Disembodiment, AI and "good quests"

AI is amazing. This whole blog is dedicated to my thinking around, usage of and explorations with AI. Nevertheless, I find it inconceivable that someone (anyone!) could believe replacing talking to their children in the car with “AI-generated podcasts” is a good idea.

I dislike negativity, and try to always side with the builders rather than the critics, but there’s something in this kind of take that leaves a sour taste in the mouth. I tend to feel that, in this take, one can see the worst of tech. It reminds me of those insane Apple Vision Pro adds where a father would sit, in the same room as the children, not actually paying attention to them, or interacting with them, but instead fully immersed in his own world.

This makes me ponder how technology is slowly leading to more and more disembodiment. We’re becoming less aware of our own bodies, our surroundings, the people around us. Of course, we live increasingly digital-first-lives. We order food online, work from home (and Google Meet) and interact with less and people every day. A recent study found that we’re actually talking less. According to the study, we spoke 28% less words out loud in a day in 2019 as compared with 2005. Maybe it’s a stretch but one could argue that we are becoming less human.

I believe we must fight against this disembodiment. We must resist the urge to live disembodied lives. We must read books, go watch live sport, touch grass and meet our friends. I’ve written before about this idea I call “AI barbells”, that part of us adapting to these new tools will be figuring out precisely when and precisely when not to use AI. “It’s still early”, so we’re still figuring this all out as a species, which I find to be a totally acceptable response, but I still find it discouraging to see AI leaders like Sam Altman talk like this.

This all reminds me of that classic Founders Fund blog post “Choose good quests”. AI is clearly a good quest! It has the potential to unlock huge productivity gains in the workplace, enable new scientific breakthroughs and maybe even help us answer previously unknown mysteries of the universe.

But AI is not a neutral technology, tools are never neutral. We have to choose how to wield them. We can choose whether or not to make our beds, and whether or not a conversation with our kids seems like a better idea than AI-generated audio.