How I Use AI

Introduction

I have a younger sister. Watching out for her was my first job. It’s a reflex — you see someone who needs help, you step in. That instinct never left. It shaped everything I’ve done since: military, teaching, caregiving, running a business. In every one of those roles, the job was the same — have someone’s back so they can move forward without looking over their shoulder.

There’s another kind of Big Brother. The one that watches you. The one that knows where you drive, what you buy, what you search for at 2 a.m. when you can’t sleep. That Big Brother doesn’t have your back. It’s at your back — extracting, not protecting.

This page is about AI — how I use it, what I think about it, and why I think you should have your own. But it’s also about who holds the controls. Because the technology isn’t the problem. The question is whether it works for you or on you.

Let’s Get This Out of the Way

I use AI. A lot. I use it for research, for writing, for policy analysis, for building this website. The tool I use most is Claude, made by a company called Anthropic. I also run open-source AI models locally on my own computer.

Without AI, I could never have gotten to the point where I was ready to run for office. The running part is still people — knocking on doors, talking to voters, making decisions. But AI prepared me. I don’t have a staff of twenty. I don’t have a PAC writing my policy papers. I’m a first-time candidate in a district that stretches from the Georgia border to Ocala, from just beyond the outer parts of Jacksonville to the Gulf Coast, and everything in between. AI lets me do the work of a much larger operation — research federal programs, draft policy, analyze budgets, build a website — with the resources I actually have.

Some candidates use AI and don’t tell you. I’m telling you. Every idea on this site is mine. Every position is mine. Every decision is mine. The AI is a tool, the same way a calculator is a tool. It doesn’t decide what to calculate. I do.

AI Isn’t the Threat. The Business Model Is.

We’ve seen this playbook before. Offshoring didn’t just happen — it was a decision. Corporations moved production overseas because labor was cheaper and regulations were looser. The towns that built those products got hollowed out. The profits went somewhere else.

AI is the same extraction logic wearing different clothes. The tool changes. The pattern doesn’t. Concentrate the technology at the top, harvest the value from the bottom, and tell everyone it’s progress.

I call this the caterpillar economy — a massive organism that pulls everything into itself. It centralizes. Local jobs, local knowledge, local wealth. Consumed. Digested. Concentrated somewhere else. The butterfly economy is the opposite: it decentralizes. It distributes. Wealth circulates locally, stays where it’s produced, and feeds the community that created it.

When AI is owned by a few companies and rented back to everyone else, that’s the caterpillar. When AI runs on your hardware, trained on your data, answering to you — that’s the butterfly. Same technology. Different ownership. Different outcome.

Running a Model T on the Information Highway

I run AI models on my own computer. Locally. Offline. Using open-source software called Ollama and models that anyone can download for free. The machine sits in my house. The data stays in my house. Nobody else sees it.

Is it as powerful as the cloud-based tools? No. It’s slower. It’s less capable. It’s a Model T on the information highway — everyone else is flying past in something with leather seats and a subscription fee.

But the Model T is mine. I own it. I maintain it. It doesn’t report back to Big Brother on what I’m up to. It doesn’t stop working because someone changed the terms of service. And every month, the open-source community makes it a little faster, a little smarter, a little more capable.

I Don’t Invent Things. I Connect Them.

I’m not a technologist. I’m not a programmer. I’m a generalist — someone who’s been a teacher, an Air Force veteran, a wireless retail operator, and a lifelong learner who reads about everything from monetary policy to meat processing. My brain works by making connections across all of it.

That’s what this entire campaign is. I didn’t invent mobile health clinics — they already exist. I didn’t invent USDA cooperative processing grants — they’re already funded. I didn’t invent community land trusts or rural broadband programs or veterans’ telehealth. All of it exists. Somebody just needs to connect the county that has the need with the program that has the money.

AI is another tool in that toolkit. It helps me find the connections faster. It helps me read a 200-page federal register notice and pull out the three paragraphs that matter to Suwannee County. It helps me compare what ten different districts have done with the same HRSA grant. That’s not replacement — it’s amplification.

A catalyst congressman. That’s what I want to be. The person who makes the introduction, connects the dots, and gets out of the way while the community does the work and gets stronger.

My Data Is Already Mined

I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’ve lived off the grid. I have a smartphone. I use Google. I’ve had a Facebook account. I ran Cricket Wireless stores for years — I sold the devices that collect the data. I know exactly how that ecosystem works because I was part of it.

That’s not resignation. It’s reconnaissance. I know the cost because I’ve already paid it. I know what a carrier can see in your usage data. I know what the activation system collects. I know how a commission-based retail operation gets squeezed between the corporation above and the customer in front of you. I’ve been on every side of that transaction.

That experience is why I take privacy and civil liberties seriously as a policy issue — not as an abstraction, but as something I’ve watched happen from the inside.

Do the Reading. Then Use the Tools.

I tested this myself. I ran my website and an opponent’s through the free versions of ChatGPT and Gemini. Gemini invented quotes I never said. It confused me with other candidates — called me a “correctional officer,” which was actually the Libertarian candidate. It invented a bill name, cited a sponsor, described detailed provisions — none of it was real. When I corrected it, Gemini “un-corrected” itself and went right back to the wrong answer. ChatGPT was better but limited — the free tier cuts you off before you can verify anything.

AI can’t replace your critical thinking. What it can do is help you organize what you’ve already read. So start there. Read my website. Read my opponents’ websites. Then ask yourself the hard questions. AI can help you compare — but you have to bring the judgment.

Here are questions worth asking — of any candidate, with or without AI:

I just read [candidate's website]. Do they explain how they would implement their positions, or do they just list things they support?

Based on what I read at [candidate's website], do they identify specific funding sources for their proposals, or just say what they'd spend on?

Looking at [candidate's] positions, who specifically benefits from each proposal? Who pays? Do they say?

I read [candidate's website]. What major issues facing north-central Florida are not addressed at all?

These questions work with or without AI. You can ask them at a town hall, in a conversation with a neighbor, or just sitting with the website open on your phone. The tool that matters most right now isn’t artificial intelligence — it’s the critical thinking skills we already have and need more than ever. We have to keep thinking for ourselves — unless we want Big Brother to tell us what to think.

A Declaration of Independence

The 250th anniversary of American independence is coming. A quarter of a millennium since a group of people decided they’d had enough of being governed by an empire that extracted their wealth and ignored their voices.

The empires look different now. They’re not across an ocean — they’re in your pocket, in your car, in the terms of service you click without reading. They don’t tax your tea. They mine your data. They don’t quarter soldiers in your home. They put a microphone there instead.

Running for Congress is my declaration of independence. I’m not waiting for permission. I’m not waiting for a party to choose me. I’m not waiting for the perfect conditions. I’m building the campaign with the tools I have, on the terms I choose, and telling you exactly how I’m doing it.

I want to give you the pathway to yours. Personal AI on your own device. Data that stays in your home. Technology you own, not rent. An economy where wealth circulates in your community instead of being extracted from it. A government that works for you instead of watching you.

That’s what securing our independence means. Not just from foreign powers. From any power — corporate, governmental, technological — that treats you like a resource to be mined instead of a citizen to be served.