The Imperfectionist: Let's stop talking about A.I.

The Imperfectionist: Let's stop talking about A.I.

.ck-link { text-decoration: underline; }<br>@media only screen { .email * { word-break: break-word; } }<br>@media screen and (max-width: 384px) { .mail-message-content { width: 414px !important; } }<br>@media only screen { .email * { word-break: break-word; } }<br>@media screen and (max-width: 384px) { .mail-message-content { width: 414px !important; } }<br>@media only screen and (max-width:600px) {<br>.ck-mobile-font-size {<br>font-size: 50px !important;<br>@media only screen and (max-width:600px) { .ck-mobile-font-size { font-size:50px !important; } }<br>@media only screen and (max-width:600px) { .ck-mobile-font-size { font-size:50px !important; } }<br>@media only screen { .email * { word-break: break-word; } }<br>@media screen and (max-width: 384px) { .mail-message-content { width: 414px !important; } }<br>@media only screen and (max-width:600px) {<br>.ck-mobile-font-size {<br>font-size: 50px !important;

email-button:hover{background-color:#fc6464}

Let's stop talking about A.I.<br>If you’ve ever so much as dipped a toe in the world of meditation, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered the story of the two monks who are travelling a long distance, by foot, when they arrive at a raging river. Waiting at the bank is a woman who can’t get across, so they carry her over, in violation of their vow never to touch the opposite sex. Miles later, one monk is still fretting about the infraction. “Brother,” the other monk tells him, “I set that woman down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”<br>It’s a slightly weird story – I always wonder if I’m being asked to endorse the notion that helping the woman was a bad thing, corrupting the monks’ virtue – but the basic point makes sense. You haven’t really renounced something, in the sense of finding mental freedom from it, if you’re fixated on the topic the whole time. Thoughts are a big, and suffering-creating, part of reality. The monk who engaged with the situation at the river, then moved on, is freer and more present than the one who can’t escape the web of rumination.<br>Which brings me to A.I., I’m afraid, because for me in recent months it’s been roughly the equivalent of the woman at the river. Here’s what I mean: I don’t use A.I. at any stage of the writing process, and don’t feel much conflict about that, because it seems clear to me that’s the best recipe for enjoying my work, making a useful contribution, and making a living in a world of ever-more-generic content. I use LLMs occasionally in life outside work, mainly as a search engine, and feel fine about that, too. So you could say I’m not entangled with the matter at all. Except… I apparently can’t hold a conversation with a friend, post on social media, or even daydream idly without the topic eventually turning to bloody A.I.<br>It’s not always me who brings it up, but it often is; I’ve rarely known such a “sticky” subject. To give one example among hundreds: the other week, Substack, a platform this newsletter isn’t even on, introduced a feature allowing readers to scan for A.I.-generated text. Never mind, for now, if it works or it doesn’t, if it’s good or if it’s bad. Whatever your position on it, why do I – and so many others – seem to find debates on such matters so incredibly compelling?<br>One answer is that the general topic is an unusually powerful trigger for a major disease of our times: overthinking. After all, A.I. threatens or promises to decimate jobs, unleash human potential, crash the economy, help you make millions, and maybe destroy the world. So whatever insecurities already lurk in your psyche, it’s highly likely to activate them. Both hostility to and zealous enthusiasm towards A.I. can be explained this way. Maybe you fear poverty, and it seems like A.I. will seal your fate; or maybe you fear poverty and it seems like A.I. is your ticket to permanent financial security. Maybe you lack faith in your talents, and now it seems like A.I. will render you irrelevant for good – or maybe it’s finally your chance not to feel inferior to people who’ve always struck you as more talented. (In my case, I think it’s partly that I’ve always found it difficult to trust my own intuitions, so it’s been unnerving to realise how many super-smart people have what seem to me to be completely bonkers views on the subject. Should I trust them, or myself?)<br>Whatever the details, this is where overthinking kicks in, because it feels like the solution to the anxious feelings in your body is to scurry off into your head and think some more, read some more, argue some more, maybe use A.I. some more. (And by the way, it’s notable that A.I.’s leading proponents are some of the most head-based people you could hope to meet, embracing a model of intelligence that seems only to involve cogitation.)<br>But scurrying off to your head doesn’t work, as the coach Alex Olshonsky explains:<br>…like any addiction, there is a hit… for a brief moment, there’s relief, the...