{"id":732,"date":"2026-07-23T15:55:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T15:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/?p=732"},"modified":"2026-07-23T19:11:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T19:11:59","slug":"cars-are-like-ai-and-both-are-bad-responding-to-george-lucas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/23\/cars-are-like-ai-and-both-are-bad-responding-to-george-lucas\/","title":{"rendered":"Cars are like AI and both are bad: responding to George Lucas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was written as a response to <\/strong>George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Laurence Phelan, which appeared in <\/strong>The Guardian<\/strong><\/em> on July 15, 2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filmmaker George Lucas has joined the chorus of out of touch rich guys pining over AI. His reasoning: it makes film production easier. What that really means is faster films and more money for Lucas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quality takes a blow when new technologies accelerate speed and ease, when people become impatient and lazy. We are adaptive animals who can get used to shoddy works, especially if all we ever experience is plastic and chipboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, mass production has lowered the cost of consumption, but overconsumption is driving us closer to the total collapse of life on Earth. Innumerable lives are sacrificed, condemned to soul crushing repetitive employment on the assembly line, or the equally damning inputting of data into computers to train AI, all for George Lucas to have an easier go at making movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are imitative animals, too. The ceaseless flow of series and films show us how to live. They reinforce what we have come to see as the normal way of life: consumerism that empowers a billionaire class that profits from the destruction of people and planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucas compares people who oppose AI to those in favour of horse drawn buggies over of cars. What he neglects to mention is that cars have been responsible for pedestrian deaths from their very beginning. We didn’t need tanks to have our first vehicular murder! Horse and buggy aren’t that innocent either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A million people are killed in car collisions every year, many more are seriously injured. Car related poor air quality and noise pollution claim countless lives and cause repository and cardiovascular diseases, including lung cancer and heart attacks, not to mention the toll making space for cars has on our cities, landscapes, and biodiversity, and how heat absorbing asphalt expanses can increase outdoor temperatures upwards of 10\u00b0C on hot days. Lastly, but certainly not least, the popular use of cars has destabilized Earth’s climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI has brought us AI induced suicides, AI induced psychosis, the trauma of AI generated deep fakes and AI generated pornography, AI slop, and AI brain rot. Pedophiles are certainly happy with AI, and reality is slipping away from us. AI is contributing to the loss of landscapes and biodiversity and has an insatiable demand for scarce energy, water, and space for AI data centres, with all the heat trappings, light and noise pollution of a busy highway and parking lot rolled into one. Perhaps Lucas is correct to draw the parallel between AI and cars after all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cars and artificial intelligence exist for economic purposes and the economy is far removed from supporting society, which is the point of the economy, to serve society, not only the interests of the most wealthy. Lucas expresses this when he says AI makes film production easier. AI in film is not about making anything meaningful or good. It’s definitely not about making films that will show us how to live in a way that avoids killing each other and the planet. AI is merely another threat to life on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luddites are often portrayed as backward people opposing the steady march of progress. This is completely inaccurate. They were master weavers who fought against being replaced by the spinning jenny. Machines continue to be used by idle capitalists seeking to drive down wages, increase the rate of production at the cost of quality, and make an easy profit, just like Lucas. There is a common misconception of progress, too. Just because it’s the latest thing, doesn’t mean it’s good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was written as a response to George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":19,"label":"Review"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Microsoft-Data-Centre-Near-Gavle-Sweden-1024x1024.jpg",1024,1024,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Graham Janz","author_link":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/author\/graham\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":19,"name":"Review","slug":"review","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":19,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":19,"category_count":1,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Review","category_nicename":"review","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwithoutcars.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}