use AI as a catalyst

Endeavor to make stronger arguments against the use of AI across our creative & educational dwellings and the wave of users championing their efficacy will only continue swelling. There is a rising tide of artists and entrepreneurs alike taking advantage of the perpetual hype cycles generated by each of the latest "iPhone moments" in tech. To stalwartly resist the current is to miss the source of its undertow.

LLM’s and their ever-evolving interfaces (explore Notebook LLM, Deep Research Modes, and Reasoning models to begin to see the breadth of the landscape two short years in) are a symptom of a larger issue that has been plaguing the internet for the better part of a decade.

Information glut, bloat, and slop has been endemic to surfing the web long before its AI counter-part hit the scene.

We have all sought refuge from the toxic and far too overwhelming amounts of links, pages, podcasts, and feeds by turning to dumbphones, social media fasts, simplified tech stacks, digital declutters, and email summaries of feeds we can no longer peruse individually. AI overviews are long overdue; Audio Overviews are lightning in a bottle of empty bits of content.

This stage of the cycle, with continued overblown headlines & overpromising heads of company, has real benefits for everyday users of the web.

Support it or condemn it, AI can catalyze a new world of creative output.

The tech-bros & bullish investors in the technology are streamlining the creation of some of the first great pieces of AI-generated art pieces, community projects, and software developments. Their fervor for these innovations will drive growth in a certain direction and (regardless of externalities and effects on those questions of personhood, identity, and generative natures that are the fly in the ointment) that growth will begin to shape the future we enter.

The cautionaries & humanists who eschew these tools will be put to the same task but with the use of their God-given talents & tools (no matter how the technology— pencil, paper, calculator, or printing press— extends their humanity in ways they take for granted with characteristic chronological snobbery) to catch up to and outpace either the quantity or quality of their AI-competitors.

In both cases, the race to adapt to a world of AI will catalyze a future where all ships may actually rise with this new (artificially?) rising tide…