AI promises to free up time. But what if it spares us from learning, writing, painting and exploring the world?

The Guardian

29-03-2025

As much as I have the general vibe of a luddite (strange hobbies, socially maladjusted, unfathomable fashion choices, etc) I have to hand it to automation: it's nice that computers have made some boring things in our lives less boring.
I side with the writer and philosopher John Gray, who in his terrifying work of eco-nihilism Straw Dogs balances the fact that human beings are a plague animal who are wrecking the biosphere that supports them with the idea that we have made our lives easier through technology. Gray, in particular, calls anesthetised dentistry an 'unmixed blessing'.
I would add some other unmixed blessings to that list: I like watching videos of cool birds on YouTube; I'm happy when my phone gently reminds me that it's time to get up and go for a walk after I've watched too many cool birds on YouTube; and I have no problems whatsoever with the printing press.
But one of the many things about the so-called 'AI revolution' that makes me want to run for the hills is the promise that AI will simplify things that should not be simple – that I would never want to be simple.
In matters of technology, I operate on one guiding principle: I give my computer the work that I do not want to do, and that I gain little by doing myself. The ideal model of the computer, I think, is the calculator: if I sat there with a piece of paper and a pen, I could probably do most of the sums myself that I ask my calculator to do. But that would take time, and I'm a busy man (lots of cool bird videos to watch), and so I give it to a computer to work out.
What I am not happy to outsource is most of the things that AI is desperate for me to outsource. I do not want a computer to summarise texts sent by my friends into shorter sentences, as though the work of being updated on the lives of those I love is somehow strenuous or not what being alive is all about. I do not want Google's AI feature to summarise my search into a pithy (often incorrect) paragraph, rather than reading the investigative work of my fellow humans. I don't want AI to clean up the pictures that I take on my phone that are rich and strange in their messiness.
And I certainly do not want AI to write my books for me, or paint my pictures. Not only would the work be terrible: it wouldn't even be work. As all creatives know, there is limited joy in having written a book – as soon as it is done, most of us are onto the next thing. The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative. Someone who merely churns out product is not an artist – they are a salesperson. The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.
Simply put: I don't know where this endless march of shortening the act of living leads us to. AI promises to free up time. But if what it spares us from is learning from our friends, writing, painting and exploring the world, then what, actually, are we meant to do with that time?
It's increasingly clear that a computer could live my life for me, all while I atrophy, never going outside. But if I reduced my existence to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of my living is only shorter, not better. And despite what tech bros tell me, those are not the same thing.
Joseph Earp is a critic, painter and novelist. His book Painting Portraits of Everyone I've Ever Dated will be published by Pantera Press on 29 April 2025