This is an opinion from the Center.
Every week now, it feels like artificial intelligence unveils a new breakthrough. As a millennial, I’ve watched technology evolve from flip phones to ChatGPT, and I’ll admit, it’s been nothing short of incredible. My boyhood sci-fi dreams come true almost daily. We truly live in an amazing age.
But I’m not blind to the darker side of progress. In a recent press briefing, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Utah Governor Spencer Cox warned that social media is a “cancer”, urging Americans to step away, touch grass, and reconnect with real human relationships. He’s right. Technology has made our lives easier, but it’s also eating away at our attention, our empathy, and maybe even our morality.
AI tools like ChatGPT have become part of my daily life, replacing Google for quick information and simplifying monotonous tasks. But recently, OpenAI’s announcement that ChatGPT will begin including erotic content starting in December has sparked widespread unease. The announcement comes less than a year after the company introduced parental controls, following reports of AI-related mental health crises.
When I shared this news with friends, the reactions were nearly identical: “Society is over.” “We’re doomed.” Their frustration speaks to a deeper concern, not just with AI itself, but with what we as a society are choosing to normalize.
What’s most troubling, however, is the media’s response, or lack thereof. Major outlets like The Guardian (Left bias) and CNBC (lean left) have reported the change as a plain fact: “ChatGPT will now include erotic content.” No editorial comment. No moral questioning. No discussion of the cultural implications. Some might call that objectivity. I call it moral evasion.
Because in cases like this, silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity.
We know pornography is one of the most pervasive and addictive industries in the world. Governments, including my home state of Utah, have taken major steps to restrict access to adult content with mixed results. It’s true that bans can drive people to darker corners of the internet. But if the answer to that problem is to make explicit content more accessible through AI, then maybe we need to stop and ask: at what point do we stop feeding our appetites and start protecting our humanity?
Every day, it seems like something once sacred crumbles a little more. Morality, meaning, even intimacy, replaced by algorithms that learn our desires faster than we understand them ourselves. At what point do we cross the line where AI becomes more human than we are?
In a recent LinkedIn post, my former boss Davis Smith, the founder of Cotopaxi, a leader long dedicated to aligning capitalism with social impact — wrote:
“Capitalism is broken. When a company worth billions (OpenAI/ChatGPT) decides the next frontier of AI is erotic content, we know we have lost our way. This isn’t innovation. Sam Altman brands this as progress, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s returning us to the economic systems of exploitation, driven by greed.
For most of human history, economic systems were built on extraction and exploitation (slavery, feudalism, colonial mercantilism, fascism, communism). Wealth came from taking from others, not creating for others.
Capitalism changed this equation. It rewarded people for solving problems for others... But we have chosen greed over good.
Capitalism isn’t the enemy. Conscience-free capitalism is.”
AI, like capitalism, reflects its creators. The technology itself isn’t evil, it’s a mirror. The question is what we choose to see in it, and whether we’ll have the courage to say when something has gone too far.
Chris Mangum is a soldier in the U.S. Army National Guard. He has a Center bias.
