The Double Standard of the Algorithm

The High Cost of Being Seen: Why visible AI is "gross" for small biz while hidden AI is the standard for everyone else.

We made it exactly six posts.

At Brewery 4 Two 4, we recently started using AI-generated images for some of our social media announcements. For a small business, it felt like a superpower—a way to bridge the gap between our humble budget and the glossy, high-production marketing of national brands. Suddenly, we had the professional capacity of a Fortune 500 company. We could create high-fidelity visuals for events that would have previously cost us thousands in photography and graphic design. That is money we’d rather spend on grain, hops, and our local payroll. But, I could see the problem coming. Weeks ago I began the blog notes for this very issue. Like everything AI, it got here faster than I expected.

The response? Initially, it was great. Engagement was up, and the posts looked sharp. But then the “Your AI images are destroying the world” comments arrived. I removed all of our posts featuring AI. I woke up this morning to brewery friends experiencing the exact same thing.

The irony of these comments is thick enough to chew on. They were posted on Facebook and Instagram—platforms where you cannot scroll for fifteen seconds without being prompted to “Try Meta AI.” They were delivered via an algorithm that is entirely AI-driven, typed on a device that uses machine learning to predict every word, while the users likely spent their day being “nudged” by AI-driven recommendations from Netflix and Amazon.

But because we are a small business that actually responds to its customers, we are the ones who get the lecture. Welcome to the Double Standard of AI.

The Invisible Machine

The average consumer interacts with a massive, invisible AI apparatus before they even finish their first cup of coffee. But because it isn’t “visible” like a generated image, it doesn’t trigger the same moral outrage.

Consider your daily “Invisible AI” footprint:

• The Grocery Store: Your rewards account isn’t just a way to save fifty cents on eggs. It’s an AI-driven data harvester that analyzes your buying habits to generate “dynamic pricing” and personalized coupons.

• The Logistics: Large corporations like UPS and Amazon use AI to set efficient routes and warehouse staffing. This isn’t for your convenience; it’s to identify exactly how many human jobs can be eliminated to increase the quarterly free cash flow.

• The Financial Nudge: Your credit card fraud detection, your mortgage approval, and the high-frequency trades that dictate the value of your 401(k) are all managed by black-box AI algorithms.

Large corporations use AI in ways that are massive, invisible, and focused entirely on increasing shareholder value. Because you can’t “see” the megawatts being burned in a server farm in Virginia to predict your toothpaste brand, there is no public outrage.

But when a local brewery uses an AI image to tell you about a new beer? That’s where the line is drawn.

NIMBYism and the Inevitable

Locally, the pushback against data centers has reached a fever pitch. It’s on the news every night: packed planning commission meetings, heated public hearings, and a clear message of “Not In My Back Yard.”

I don’t think these people are being insincere. Most of them truly don’t want to live in an AI-driven world. They see the physical footprint of these data centers and they want to opt-out. But the reality is that the technological toothpaste is out of the tube.

Nvidia isn’t a $4 trillion company because this is a passing fad. This is the structural reorganization of the global economy. NIMBY may keep the server farms out of our specific township, but the infrastructure is going to be built somewhere. We aren’t going back to a world of paper ledgers and analog logistics. We are living in the cloud whether we like the view of the data center or not.

The disconnect is that the same people rallying against the infrastructure are still using the tools. They organize their protests on Facebook. They coordinate via Gmail. They use the very products they are trying to keep out of their backyards. They aren’t hypocrites; they are just caught in a transition where the tech is everywhere, yet they hope if they don’t see the building, they aren’t part of the machine.

The “Responsive Tax”

Small businesses are held to a higher moral standard because we have a face. This is what I call the “Responsive Tax.”

When you yell at a multi-billion dollar tech giant, you’re screaming into a hurricane. Nothing changes. When you yell at us, you’re yelling at the person who might be pouring your beer or sponsoring your kid’s Little League team.

Because we are responsible to our community, we have to adapt. We’ve pulled back on the “visible” AI images because the “distraction” isn’t worth the engagement. We’d rather have a quiet comment section than a moral crusade over a picture of a pint glass.

Behind the Curtain: The Choice That Isn’t One

But here is the hard truth: To stay competitive as a business, we have to use AI. In most cases, it’s not even a choice we make—it’s the water we swim in.

I use QuickBooks for our accounting. Every single day, AI algorithms are categorizing our expenses, identifying trends, and predicting our cash flow. I use Square for our Point of Sale. It uses AI for data analysis, sales records, and searching. If you have an issue with a transaction from a month ago, I can find it and fix it in under a minute thanks to Square AI, which allows me to tell the system exactly what I am looking for without a filtered search or manual hunting.

I didn’t “install” an AI to do these things. They are baked into the services I pay for just to keep the doors open. I literally have no choice but to use them.

And frankly, it feels a little gross that every business you touch uses it—and they might not even know it. But it’s here. Unless you are sitting in a yurt most of your day, there is a good chance that almost everything you interact with that is web-enabled is using some sort of AI.

It feels like we are being forced to hide the very tools that allow us to survive, while the giants use them openly to replace human labor with code. We are using AI to try and drive business that supports local jobs, while the massive corporations are using it to eliminate them.

The Coming Rationalization

We are currently at the tip of the spear. AI will change the landscape for all businesses—small and large—massively over the next 24 months.

I don’t know if most small business owners see the “rationalization” that is coming. The transition is going to be ugly. Large corporations will continue to use it to optimize their margins and “efficiently” replace human labor. Meanwhile, small business owners are being shamed for using it to simply look professional on a Facebook page.

To survive, we have to be smarter, faster, and more efficient than the giants. We have to use the tech. But if the double standard holds, the small business of the future will be a paradox: A facade of “artisan” hand-crafted simplicity on the outside, and a highly-optimized, AI-driven machine on the inside.

We’ll be using the tech to keep the lights on—just like every other business, whether they know it or not—we just won’t be talking about it in the comment section.

Micro Brews. Macro Views.

Dave