Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
Just because you can use AI doesn’t mean that you should.
Everyone wants to use AI to produce (write), hardly anyone wants to consume (read) it. Several peers orchestrate AI agents to create posts on their behalf, others claim that AI is equivalent to their own writing, or even express they can’t write an email without ChatGPT.
We seem to be publicly normalizing what many of us privately criticize. Automation and the pursuit of productivity for its own sake strike me as a collective race to the bottom in many respects. To be sure, I personally subscribe to Claude Max (not for publication drafting) and use AI (e.g., Cowork). But just because we can, it doesn’t mean we necessarily should do something.
“Enshittification” denotes the gradual deterioration of a tech platform: social feeds of organic posts and community interactions give way to algorithm-driven advertisements and influencer content that move to our current paradigm of AI slop. Estimates suggest up to half of the Internet is made up of AI-generated content, and the same activities promoting engagement are the ones that turn users away. We stop reading or posting and switch off.
On a macro level I do believe the AI transformation is real and here to stay. I have participated in private equity due diligence projects for AI infrastructure to witness the billions of dollars directed into data centers reshaping wholesale economies across regions. The funding already represents a historic buildout of investments for this mega-trend or potential bubble.
I also think we are generally not adequately prepared for advanced AI, and question the motives and narrative of CEOs at the frontier (the same cadre who got us addicted to social media and perpetual distraction). Most of us in fact believe the pace of development is too fast and do not trust big tech.
We can hold nuanced views of upsides and downsides on a topic. We can deploy AI for certain use cases, while seeking to preserve our critical thinking faculties by not overly relying on LLM models. We can advocate for AI in workflows for efficiency, but challenge the logic that mass layoffs are therefore essential. We can be pro capitalist, yet recognize when monopolies distort markets and incentives to require government regulations. We can observe that prioritizing profits at the expense of safety (“letting it rip”) likely yields negative outcomes beyond headline existential risks.
Between “AI pilled” and “AI backlash” exists the space where the majority of us reside. Keeping the big picture of purpose and end-goals in mind seems to be as important as capabilities themselves in our decision calculus as a society regarding AI diffusion, governance, and security considerations.
It’s up to each one of us to actively participate as we decide what kind of future world we wish for ourselves. What would you like to see, change if you could, and best contribute towards this vision?
