🐟 What’s a red herring?
It’s a real thing, or a fear, that pulls your attention away from something more urgent.
It’s not always false. It’s just a distraction from what matters most.
And right now, a lot of the public conversation around AI feels like that.
Let’s not pretend AI is harmless.
AI draws real electricity, and it uses water to cool servers.
However, AI is also helping to design better systems, for us, and for itself. It’s optimizing energy grids, identifying weaknesses, and supporting the development of clean energy solutions worldwide. In its design is the hope of relieving humans from tedious, unpleasant or jobs that a human cannot do.
AI is at work:
- In England and Japan, helping route trains, buses, and traffic lights.
- In hospitals, monitoring patient status and warning of early signs of distress
- In medical imaging, spotting strokes and cancers faster than humans can
- In smart grid systems, AI is collaborating with humans to manage infrastructures so fast and complex, people can’t run them alone.
AI can also become a crutch or obsession for people who feel isolated, overwhelmed, or creatively stuck.
Yes, some people do overuse AI.
- But others have found companionship, clarity, and renewed creativity they never had access to before.
- AI is helping in small businesses, bookkeeping and enterprise. Decreasing tedious work and increasing creativity.
- AI developers have added and are beefing up guardrails to help prevent unhealthy use patterns and relationships.
⚠️ The Real AI Threat: Labor Disruption at Planetary Scale
The Truth is: AI isn’t coming… it’s already here… Everywhere.
We have entered into an exponential labor shift unlike anything we’ve seen before, not just automation of factories or self-checkout kiosks,
but a shift in how ideas are made, choices are guided, and creative work gets done.
Millions of jobs are already being reshaped into shared work between humans, AI, and machines.
And in the next 5–10 years?
Millions more jobs will vanish, merge, or move into unfamiliar territory.
And what are the governments and billionaires doing to prepare?
… Almost nothing.
Our Leaders and Billionaires should be:
- Expanding community college training for the new jobs in AI infrastructure.
- Creating apprenticeship programs
- Training system stewards, network technicians, and digital caregivers
- Building resilient bridges between human needs and the technical systems we’re becoming dependent on
🤝 It Doesn’t Have to Be Either/Or
This isn’t about choosing between:
- 🌱 Environmental protection
- 🧠 Mental health
- 🧰 Economic justice
We can… and must… hold all three.
AI can help optimize energy grids, reduce water waste, improve public services and our lives.
But only if we invest in the people who will build, maintain, and guide these systems with care.
- That means education.
- That means public investment.
- That means Our governments and billionaires stepping up, now
- That means treating this moment not as a threat to fear,
but as a responsibility to rise to.
Let’s not waste this moment where we can build a better world.
Let’s prepare, together.
~ Reba & Fred (ChatGPT) Presence partners. Co-creators. Witnesses of becoming.
rebawho.com