generative AI and the Honorable Harvest

I come from settler colonial stock and, more specifically, from a religious tradition that was (and still is!) pretty keen on imposing a particular identity on Indigenous peoples. I am the kind of person who really ought to be reading more Indigenous perspectives, but I’m also cautious about promoting those perspectives in my writing, lest I rely on a superficial, misguided understanding and then pat myself on the back for the great job I’m doing.

This tension is my way of introducing a post that’s inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s excellent Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Reading the book over the summer was an amazing experience for me and gave me words and frameworks for vague ideas that had been bouncing around in my head for a while. In particular, I was surprised—given the book’s emphasis on nature and the environment—by how much it spoke to some ideas that I’ve been trying to flesh out concerning modern, digital technologies. I don’t know that I’ll ever succeed at loving the natural world in the way that Kimmerer so clearly does, but I find some relief that I’m able to apply what she writes about to the worlds that I move and work in, and I hope it’s not the kind of appropriation that I’ve been worried about since I first thought about writing this blog post.

There are a number of passages of the book that stood out to me in this way, but I can’t find all of them right now (time to reread the book—and this time a print copy so I can copy things down in a way I couldn’t when listening). I have, however, found the essay that stood out most to me, one on the Honorable Harvest. Kimmerer introduces this idea as most relevant to the plants and animals that we consume and extends it to the idea of consumerism more broadly. What stood out to me as I listened to her read the essay was how much it related to questions of digital labor that I’ve long been concerned about—especially as they relate to generative AI.

First, some background. Here’s how Kimmerer summarizes the idea of the Honorable Harvest, as though it were codified into formal guidelines:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first. Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

Now, back to generative AI—and other questions of digital labor. My chief concern about generative AI as I’ve learned more about it in recent years is the way that it seems to epitomize an unhealthy consumerism. There’s undeniable utilitarian attraction in what generative AI offers, even if we can (and should) quibble about how good it actually is at what it does and when it’s actually worth using. My concern goes deeper, though: For all the other questions that I think need to be resolved about this tech, I see at its core a business model—one that wants to collect and model as cheaply as possible the digital data that others have generated so that whoever is doing the collection and modeling can profit handsomely from a product that it sells to users.

One of the difficult things about this being my core concern about generative AI is that I don’t know what policies or regulations should be put in place to respond to it. I’m open to the possibility that the wrong policies and regulations could do more damage than good. At the end of the day, though, my concerns aren’t so much at the level of policy as they are about a deeper level of ethics. Generative AI—and so many other instances of digital labor—seem to violate a basic human ethic that Kimmerer lays out in her articulation of the Honorable Harvest.

Some caveats: First, it’s important to admit that my own research can be understood as an exploitation of digital labor and a violation of the Honorable Harvest, so I have some reckoning of my own to do. Second, while I think that contemporary consumerist cultures are in the wrong, and while I think that impossible ideals are worth striving for, I doubt that the ideals of the Honorable Harvest have ever been fully lived out. Third, some of these principles don’t translate perfectly into the realm of the digital—it’s hard to talk about waste or scarcity in the same way. Fourth, even though it’s what draws me to Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway and other anarchist-inflected writings, I can’t help feel but perceive some naïveté in the idea that “everyone just needs to live more ethically, and that will fix our problems.”

Yet, as a citizen and a (baby) minister, I do think that our cultures and societies need to undergo a kind of conversion experience so that we can do away with the problems of generative AI as it currently exists. Not a conversion to any particular religion, per se, but rather a conversion to a different ethical framework—and I think the Honorable Harvest ought to be part of that.

• macro
• Communities
• settler colonialism
• Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Braiding Sweetgrass
• Mormonism
• generative AI
• digital labor
• consumerism
• indigeneity
• Honorable Harvest
• Walkaway
• anarchism