10 Things I Wish Were Not True About AI

The bleak side I seldom talk about

Time for an honesty post. I usually try to keep things constructive and optimistic when I write, but that means I filter out the pessimism. So now and then, I need to unfilter.

I keep these posts short and quiet, not trying to spotlight them. Just something real to return to if I start sounding too hyped or too in sync with the crowd. Sometimes, pessimism “is all you need” for the optimism to stand out. (My last post wasn’t super optimistic either, just a sign of the times.)

So, 10 things I wish were not true that reveal the bleak side of AI I seldom write about:

1. AI has great potential, but society will be unable to fulfill it. We will cut ourselves with this double-edged sword. It will become a source of cognitive decline, distraction, and loneliness much more than of cognitive enhancement, focus, and belonging. This is the natural tendency of the human spirit when it exists in an unnatural environment.

2. I'm not afraid of losing my job, but only because of a safeguard I know won’t work for everyone. I'm in a proverbial spaceship—one of the lucky few drifting away from this mess, looking back at a world. Most people can’t, and won’t, get a seat. In one sentence: Only those with a direct relationship with their customers will have leverage—once labor becomes fully interchangeable with capital.

3. I’ve used ChatGPT for low-stakes therapy. I’ve also had conversations I don’t think I could have with any other human, not due to shame or lack of options, but because ChatGPT can pattern-match me better than any person. This will be the norm as soon as AI companies hit the sweet spot between honesty-disguised adulation and superhuman persuasiveness; we will be pushed and pulled into isolation and emotional dependence.

4. I haven’t internalized the superintelligence story. My model of the world is—despite being so immersed in AI—that “nothing ever happens.” I don’t think my case is uncommon: we can't psychologically withstand the implications were that reality come to fruition, even if we rationally understand them. We can't afford to prepare for it.

5. I can’t imagine what unbearable uncertainty students must be feeling. I can offer advice to them—“become adaptable” or “learn to learn”—but I only feel ok with it because I’m not in their position. If I were, I'm not sure I'd find it valuable at all. AI will be soon able to do whatever job they’d as fresh graduates; they will suffer obsolescence before having tasted the real world at all.

6. We should study the world as it is rather than as we’d want it to be in part because our hopes to change it should be grounded in reality. But there’s another reason: The gap between “what the world is” and “what the world should be” is growing—not necessarily because we're doing it wrong but because we're doing it too fast—and I don’t know how to face it.

7. I don’t think people will rebel against AI-generated content. For two reasons: One, you can’t tell the difference (people suffer from survivorship bias when detecting AI), and two, most people love slop. You will rebel against that thought, but it’s true.

8. People are correct in resisting AI because we risk cognitive decline, but that’s a bet that may or may not pay off. If using AI ends up being the norm, those who started early will get a big advantage. It is annoying to be forced into this dilemma.

9. AI’s negative effects are both an individual challenge and a systemic malaise (e.g., art being depreciated, cognitive decline, slop pollution, emotional dependence). Often, a systemic fix is preferable; often, an individual band-aid is all you have. You can choose between fighting everyone's fight in vain or taking that first-aid kit.

10. Automation is a great thing but only so long as the political power confronts the economic elite instead of strangling the worker class (e.g., distributing the gains through UBI). If that doesn't happen, it will instead produce greater inequality. So far, it is not happening. (I want to end on a high note so I will say I'm hopeful.)