Earlier this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei likened Artificial Intelligence (AI) to an out-of-control bus; it’s something that “can’t be stopped or even slowed,” something only controllable by frantic steering. In an interview this September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called AI “an inevitability” and stated that artificial intelligence is already smarter than human beings. In 2023, director of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology’s AI initiative Jürgen Schmidhuber said that “you cannot stop it [AI],” that we “shouldn’t stop it” because it “make[s] human lives longer and healthier and easier.” Even one of my professors here at Swarthmore said on our first day of class: “you’d be foolish not to use AI in your research.”
Ironically enough, just a decade ago when AI was still in its nascent stage as a narrow machine learning tool, Sam Altman joked that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world.” What we have been conditioned to believe is an inescapable, unstoppable force, is also the very thing that will lead to humanity’s demise. How are we expected to just accept that?
But it seems like most of my world already has — multiple Swarthmore professors have harped on the importance of being “AI-literate,” my parents are constantly urging me to stop being so thick-skinned and just give in and let AI make my life easier, and every doomscroll introduces me to ten new AI chatbots begging to be clicked on. In the 2020s, the influx of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) in our everyday lives has been unprecedented. Over one billion people use standalone AI tools each month, and as of November 2026, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has recorded 1.2 billion weekly active users, adding a whopping 200 million users since just September. Every Google search that comes with an inescapable “AI Overview,” artificially generated content is becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and advertisements for the newest-most-efficient-AI-powered-study-tool never ceases to tantalize students. AI companies are encroaching on the political world as well, with OpenAI and Anthropic channeling roughly $100 million into 2026 midterm campaigns to leverage congressional allies that might influence friendly oversight regarding AI regulation. The ubiquity of AI is not slowing down anytime soon.
And is it even possible to slow it down? We have been indoctrinated to believe that this novel technology is something that simply cannot be stopped, a freight train that will crush any human stupid enough to stand in its tracks. Tech leaders deliberately frame AI as an integral next step in the trajectory of human development and innovation, something necessary to achieve our full potential as a species.
This is not the truth. That is simply a ploy to manipulate us to willingly forgo our agency to resist. Our mass conviction that engaging with AI is a non-negotiable reality is the consequence of a successful psy-op drilled into our skulls by corporations that benefit from our belief in it.
The narrative of inevitability is an illusion that affirms the power of the techlords that perpetuate it — if AI is truly this impending juggernaut that is destined to overtake our lives, then we have no choice but to surrender to its will. This ruse is only perpetuated to evade accountability and justify further innovation at the expense of human jobs, environmental destruction, and the erosion of critical thinking. If we accept this story, corporations are granted the go-ahead to continue building advanced technologies that may outpace humanity’s own development. After all, they must fulfill the tale they’ve created. Nowadays, this narrative is not only being disseminated by those in power — it is being collectively reinforced and reflected by the public who willfully subscribe to this story. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are enabling. But that doesn’t make it true, and it is now more important than ever to break apart from the hegemony. AI is only inevitable if we let it be.
There is a difference between unavoidability and inevitability. While we might not be able to shield our eyes and completely ignore AI dangling in front of our faces, we are not required to engage with it either. That is a choice. It is always a choice. A professor of responsible Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University in Sweden argues that technology does not simply happen to us, but “reflects deliberate human decisions about what we build, who benefits, and what kind of future we want to create.” When we succumb to the will of tech billionaires whose lives’ purposes are to hoard as much money as possible, we are putting our future in their hands. We must fight to reclaim the ability to dictate the future for ourselves. Technology is a product of humans, and therefore we as humans have the power to stop it.
Somehow, the idea of rejecting AI has been conflated with ignorance or deliberate naïvete. I personally have been told countless times that an AI-free future is just “wishful thinking,” that my staunch opposition is just performative moral posturing to appear superior to those who engage with it. This complacency, this unquestioning acceptance, this choice to so easily submit to something that makes our lives mildly more convenient, is exactly what these corporations bank on. This tacit embrace is more dangerous than we think — when we ostracize those who don’t subscribe to the narratives we’re fed, we essentially become mouthpieces for the corporations we willingly bow down to.
While it is undeniable that AI has the potential to make our lives more efficient, there are clear detriments to regularly engaging with AI on both an individual and global scale. As someone who still values the importance of critical thinking, discomfort, and friction, I strongly feel that we as students should be more inclined to resist colloquialized AI usage. A global survey by the Digital Education Council reported that 86% of students use AI for education purposes, with 54% using it weekly and nearly 25% using it daily. College students are increasingly seeking out generative AI to attain quick solutions with minimal effort, and 93% of higher education staff expect to expand their use of AI in academia. While it may feel as if you will be left behind if you don’t conform to this mass usage, there are severe, lasting effects engendered through this dependence. Developing a reliance on AI only threatens students’ cognitive development and critical thinking by offloading mentally challenging tasks that may be integral to the learning process. Human progress is predicated on this uniquely human capacity for innovation and creativity, and a world reliant on a device that simply regurgitates what already exists is catastrophic for our future.
The environmental consequences are arguably even more destructive. A single ChatGPT request requires ten times more electricity than a Google search, and by 2030, AI growth is projected to add 24 to 44 million metric tons of CO₂ to the atmosphere annually in the U.S. alone, and global data centers are projected to consume up to 945 terawatt-hours of electricity (nearly triple the combined electricity use of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria).
On an interpersonal level, the ubiquity of AI has only exacerbated the growing hyperindividualization and chasm of human disconnection in the digital age. A study by the Survey Center on American Life reported that only 13% of adults in the U.S. now have ten or more close friends (down from 33% in 1990), and the number of those with zero close friends grew from 3% to 12% by 2021. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisor has declared loneliness a public health epidemic. AI companions that substitute real, interpersonal relationships see hundreds of millions of users each day, amplifying social withdrawal. In a world where communal spaces are dwindling and face-to-face human connection is few and far between, talking to an AI chatbot perennially at our fingertips is more dangerous than we may think. When the line between machine and human grows blurrier, when educators endeavor to reduce face-to-face teaching and personalized digital assistants lurk in the corner of every search tab, will there reach a point when the need for human effort is outgrown?
But that will never be the case. However many times I am accused of willfully deceiving myself into an ignorant bliss, I will continue screaming from the rooftops about the beauty and ability of the human spirit — and there are many people who are actively fighting for this truth. Artistic industries are at the forefront of championing human-made stories. CEO of the stop-motion animation studio LAIKA, Travis Knight, argues that AI is “plagiarism” and “theft” that “has no soul … [a] machine does not know what it feels like to lose someone. A machine has never fallen in love. A.I. has no humanity.” Over 200 music artists such as Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, and Stevie Wonder signed open letters demanding protections against predatory AI voice cloning, likeness theft, and AI model training. Painters and illustrators Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz, and Sarah Andersen have filed lawsuits against developers that fed their artwork into AI systems used to train image-generators. When Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro was asked about his stance on using AI, he simply replied: “I’d rather die.”
Despite what tech leaders want you to believe, AI is not yet something we are completely dependent on — it is not a crucial life source like food or energy that humans must utilize in order to survive. If all AI models were to magically disappear tomorrow, society would still persist. As actress Carrie Coon said, “[The techno-fascists] have to divide and conquer us because they know that if we realize that everyone downstream of the billionaires have to work together in order to survive … we [will come] for them. So they have to keep us apart.” Don’t let the techno-fascists win. Stand up! If AI is truly an unstoppable force, we must be the immovable object. AI is never necessary. There is always a choice. While it may attempt to sink its claws into every facet of our lives, we can always make the conscious decision to yank them away. There are ways to actively resist and not let our lives be dictated by machines trained on our humanity. There is always a choice.
