I have been on this quiet crusade against my own, and others’, use of AI. People have started to call me out on it by saying, “Why do you hate ChatGPT so much?” That question made me reflect on and interrogate what exactly I’m resisting. I noticed a belief I hold that AI has conservatism baked into every aspect of it.
My reluctance isn’t technophobic, I understand the power and potential of artificial intelligence, and to a degree recognise it as an extraordinary human achievement. I just find it ironic that the same humans who helped create this super-intelligent computer are the ones encouraging its use to minimise human involvement.
I believe that AI’s widespread use, especially unquestioningly welcoming it into our lives, reinforces a worldview that prioritises efficiency over nuance. In recent months, especially as I’ve watched more people around me lean on this tool, I can’t help but see its usage promote values that align disturbingly well with conservative populism – namely deference to authority, suspicion of intellectualism and individualism masquerading as empowerment.
When I try to explain this to people, I realise how conspiratorial I sound. As if I’m muttering, “This is what they want you to do,” while clutching a tinfoil hat. The ‘they’ in question is a capitalist system that rewards conformity and thrives on our desire to feel efficient and in control.
Using academia as an example, AI tools can locate articles and summarise complex texts in seconds, and what begins as a time-saving convenience quickly becomes a shortcut that bypasses the intellectual labour of learning.
I’m not proud to admit that when ChatGPT launched during my final year at university, overwhelmed by a challenging essay, I let ChatGPT write large chunks of it. I told myself it was a pragmatic choice to avoid failure. However, despite many claims that AI democratises information, I learned far less from that assignment than from the ones I struggled through myself.
What I did learn is how seductive anti-intellectualist sentiment can be when masked by language of efficiency. I could have asked my professor for help, but instead I chose the easy route, and in doing so inadvertently aligned my thinking with a mindset I believed I opposed.
This is where the political dimension of AI use became obvious to me. The mindset that often accompanies reliance on AI means relying on a single, centralised ‘intelligence’ to simplify complexity, rather than the more complex prospect of wrestling with conflicting viewpoints. With conservatism, and more extremely, authoritarianism, complexity is traded for clarity. The idea of “cutting through the noise” and “telling it like it is” is all over the alt-right sphere – it’s basically page one of the alt-right grifter manual.
I am no longer seeing it as much of a leap between the likes of Joe Rogan appealing to the uncomplicated everyman and the simplification and shrinking of nuance and humanity in AI. When we let AI think for us, even in small ways, we begin to erode our capacity for the messy hard work of independent thought, which leaves us open to the quick, simple fixes that the alt-right promises.
We are seeing within this right wing a rebranding of (especially the young) people on the right as more down-to-earth, ‘real’ people, speaking the common sense left behind by the rise of progressive politics. This rebrand relies on an attitude that dismiss academics as elitist and celebrates “common sense” over expertise. AI amplifies the cultural drift toward simplicity, suspicion, and submission to authority.
I think we should be cautious of the use AI for all the so-called menial thinking tasks it supposedly frees us from. I’ve seen people in my life use it for meal plans, travel itineraries, career and even moral advice. You could argue these are low-stakes uses, but they signal a willingness to outsource not just tasks, but judgement.
The paradox of right-wing rhetoric promoting ‘free thinking’ and ‘your own research’ while just parroting the same talking point is just as present in AI. It makes you think you’re making life easier, but instead it is actually decreasing your ability to make hard decisions.
We are all exhausted. Late capitalism demands constant self-optimisation, and it’s no wonder people want tools that make life easier. However, this time-saving efficiency mindset mirrors the conservative influencers that promote the importance of strict discipline and manicured, time-optimised routines aimed at squeezing maximum productivity from every day. They push the idea that output and personal growth are morally virtuous. And AI fits perfectly into that narrative, flattening individuality under the guise of self-improvement.
The irony is that with alt-right neoliberal individualism – which encourages you to see yourself less as a person and more of a project – you think only about yourself, while losing everything about yourself that makes you unique.
I can’t help but feel that every question outsourced to AI that could be thought through for yourself becomes a small step towards a gradual withdrawal from the process of living our lives. We no longer trust ourselves to make small decisions. We’re encouraged to believe that algorithms know us better than we know ourselves.
Most of the AI content online that is targeted my way features a smug young man in his bedroom, speaking on behalf of a tech company. He tells me my life is a mess, and I need an AI assistant to make every decision for me. I don’t believe these companies are directly malicious – rather they are just eager to monetise the human impulse to feel less overwhelmed. However, I do think they do so without considering long-term consequences of pushing a belief that thinking for yourself is wasteful, that slowing down is a liability, and that your intuition is an obstacle to efficiency.
The end goal, I feel, might be that the ideal human is an effortless productivity machine. The less you think, the more you can do.
AI promises a freedom from burden, but the more we depend on it, the more we become entangled in a system that thrives on disconnection. Conservative capitalism doesn’t want you to think collectively. It wants you atomised, hyper-productive, and too distracted with individualism to notice the structures holding you in place.
Conservatism, at its root, needs you to stop thinking for yourself and simultaneously to only think about yourself. And AI is such a powerful tool in allowing you to do both.
It is our responsibility to use AI as a tool for learning, not a shortcut for doing. The stakes are higher than grades or grocery lists. The more we abandon the difficult, time-consuming work of thinking critically and collaboratively, the more vulnerable we become – to authoritarianism, to populism, and to losing what makes us human in the first place.
