I’m reaching a nadir in my tolerance for generative AI content; maybe it’s a sign I’m human.
Europe just experienced its first solar eclipse in generations. It seems like a fitting image as I consider how the bright sunshine of human creativity is being dimmed by the passing of a new technology that is blotting much of it out.
These days, the struggle to make sense of the writing I am reading and the exposure to ideas is fraught with discussion of generative AI and the artificiality of many of the arguments within. And yet, it is because of this artificiality that I find a tension with what it means to be human.
There are times when an answer to a specific question is what I want, and for that, an AI-assist like Gemini or Siri will do. There are virtual piles of disorganized or disaggregated content that AI can save me hours of time, energy, and focus in sorting and connecting. AI delivers value in these moments.
Yet, there are increasingly moments when I question whether this is all a Faustian bargain. I’ve begun asking questions about what it means to be human in the age of AI and how our creations, stories, and designs all contribute to something that I don’t believe can be offloaded to an LLM.
Telling Human Stories for Humans
It’s the generation of content through human discernment, judgement, craft, and effort that does more than create content; it creates humans.
Let’s take journalism as an example. Journalism is about informing us, but also holding people to account. It is a profession that tells stories from and about humans and their experiences in the world and of the world. The ‘facts of the matter‘ in journalism matter little without a human voice. We’re drowning in facts, what we lack are the stories that connect the experience of human lives to ours and the facts that we find around us. Health journalism is what connects those human stories to the very factors (health and wellbeing) that sustain us and keeps us alive. It doesn’t get more human than that.
Journalism matters because people matter. You could say the same about film, novels, screenplays, education, and design. They transcend content, even if it’s content that draws us to the creators who make it. But it’s the generation of content through human discernment, judgement, craft, and effort that does more than create content; it creates humans.
I don’t want content without people. I don’t want to live in a world where the machines do the “thinking” work that was once the provenance of writing. I’ve recently abandoned one of the major self-publishing platforms I used to create and share content because the volume of (suspected, not verified) AI slop was too high. Even if it wasn’t AI, much of what I read on that platform read like it.
The argument that AI can write as well as a human is a poor one. As a professor, I’ve read a lot of terrible papers over my career — ones that could have been made more coherent with AI assistance. But those poor papers reflected work from a student that required energy, time, attention, and some form of craft. Maybe that student isn’t a great writer, but the writing might have made them a better thinker.
A world with words without the thinking behind it worries me.
A world with words without the thinking behind it worries me. Artists and designers express themselves through the works they struggle to produce. That includes writers, publishers, entrepreneurs, scientists, filmmakers, and engineers — who are all artists in the manner that Seth Godin argues they are. They are applying their experience, knowledge, craft, and creative insights on their work to generating products that shape us just as they are shaped in their creation.
AI-generated content at best eliminates one half of this equation. After consuming an ever-increasing amount of AI-generated content, I can’t say I’m better for it. Even when that content was generated by my own prompts for my own purposes — and not outward consumption — I find it hard to read, process, and retain what I am exposed to.
What does that mean for us?
Creative Products and Human Outcomes
Mine isn’t an anti-AI stance, it’s a call for creative products that matter to those who create them, not just those who consume them. We can’t innovate if we have little practice. We can’t be expected to express ourselves in sophisticated ways if we never have to put the energy into coming up with words, phrases, or perspectives.
It’s easy to take this all for granted as if it is part of our DNA. It isn’t. Our creative skills and communication evolved because we continued to push ourselves to use words — whether orally, in text, or visually through film or actions — to express ourselves. AI-driven content is taking this from us, but only when we allow it.
Not all generative AI-driven products are act of creativity, but many are. It’s one thing to organize a spreadsheet, but quite another to write a blog post or a scientific article.
What happens we we off-load enough of work to something that reduces or eliminates our need to critically think, analyze or synthesize? Will our perceptive ability fade? Will the richness of our communication disappear? How might we better design for people’s needs, preferences, and capacities when we no longer need to work to relate to them? Why empathize when we can unload the burden of energy required to step into the lives of others we might not inherently know when there are tools that try and fail for us?
The benefits of creation are many, but retaining our humanity is by far the best of them.
I’m using AI diligently and consuming content with that same care. Nearly all of my writing — at least everything here and for public consumption — is self-authored because it’s through writing that I think.
It is through thinking that I learn.
It is through learning, that I become.
And it’s through that becoming that I can design, teach, and serve my clients and my community.
I think that’s worth protecting.
Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash