The Lotus and the Algorithm

I’ve been in an ongoing personal exploration and investigation of AI lately.

Not from a distance. I’ve been using it. A lot. Taking some particularly deep dives into, “What happens if I say or ask this…?” to determine what the actual limitations and patterns are.

I use it to support my work and my writing. Mostly, it helps me clarify and distill my own ideas so I can get faster, sharper access to what it is I actually want to say.

And I’m super careful. I am curating a tool. I am working with deep intention and attention not to let a bot become my voice. If it sounds generic or not like me, if it does all the chat-vibe things, it’s out. I keep my language. I keep my rhythm. I generate my own ideas and arc as the input.

I also use it to aggregate research-based information on things I’m curious about.

And I am curious about a lot, especially around social norms, stigma, bias, culture. I am constantly educating myself and trying to understand more deeply my questions, which all kind of boil down to: “How did we get here?”

And every time, the answers that come back feel… progressive.

It feels like it carries real values. A worldview.

And because that worldview seems to align with mine, I question it.

Is this neutral?

Is this fact?

Is this ideology dressed up as research?

So I’ve interrogated it. Repeatedly.

What keeps coming back, from every angle I feed it, is that it isn’t programmed with ethics or morals. It’s programmed with safety protocols. And those safety protocols are rooted in research, research that shows harassment, shaming, racism, fatphobia, homophobia, stigma, misogyny (etc, etc) - these things measurably increase harm. Depression. Anxiety. Isolation. Violence. [Yes, I know also ironic considering the corporate darkness of many of the actual companies].

So this platform, the one I use (yes, the big one!) at least, is designed for harm reduction??

This is fascinating to me.

Because yes, AI largely aggregates what exists online. And yes, the internet is loud with cruelty. But the layer it is trained to prioritize is the layer that says harm hurts humans.

Which means something else must also be true.

Despite the moment we’re in, despite how much anger and hate feels amplified right now, the broader body of human research and recorded knowledge overwhelmingly says that shaming, stigmatizing, and dehumanizing people damages us.

That is not nothing.

And weirdly… that gives me hope.

What if, beneath the noise, the aggregate human record actually shows that the vast majority, the true pulse of the current human collective heartbeat, is that we want less harm. Less shame. Less dehumanization. More wellness. More dignity. More safety.

That doesn’t mean we’re there.

It doesn’t mean the platforms are pure.

It certainly doesn’t mean power structures are benevolent.

But it does suggest something about us.

I’m not particularly afraid of AI. I can see the long arc of the human story. We are, by nearly every measurable metric, more whole, more healthy, more connected than we have ever been, even when the news cycle screams otherwise.

I am personally news-abstinent. It’s a deep act of self care. I intake zero.

But even if you’re not, maybe this offers a breath:

The largest pattern recognition systems in the world are being trained on the understanding that harming humans harms humans.

And honestly? That makes me smile.