I’m not a big fan of artificial intelligence. That might surprise some of you who know me as a tech-friendly nerd who bought my first PC in my early 20s, leapt onto the Internet as soon as it was remotely possible, and has owned a variety of different gadgets — things like Palm Pilots, Blackberries, tablets, and more — over the years.

I recently added a Kindle Paperweight to my collection, and picked up an old Windows 8 cell phone last year just because I thought it was cool.

But I’m not a fan of A.I. And there are a few reasons for it.

First, and maybe the easiest one to point to, is the environmental impact of this technology. The power required to both train and maintain these systems is massive and a substantial amount of water is required to keep it all running nice and cool (which is how computers like to be for maximum functionality — kind of like me).

Now maybe this would be an acceptible sacrifice if artificial intelligence was an amazing technology that was making the world a better place, but frankly, it’s not, or affecting our lives in generally positive ways.

But it’s not.

At best, it makes entertaining, if kind of soulless, cartoons. At worst, it just gets things wrong, even as it attempts to replace actual human beings who are capable of doing the same things better, but maybe not as quickly.

Current A.I. models aren’t actually artificial intelligence, at least not in the way that most sci-fi writers (or consumers) would think of it. These aren’t systems that are capable of gaining sentience in the same way that Skynet does in the Terminator franchise, or any of the other fictional approaches to A.I. — which, I feel like it should be reiterated, almost exclusively function as warnings to avoid this type of tech — and for that I’m grateful.

What they are is artificial communication devices. They’re able to take the information that they have access to and provide it to you in a manner that feels, to the end user, like you’re talking to a person instead of a computer.

Someone recently asked me if I’d ever consider using A.I to proof the content in the Chronicle. The answer was, emphatically, no, and the reason is because I don’t trust A.I. Not that I don’t trust it to gain sentience and try to destroy us all, but because I don’t trust it to do the most basic thing: be correct.

Current A.I. is only as good as the information it has access to, and most of those A.I. systems are being trained and learning from the Internet at large which, if you haven’t noticed, is awash in misinformation, disinformation, lies, and god knows what else.

And now we have sites that are posting articles created with A.I., that are being fact-checked with A.I., and there’s no third party around to make sure that any of that information is accurate. Meanwhile, that information is being fed back into A.I. to train the next iteration of those models.

Pardon me if I don’t find that systetem particularly trustworthy.

There are some things that A.I. seems to be better at than others, and I don’t really fault the average person for wanting to play around with it. If you find it helps you to organize your notes or format your documents, or if you’d like to use it to make a little comic strip for your family, I don’t really think it’s hurting anyone too badly (outside of the aforementioned environmental impacts, which, again, not ideal). But A.I. has no business touching any attempts at actually creating something, whether it’s a song, a painting, or a newspaper.

Now, where did I put that 10-year-old Windows phone.