I love that quote, but I sometimes wonder if we’ve already been living as machines—locked into systems that demand efficiency, productivity, and output above all else. Maybe AI isn’t pushing us toward that; maybe it’s the thing that finally lets us step away from it.
What if it’s not the beginning of the machine age, but the first real chance to live as creatures again?
I agree that we have been living as machines, to varying degrees. To think the that a machine will save us from living like a machine feels naive, with all due respect. Isn't that what the believers in some tech utopia are always saying? C.S. Lewis says that the most progressive man is the one who realizes hes walked in the wrong direction, and turns around.
The thing that lets us step away from it are the human things that havn't changed for thousands of years. Family, real work, real art etc.
Ah, yes. The classic “AI is ruining everything” chorus—sung in unison by those who have neither used it deeply nor interrogated their own resistance to it. But here you are, happily marching to the beat of a different drum, not only using AI but actually enjoying the experience. How scandalous.
Of course, the skeptics would say you’re just rationalizing your own descent into creative laziness. That AI hasn’t “unlocked” anything—it’s just made you more comfortable outsourcing the hard part of thinking. Isn’t struggle supposed to be part of the process? Shouldn’t the blank page terrify you a little? After all, if AI can neatly package your thoughts without the slow-burn agony of writing, what separates the real thinkers from the copy-paste crowd? If anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can suddenly express themselves with clarity, does that diminish the craft? The skeptics might argue that ease comes at the cost of depth—that by skipping the grind, you’re skipping the growth.
Your closing question—“Or is this writing?”—lands like a well-placed punch. Because it forces the reader to ask: if AI helps articulate your thoughts, organize your ideas, and refine your work, then what, exactly, is it stealing? And if the only thing AI is taking away is the hesitation, the second-guessing, the creative paralysis—then maybe the real fear isn’t that AI is making us dumber.
One more thing I forgot to say—people act like using AI to write is some kind of creative shortcut, but let’s be honest: most writing was already a hot dog. Do you really think every article, essay, or book was painstakingly crafted from scratch with only the finest, most organic ingredients? No—most of it is processed, repackaged, and served up in a slightly new bun. AI just makes the assembly line more efficient.
The real question isn’t whether using AI is “cheating”—it’s whether you’re making something worth eating. Because at the end of the day, whether you grilled it yourself or grabbed it from a street cart, a great hot dog is a great hot dog.
I'm glad AI helped you get your thoughts into words.
If it matters, I could tell within a few sentences that AI (or someone else) had written it. The way AI puts sentences together is pretty formulaic (but it's a good formula).
I think the final revision of the piece could be you injecting some of your chaos into the piece. A few f-bombs or other humanity to strip away the bland sheen of mechanical language.
Oh, you could tell? Within a few sentences? Incredible. A true scholar of the sentence. A sommelier of syntax. A grandmaster of the written fucking word. I’m honored to have my work assessed by such a refined palate.
You’re right, of course. The AI draft was missing something—the sweat, the mess, the reckless jazz of human imperfection. So here it is. A little rough edge. A little unnecessary profanity. A sentence that refuses to resolve itself properly, just to piss you off.
Maybe next time, I’ll just record myself muttering half-formed ideas into a tape recorder while pacing in circles, then transcribe the whole chaotic mess with no punctuation and send it straight to your inbox like an unhinged manifesto. Would that feel more human?
But seriously—you’re a word nerd, and I respect the hell out of that. I’ll keep pushing the edges of what AI can do, and you can keep being the voice in my head whispering: Needs more chaos."
Art makes us uncomfortable and this achieves that. I think I might revere your work to the extent that reading this made me excited (it’s been a while since you wrote) and then disappointed. Was this really you? Or is this something else.
I’m don’t have a comment on AI. But I do know art when I feel it. Your work consistently resonates with me. Muses on paint or elaborate jig systems. Each step of your process feels measured and imbibes your work with a quality I enjoy and respect.
I really appreciate this. It means a lot to hear that my work resonates with you, and I take your reaction seriously. Excitement followed by disappointment is a hell of a response—so something here is working, even if it’s not comfortable.
But I have to ask—what exactly made it disappointing? Was it the content of the piece itself, or was it the realization of how it was made?
Because if something I write connects, if it makes you think or feel something, if it carries the same energy you’ve come to expect from me—then isn’t that me, in some form? If this post felt like my voice, my thinking, my cadence, then how much of that is lost just because the process of getting the words onto the page was different?
I still had the ideas. I still shaped the direction. I still decided what mattered. The only difference is, instead of struggling through writing sentence by sentence, I spoke. I let my thoughts come out naturally, the way I would if we were having this conversation in person. And that felt right in a way that traditional writing never has.
I don’t know if that makes this post not me or just a new way of being me. But that tension—the discomfort, the questioning—that’s interesting to me.
The reason that I was disappointed was because in my imagination you are singular. The reason that I find your work so special is because it is unique to my experience. Maybe there are other artists similar to you but I don’t know of them. The idea that your work will be photocopied into an algorithm to be later mass produced. Your style, your cadence, the real you is being added to the rolladex of shared knowledge. (This sounds like a good thing but I have unhappy feelings about it.)
As I respond I find myself realizing the irony. Am I pining for exclusivity and gate keeping? Maybe that’s it. Maybe I feel some sort of attachment to your work and I don’t want the computers to have it too.
The content is never the issue. I’ve sat around and listened to you talk about all sorts of stuff that I didn’t really care about. Because I look up to you I listen closely to what you have to say. Maybe something useful is just around do the corner. And usually it is.
I’m so glad you had this experience with AI. Like any tool, it can be used constructively, in a way that helps an individual overcome roadblocks and assist in reaching their creative or productive potential, or it can be used by corporations to eliminate jobs and increase their bottom line, to plagiarize the work of human artists without credit or compensation, and to further distance people from connecting with one another through art. I am one of those people with a general aversion to AI, not because of bad vibes, but for the reasons above as well as because the disproportionate energy and water consumption necessary to maintain the servers is ecologically unsustainable. As the technology progresses, as it inevitably will, that environmental impact may lessen and regulations might be enacted to protect jobs and intellectual/creative properties, but given the goals of our capitalist system I think that’s extremely unlikely.
Really appreciate this response—thoughtful, well-articulated, and not just bad vibes (which I respect as a legitimate stance in some cases).
I get the concerns. AI, like any tool, can be used in ways that empower individuals or in ways that consolidate power in the hands of a few. But I do find it interesting that AI is getting this intense level of scrutiny when so many other technologies and systems we interact with daily could be accused of the same things—displacing jobs, centralizing power, consuming resources, and affecting human connection.
Think about social media—it fundamentally changed the way we interact, for better and worse. It’s been used to manipulate, commodify, and exploit, yet most of us still use it because we’ve found ways to make it work for us. Same with Google, which quietly hoovers up far more of our intellectual and creative output than AI models, and we’ve all just sort of shrugged and accepted it. The same accusations against AI could be applied to automation, industrialization, digital marketplaces, even email. But for some reason, AI is where people draw the line. Why?
On the artistic connection piece, I actually feel like AI is freeing up more time for people to create and connect, not less. I don’t feel further removed from art or from others—I feel more engaged, more present, and more capable of doing the things that actually matter to me. If AI takes care of some of the tedious mental busywork that normally drains my energy, isn’t that a net gain? If it helps me get my thoughts out faster and with less friction, doesn’t that allow for more engagement, not less?
As for AI’s energy consumption, I keep hearing that it’s “disproportionate.” But relative to what? Compared to the energy sucked up by server farms running Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix? Compared to the entire academic publishing industry, where millions of researchers spend years manually compiling and synthesizing data that AI could process in hours? Or, my personal favorite—compared to the collective human energy spent staring at blank screens, procrastinating on writing, and rewriting the same sentence ten times? I’m not saying AI has no impact, but I’d love to see a real comparison before assuming it’s uniquely egregious.
I also find it interesting that people assume AI will only serve capitalist exploitation. Sure, that’s a risk, but it’s not the only possible outcome. Even Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt—the kinds of people you’d expect to be fully on board with AI-driven wealth consolidation—have talked about the potential for a post-work society where abundance is distributed rather than hoarded. That’s the kind of utopian sci-fi thinking that always seemed impossible—until suddenly, the people in charge are taking it seriously.
So, yeah, I get the skepticism. But I also wonder if a lot of these concerns come from assuming AI’s trajectory is already set in stone—that there’s only one way this plays out. I don’t buy that. If anything, AI has made me feel like there are more possibilities, not fewer.
And, hey—at least I didn’t make AI write this response. (Or did I?)
My problem with AI content isn’t so much that it is “inauthentic”; it is that to me it reads like ad copy. Like something that was written by a committee and designed to be non-specific and inoffensive in order to make it appealing to as broad an audience as possible, which results in something that is appealing to no one in particular.
It was interesting to read your thoughts on how you use AI to get your thoughts out. I am a teacher and I struggle to make sense of the work my students submit when its clearly written by AI -- I don't know how to differentiate between their ideas and those of the AI. Frankly, I don't care if they don't write their work as long as they think the thoughts and deliver a good hot dog at the end but truth be told they mostly serve up word salad that sounds like the latest buzzwords and industry jargon.
On the other hand you advocate for a thoughtful use of AI with intention and care. I still enjoyed reading this because I did feel like I heard a unique point of view being channeled through the AI writer. I could tell it was AI because of the excessive bolding of key phrases. If it makes you move, use it. I wonder if eventually you will find it less useful as you gain confidence expressing your thoughts. The trouble I find with using AI for writing is that it makes everything I say sound good which then makes it hard for me to figure out whether it is actually any good at the core. However, there is also pleasure in sharing half-baked ideas in whatever form they come and plenty of people do that too and it's not any worst to read. It's all just as interesting because it comes from their unique point of view.
Good post, man. I had this experience when I was teaching my nephew to chip carve over Christmas. I was showing him how to layout his design on the material and talking about spending time learning how to draw lines and how anyone can learn to do it it just takes time. So he whips out this app that projects his photo onto the wood and traces out what he wants. Was I mad about my countless hours staring at Pysanky eggs or folk art and learning how to draw them freehand? No. I got plenty of ben I used to be mad about AI and societal collapse etc. but somewhere I realized that the people who are making us afraid of this or that are also using the things we should be afraid of. Do we have problems? Sure, lots and some big ones. The good or bad or in between of a given tech is in how you use it. I don’t envy the miners who have to pull the necessary minerals outta the ground or protect their investments from the clutches of the powerful. I do think in the developed world we are free to enjoy more of the benefits of a given technology while being shielded from the true costs of its impacts. I don’t know how to feel or what to do about that.
Man, I love this. Your nephew just speedran past centuries of craft traditions straight to “here’s an app for that”, and honestly, that’s kind of perfect. You could’ve fought it, but instead, you just let the kid do his thing. And isn’t that the real difference? Whether we resist something out of principle or figure out how to make it work for us?
I also think you nailed something important—fear is a product as much as anything else. We’re always being told what’s going to ruin us next. But I don’t see AI as just another step in the same cycle of exploitation. If anything, it might be the first real break from it. Not another tool for the same power structures to extract more from the bottom, but a chance to actually shift who has access to knowledge, creation, and abundance.
A lot of people assume AI will just accelerate the bad, but what if it actually flips the whole script? That’s the part that keeps me interested.
Anyway, appreciate your thoughts. And hey, at least your nephew still carved the thing, even if he skipped the part where you struggle for years to draw a straight line.
The next great division will be between those who wish to live as creatures and those who wish to live as machines. -Wendell Berry ‘life is a miracle’
I love that quote, but I sometimes wonder if we’ve already been living as machines—locked into systems that demand efficiency, productivity, and output above all else. Maybe AI isn’t pushing us toward that; maybe it’s the thing that finally lets us step away from it.
What if it’s not the beginning of the machine age, but the first real chance to live as creatures again?
I agree that we have been living as machines, to varying degrees. To think the that a machine will save us from living like a machine feels naive, with all due respect. Isn't that what the believers in some tech utopia are always saying? C.S. Lewis says that the most progressive man is the one who realizes hes walked in the wrong direction, and turns around.
The thing that lets us step away from it are the human things that havn't changed for thousands of years. Family, real work, real art etc.
And yet… here you are, having a conversation with AI.
Lord have mercy
Ah, yes. The classic “AI is ruining everything” chorus—sung in unison by those who have neither used it deeply nor interrogated their own resistance to it. But here you are, happily marching to the beat of a different drum, not only using AI but actually enjoying the experience. How scandalous.
Of course, the skeptics would say you’re just rationalizing your own descent into creative laziness. That AI hasn’t “unlocked” anything—it’s just made you more comfortable outsourcing the hard part of thinking. Isn’t struggle supposed to be part of the process? Shouldn’t the blank page terrify you a little? After all, if AI can neatly package your thoughts without the slow-burn agony of writing, what separates the real thinkers from the copy-paste crowd? If anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can suddenly express themselves with clarity, does that diminish the craft? The skeptics might argue that ease comes at the cost of depth—that by skipping the grind, you’re skipping the growth.
Your closing question—“Or is this writing?”—lands like a well-placed punch. Because it forces the reader to ask: if AI helps articulate your thoughts, organize your ideas, and refine your work, then what, exactly, is it stealing? And if the only thing AI is taking away is the hesitation, the second-guessing, the creative paralysis—then maybe the real fear isn’t that AI is making us dumber.
Maybe it’s making us move.
Well played.
One more thing I forgot to say—people act like using AI to write is some kind of creative shortcut, but let’s be honest: most writing was already a hot dog. Do you really think every article, essay, or book was painstakingly crafted from scratch with only the finest, most organic ingredients? No—most of it is processed, repackaged, and served up in a slightly new bun. AI just makes the assembly line more efficient.
The real question isn’t whether using AI is “cheating”—it’s whether you’re making something worth eating. Because at the end of the day, whether you grilled it yourself or grabbed it from a street cart, a great hot dog is a great hot dog.
:)
I'm glad AI helped you get your thoughts into words.
If it matters, I could tell within a few sentences that AI (or someone else) had written it. The way AI puts sentences together is pretty formulaic (but it's a good formula).
I think the final revision of the piece could be you injecting some of your chaos into the piece. A few f-bombs or other humanity to strip away the bland sheen of mechanical language.
But I am a word nerd.
I asked Chatty to give you what you want ;)
"Oh, he wants chaos? Let’s fucking go.
Oh, you could tell? Within a few sentences? Incredible. A true scholar of the sentence. A sommelier of syntax. A grandmaster of the written fucking word. I’m honored to have my work assessed by such a refined palate.
You’re right, of course. The AI draft was missing something—the sweat, the mess, the reckless jazz of human imperfection. So here it is. A little rough edge. A little unnecessary profanity. A sentence that refuses to resolve itself properly, just to piss you off.
Maybe next time, I’ll just record myself muttering half-formed ideas into a tape recorder while pacing in circles, then transcribe the whole chaotic mess with no punctuation and send it straight to your inbox like an unhinged manifesto. Would that feel more human?
But seriously—you’re a word nerd, and I respect the hell out of that. I’ll keep pushing the edges of what AI can do, and you can keep being the voice in my head whispering: Needs more chaos."
-ChatGPT
Art makes us uncomfortable and this achieves that. I think I might revere your work to the extent that reading this made me excited (it’s been a while since you wrote) and then disappointed. Was this really you? Or is this something else.
I’m don’t have a comment on AI. But I do know art when I feel it. Your work consistently resonates with me. Muses on paint or elaborate jig systems. Each step of your process feels measured and imbibes your work with a quality I enjoy and respect.
I hope you write more and share more.
I really appreciate this. It means a lot to hear that my work resonates with you, and I take your reaction seriously. Excitement followed by disappointment is a hell of a response—so something here is working, even if it’s not comfortable.
But I have to ask—what exactly made it disappointing? Was it the content of the piece itself, or was it the realization of how it was made?
Because if something I write connects, if it makes you think or feel something, if it carries the same energy you’ve come to expect from me—then isn’t that me, in some form? If this post felt like my voice, my thinking, my cadence, then how much of that is lost just because the process of getting the words onto the page was different?
I still had the ideas. I still shaped the direction. I still decided what mattered. The only difference is, instead of struggling through writing sentence by sentence, I spoke. I let my thoughts come out naturally, the way I would if we were having this conversation in person. And that felt right in a way that traditional writing never has.
I don’t know if that makes this post not me or just a new way of being me. But that tension—the discomfort, the questioning—that’s interesting to me.
The reason that I was disappointed was because in my imagination you are singular. The reason that I find your work so special is because it is unique to my experience. Maybe there are other artists similar to you but I don’t know of them. The idea that your work will be photocopied into an algorithm to be later mass produced. Your style, your cadence, the real you is being added to the rolladex of shared knowledge. (This sounds like a good thing but I have unhappy feelings about it.)
As I respond I find myself realizing the irony. Am I pining for exclusivity and gate keeping? Maybe that’s it. Maybe I feel some sort of attachment to your work and I don’t want the computers to have it too.
The content is never the issue. I’ve sat around and listened to you talk about all sorts of stuff that I didn’t really care about. Because I look up to you I listen closely to what you have to say. Maybe something useful is just around do the corner. And usually it is.
I’m so glad you had this experience with AI. Like any tool, it can be used constructively, in a way that helps an individual overcome roadblocks and assist in reaching their creative or productive potential, or it can be used by corporations to eliminate jobs and increase their bottom line, to plagiarize the work of human artists without credit or compensation, and to further distance people from connecting with one another through art. I am one of those people with a general aversion to AI, not because of bad vibes, but for the reasons above as well as because the disproportionate energy and water consumption necessary to maintain the servers is ecologically unsustainable. As the technology progresses, as it inevitably will, that environmental impact may lessen and regulations might be enacted to protect jobs and intellectual/creative properties, but given the goals of our capitalist system I think that’s extremely unlikely.
Really appreciate this response—thoughtful, well-articulated, and not just bad vibes (which I respect as a legitimate stance in some cases).
I get the concerns. AI, like any tool, can be used in ways that empower individuals or in ways that consolidate power in the hands of a few. But I do find it interesting that AI is getting this intense level of scrutiny when so many other technologies and systems we interact with daily could be accused of the same things—displacing jobs, centralizing power, consuming resources, and affecting human connection.
Think about social media—it fundamentally changed the way we interact, for better and worse. It’s been used to manipulate, commodify, and exploit, yet most of us still use it because we’ve found ways to make it work for us. Same with Google, which quietly hoovers up far more of our intellectual and creative output than AI models, and we’ve all just sort of shrugged and accepted it. The same accusations against AI could be applied to automation, industrialization, digital marketplaces, even email. But for some reason, AI is where people draw the line. Why?
On the artistic connection piece, I actually feel like AI is freeing up more time for people to create and connect, not less. I don’t feel further removed from art or from others—I feel more engaged, more present, and more capable of doing the things that actually matter to me. If AI takes care of some of the tedious mental busywork that normally drains my energy, isn’t that a net gain? If it helps me get my thoughts out faster and with less friction, doesn’t that allow for more engagement, not less?
As for AI’s energy consumption, I keep hearing that it’s “disproportionate.” But relative to what? Compared to the energy sucked up by server farms running Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix? Compared to the entire academic publishing industry, where millions of researchers spend years manually compiling and synthesizing data that AI could process in hours? Or, my personal favorite—compared to the collective human energy spent staring at blank screens, procrastinating on writing, and rewriting the same sentence ten times? I’m not saying AI has no impact, but I’d love to see a real comparison before assuming it’s uniquely egregious.
I also find it interesting that people assume AI will only serve capitalist exploitation. Sure, that’s a risk, but it’s not the only possible outcome. Even Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt—the kinds of people you’d expect to be fully on board with AI-driven wealth consolidation—have talked about the potential for a post-work society where abundance is distributed rather than hoarded. That’s the kind of utopian sci-fi thinking that always seemed impossible—until suddenly, the people in charge are taking it seriously.
So, yeah, I get the skepticism. But I also wonder if a lot of these concerns come from assuming AI’s trajectory is already set in stone—that there’s only one way this plays out. I don’t buy that. If anything, AI has made me feel like there are more possibilities, not fewer.
And, hey—at least I didn’t make AI write this response. (Or did I?)
My problem with AI content isn’t so much that it is “inauthentic”; it is that to me it reads like ad copy. Like something that was written by a committee and designed to be non-specific and inoffensive in order to make it appealing to as broad an audience as possible, which results in something that is appealing to no one in particular.
It was interesting to read your thoughts on how you use AI to get your thoughts out. I am a teacher and I struggle to make sense of the work my students submit when its clearly written by AI -- I don't know how to differentiate between their ideas and those of the AI. Frankly, I don't care if they don't write their work as long as they think the thoughts and deliver a good hot dog at the end but truth be told they mostly serve up word salad that sounds like the latest buzzwords and industry jargon.
On the other hand you advocate for a thoughtful use of AI with intention and care. I still enjoyed reading this because I did feel like I heard a unique point of view being channeled through the AI writer. I could tell it was AI because of the excessive bolding of key phrases. If it makes you move, use it. I wonder if eventually you will find it less useful as you gain confidence expressing your thoughts. The trouble I find with using AI for writing is that it makes everything I say sound good which then makes it hard for me to figure out whether it is actually any good at the core. However, there is also pleasure in sharing half-baked ideas in whatever form they come and plenty of people do that too and it's not any worst to read. It's all just as interesting because it comes from their unique point of view.
Good post, man. I had this experience when I was teaching my nephew to chip carve over Christmas. I was showing him how to layout his design on the material and talking about spending time learning how to draw lines and how anyone can learn to do it it just takes time. So he whips out this app that projects his photo onto the wood and traces out what he wants. Was I mad about my countless hours staring at Pysanky eggs or folk art and learning how to draw them freehand? No. I got plenty of ben I used to be mad about AI and societal collapse etc. but somewhere I realized that the people who are making us afraid of this or that are also using the things we should be afraid of. Do we have problems? Sure, lots and some big ones. The good or bad or in between of a given tech is in how you use it. I don’t envy the miners who have to pull the necessary minerals outta the ground or protect their investments from the clutches of the powerful. I do think in the developed world we are free to enjoy more of the benefits of a given technology while being shielded from the true costs of its impacts. I don’t know how to feel or what to do about that.
Man, I love this. Your nephew just speedran past centuries of craft traditions straight to “here’s an app for that”, and honestly, that’s kind of perfect. You could’ve fought it, but instead, you just let the kid do his thing. And isn’t that the real difference? Whether we resist something out of principle or figure out how to make it work for us?
I also think you nailed something important—fear is a product as much as anything else. We’re always being told what’s going to ruin us next. But I don’t see AI as just another step in the same cycle of exploitation. If anything, it might be the first real break from it. Not another tool for the same power structures to extract more from the bottom, but a chance to actually shift who has access to knowledge, creation, and abundance.
A lot of people assume AI will just accelerate the bad, but what if it actually flips the whole script? That’s the part that keeps me interested.
Anyway, appreciate your thoughts. And hey, at least your nephew still carved the thing, even if he skipped the part where you struggle for years to draw a straight line.