Attack of The Really Quite Interesting Brain-Sucking Delights

I was thinking earlier that we need to create a badge or certification that declares something as Human-Made. But as time goes on, I’m growing certain that such a thing is unnecessary. Not because we’ve lost the plot and it’s too late, but because it’s becoming clear that, against an ever-increasing backdrop of AI-generated content, humanity emits an unmistakable scent.

AI can’t seem to decide whether it’s coked-up or catatonic. It’s the new guy in the office who’s either 1) over-caffeinated, too smiley, and often described as “a lot,” or 2) mostly silent, taking just a little too long to react or respond, emitting no tangible personality whatsoever.

Something’s off about that guy.

AI-generated content has a narcotic effect on me. I’ve noticed. It slips a gear in my brain or something. A near-audible hum begins, like someone running a giant, faraway washing machine. My brain just glides away, without a purpose or a care.

Hop on LinkedIn—you’ll see what I mean instantly. Suggested posts have an eerily similar format: a clickbait lead sentence, followed by a paragraph break to force the user to read more, which then reveals a multi-sectioned, emoji-riddled barrage of generic business or life advice.

Woooooooosh. Off I glide, into the abyss.

Meanwhile, inside my own mind, an ever-present lurker persists. I fancy it a grouchy, wizened old creature crouched in the back corner of my brain—mumbling and muttering various things. Everything is changing, all the time, friend—you can’t stop it. The creature is correct, of course. And with that truism comes a mixture of fear and exhilaration. Cultural observations are, instantly upon materialization, outdated signposts, suddenly stale markers for what once was. One day—maybe later this afternoon—my thoughts will seem quaint and mildly archaic. Aw, look at grandpa opinin’ on the state of things. How cute.

One day—next week, perchance?—the telltale AI signature won’t seem so ham-handed. Each hour we introduce more and more children to a world where this stuff is just a normal part of life. Meanwhile, burdened by the dizzying effect of the past few decades, the grownups are still in the “Over 50% of American Adults Have Used a Chatbot” well-I-do-declare phase.

Oh, and hey. We really breezed right on through our existential dread over The Algorithm, didn’t we? Remember being apoplectic about hyper-capitalized, centralized platforms tracking our habits and creating intelligent systems designed to tamp irresistible digital dross into our head holes? It freaked us right out, for a few minutes or so.

No problem, though. We rolled over long ago. And let’s be honest—as long as what’s being tamped into our heads makes us laugh, cry, escape, or feel, well, anything, we’re pretty much okay with it. Yes, we push back (we always push back), but like the tides, erosion and disorder are inevitable.

You’re probably wondering if this article has a twist or a surprise happy ending. I don’t know if it does. I hope it does. But in the same way that I can’t shake the sensation that humanity is on a trajectory it can’t stop, there’s another unshakeable thought that keeps me feeling pretty good:

We’re here, now.

We—you and me—are plainly not sterile systems. Our ideas—though most are not that useful and many are downright dangerous—are still quite organic, bless their hearts.

Neighborhoods, restaurants, schools, and parks are not data centers.
Human conversations are not training models.
Laughs between friends are not measured by energy consumption.

I can’t help but hope that the more that we lean into AI to generate ideas, the more that our own messy, organic human output will stand out against all that meh. Human ideas may just well be that snaggletooth that, you know what, actually looks really cute. Maybe we’ll be the mole that counterintuitively adds beauty to something otherwise beautifully… boring.

It’s getting harder to resist the urge to let AI do things for us, but for those who choose to build something Human-Made, there is a reward in the choice itself.

The choice to strive. The choice to do it slower.

Work, or ideas, or relationships, if undertaken with honest effort, come imbued with a certain inherent value. It doesn’t guarantee merit or success, of course, but it comes with an unmistakeable signature:

Us.