When AI feels like an insult

In my bubble, artificial intelligence (AI) mostly has negative connotations. It’s associated with slop, laziness, layoffs, and overall deterioration of mental well-being. To me, while AI can definitely help us get things done faster, human effort and creativity are more meaningful than results alone.

Have you ever completed a jigsaw puzzle without glancing at the box at least once? Or attempted to construct a piece of IKEA furniture without the instructions?

Let’s take something even simpler. When was the last time you figured out a new route to somewhere without a GPS? Or described a crazy fight between a crow and a pigeon you saw this morning, using your words instead of showing the video you took?

I suspect that, more often than not, we skip the effort of using our brains whenever there’s a better and more efficient way to complete the task. Unfortunately, the go-to tool these days is usually AI.

Since we have very different thresholds of what’s acceptable and what’s not, here are a few things I thought could be controversial.

• Is it acceptable for your partner to use ChatGPT to settle relationship arguments?
• Is it acceptable to keep sexting a robot while in a real relationship?
• Is it acceptable for your HR partner to use AI to announce that everyone has to come back to the office?
• Is it ok for an author to use AI for book writing?
• Is it ok for police to use AI-assisted cameras for facial recognition?
• Is it ok for banks to use AI when evaluating loan applications?
• Is it ok for a journalist to use AI to assist with their writing?
• Is it acceptable for the Pope to use AI in writing his speech?

When I ask someone why they used AI to write that message or post, the common answer I hear is that they think AI is simply better at putting words together.

Which I don’t think is true. Sure, it does the job in seconds, and we can’t do that. But thinking things through is an essential part of communication, so what’s the point of getting rid of the most crucial part of that message?

Writing is just a technique to help your message materialize. You will always be better at writing than AI, just because you have a personality and a unique way of making connections and spitting out words.

With AI, we often feel helpless, as if fighting an already lost battle. We are looking for skills that AI can’t replace; we are angry at brands and influencers who use AI to make money with nearly zero effort; and we give AI credit if a picture or piece of writing seems too perfect to be true.

Joshua Rothman’s essay Why is it so hard to be ordinary in The New Yorker brings to light some important questions, like whether seeking greatness is overrated, why does everything have to be good, and how do we cherish the ordinary without making it into something it isn’t?

Because I side with the existentialists, the hours I spend awake must have meaning to me, and this meaning is rarely measured by results. While most of what I do throughout the day might seem meaningless to other people, like a waste of time, the process often matters more.

For example, the sense of achievement I get just from completing long distances, even if it's not reflected in the result or time on race day, is plenty for a below-average runner like me. So is the meditation of learning how to construct and sew a bra over the finished set of lingerie. The buying and rearranging of books over having read them all. And the writing of a personal birthday message to a friend, rather than a perfect yet machine-written e-card.

We are all the main characters in our stories. Those stories might seem dull and ordinary to others, but should that mean we need to stop striving to be better versions of ourselves than yesterday? And are we really getting better by outsourcing all of our efforts to AI?