AI and Plant Care: Why Obsession and Profit Risk Ruining What's Beautiful

AI and Plant Care: Why Obsession and Profit Risk Ruining What's Beautiful

AI is now part of our daily lives. It's talked about everywhere, often swinging between blind enthusiasm and strong ethical alarmism. But fear is useless: panic blocks, while caution and self-regulation build.

The real problem is not the technology itself, but money. Those who have invested astronomical sums in AI want an immediate and massive return. Money is a neutral and positive tool for commerce, but when it concentrates in the hands of a few who share no common morality, the risk of distortion becomes real.

What connects an immaterial technology like AI to the green and tangible world of plants? Human behaviour. Even an intrinsically positive activity, like caring for nature, can be corrupted when obsession, distorted judgement, and commercial competitiveness intervene.

To understand how greed and performance anxiety can ruin the most beautiful things, we only need to look at three glaring mistakes we commonly make with our plants:

• Drowning from "too much love" (Overwatering): The most common mistake. Driven by anxiety that the plant is missing something, we keep watering even when the soil is still moist. The result? The roots rot and the plant dies. In AI terms, this represents "too much control" driven by panic. Through the obsession of monitoring and regulating every single aspect out of fear, we risk suffocating the natural development and real benefits of the technology.

• The race for "super-nutrients" for immediate results: Bombarding the soil with chemical fertilisers or miracle tricks to force an early bloom or grow giant leaves in a few days. This shock burns the roots and weakens the plant in the long run. It is the perfect metaphor for the money factor: multinationals pump billions into AI demanding spectacular and immediately monetisable results, without giving society the biological time to adapt and develop a solid ethics.

• The trap of "trendy plants" and competition: Buying rare varieties at crazy prices just because they are fashionable on social media, or to prove you are a "superior grower". The plant stops being a living being to contemplate and becomes a status symbol requiring artificial and exasperated care. Just as AI risks being used only to show off power or to avoid "falling behind" in the market race, forgetting its real usefulness.

Worrying too much takes away oxygen — both from debates about the future of humanity and from the roots of a pothos in the living room. Nurturing one's own wellbeing through nature requires the same approach we should have with technology: respect, care, and an absence of panic.

This in the photo is the trunk of a horse chestnut — the fixed destination of my walks with my wife. It is not mine, it is public. It costs nothing, yet it represents an enormous wealth. In the asymmetrical and gnarled contortions of its bark I find true contact with nature — real nature, which does not follow the rhythms of the stock market or performance charts.

Live, if you can, with your plants naturally. Enjoy all the nuances that only flowers and trees can spontaneously give you, without forcing and without the anxiety of having to monetise or prove something to anyone. Beauty lies in the slow rhythm of growth, not in the rush of the market.