Join Yascha Mounk and Dan Williams for this live recording of The Good Fight podcast at the Halycon International School as they discuss whether AI will doom us all!
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AI → join → us
Please note that you must reserve a ticket in order to attend.
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you → note → ticket
Pease email events@persuasion.community if you have any questions.
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you → pease → questions
A couple of weeks ago I put a (very unscientific) poll out in the field, asking the usual suspects of Substack Notes the following: “Just curious: can anybody here point to a case in which YOUR life has been made qualitatively better by AI?”
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life → put → AI
I have to admit that I wasn’t entirely sincere in this query.
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I → have → query
I expected crickets, which was what I was going for, and a bit of snark—and there was some much-appreciated snark in the mix.
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I → expect → mix
Here was @Emmett Rensin:
When I teach, it takes less time to grade.
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it → teach → time
Not because I use an LLM to grade, but because 10-20% of the papers are written by an LLM, I can tell within 2-3 sentences, and then I get to stop reading, skip the feedback, and just fail it.
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I → use → it
Quality time with my daughter explaining which 30% of the medical advice she gets from ChatGPT is wrong.
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she → explain → ChatGPT
Since AI seems destined to eliminate all humans, it means global warming won’t get a chance to kill us all first.
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warming → destine → us
But a lot of people—over 160!—gave very thoughtful answers and forced me to consider more carefully how AI is reshaping our lives.
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AI → 160!—gave → lives
Here are a few of the responses that grabbed me:
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that → grab → me
@Damon Rondeau:
In less than a year Claude has saved me literally thousands in repairing my gas range, my car, my plumbing, my SSD failure, and more.
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Claude → save → range
When parties who shall remain nameless accidentally disconnected my grandmother’s telecare system, it gave me every step in how to get it back up and running far faster than I could have found it myself.
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I → remain → it
@Sonia Albrecht:
I’m able to enter the field I want!
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I → ’m → field
If it wasn’t for AI I would have switched majors to something I can start from scratch with [after a medical leave], but instead I’m using it as a tutor and am going to get my dream job after all :)
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I → switch → job
Beyond that, people listed some of the following benefits: cutting through paperwork, vibe coding, planning out travel itineraries, video editing, writing work e-mails.
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people → list → mails
The term “personal autodidactery” came up.
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term → come → ?
@Andrew Printer used it to start a 501(c)(3) and several others claimed they had saved money or made money through it.
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they → use → it
@Sabrina Ivan gave maybe the most lyrical response when she said “It really helped a lot with my roses.”
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It → give → roses
@Dan Williams said it helped him to improve his hair styling—and if you check out dapper Dan’s avatar, that might well make an AI believer out of you.1
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that → say → believer
Sifting through the responses there were a few patterns I noticed.
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I → sift → responses
Maybe the most common use was some form of “cutting through paperwork,” but if you asked people what they used their iPhone for, just about everybody would answer “photos” and “messaging” and then from there it would be as widely divergent as everybody’s individual personalities, and the same seemed to be true here
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same → cut → personalities
: everybody who used AI seemed to be finding a way to extend some version of themselves and what they already liked to do.
Second, people often seemed to be defensive or resigned to their AI usage. “I am anti-AI, but…” was a very common formulation.
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I → use → usage
In other cases, people seemed annoyed with me for asking the question.
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people → seem → question
The sense was that AI was deeply intertwined with people’s habits, whether that was chat or research or red tape-cutting and so much so that to some it came across as an affront to be challenged on it.
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it → intertwine → it
But the main pattern I noticed—and this seems somehow to be under-discussed in the conversation—is that everybody, with a few notable exceptions, talked about themselves and their habits.
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everybody → notice → themselves
And this strikes me as something profound about how AI is reshaping our mental landscape.
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AI → strike → landscape
If social media was all about other people—“this is what drives life,” as the Zuckerberg character says in The Social Network, referring to gossip and flirtation and knowing all the little tidbits about one another, what he calls “the social structure of college”—AI is anti-social media, allowing us to develop a kind of self-sufficiency where our main relationship is with this souped-up cyber version of our own shadow.
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relationship → drive → shadow
The exceptions are worth noting.
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exceptions → note → ?
@Mari-Claire said AI allowed her to successfully diagnose her child’s rare speech disorder a year before the medical profession caught up, while @Carol Horton said she was able to prolong her dog’s life by changing the dog’s diet—but these uses are offset by representative comments like that of @Rossella Singer, who said, “I now have a reasoning partner who isn’t constantly imposing their ego and seeking validation” or @Jest Dotty, who said, “if I’m bored I can talk to it and waste x3 the amount of time I needed to get something done.
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something → say → time
If social media compelled us to be involved—whether we wanted it or not—in the minutiae of everybody else’s everyday life, AI turns us all into, like, reclusive billionaires, no longer obligated to try to communicate with doctors or handymen, let alone to comment on each other’s vacation pictures.
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AI → compel → pictures
It seems fitting that the computer age would culminate (or culminate for now) in this: frictionlessness, the avoidance of anyone who isn’t you.
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who → seem → anyone
I have been on record since last year as boycotting AI, but, reading these responses, I noticed that, even without participating in AI, I have adopted some of the same characteristics.
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I → boycott → characteristics
Recently—as if out of nowhere—I have gotten very into habits.
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I → get → habits
Basically, every spare moment I listen to audiobooks on my earbuds.
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I → listen → earbuds
I have these mental rituals that frame the day and that I can slide into if there’s a slow moment and it’s too much trouble to reach into my pockets for the earbuds.
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it → have → earbuds
I like the new habits—I have become much more productive and structured over the course of a day—but it’s interesting to me that I didn’t do anything like this before.
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I → like → this
The reason, I’m pretty sure, was that I still expected the world to have bounty to give—if I was just idling around, I thought that, who knows what, a stranger would come up and say something interesting or an adventure would unfold or just some thought would float up out of the boredom.
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thought → ’m → boredom
Sometime between the release of ChatGPT and now, I have been disabused of that notion.
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I → disabuse → notion
…and 36 more, not listed.
The Aporia
