Note: In this article, AI refers to generative tools like ChatGPT and AI image generators
The AI boom means it’s hard to spend five minutes on the internet without encountering AI-generated content. However, despite the feeling of inevitability, creatives vehemently oppose the use of AI. Even my work pressures me to use AI in my day-to-day job. It is hard to avoid it right now, but there is hope. We have seen this same sense of complete overwhelm, proliferation in every product imaginable, successfully stopped and reversed before. Just look at the rise and fall of radium use in the US in the 1920s.
AI and Radium False Claims
Today, AI companies advertise increased productivity, upskilling opportunities, and frame AI as “your work but better.” In reality, early research shows lower brain engagement, detrimental impacts on learning, and increased loneliness.1
Similarly, in the 1920s, companies pushing radium products highlighted the “health benefits” of their “harmless” “miracle” products. This is what the radium watch face painters (radium girls) believed when they worked for the Radium Dial Company. They thought they were safe when they ingested radium paint in pursuit of fine, detailed brushwork.2
Radium was included in toys, beauty products, food, water, and medicine. It didn’t take long before the health impacts became apparent. The radium girls developed horrific side effects, which eventually became a lawsuit and national scandal. Radium was phased out of consumer goods after research and new safety measures were imposed. Below are a few products from my research that had known amounts of radium and their marketing claims.
Radium Toothpaste
The radium craze was a global phenomenon! During WWII, a Berlin-based company produced radium toothpaste. They claimed, “cells are loaded with new life energy; the destroying effect of bacteria is hindered.”3
Radium Cigarettes and Accessories
Radium cigars, cigarettes, cigarette holders, and even a radium card to insert into a cigarette pack exemplify a match made in heaven. The claims from these types of products were that radium can protect you from any negative health consequences of smoking and it makes the cigarettes taste sweeter.4
Radium Beauty Products
The most infamous radium beauty company was Tho-Radia (thorium and radium). Tho-Radia stopped adding thorium and radium to products in 1937 due to stricter regulations. However, they kept the name and produced new products through the 1960s. When radium was in their products, they claimed their crème could “activate circulation, tone, firm tissues, eliminate fat, and suppress wrinkles.”5
Who are the Radium Girls of Today?
I would argue the radium girls of today are students across the nation. AI exposes students to the negative learning impacts, just like the Radium Dial Company exposed radium girls to 20,000 times the maximum radium dose. I haven’t even broached the ethics of scraped training data and the sheer environmental impact of these LLMs.
Looking back at radium toothpaste or face cream, it’s almost laughable how we normalized the use of such a dangerous chemical in every facet of life. What will we think when we look back in 50 years at the endless feeds of AI slop, the outsourcing of basic thinking, and the devaluation of creativity? Why wait for a national scandal like the radium girls to kickstart the resistance and safety measures?
Maybe this sounds like fearmongering or that I’m a technophobe, but the truth is I love technology. I have a whole zine about it. It’s amazing that radium treats cancer; I want to see positive use cases for AI too. In the study from earlier, when AI was an editing tool instead of the brains behind the writing, the results were optimistic. There is a right way forward, but for now, we are deep in an AI craze, and people are going to get hurt.
Sources
- https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/ ↩︎
- https://www.orau.org/blog/history/radium-girls-the-health-scandal-of-radium-dial-painters-in-the-1920s-and-1930s.html ↩︎
- https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/radioactive-quack-cures/pills-potions-and-other-miscellany/doramad-radioactive-toothpaste.html ↩︎
- https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml1008/ml100840118.pdf ↩︎
- https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/radioactive-quack-cures/pills-potions-and-other-miscellany/tho-radia-items.html ↩︎
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