Hank Green, GenAI, and the silent agreement we all made

This week, thought leader and all around source of authentic intelligence Hank Green got “canceled” for using generative AI to create his content, but as usual it’s more complicated than that. He used a phrase, “I appreciate the pushback,” in a YouTube video, sending up red flags among viewers — the phrase is apparently beloved and overused by genAI bots like ChatGPT — leading them to assume he was reading from an AI-written script.

This was quickly eclipsed when Hank released a detailed open letter to his audience laying out where he thinks he’s become too reliant on AI for research and optimization purposes, and what he plans to change going forward. I should mention I’m a huge fan of Hank, he’s done truly amazing things with his influence, and he deserves way more nuance than this being the thing defining his character and impact on the world right now. But the message was that he had become more or less dependent on the efficiency of AI engines, and it was now leading him to reassess his process instead of simply focusing on the output.

I listened to a podcast this morning that came up on my YouTube suggestions, wherein the hosts discussed this topic. I was unfamiliar with this show, but I listened to the whole episode because I am a long time Hank fan, and I found the discussion both thought-provoking and abrasive. I had a deep, visceral reaction to the hosts aligning themselves with overall millennial sentiment in general as being enthusiastic early adopters of technology, and that we used to see Mark Zuckerberg as an icon.

Maybe you did, bros, but don’t speak for me. A lot of us always thought he was a creep, and something tells me we still don’t know the half of it.

I also had a strong reflexive sense of injustice hearing one of the hosts repeatedly assert that the red line for AI use should be the audience noticing. That’s…gross. Basically he was saying that the only thing that matters to him is getting away with it, and he tried to argue the logic and ethicality of that. At one point the other host said he recently used AI to make the cursor on the Lexus website a little car, and that that’s “super cool” in defense of AI’s indispensability.

Again guys, I’m trying here, but you’ve lost me.

In fairness, they did bring in three people from their own team who, while very compelled not to step too far out of line because of the inherent power dynamic of being employees who want to keep their jobs and not insult their bosses’ views, were in their early to mid 20s, and had a much more cynical and negative view on AI and its constant creep — I’m with them. And it did help balance the discourse, even if I felt like my millennial cohorts were being mostly incredibly embarrassing.

What I noticed most though, throughout, was the underlying agreement I don’t think any of us remembers making: That what we all want is more information, more productivity, more content, more discourse, as much as possible as quickly as possible. The crux of the argument was, “We all want more, all the time, AI can give it to us, how do we keep it from being problematic?”

But I want to back up to the premise: When did we decide that more is always better? And furthermore, when did we decide that effort was the enemy?

Evidence throughout history and the reality all around us insists that it is not. “A thneed’s a fine something that all people need!” is the ironic slogan of the nature-decimating Once-ler in the incredibly-depressing-because-it’s-so-real Dr. Seuss book The Lorax. He optimizes his process, creates a glut of an inane product, scorches the earth and regrets it in the end.

There is nothing that everyone needs except absence of things. Let me elaborate.

More is great when you know you’re indulging in seconds. More is lovely when you value it for what it is, but we’ve learned to worship more as a concept. Not more of one thing or another, just an insatiable craving that hollows us out and leaves us wondering what it’s all for. And because we’ve been taught to only value the seen, the concrete, the extant and immediate, we think the answer is still MORE. It’s not.

The absence of things is the fertile ground for all the invisible (no)things that make life worth living.

In my book, You Don’t Have to Like Me, I dedicate a whole chapter to the “unseen.” Often the unhappiest people in the world are surrounded by stuff, more and more stuff, then accumulations of power, dominion over others, never satisfying their inner need to actually like themselves. Liking ourselves, even just accepting ourselves as we are, is seen as a superfluous and optional part of life, something new-agey and therapy-speak-y like the guy you say “went off the deep end and got into that touchy feely stuff.”

And to be fair, it is the Buddhist philosophy that has a really great word for those folks who can’t get enough: Hungry ghosts. Their humanity is replaced by wanting. They cannot seek enlightenment because they can’t see beyond their ego’s desires. No matter how much they have, they are always hungry for more.

So let me put it to those cynics in words they’ll understand: Liking yourself will give you access to more of everything you want, and eventually you’ll actually stop being hungry.

And when you focus on being present with the process instead of jumping ahead to the outcome, you’ll feel like you actually deserve your rewards, instead of feeling like an impostor.

This is where the unseen becomes everything. Matter is all around us. The wooden table we can’t see through or mold with our hands is made of the same material as the air we breathe, and even quantum physics can’t explain exactly why one is table and one is air. But the fact is it’s all everything, which means we are everything and everything is us. We and every thing we see were made of this invisible potential, but there is a strong argument to be made that what we see is simply a handicap of being human. It’s all important.

The “problems” AI is aiming to optimize also happen to be invisible: Effort and satisfaction. This zero-value appraisal of the invisible then very intuitively results in a feeling of unworthiness and insatiability. AI might “save time,” but what’s the point if you feel no connection to what you create, you don’t learn anything new, and you don’t strengthen your endurance for difficult things? We think we’re cutting out non-essential time and difficulty, but really we’re shortchanging ourselves on our necessary diet of what makes us feel human.

I’ll be honest, I speak with so much certainty on these things because I see myself as a success story of this approach to life. I’m very, very happy. Do I have the things that usually denote a successful life? I sure do. But if I didn’t have the underlying sense of self-worth I’ve worked so hard to cultivate, none of it would be enough. I wouldn’t be able to look around at my day and say, “Wow, I did it. We did it. This is great. I don’t need more than this.”

I would instead be surrounded by beauty but compare my life to someone else’s and decide that the answer to my perceived lack is more.

I would feel the love and support from my incredible family but it would ring hollow inside me because I didn’t believe any of the nice things they said to me.

I would see change as scary because who knows if I can ever achieve the things I have again?

I would be afraid to express my opinions on my online platforms for fear of being disagreed with.

My reality would look very, very different.

This is why I say that self-esteem will bring all the rewards that humans place the highest value on. It’s because self-esteem roots you firmly in your self, so that’s where your decisions come from. They come from faith that you can stay the course on your own behalf, bet on yourself, and rise to the occasion again and again, instead of self-sabotaging because you’re afraid you’ll fail, or never starting at all.

The world needs you to be you. The universe is begging you to tap into your uniqueness. That’s why we’re all so different; what we each have to offer is like nothing else that has ever been or ever will be. Tapping into your individual vibration until it becomes the drumbeat of your very existence, unshakeable in its worthiness to exist and abundant enough to shine light on all that it touches, that’s where fulfillment comes from. The tangible dividends of success will come, but this time you’ll actually find them satisfying.

So no, more is not better, and AI’s ability to access as much as possible as fast as possible is simply another way we are trying to find satisfaction in the ways that avoid the only place satisfaction is found: within us. The irony that we are trying to get a computer to synthesize the unlimited availability of everything and it leaves us feeling more and more empty is a strong sign we should probably be doing something differently, and the answer is right there: It’s you.