The AI race to dumb

Do you all have a death wish?

Most seem to think I am an idiot for declining to jump on the AI bandwagon. It could do your whole job for you, Meghan! (It could not, thank you very much.) Most seem to think I’m stupid for not jumping on all sorts of technological bandwagons, actually. You’ve got to get on TikTok, Meghan—that’s where the money is. Perhaps so, but is money a fair tradeoff for having to be on TikTok?

You all did this to me with dating apps too. Lord the endless pressure I got from friends back in Vancouver who insisted It’s fun, Meghan. (It’s not.) Why would I want to spend one more second of my day on any app, nevermind on an app talking to strangers I don’t want to date?

What happened to the will to live? To be human?

Life’s greatest joy and fulfillment comes from our relationships to others. I like meeting people in real life. (Also, why on earth are you claiming to want to meet people if you aren’t willing to go out and be around people?) It is thrilling and exciting and fun and titillating and romantic. An app is none of those things and beyond my disinterest in swiping through a series of internet faces, disattached from any vibe or pheromone, there is no part of me so desperate as to be driven to attempt to sell myself to strangers I have no interest in. (Frankly I’d probably be better off if I met less men, not more. Surely I’d have published several books by now.)

Speaking of, what happened to shame? Apparently, we are now expected to have none. Adult women spend their days posting videos of themselves dancing in kitchens and grocery stores and desperately trying to get strange men to send them trite or perverted messages on the internet. (Let’s avoid getting into the mass normalization of OnlyFans just this once—I don’t think I need to explain at great length here what I think about two generations of young women selling their souls and assholes for an average of $180 a month.)

We’ve handed over our self-respect to technologies we have been told are for us but of course are not. (Do you really think they designed dating apps to function like slot machines because they wanted us to find love and happiness? No. They did that on purpose because they understand how gambling addiction works and want to keep you swiping swiping swiping, hoping for a big win…) And now we’ve handed over our humanity—our very will to live and live with purpose—to the next big thing.

I am aware that AI helps you write your emails and answer your questions in the style of a Jamaican pirate and then will do you the favour of taking your job so you can nap the rest of your life away on UBI, waking every 12 hours to masturbate to your very own private AI girlfriend who never we-need-to-talks you, but my question is why would you want this?

My aim in life is not to disconnect or to make my brain lazier than it’s already been made, bouncing around between 120 browser tabs and my Instagram notifications. I don’t want the internet to meet people for me or imagine what I might say to them. I don’t want to farm out my ability to think or to compose a paragraph.

This doesn’t sound helpful it sounds like hell. Literally. It sounds like a death wish, but like if you also wanted to spend your one glorious, miraculous life on your death bed, staring into the blue light until eventually your soda spills, short-circuiting your Neuralink.

Too many appear to have forgotten the eternal message that there is no joy without pain, no triumph without sacrifice, no glory without guts, and no gratitude for peace without having fought a few wars.

Embracing the AI revolution equates to suicidal ideation—a voluntary extinguishing of your ability to think, as well as your passion, creativity, and humanity, but I guess it’s cool you know what a breakup letter from a potato would sound like.