AI is the devil, and we need to turn if off everywhere we can. Let’s get to it. I’m a Windows user so some of this is not going to apply to other OSes.
Disable AI in Word
1. From the menubar, go to File > Options > Trust Center
2. Click the Trust Center button
3. Go to Privacy Options
4. Click Privacy Settings button
5. Scroll down and uncheck the “Turn on all connected experiences”
Kill AI in Windows (aka CoPilot)
Disabling CoPilot
1. Click the start button
2. Type “Settings” (and select it)
3. Goto Personalization
4. Goto Taskbar and expand it
5. Find the Copilot option and turn it off
Uninstalling Copilot
1. Click start
2. Type “add or remove”
3. Select “Add or Remove programs”
4. Find Copilot on the list and remove it
Change Default Search Engine in Web Browser
Both Google and Bing now use AI heavily in their search engines, which scrapes content off the web and leads you away from visiting the actual site with information. This has downstream effects (not just lost sales) on content creators (writers such as myself). For now, I recommend DuckDuckGo. Chrome and Edge are still doing AI stuff, so you may want to consider a different browser. However, if they are installed, I recommend doing this in them so you don’t inadvertently use more AI.
Chrome Directions
1. Open Chrome browser
2. Click the triple dot icon in the top right corner
3. Select Settings
4. Select Search Engine
5. Click the Change button
6. Select the search engine you want to use (ex. DuckDuckGo)
7. Click the “Set as Default” button
8. Close all instances of the browser so changes take effect
Change Default Search Engine in Edge
1. Open Edge browser
2. Click the 3 horizontal dots button near the address bar
3. Choose “Settings”
4. Select Copilot and sidebar
5. Expand the Copilot section
6. Turn off all the copilot options
7. Click on “privacy, search, and services” from the sidebar menu
8. Check out the Privacy section and toggle anything you want to adjust
9. Check out the services section and turn off things you don’t like/need
a. There’s all sorts of things that kick off notifications and offers in there
10. Expand the “Address bar and Search” section
11. Set the Search Engine you want in the drop-down (ex. DuckDuckGo)
12. Close all instances of the Edge browser so changes take effect
Switch to a Web Browser with No AI
At the moment, FireFox is still AI free, sort of. They added a chatbot that you can ignore.
Turn off AI in iPhone
They call it Apple Intelligence. If you have a newer phone and iOS 18.1 or higher, here’s how to turn it off:
1. Go to Settings > Apple Intelligence
2. Toggle off Apple Intelligence
3. Confirm when it prompts
Turn off AI in Android
I have one device that runs Android, but I did include an article link in the References section. Since I can’t try it I’m not pasting in directions that I can’t even rewrite in my own words.
Why No AI?
If you got this far and don’t have your own reasons why you are concerned with the integration of AI with applications that already have a record of data mining you, I don’t see what I could say that would convince you. But I do have reasons.
Privacy
Leakage of your scraped data to the public/bad actors
Content scraping to train AI without payment or direct authorization
Data-mining (They Know Who You Are)
Skill Devaluation
Diminishing skills by letting the machine do the work
Corporations benefit while workers lose jobs
Lazy folks who didn’t practice and learn benefit from stolen work of people who did
Environmental Protection (AI uses tons of energy)
White Privilege and Cultural Damage
ESL writers are being told to use AI and it is damaging their work
Most training datasets are dominated by white people sources
Racist Results
Substandard, untrustable output
AI is producing a median output
Someone who lacks skill to create it, lacks skill to identify flaws and fix them
Was it sourced with permission
Was it trained on an AI-spammed internet
I am not against machine learning for data analysis like gene folding, protein splicing, etc. Science. Stuff a human can’t readily do because it’s tiny and there’s billions of data elements to identify a pattern. Generative AI is none of that. It attempts to create content that is a median summary of all the stolen knowledge. Creatives have always studied from others, but that’s not what Generative AI is really doing. No creative person in the history of the world would want the next generation of creatives to lose their vocation because the lazy and the rich just want to push a button to get content they can sell or get likes from.
References
댓글