Amanda Pleau lives in Bath.

At the annual Maine Tourism Conference recently held in Rockport, keynote speaker Janette Roush, chief AI officer and SVP of innovation at Brand USA, spent 45 minutes attempting to convince the room that using AI to improve productivity is the way of the future.

Her AI put together her PowerPoint presentation, and created a list of tasks for the day. She has her AI review transcripts of phone calls to prepare for meetings. Meanwhile, the sold-out crowd of 350 waited for news of Gov. Janet Mills’ veto on the bill to ban data centers in Maine.

Roush said that the environmental problem with using AI is that companies aren’t overseeing the use of AI for efficiency and a superfluous number of workers are using Chat GPT in secret on their phone to do their work. In addition, she compared the decision to use AI to eating meat — another moral choice for which one individual’s habits is a drop in the bucket. 

First, I’d like to acknowledge that Pandora’s box has already opened; we can’t go back to a world before AI. Early on, I dabbled with AI. I’ve also smoked a few cigarettes — trying something isn’t an endorsement. There are folks for whom AI is a big part of their day, their lives, and many don’t have a choice. They’re probably very lonely. 

AI doesn’t improve efficiency, it replaces jobs, ruins skill sets and your memory.

AI models were trained on the work of writers and artists without their consent, which is unethical. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but paying for AI does not help local economies; it goes in the pockets of the richest people on the planet. Didn’t we learn our lesson with Poland Spring? Stop using Maine’s natural resources to up the ante. 

In the ballroom in Rockport, someone who works in the windjammer fleet, Maine’s historic sailing vessels, asked what AI for productivity has to do with Mainers, specifically, who still go out there and get dirty. Another representative from a nonprofit nature center asked how we can reasonably use AI while protecting our arts and culture. Some of us were clearly fired up. 

Recently, I was asked to co-present at a local conference with two other professionals I had just met in the cultural industry, and I sent my slide deck to my co-presenter later than I had planned. My co-presenter stayed up late into the wee hours of the morning adapting my part so everything looked cohesive and professional. I was embarrassed, but deeply grateful. We bonded over the experience and now regularly share professional resources and gossip. That’s an experience I’ll never share with a bot.

In Maine, we work on old boats, protected land and historic landmarks in addition to screens; we “touch grass” and get dirty. They say “forged by nature” — not AI.