This is super interesting, and gives voice to a lot of fears/concerns I have as well. What’s been interesting to me as I watch this unfold is that, at the beginning of last year, I took an online course on “The Fundamentals of AI.” It emphasized AI’s ability to diagnose and evaluate problems/issues in complex systems and situations, like how to manage inventory in a big, complex business.
But, at least as it’s played out in the public realm ever since then, all the oxygen is taken up by *generative* AI, the kind of AI that can replace human creativity and labor, as well as even our relationships, as you point out.
The timing of all these jaw-dropping advances in AI coming right after a global pandemic couldn’t be more problematic re: all the concerns you cite. It reminds me of "Wall-E" more than anything!
I've wondered about the timing of AI being released just as we finally returned to a normalcy after the pandemic. Like you,I am reminded of Wall-e. It's a strange thing when movies and books written with despotic intentions meant to warn us are so often disregarded.
Amazing essay. As a futurist and Ai Hype Junkie, these predictions about Ai-induced solitude at civilization-level scale are the first thoughts to give me pause. I have started putting a lot of weight into the existential question “what should I build that was once impossible?” Maybe that question should be tweaked to “What should WE build that keeps society possible?”
I read this. And I wonder if we are not all believing the worst of other people. I value my social spaces. They aren't perfect but they feel good. I sing on a choir. I talk to people in the pub. I watch crap on Netflix, I read books. I read insightful articles on Substack. I use AI. It's useful and we can adapt to it. Am I odd?
I don't think AI is a problem EXCEPT in terms of resource use. In those terms it's catastrophic. I don't think it's talked about enough.
But we are already living a slow catastrophe. Overshoot is the only burning issue, it's a firestorm, a true predicament we can't solve and which will end us. I keep asking the AI. No solutions as yet. I'll keep you posted.
I hear you Nick. But you painted there the best possible combination of circumstances. I urge you to read Thompson's essay in its entirety. He did a better job than me. It's also quite optimistic at the end.
It's paywalled, Alberto. Still, though I hear what you say, I'd be surprised if that were the best possible combination. And what of the energy issue? We live in a society that depends on finite and dwindling energy access, whether you are gregarious or solitary. AI is not helping.
Yeah, the energy issue is very real (e.g. Karen Hao, also for The Atlantic, published a very good piece months ago on the water requirements of datacenters and then there's the news on the nuclear energy bet of the big hyperscalers, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon). I have covered it only in the weekly review because I don't feel I have a good enough grasp of the issue to do a standalone post. But probably will.
AI is just another new thing for humans to adapt. Some will figure it out and use it productively for work, psychological advice, physical health guidance, etc. Those will have an advantage in earning potential, emotional and physical well-being, etc. They will happily socialize and procreate. Others will binge on AI and collapse in asocial solitude with a corresponding extinction outcome. Embrace a change; ain't the change is what makes life interesting and intriguing?
Why is Thompson's article a must read? I can't disagree with anything here but there's nothing new. "Bowling Alone" is twenty five years old this year. Maybe AI will accelerate this trend, but seems like it is would continue this path without it.
Because he provides data we didn't have before (surely not 25 years ago, although he does mention Bowling Alone and interviewed its author) and because it's valuable being aware of how new technology changes the story. If you don't want to read, then don't! (Also, he doesn't focus on AI. I do)
Here’s a few positives to note regarding entertainment:
When it comes to new releases at home and in the cinema, it’s good that many people are watching many of the same of films and television series with celebrations, anticipation and recency-bias around new releases, plus trending back catalog titles surfacing in waves, reliable constants resulting in many people being involved in the same entertainment activities and forming conversations that orbit around them.
Thankfully and in addition, it seems the major streaming platforms are also gradually planning on gravitating towards adding a top-level linear autoplay channel to their apps, which hopefully will go some way to replicating the classic days of many people at home watching the same thing, to then talk about together later. And will reduce the friction of perceived too-much-choice, when people first enter a streaming app and can’t decide on what to watch.
It’s also very positive that more people, especially teens and young adults - and across all ages too, are returning to cinemas and are sharing these experiences together, —in many cases also reliving them again at home with VOD digital and streaming later and via early pre-orders being made at the same time as theatrical release windows.
The live music scene is also huge right now, it’s great that people are loving being together, dancing and experiencing live entertainment in the moment, especially compared to back during the pandemic.
Humans vs Ai
I like to think that human nature, instinct and our natural behaviours already may have what it takes to naturally counteract the worst of artificial intelligence and algorithms that otherwise would be stripping the soul out of everyday activities, and that they we may naturally remedy the fragmentation, isolation and side effects caused by some of the worst aspects of Ai —but admittedly that’s said with a large dose of wishful thinking and long-term faith!
There has always been too much of everything, for example, there is a reason it's called pulp fiction. It was just more inaccessible because the world was less connected and no one person was aware of just how much there was. I think, therefore, this is our opportunity to stop looking forward and to look back. The quality of much of everything that has been produced has always been, well - crap. The fact that most everything that will be produced from now into the future will be absolute garbage at least gives us a nice demarcation line from which to begin our retrospective search. Perhaps we will discover, or rediscover, valuable things that we had collectively missed - don't forget that everything we superficially perceive to have "value" especially in literature, has been driven by psychological priming. Foisted upon us in school and by our peers and the NY Times Best Seller List - is "Catcher in the Rye" or "Lord of the Flies" really "good" or are they sociologically convenient artifacts we've been fooled into valuing because they tell a narrative about human nature they want you to believe. I think it's the latter, because literature, like art and music and movies, are a subtle form of social control. So don't lament the loss, embrace the archeology. This is why a bad actor tried to take down the Internet Archive - that's where the treasures are, there and in attics and basements in thrift shops and old libraries that cling to the past…
It touches on Donald Hoffman’s work on the illusion of reality as a survival, probability-maximizing headset. Psychological research for decades, some benign, some not, revealed the clever tweaks and manipulations capable of changing human perception. Changing perception changes behaviours, actions, and, ultimately, destinies; now at Coke-distribution scale, leveraged by the adaptation of Cialdini’s principles.
I commend you on the flow, cohesion and scope of your writing (first one I read of yours) and where you left it for further essays. Most particularly I commend what you didn’t discuss (deliberately or otherwise) and where you let it end for the reader to ponder. The comments themselves I read as signals.
This prompts me to encourage others to read Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of Rituals. There are other writers armed with (often) form-fit data, but nothing equals his atypical perspective, density, prose, implications, and corrective actions, in my opinion. By all means read the many novels the past ~200 years and plethora of recent non-fiction (some you mention), but they don’t dig deep as to cause, and as to counter.
There yet remains an ancient, ready antidote to the predation of collective human narcissism by narcissistic tech pedlars - the faces presented in lieu of their faceless overlords. As we hurtle towards a pre-designed world for benefits sold to us, benefits not for us, the manufactured perfect combination of sugar, fat and by subscription, can we still step back? Can we step back to reveal what the ancients constructed for good reason, even unto this, to read Chesterton’s Fence, invaluable rituals rendered invisible by accretive, tweaked intoxications warping our very perspective because we are picked from the troop one-by-one.
Step back and explore B-YH before you put on what will one-day be your final headset, a face-hugger of blissful solitude delivered by Amazon, made by Oculus, promising Westworld without the train trip - because you won’t know which headset will be your last, sealing your doom.
Disclosure - no commissions from his work are earned by this comment. 🥸
Would we have a black mirror episode covering that dystopia of near pure solitude (virtually forgetting about what loneliness is, because of super immersive merged tech & entertainment) ?
Anyway our ecological overshoot will shake us up hard and bring our tech down (albeit with stress, tension, violence and conflicts).
I just hope we don't end in The Matrix 25 years later!
What a deep topic your wrote about in such a personal way. Love it!
Gracias Jose!
This is super interesting, and gives voice to a lot of fears/concerns I have as well. What’s been interesting to me as I watch this unfold is that, at the beginning of last year, I took an online course on “The Fundamentals of AI.” It emphasized AI’s ability to diagnose and evaluate problems/issues in complex systems and situations, like how to manage inventory in a big, complex business.
But, at least as it’s played out in the public realm ever since then, all the oxygen is taken up by *generative* AI, the kind of AI that can replace human creativity and labor, as well as even our relationships, as you point out.
The timing of all these jaw-dropping advances in AI coming right after a global pandemic couldn’t be more problematic re: all the concerns you cite. It reminds me of "Wall-E" more than anything!
I've wondered about the timing of AI being released just as we finally returned to a normalcy after the pandemic. Like you,I am reminded of Wall-e. It's a strange thing when movies and books written with despotic intentions meant to warn us are so often disregarded.
Amazing essay. As a futurist and Ai Hype Junkie, these predictions about Ai-induced solitude at civilization-level scale are the first thoughts to give me pause. I have started putting a lot of weight into the existential question “what should I build that was once impossible?” Maybe that question should be tweaked to “What should WE build that keeps society possible?”
That's a good way to frame it. What "keeps society possible"
I read this. And I wonder if we are not all believing the worst of other people. I value my social spaces. They aren't perfect but they feel good. I sing on a choir. I talk to people in the pub. I watch crap on Netflix, I read books. I read insightful articles on Substack. I use AI. It's useful and we can adapt to it. Am I odd?
I don't think AI is a problem EXCEPT in terms of resource use. In those terms it's catastrophic. I don't think it's talked about enough.
But we are already living a slow catastrophe. Overshoot is the only burning issue, it's a firestorm, a true predicament we can't solve and which will end us. I keep asking the AI. No solutions as yet. I'll keep you posted.
I hear you Nick. But you painted there the best possible combination of circumstances. I urge you to read Thompson's essay in its entirety. He did a better job than me. It's also quite optimistic at the end.
It's paywalled, Alberto. Still, though I hear what you say, I'd be surprised if that were the best possible combination. And what of the energy issue? We live in a society that depends on finite and dwindling energy access, whether you are gregarious or solitary. AI is not helping.
Yeah, the energy issue is very real (e.g. Karen Hao, also for The Atlantic, published a very good piece months ago on the water requirements of datacenters and then there's the news on the nuclear energy bet of the big hyperscalers, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon). I have covered it only in the weekly review because I don't feel I have a good enough grasp of the issue to do a standalone post. But probably will.
gift link (not paywalled):
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/?gift=HvjgLNaoNQYB64KoZ5weL_dmQCJYFpIdK00OKtX9H7E
AI is just another new thing for humans to adapt. Some will figure it out and use it productively for work, psychological advice, physical health guidance, etc. Those will have an advantage in earning potential, emotional and physical well-being, etc. They will happily socialize and procreate. Others will binge on AI and collapse in asocial solitude with a corresponding extinction outcome. Embrace a change; ain't the change is what makes life interesting and intriguing?
Why is Thompson's article a must read? I can't disagree with anything here but there's nothing new. "Bowling Alone" is twenty five years old this year. Maybe AI will accelerate this trend, but seems like it is would continue this path without it.
Because he provides data we didn't have before (surely not 25 years ago, although he does mention Bowling Alone and interviewed its author) and because it's valuable being aware of how new technology changes the story. If you don't want to read, then don't! (Also, he doesn't focus on AI. I do)
1. This reminds me of this post of mine: https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/loneliness-is-self-reinforcing 2. According to Robert Putnam (famed researcher and author of Bowling Alone) TV was anything but trivially problematic for US loneliness and isolation.
Minor points aside, this was really good. Shared it on Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/cathy.bsky.social/post/3lfqc74zbqk2v
Thanks Cathy! I meant trivially as in "trivially to understand how it's problematic" not as in "unimportant"
(I've written myself about this a few times before, but Thompson's essay was a good starting point for a new post.)
Enjoyed reading your article, interesting points.
Here’s a few positives to note regarding entertainment:
When it comes to new releases at home and in the cinema, it’s good that many people are watching many of the same of films and television series with celebrations, anticipation and recency-bias around new releases, plus trending back catalog titles surfacing in waves, reliable constants resulting in many people being involved in the same entertainment activities and forming conversations that orbit around them.
Thankfully and in addition, it seems the major streaming platforms are also gradually planning on gravitating towards adding a top-level linear autoplay channel to their apps, which hopefully will go some way to replicating the classic days of many people at home watching the same thing, to then talk about together later. And will reduce the friction of perceived too-much-choice, when people first enter a streaming app and can’t decide on what to watch.
It’s also very positive that more people, especially teens and young adults - and across all ages too, are returning to cinemas and are sharing these experiences together, —in many cases also reliving them again at home with VOD digital and streaming later and via early pre-orders being made at the same time as theatrical release windows.
The live music scene is also huge right now, it’s great that people are loving being together, dancing and experiencing live entertainment in the moment, especially compared to back during the pandemic.
Humans vs Ai
I like to think that human nature, instinct and our natural behaviours already may have what it takes to naturally counteract the worst of artificial intelligence and algorithms that otherwise would be stripping the soul out of everyday activities, and that they we may naturally remedy the fragmentation, isolation and side effects caused by some of the worst aspects of Ai —but admittedly that’s said with a large dose of wishful thinking and long-term faith!
There has always been too much of everything, for example, there is a reason it's called pulp fiction. It was just more inaccessible because the world was less connected and no one person was aware of just how much there was. I think, therefore, this is our opportunity to stop looking forward and to look back. The quality of much of everything that has been produced has always been, well - crap. The fact that most everything that will be produced from now into the future will be absolute garbage at least gives us a nice demarcation line from which to begin our retrospective search. Perhaps we will discover, or rediscover, valuable things that we had collectively missed - don't forget that everything we superficially perceive to have "value" especially in literature, has been driven by psychological priming. Foisted upon us in school and by our peers and the NY Times Best Seller List - is "Catcher in the Rye" or "Lord of the Flies" really "good" or are they sociologically convenient artifacts we've been fooled into valuing because they tell a narrative about human nature they want you to believe. I think it's the latter, because literature, like art and music and movies, are a subtle form of social control. So don't lament the loss, embrace the archeology. This is why a bad actor tried to take down the Internet Archive - that's where the treasures are, there and in attics and basements in thrift shops and old libraries that cling to the past…
This eminent writing Alberto.
It touches on Donald Hoffman’s work on the illusion of reality as a survival, probability-maximizing headset. Psychological research for decades, some benign, some not, revealed the clever tweaks and manipulations capable of changing human perception. Changing perception changes behaviours, actions, and, ultimately, destinies; now at Coke-distribution scale, leveraged by the adaptation of Cialdini’s principles.
I commend you on the flow, cohesion and scope of your writing (first one I read of yours) and where you left it for further essays. Most particularly I commend what you didn’t discuss (deliberately or otherwise) and where you let it end for the reader to ponder. The comments themselves I read as signals.
This prompts me to encourage others to read Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of Rituals. There are other writers armed with (often) form-fit data, but nothing equals his atypical perspective, density, prose, implications, and corrective actions, in my opinion. By all means read the many novels the past ~200 years and plethora of recent non-fiction (some you mention), but they don’t dig deep as to cause, and as to counter.
There yet remains an ancient, ready antidote to the predation of collective human narcissism by narcissistic tech pedlars - the faces presented in lieu of their faceless overlords. As we hurtle towards a pre-designed world for benefits sold to us, benefits not for us, the manufactured perfect combination of sugar, fat and by subscription, can we still step back? Can we step back to reveal what the ancients constructed for good reason, even unto this, to read Chesterton’s Fence, invaluable rituals rendered invisible by accretive, tweaked intoxications warping our very perspective because we are picked from the troop one-by-one.
Step back and explore B-YH before you put on what will one-day be your final headset, a face-hugger of blissful solitude delivered by Amazon, made by Oculus, promising Westworld without the train trip - because you won’t know which headset will be your last, sealing your doom.
Disclosure - no commissions from his work are earned by this comment. 🥸
Great post, Alberto, thought-provoking and well-written!
Would we have a black mirror episode covering that dystopia of near pure solitude (virtually forgetting about what loneliness is, because of super immersive merged tech & entertainment) ?
Anyway our ecological overshoot will shake us up hard and bring our tech down (albeit with stress, tension, violence and conflicts).
And between that ecological overshoot and the rabbit hole of virtual solitude, the chapter 1 of the book Ready Player One is very prescient too: https://lythrumpress.com.au/chapter/ready-player-one-chapter-no-1/