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Have you ever had one of those days when nothing monumental happens but you just feel like it’s a bad day? Has AI ever made you question the Matrix?
I had one of those last Friday…
I spent most of last week updating resumes, websites, and reading non-sense in my feeds, which has been a common theme. Rarely do posts actually catch my attention to the point of reading it line-by-line. One post in particular made me stop scrolling, and actually brought a tear to my eye. As I was contemplating my thoughts and considering my views on humanity I scrolled into the comment section. There it was, the truth that broke my Friday: “this is AI trash” with an explanation of proof.
Insert sound of breaking glass…
It wasn’t even the idea of people using AI that broke me. It was the realization that nothing is real. I have been struggling with job hunting and playing the balancing game of optimizing for AI, optimizing with AI, and still managing to, somehow, appear to be a real human. Only to apply to a bunch of generated jobs, at generated companies, being pushed by generated talent.
My AI journey
I spent many weeks last summer learning the ins and outs of how to communicate with bots. How to generate content, produce ideas, and build an empire. It was all fine and dandy until I realized that it wasn’t working for me. No matter how much I tried to control the outcome, all I could get out of it was sadness.
I couldn’t connect. Even if it did sound like my voice, which it rarely did, it felt empty. And the harder I pushed, the grosser I felt.
There was no excitement. When you create something, there’s this place inside that starts to glow. You recognize the joy, the journey, and how much effort you gave to get there. There was no joy. No journey. Just copy paste generated content with no feeling.
Since dropping my last bot generated short in August (check it out HERE), I have seen the exact same idea, and every other generated idea I skipped, multiple times in multiple places. I wasn’t training my brain to learn how to use AI, but how to recognize it.
So where do I go from here?
I find that I am deeply offended by the idea that nothing is real. All I want to do is exit all 37 tabs I currently have open, cancel my internet, and move to Alaska. I actually found a really cute cabin in the middle of nowhere. $50k no water, no bathroom, no electricity.
That is probably not an acceptable response when you are trying to do some responsible adulting. So I guess I can accept a different path. One that embraces art, non-AI-edited content, and the journey.
