Hats off to the AImish

Of course, it’s long seemed obvious to me (and, I presume, basically everyone I care about or respect ) that the use of AI in most humanistic endeavors is beyond the pale. Even if it were good at writing prose or doing philosophy—and thus far it isn’t —to use AI to write or philosophize would be to render those activities futile. In some of the sciences, some of the time, the point is the outcome—the vaccine, the medicine, the finding, the technology. In the humanities, the point is the process. The point of writing is to make something beautiful or interesting; the point of reading a book or a philosophy paper is, at least in large part, to make contact with another human mind that has strained to make something beautiful or interesting, whether or not the human mind has succeeded or failed.

But I also fear that using AI regularly alters a person’s instincts and habits of mind and heart. When you’ve gotten used to forgoing all the little frictions of thought, all the pleasures and annoyances of grappling, then even the ethical imagination can come seem like the sort of thing you may as well “streamline.” Sure, maybe once or twice a year you can use AI to do some especially odious practical task without thereby transforming yourself into a monster. But remember what you are at risk of losing each time you do, and never do so lightly. Don’t use AI to get recipes; don’t use it instead of Google.