AI is Not Becoming More Human; We Are Becoming Less So
Asking why we read and write creates an opportunity to consider how the Valorization of Ease primed us for AI
Here’s a thought experiment: let’s say you get to the end of this essay and the very last line reveals that what you’ve been reading was AI-generated. How would you feel? Tricked? Manipulated? Insulted, maybe? For me, it would be all of the above.
But why? If the “content” is good, which no doubt it would be, why would you feel manipulated?
I worry that amidst all the talk about the benefits that AI might provide writers—ease, efficiency, convenience—we’re missing something crucial: the reasons we write and read in the first place.
I’d venture to guess that the reason you might feel tricked, manipulated, and insulted if what you’re reading now is later revealed to be AI-generated is because you’re not reading for good “content.” You’re not reading, even, to learn something. If I may be so bold, I like to imagine that you’re reading for connection. You know that there is another human on this end, and you know that there is intrinsic value in communing with other humans through the written word.
For my part, that’s why I write. Whatever other motivations I might have, reaching out from the solitude of my desk through the screen to you is what this is all about for me.
But, the ethos behind the Valorization of Ease, which I introduced last week, does not care at all for this important aspect of human communication. The Valorization of Ease is a byproduct of a Silicon Valley subculture that sees optimization as the ultimate end. We can see this in the evolution of social media. The irony of the invention and spread of social media is that a technology that was initially conceived to foster human connection ended up leading to a marked increase in feelings of loneliness, isolation, and, ultimately, anomie. The necessity to optimize the user experience (for financial gain, of course), meant that the boring parts of human connection had to be routed out.
If you’re old enough to remember MySpace or the early days of Facebook—the days before the News Feed—you remember a very different experience with social media. You might sign on, write a status update, click into a few people’s profiles, maybe write on their wall, and sign off. It was cool to be able to keep tabs on old friends, but, ultimately, it was kind of boring. There was nothing to keep you there. Thus the News Feed, and Like button, and then the algorithmically-generated endless scroll experience. More content; less human connection.
This is the same ethos behind AI, and we are primed to valorize it because we’ve been trained to see ease and efficiency as connected to enjoyment. But writing—and I really do mean writing in all its forms, from emails to essays—is not about efficiency; it’s not about ease. It’s about connection.
The thing that makes us human and what will always distinguish us from artificial intelligence is that we have rich interior lives. And, through writing, we can share something of that inner experience with others, who also have rich interior lives. And they can, in turn, share with us. We aren’t human because we are efficient or skilled in ways that machines can’t replicate. No, what makes us human is our interiority, and our ability to communicate that to others.
I’d argue that we are not wowed by artificial intelligence because of how human-like it is; it’s not. Rather, AI seems human because we have come to see ourselves in ways that are more akin to AI. The emphasis on ease and efficiency in our culture makes us forget that this is not what being human is about. I could, of course, take a detour here to consider how a capitalist society that sees people, only, as “human capital” is behind the Valorization of Ease in the first place, but I’ll save that for another newsletter.
Rather, I’ll end here: AI might make writing easy and efficient—optimized, as it were—but it also completely strips away any and all reason from the acts of writing and reading. Imagine the endgame of the Valorization of Ease. Imagine a world wherein we’ve optimized everything we do. You’re imagining a world of meaningless machines, without any purpose beyond achieving greater efficiency and ease. Being human is not efficient. It’s certainly not easy. But, in our ability to communicate and understand, to question and to learn, to wonder and be amazed, being human is meaningful—literally, full of meaning. Let’s keep it that way by resisting the Valorization of Ease.
And, no, this was not written by AI.