One of my favorite online videos of recent vintage explains the FAFO Principle — fool around and find out.

Just for the record — and to save everyone the trouble of dashing off a snarky email — I know that’s a sanitized interpretation of FAFO as most of us have come to know it. But this is a family newspaper, and we adhere to certain standards.

As I once told a young reporter who had a penchant for including even the most sordid details of courtroom testimony and police reports, “If you wouldn’t be comfortable relating these details to your mom or grandmother over breakfast, they probably should not be included in the story.”

FAFO suggests that when someone “fools around” they are likely to “find out” at a proportional level. My first exposure to the principle came courtesy of a YouTube video in which a middle-aged professor type stands in front of a whiteboard and explains FAFO using a graph. His deadpan delivery made the lesson an “instant classic,” as ESPN might call it.

All that to say this: FAFO is the first thing that comes to mind — at least for me — when I think about Artificial Intelligence. Even a few years ago, as AI began to grow, scientists were warning that the technology could one day backfire on us. AI, some cautioned, could take over the world and bring about the demise of mankind — if we let it.

We aren’t quite there yet. So far, some aspects of AI seem amusing and mildly annoying. Just the other day, someone showed me a “video” of Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown supposedly saying that the downtown area doesn’t need more parking because people are too fat and should walk more anyway. The clip was making the rounds on social media, but as you might suspect, it was AI-generated.

Only the most gullible among us would believe some of these are real. Sort of like when I was a kid and thought Steve Austin — astronaut and a man barely alive — could actually run 60 mph and beat the hell out of Bigfoot in a forest showdown after being retrofitted with bionic limbs.

Just a couple of years later, our Facebook feeds are overwhelmed with “videos” of house cats saving babies from grizzly bears, mountain lions or alligators. In fact, I saw a meme the other day in which Abraham Lincoln warned us not to trust everything we see on the interwebs.

But it gets much, much worse. According to the syndicated radio show I listen to during my brief morning commute, more and more lonely young men are turning to AI girlfriends because they’re easier to talk to than real women and won’t turn them away because they’re too short, live to play video games, seldom leave their parents’ basements and shower even less frequently than that.

And we all thought high school and college kids would just use AI to write the term papers they waited until the last possible moment to even think about doing. Some media outlets have even embraced AI to generate copy that they used to have to pay people to do.

Thankfully, we don’t do that here. You might not like what you read in this space, but I can guarantee one thing — none of it is fake. Silly or stupid? I’ll leave you to decide that for yourself, but whatever it is, it all comes directly from the vast — some would say empty — recess between my ears.

If it sounds like I’m afraid of AI or of how it could be used by those looking to make a buck or for far worse purposes, I promise that’s not true. If I was smart enough to use AI to generate a side hustle and a new personal revenue stream, I’d probably do it. I’m just more annoyed by how some are using AI and by the fact that others are missing out.

We’ve been told that the Cleveland Browns braintrust — a term employed very loosely here — are among the brightest nerds in pro football. So why aren’t Kevin Stefanski, Andrew Berry and Paul DePodesta effectively using AI to dominate the NFL? I guess there are some tasks even AI can’t handle.

Some people are, in fact, terrified of AI. Witness the Lordstown Village Council, which voted preemptively Monday to ban future data centers. The vote was unanimous and council members cited the will of the citizens, who are worried about electricity and water rates skyrocketing and even noise.

Not even a lecture from an attorney representing a data center company interested in coming to Lordstown was enough for village officials to table the vote. You’d think that the recent news of job cuts and layoffs at Ultium might have given Lordstown reason to look into the situation more closely before deciding it wanted no part of data centers.

There are legitimate concerns about utility rates rising in areas with data centers, but there are ways to circumvent rate increases for citizens. A CNN report states that Oregon, for example, has passed a bill requiring data centers to “pay for the actual strain they place on Oregon’s electrical grid” so cost increases are not simply passed on to consumers.

That sounds like something Ohio — which has tried to entice tech companies to the Buckeye State — should consider.

Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator. He can be reached at epuskas@tribtoday.com or reach him at 330-841-1786.