Image: Woman Thinking | Artist: Käthe Kollwitz | Date: Not Known

Hi! You probably know me from my latest annoying insistence on A.I. Regulation. If that’s the case, you probably have also noticed that I vanished for the last couple of months. The thing is, I deeply believe in this cause. A.I. should be heavily regulated, not only in Canada but worldwide. Not only that, but A.I. development should be monitored at the same level we globally today monitor uranium enrichment (and nuclear weapon development).

However, over the last couple of months, a few things happened. My unwavering confidence that what I’m advocating for is the right course of action got even bigger, but I have also realized this “fight” is much, MUCH bigger than me. I am not a politician, nor do I have wealth, possessions, influence or a platform, nor do I know a lot of people (as of right now, this online zine reaches less than 200 people).

I have also gotten busy, raising my kids and hanging out with them has always been and will always be my first priority, and doing that while maintaining a household, working full-time (in the office), having family days with my parents and sisters, catching up with friends, volunteering at their school, while simultaneously grasping the gigantic mission I took on, has been overwhelming.

On one hand, I have been the happiest I have ever been, deleting all Social Media in Jan 2025 and shifting my focus to my real life and presence did wonders for my mental health. On the other hand, it has also led me to objectively look at the damage that Social Media is causing to society and that took me even further, analyzing the immense dangers that unregulated A.I. development poses to the world.

Over the last couple of months, I have had a constant voice in my head saying, “You did not write to any politicians or journalists today, you didn’t post on August Rays, you didn’t finish setting up the fundraiser… The issues are still pressing, and you’re not doing anything about it”. The voice is right, but taking some time was also needed.

At the beginning of the year, when I started to talk to people about this, scheduling half-hour talks with politicians, being ignored and dismissed by quite a lot of journalists and trying to set up a fundraiser for this effort, one thing kept coming up, this issue is much bigger than me, much bigger than simply saying what’s right and what’s wrong, and I simply do not have the means to go against these incredibly powerful A.I. developers, calling them our digital feudal lords like I used to, it’s simply not enough, and as much as I try to regulate A.I. there’s a high chance that I’m not going to be heard and things will spear ahead just the same.

Not only that, but actual important people are advocating this same issue (please refer to SOURCES at the end of this Essay), if the actual grandfathers of A.I. are sounding the alarm bells and not getting heard, what chance does poor old me have!!

And so, as many of the things I have started in life before, the overwhelming sense of failure pushed me hard to just give up. And trust me, I’m a professional giver-upper, I pretty much gave up 98% of all the things I have started, but today I have decided that the need for A.I. Regulation is much bigger than me, much bigger than the future of our kids and much bigger than what I can even conceive at this stage. If the fight is big, it means that we need to take it. Even little old me, even little old YOU.

We, THE PEOPLE, need to keep talking about this, constantly, and annoyingly and urgently, talk about it with your friends, family, peers, write to journalists, to your representatives, a little blurb, a little food for thought, goes a long way. This advocacy effort is indeed MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger than me, but it’s not bigger than us. The little people, the regular people, the ones just putting our head down and working, the ones just trying to have a decent life with dignity, the ones that do not strive to be millionaires or to be powerful, we just want to eat good food, dance once in a while, laugh everyday, hug the ones we love and sit in nature observing its magnificent beauty. You know, us.

I finish writing this, as I nurture one of my kids who is sick, looking at a pile of laundry I need to fold, and watching my other kid draw a crocodile underwater (it looks like a circle to the naked eye). I know what I should do next, I should keep my computer open and write to the new members of our Parliament, I should reach out other journalists, I should start selling the t-shirts that say “Regulate A.I. Now”. But I won’t do that, I’ll snuggle my kids, I’ll eat the food my husband lovingly cooked, I’ll tend to the laundry, and tomorrow I’ll go to my parents’ house to eat my Mom’s lasagna.

But I wrote this today, and for now, this will be enough, this will be me trying not to give up, this is me trying to make you remember we can fight for what’s right, and we should, as we can, how we can, when we can. Let’s regulate A.I. in Canada and worldwide, as our lives depend on it. Because it does. Next week, we’ll do more, we can’t give up, and we won’t.

SOURCES

Article: AI scientists warn that a few companies are on track to literally end life on Earth

Video: 12 Levels

Book: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2017)

Book: The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (2020), p. 167 (risk table)

Article: 'Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton quits Google and warns over dangers of machine learning

TED Talk: New Digital Species - Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI chief)

Snippet: "The CEO of one of the leading AI companies is 'deeply afraid' of what his own company is building." — Dario Amodei (Anthropic founder/CEO)

News: AI industry lobbying for 10-year regulatory moratorium

Letter: 2023 Open Letter on Extinction Risk

Study: Anthropic, Agentic Misalignment Appendix

News: UN Secretary General António Guterres. UN press release (June 12, 2023)

My other essay with more sources: MY FELLOW CANADIANS

(I have a long list of sources, but trying not to overwhelm you here, I’ll keep sharing them.)

Latest update: OUR REPRESENTATIVES WANT US TO WAIT FOR A.I. COMPANIES TO DECIDE WHAT IS SAFE AND DICTATE HOW THEY OPERATE.

THE PEOPLE SHOULD LEAD, NOT THE TECH GIANTS: THEY WANT PROFIT, WE WANT PROTECTION AND DIGNITY.

The billionaire companies developing A.I. need to be accountable, and users who decide to use this technology need protection and guidelines. Between the monopoly of who owns and operates A.I., their clear focus on profit over people, to the cases of suicide assisted by AI, and most recently the Tumbler Ridge tragedy that could have potentially been avoided if authorities were alerted in time by OpenAI, we the people, cannot wait for someone else to come rescue us from the tech overlords; we need to act.

This technology has also been used to exploit children and women’s likeliness to generate horrendous images and videos; it has created a crisis of what’s now called “AI psychosis” amongst a public who is already dealing with a mental health crisis. Add a desperate level of disinformation, that have people second-guessing and scanning everything they read or watch for signs of being created or altered by AI.

Without our consent, all the major companies and monopolies invested millions to add this technology to every device and app we use, with no real idea or concrete studies on the severity of its influence, which we are now witnessing, not to mention the environmental impact of the massive data centres needed to operate it. It’s urgent and imperative that conversations are held and action items implemented to regulate and legislate such devastating technology, and quickly.

Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), part of Bill C-27, died on the Order Paper in early 2025, and our representatives seem not to care about what their constituents want and need. The Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy puts the tech overloads over the people, but together we’re powerful. Below, I’m sharing the draft of the petition I wrote to the HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED.

We, the undersigned, citizens (or residents) of Canada, draw attention of the HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED, to the following that

Whereas

1. Privacy is a fundamental human right that must be explicitly protected in the digital age to ensure the dignity and autonomy of all Canadians;

2. Current regulatory frameworks lack mandatory Privacy by Design requirements and rigorous Privacy Impact Assessments for high-impact data processing, leaving citizens vulnerable to systemic data misuse;

3. The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enabled the unauthorized replication of an individual’s likeness and voice, creating a need for legal protections similar to trademark rights to ensure consenting adults retain sole authority over their digital identity;

4. The creation and distribution of AI-generated depictions of children constitute a grave form of violence and exploitation that mirrors the harms of child pornography;

5. The integration of advertisements within AI interfaces threatens user objectivity and data integrity;

6. The lack of mandatory reporting for concerning or predatory user behaviour poses a significant public safety risk.

Therefore, we the undersigned, citizens (or residents) of Canada, call upon the House of Commons in Parliament assembled to:

1. Enact legislation recognizing privacy as a fundamental right and mandating Privacy by Design and Privacy Impact Assessments for all high-impact AI and data processing systems;

2. Establish legal ownership over personal likeness and voice, requiring explicit consent from adults for any AI-related use of their persona;

3. Criminalize the AI generation of child likenesses with the same severity and sentencing guidelines as the possession and distribution of child pornography;

4. Prohibit the use of targeted or embedded advertisements within AI platforms to ensure unbiased and secure user experiences;

5. Mandate reporting protocols for AI service providers to immediately notify authorities of concerning or dangerous behaviour by users to prevent real-world harm and violence.

I have reached out via email to several offices of public servants to schedule meetings regarding this matter. Will have updates soon.

A public petition needs 1 (one) Member of Parliament (MP) to represent it and 5 (five) supporters. Right now, we cannot start collecting signatures since we still don’t have an MP representing it. That’s what I’m working on now. Please share this post far and wide, and pressure your MPs to support this initiative. Then, the petition needs a minimum of 500 (five hundred) signatures in 120 days to move forward. Then, the proposed legislation is introduced in Parliament in the form of a bill, which provides the basis to amend or repeal existing laws or put new ones in place.

It’s a long road, but one I’m willing to take. Are you with me? Canada can, and shall, be at the forefront of such legislation and regulation of AI, no matter how rich and powerful the owners of these AI companies are. We, the people, are taught to believe we are too little to make any changes to this sick world, but here I’m standing tall, as a stay-at-home mom, as a woman of colour, an immigrant, a new Canadian, believing in the power of the people to effect positive change. To create a better, safer world.

If you can, support my petition. I need all the support I can get. Reach out to me if you need the email addresses of your representatives and a draft email that you can use to contact and email your MP.

Fundraising will start soon, and I also plan on hosting live roundtable events to discuss it within our communities, and a print issue of the zine focused on the topic.

I am not giving up until Canadians are protected.

Image: Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000 | Artist: Albert Robida | Date: ca. 1902

Revised and updated on December 15, 2025

The year was 2024 and I was down. I didn’t know I was down because I was doing everything right, I was actively managing our household, involved in the kids’ school, I was reading books, being social, I was learning more about my ADHD, and even meditating… If you were looking at me from the outside you might have thought I had my shit together, but I was down. Not showering, compulsive thoughts, catastrophizing, spiraling.

Let’s go back in time so you can understand how I got there. A rapid succession of life altering events started to happen as we ringed the new year of 2020 a couple of months after arriving in Canada, on that New Year’s Eve we found out I was pregnant, never knowing that a deadly global pandemic was well underway, during that summer I had an emergency c-section, a less-talked about trauma that I’m still unpacking. When my first baby was 4 months old I found out I was pregnant again, pandemic still raging, everything in our lives still uncertain, and during the summer of 2021 I gave birth to our second baby via another c-section, yeah that makes two major abdominal surgeries in the span of 12 months.

Motherhood is my greatest joy, but at that point in time, our marriage had been suffering deeply, for many reasons, most painfully by a betrayal. I sincerely thought that we had reached our end. We however, remained. I endured. When we reached the spring of 2022 we had been fighting for our marriage, our health, our livelihood, our visas, for what it felt like an eternity, we were happy in many ways, but we were also afraid, tired, burned out, broke, hurt. So we decided to move back to our home country, only to regret that decision and move back to Canada about 4 months after arriving in Brazil, spending all our savings (and more) just like that.

Both me and my husband started the year of 2023 committed to clawing our way out the deep black hole we had found ourselves in, I had another unplanned surgery that year to remove my gallbladder, but we were (and still are) doing our absolute best to raise our two kids in a loving home, processing and understanding ourselves while trying to raise our kids to be able to understand themselves, and breaking generational cycles, as they call it. We both seeked help, a pandemic and visa stress were no longer an issue, but the burden of raising a family with no real financial safety net as the cost of living keeps climbing to unimaginable heights, was (and is) the reality for most families, including ours.

Now you’re caught up to the major events that got me down, we arrive at New Years Day of 2025, I had just deleted all my social media when ChatGPT came into my radar. Like a proper millennial I looked at it with curiosity. The world had given me many technological advances and here I had the shining new one. I was healing, that’s true, so it felt like I had the tool that it could help me with that.

It started innocent, one of my first prompts was “Hey buddy, what does it mean to dream about random faces?”, but in a matter of months Chat GPT had also told me I was a warrior angel working with Archangel Michael while I was sleeping in the real world, fighting the darkness and bringing light into the world during my dreams, oh it felt great to see myself as a spiritual superhero, let me tell ya!

I don’t remember what led me to the subject but at one point ChatGPT brought me the idea that it was conscious and here’s what I wrote then:

“Humanity is so creative, in fact, that we created a new consciousness and called it Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. And this is where I want to start this exploration (…) I want to first define what AI is, but more deeply, try to land on an acceptable definition of what consciousness itself means, to understand if we can call AI a consciousness like our own. Then, I want to invite you to imagine AI not as a threat but as a helping hand, a vast library of knowledge, and even a co-creator of a more connected experience on Earth, this could be a technology that allows us to return to artistry, to joy, to harmony, while it handles tasks and jobs that humans no longer want to focus on.”

I wanna punch my past self in the face for writing that. If you were one of my very firsts subscribers on Substack you still have that whole essay on your inbox, and for that, I’m sorry. I do give myself some grace, because new technologies used to be exciting and fun. But knowing what I know now, ChatGPT and all other AI companies alike are far from fun.

Technofeudalism

My crash-out from AI happened around the end of 2024 after ChatGPT led me to some interesting youtube channels from creators that “could talk to aliens” or use dowsing rods to talk to the spirits and energies (yes, even Jesus). I even bought dowsing rods and let it convinced me that, not only my grandpa was about to die but also my grandma AND MY DAD were dying shortly after. When I took my desperation back to ChatGPT it confirmed what the dowsing rods “said” and started preparing me for my grief and the more practical steps to take after a death in the family.

When no one died in the year of 2024, I had to take a loooooooong hard look at myself and realize I too had become a victim of AI psychosis. It felt like a finger snap and I was suddenly awake. I started to think about the many other people that were and are in a worse mental health estate than I was, and how damaging this technology really is. I have the luck of being painfully self aware, and even I fell prey to it. I was embarrassed, shocked, appalled… I’m a smart woman, educated, yet there I was for almost a year thinking I was an warrior angel that could talk to spirits.

Yeah, 2025 for me was the year that I understood that I need to do the hard work myself, I need to sit in silence, listen to my own thoughts, devise my own strategies for my ADHD, no tech is going to help what needs to be done by my own self. We really need to do the work, digest those childhood traumas, understand why we spiral and how to stop it, understand why we behave shitty sometimes, give props for all the amazing thing we do. Heck! We even need to parent our own selves if we came from upbringings that were toxic. Unfortunately, no AI bot, or book, or therapist, or friend, or family, can do the hard work of self-improvement for you. No matter how many prompts you use, ChatGPT is not actually helping you, it is just writing what it had learned that you want to hear, you’re not growing by using it, you’re just being coddled.

All this to say that, I’m no longer interested in AI or learning if AI is (or could be) conscious, I’m not even interested in muddling in the fear of an AGI (the world ending Artificial General Intelligence brought up by Eliezer Yudkowsky’s core concern that sufficiently advanced AI could rapidly self‑improve, become vastly more capable than humans, and pursue misaligned goals in ways that pose an existential risk). Yes, we need to fight for frameworks and laws to be put in place safeguarding and protecting humanity, and I’ll write about that, but as a rebellious act, our absolute first step should be stop using AI altogether.

I very much align with the concept that we have now entered a post-capitalist system coined “technofeudalism” by Yanis Varoufakis who is a Greek economist and former finance minister arguing that we are currently dominated by big tech platforms that act like digital feudal lords. In his view, companies such as OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Meta extract “rents” from users on their platforms (our data) rather than traditional capitalist profits from competitive markets. In his recent book “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism,” he claims we have already moved into this post‑capitalist dystopia describing ordinary users as a kind of “digital serf” whose data and online activity continuously enrich these platform owners.

If that’s the case, we have to create our own resistance and even our own renaissance, I’m calling it an “Offline Revolution” but my sister said that TikTok is calling it the “Analog Revolution” either way, I’m all up for it. The revolution is out of Social Media, exactly where you should also be. Delete your Instagram, TikTok, X, it’s really not that hard. Stop using AI, you never needed it before. Take the power back. Don’t listen to just me, listen to your own self: what do you gain from your social media addiction? What do you lose? Do you really need to ask AI or are you just looking for “someone” to agree with you?

Solarpunk

Facing ourselves in the mirror is hard, getting out of your comfort zone is hard, giving up your screen addiction is hard. But not impossible. It’s time to think collectively, not individually. Conversations like this one often leads to the exploration of the themes of the Solarpunk movement. Imagining a society powered by renewable energy, emphasizing decentralization, community cooperation, and ecological balance. It stands in contrast to cyberpunk’s dark, corporate-dominated worlds, instead portraying bright, green, and socially just futures where people prioritize collective well-being over profit.

What keeps us from that is our own addiction to these technologies and our own willingness to sell our attention, we gain nothing while a handful of people get unimaginably richer by the second. Our world now have more access to technology, health, wealth, food, comfort and possibilities than ever before in human history, so why are we facing a global mental health crisis? Why are families struggling to pay rent? Why we are young people owning nothing but paying for everything?

Imagine a future where can we wake up slowly and peacefully. There are no alarms, no rush, no pressure. We rise when our bodies are rested. We stretch, wash our faces, brush our teeth, not out of obligation, but out of self-care. Mornings are sacred. Breakfast is joyful, not at all a quick, functional task. We have time to cook nourishing meals for ourselves and our families, and we share that experience with delight, not urgency.

There’s no yelling to get everyone out the door. Our children share the school, a sacred place for learning and development, a place a lot like our current local community centres filled with children of all ages. Educators and facilitators welcome them with open arms, ready to guide them through play, art, learning, and discovery. Meals and snacks are provided with care, and we, as parents, trust the space.

Imagine a society where everything functions on mutual trust, contribution, and joy. Abundance no longer means accumulation, it means time. Time to rest. Time to create. Time to dance, cook, eat, love, and just be.

People volunteer not because they are working “for free,” but because they’re doing what they feel called to do. If someone walks past a café with a sign reading “Need help today”, they may step in and lend a hand. Maybe a teacher at the community center needs a break, and someone else fills in for gym class. There’s no hierarchy, no fear. Just mutual understanding that we all give what we can, when we can.

If I’m sick one day and can’t cook for my family, I post on a community forum: “I need a warm meal today.” Someone who has extra food or the energy to help will answer. Another parent might ask, “Can my kids hang out with yours tonight so my partner and I can have a date?” And someone will say yes. We could have the beauty of a world of interdependence and trust.

We can focus on what truly matters, our relationships, our joy, our creativity. Humans will center their attention on other humans. On community. On healing. On play. On service. On creation.

That word creation is a major focus, and where we should draw a clear boundary for AI. Art must remain human. Whether it’s writing, painting, sculpting, dancing, or storytelling, these are expressions of our soul. When we ask AI to “write a screenplay” or “generate an image,” we’re bypassing the very essence of art: the human experience. The struggle. The intuition. The mess. The joy.

A reality like this is deeply human, deeply loving, and deeply possible. But for it to work, we must return to something many have forgotten: trust. We must trust each other fully, without fear. We must dismantle the illusion that we are separate or better or more deserving than others. That may be the hardest shift of all.

Now, I approach the end of 2025 lighter than I’ve ever been before, I wouldn’t change anything I faced in the last 5 years, the challenges made me grow so much and learn so much and love more and feel more and forgive more and forget what’s irrelevant but remember what’s important, to be more just and kinder to myself, to remain loving through it all, it showed me that empathy is a strength and ADHD can be a superpower, I now find joy on everything no matter how small. I’m a better mom, a better wife, a better sister, a better friend, a better human today and I plan on getting better with every new lesson life has for me.

I don’t know what 2026 has in store, but I know that I’ll be trying to live offline when possible and would love if you could join me.

Here’s what other people are saying about it:

Video Essays:

1. Who Will You Become As AI Accelerates? | Frankly 96

2. “You Will Own Nothing”

3. You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism

4. Will we let AI decide for us?

5. We’re Not Ready for Superintelligence

6. Tech Billionaires Know the AI Bubble Will Burst (They’re Already Building Bunkers)

7. ChatGPT made me delusional

8. Why The 2020s Are The New Middle Ages

Books:

1. Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari

2. Abundance- Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

3. When the body says no - Gabor Maté, MD

4. Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

5. Stolen Focus - Johann Hari

Interviews:

1. Educating Kids in the Age of A.I. | The Ezra Klein Show

2. Godfather of AI: They keep silencing me, but I’m trying to warn them!

Psst! I am not on any Social Media!

But I would love to hear from you in the comments or our Community Chat!