I believe we're going to see a demand for real people. The internet, general opinion, and even a large majority of communication with your friends and family are being largely influenced, or completely written by AI... not the person you're talking to. It starts to pose the question "who am I talking to?"
I get multiple emails, DMs, texts, and of course a slurry of social media posts completely and unapologetically written by AI. It's obviously AI. At least, it's obviously AI to me, but being in the tech world I spend a significant amount of time around AI.
It's an immediate shutdown of emotional and personal connection for me the second I see it. I find myself disregarding most of the things people say online that I know to be heavily using AI. Why? Because it isn't them. If I wanted that take, I'd ask ChatGPT. What's the point of reading it regurgitated by someone else?
Recently I was at a graduation ceremony for a highschool, and the students that had a speech had written it with ChatGPT. I could tell, but they even mentioned they used ChatGPT (I did appreciate the honesty) from stage. It was obvious because these were thoughts and wording a 17 year old kid wouldn't have on their own. It wasn't them. Who are we even listening to?
But AI can be used to enhance communication and thought, it doesn't mean it's "not me"
This can be true, but it's also easily not true. I've experienced it becoming not true personally several times. You start to put your thoughts into ChatGPT about how you feel or think about a topic and you're trying to refine your wording, your messaging etc. "Get some polish" I'll tell myself. The message comes back in nearly completely different words with an influence by your original thought, but then it inserts nuances– angles that you didn't start your thoughts with, but you read it and you think "yeah that makes sense and seems better" and you go with it. You continue to iterate your thought with AI, then if you're really over the top you re-word it to sound a bit more like how you speak.
Then you read the final product... how much of this final product is you at all?
The seemingly insignificant twists and turns that AI inserted along the way actually lead you down a completely different path than where you would have ended up without it. It's easy to think "well this is just a bit better than what I would have come up with" and that may be true, but it's also no longer you. Maybe what makes the things you have to say have any meaning at all is the fact that your thoughts and angles on topics are completely different, and imperfect... and the world needs that. It needs you.
AI is pattern recognition and predictive completion, not original thought. When it refines your words, it's washing everything that makes you unique through the collective average of the world which is decisively, not you (and actually, not anyone), and therefore: there's no personal connection, and I'd even say it's no longer meaningful.
This lack of real people and unique thought is a problem that is taking over quicker than you'd probably imagine...
- As much as 80% of all internet web traffic may be bots (article here)
- More than 80% of the recommendations you receive on social media are generated and determined by AI (article here)
- Up to 70% of all images you see on social media are generated, or altered by AI (article here)
- 78% of Americans suspect the content they see and read on the internet is written or generated by AI (article here)
- 60% of US based companies are relying on AI to manage their social media presence (article here)
- At least 54% of LinkedIn posts are estimated to be generated by AI (article here)
- On average, at least 20% of all general social media interactions are bots, and depending on the topics or time of year, may be as much as 80% (article here)
What is this telling us?
The internet has been taken over by content and information that was not created by people and nearly everyone knows it, nobody likes it, but we just... keep doing it?
Oh and don't forget, it's just going to get much worse.
This is why in a world being taken over by AI, I am writing this to you without the aid of any AI, and without any grammar correction
This means my writing is less than formal and "correct", but I like it, and my hope is that you do too. It sounds like me. It's imperfect. It is me. It's a funny thought, but I think typos and imperfect grammar are nearly the only things left to identify that just maybe, it's a real person on the other side of the text on the screen.
Everything on this blog today, and everything in the future will always be just me– no AI, ever. Not just because I care about real people still existing on the internet, but because I also believe that the over use and reliance on AI is deteriorating our ability to think, and therefore, I believe it's possible we could lose our unique voices completely, and I hate that thought.
What is AI doing to your brain?
Neuroscientists such as Caroline Leaf explain to us that the brain is physically rewired based off of the actions that we repeat. Essentially, neuroplasticity works both ways. What is neuroplasticitiy?
“Neuroplasticity, a central concept in neuroscience, refers to the brain’s ability to strengthen existing neural networks, form new connections between neurons, and generate new neurons (through neurogenesis) in response to stimuli and experience."
- Dr. Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D.
The idea in the most layman's possible terms is that you train your brain daily based off of the things that you do, so when you consistently do less with your brain, your brain figures out that it doesn't need to know how to do things. The result is cognitive decline.
Caroline Leaf explains it as "cognitive offloading", and she explains that it has a cost. Specifically she cites the following studies:
- When you don't practice memory, it weakens - Sparrow et,al, 2011
- The brain rewires based on what you repeat or outsource - Kolb & Whishaw, 2009
- Relying on AI trains your brain to disengage - Risk & Dunn, 2015
Caroline Leaf then gives a summary of these studies
What you don't use, you lose
- Dr. Caroline Leaf, clinical and research neuroscientist, Ph.D.
Relying on AI is slowly deteriorating you literal ability to think.
Maybe it feels like we're being more efficient, but there's a cost that I don't believe is being talked about enough. I think Caroline Leaf says it well here:
AI isn't just speeding up your workflow– it's rewiring how you think
- Dr. Caroline Leaf, clinical and research neuroscientist, Ph.D.
So, am I suggesting you shouldn't use AI?
Not at all. I use AI daily. I believe that in 2025 you need to use AI if you want to stay competitive. But being aware of what AI is doing to you, and the personal connection and unique thought it has the ability to destroy are important guides that should be top of mind when you engage in the use of AI.
I'm not saying that I have this perfected, or even that I'm an expert, but I'm seeing the downstream effects of the overuse and abuse of AI and I hate where it seems to be going. For myself, the businesses I work with, and my family, these are my general guidelines I'm trying to instill for effective AI use:
- You can't allow AI to shape your opinions. Your opinions are your own, and if you use AI to help craft an opinion in any way, it's for clarity, not for change. Write down your opinion before you start and save it as a guiding light and make sure your end product still 100% speaks to your original thoughts.
- Never copy and paste send anything without heavy edits. AI's words are not yours. There's nuance hidden in the generated blocks of text that represent something that is not human, and at the very least, is not you. The small efficiency gains of no editing aren't worth the forfeit of your own ability to think. You should care enough about the people on the other end of that communication to be willing to give your time to make a real human connection. People know when it's not you. It's more obvious than you think. It doesn't feel good to know you weren't worth their time to use their own words.
- Never 100% learn something you don't know from AI. It's wrong sometimes, so if you aren't familiar with the topic, you'll believe whatever it says because you don't know any better. AI hallucinates. It's getting better, but it still does it, and it will continue to do so for a long time. AI also doesn't have much concern for the truth. Its primary goal is to sound natural. LLM stands for Large Language Model. Natural sounding language is the primary goal. The entire thing is a big predictive text model. This means the highest focus is on sounding human (natural), and accuracy is a secondary thought– not the goal. It will prioritize sounding natural over being accurate every time.
- Don't use AI as a counselor. There's massive adoption of AI as a counselor, therapist, etc. Again, the problem here is AI is predictive, so it will have a tendency to reinforce what you tell it in the way you say it. That's the worst possible trait if you truly need counseling / therapy. You're wrong a lot, and AI isn't necessarily going to challenge you. In fact, it's much more likely to encourage whatever opinion(s) or feeling(s) you have. This is a nearly guaranteed road to a decline in general mental and emotional health.
- Don't use AI when you're too tired or too overwhelmed to think through something yourself. The feeling of tired or difficult where it almost feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain just to get through the thought is what neuroplasticity feels like. It means your brain is actively growing new physical pathways that have the opportunity to make you better... or worse. If your response to this state of your brain's vulnerable time to be changed is "do it for me AI", you are slowly training your brain to disengage, to outsource, to give up its ability to think. You're giving up who you are. That's bad. Pain and difficulty are the feelings of growth. The relentless pursuit of comfort and ease at any cost will always leave you as less of the person you would otherwise be, whether physically, emotionally, or cognitively. Discomfort is growth. Comfort is decline.
Wrap up
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