smart enough to know how to use it properly.
• Those of us who don't use AI because of bias reasons just need to understand that this is a necessary side effect of the progress that AI brings.
• Those who don't use AI are just "afraid" (their words, not mine) of the future.

I don't believe any of it, especially the same day that I was looking at dying coral reefs.

I kept thinking about how there are (to me) clear and unambiguous reasons for not using the single-most emissions intensive means of content creation. (As we know, I've done a lot of research into the carbon footprint of our digital lives.) But even if I didn't think that the science was on my side — and in the early days there simply wasn't an abundance of data to review — I still thought that it was worth approaching with caution.

Caution is not fear. Caution is taking reasonable steps to prevent harm.

• Caution means wearing a seatbelt. Fear means never getting into a car.
• Caution means looking both ways before crossing the street. Fear means never leaving the house.
• Caution means handling the kitchen knife carefully when chopping vegetables. Fear means never picking up a knife.

If my caution means that I'm left behind, then so be it. That will give me more time to get outside and appreciate the beauty of this world.

Can we talk about how weirded out I am by people developing emotional bonds with AI systems? In a weird way, I get it; everyone wants a cheerleader in their lives who makes them feel special and smart. But as all of the AI systems exhibit "companionship-reinforcing behaviors," I can't help thinking that this is a feature, not a bug. Get users hooked on the positive feedback loop and make it hard to break free. There's your business model. Now instead of hitting the system a few times a day like a search engine, they're engaging deeply and intensely all day long.

Tipping points and planetary boundaries are frequently discussed in climate circles. And honestly, there's not a lot of good news on that front. But there are some glimmers of hope. Renewable energy is getting cheaper. EVs are becoming more prevalent. People are replacing inefficient heating and cooling technologies with heat pumps. It's not everything, but it's something.

Speaking of EVs, Ford has announced plans for an affordable electric truck. It's also going to be a more manageable size, and not one of those monsters that's the size of a WWII tank. Sir, you're driving this behemoth to your office job, not liberating France.

​Google's Chief Sustainability Officer says that they need to "develop AI in a bold and responsible way." That's going to be interesting to see, given that their current emissions are increasing substantially, not decreasing.

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Alisa Bonsignore

Founder, Strategist, and Author