When The Tech Makes You Feel Bad About Yourself

When it comes to AI, I’m in the “use it if you must, but use it wisely” camp. To preface this, I’m not about to go on a Luddite rant, nor am I going to shake my fist and mumble about “you kids today and your technology.” I get the appeal. I use it (a little) myself.

Whilst I am sheepishly dipping my toes into AI, I like to keep at the front of my mind the many reasons not to use it, or to at least keep a lid on it. It’s built on questionable, swampy moral grounds (ahem, steal much?). It gobbles up environmental resources like a cartoon supervillain. If we’re honest, it’s just kind of creepy, in an uncanny valley sort of way. The jury’s still out on what havoc it might wreak on our brains if overused. I use it with an extra helping of side-eye.

I’ve noticed something strange about the way I feel when I use it, or when I see it used for something for which it maybe wasn’t intended. It’s a subtle itch, something just a little bit off. When I’m having it look up a passage in a book, or getting it to figure out the most effective hashtags in social media, I think of the possibility of having it do bigger, more important things for me. The possibility of “delegating” doesn’t instill in me a sense of relief at having extra time to do other things, nor does it impress me with its capabilities. Instead, it makes me feel…small. There are instances when I’m overcome with feelings of being insignificant, irrelevant, obsolete, disposable. My sense of self-worth, my confidence as an artist and an educator, my pride in all the hours I’ve put in honing my craft, all shrink just a little.

I’m wondering how many other users feel this, even if it’s way below the surface. Do you remember when you were a little squirt, and you were focused on some seemingly grown-up task, with your tongue sticking out to the side, your eyes focused forward, and your brow scrunched? Do you recall a big person coming in, taking things out of your hands and “offering” to finish it for you? How did it feel to be “relieved” of this thing that was so important that it consumed you? What did it do to your pride to have someone just do it for you, so it could be done faster or better than you could possibly manage?

I fear that overreliance on AI has a similar stink to it. If we’re honest, in giving our tasks over to an invisible code friend, we aren’t simply checking things off our to-do lists. We’re kind of saying we aren’t as good, or as capable. Maybe this is fine for simple, menial jobs, but we seem to be keen to also unload the creative, transformative, skill-building stuff too. We’re conceding that the only determining factor in success in a task should be how fast we can get it done, and how little effort we can put into it. We’re forgetting to explore how getting something done ourselves, without help, can boost our confidence, rewire old ways of thinking through things, bolster our creativity and problem-solving skills, and even help us build relationships.

I used to teach essay writing skills to students who were still at the beginning of learning English as another language. I couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine how daunting this would be. What I saw in many of them, over and over again, was panic that they couldn’t do it themselves, that they were progressing too slowly and they’d never get over the hump.

I reassured them that their essays didn’t have to be Pulitzer Prize winning pieces, that there were patterns and formulas that could help to guide them. I told them, over and over again, that they would get there, that this was a skill that took time to build, and that their future, successful selves were worth the patience and effort. They were already smart enough, resourceful enough, creative enough, and innovative enough. It took many, many reminders that they weren’t just learning grammar and sentence structure, but also learning self-assurance.

Have we fallen so far in our opinion of ourselves as humans (both individually and collectively), that we’re under the impression that we suck, that we have to have a nameless, faceless, nonhuman force take over the stuff that makes us who we are? Are we letting our poor self-image dictate the tasks we still trust ourselves to do, because the list is getting shorter. Humans like doing stuff and making stuff. It feels good to do stuff and make stuff. I think giving all our stuff to do away to a virtual entity might be taking bites out of us on an emotional or even cultural level, or maybe it’s a sad indication that we’ve already lost some important part of ourselves.

I want to put it out there, the same way I did with my essay writers, that we are still good at stuff. Humans are greedy, selfish jerks sometimes, but we aren’t without the capacity to learn, to create, and to collaborate. It’s all still there, amidst the rubble. There are tasks I’m fine with giving up, but I’m not ready to let go of the arts, entertainment, or communication. I want to ask other humans important questions. The stuff we don’t know how to do yet, the stuff that might take time to master? That’s kind of what learning (or relearning) is for, right?

It’s tempting to feel some sort of resignation because AI is already here. It’s soldered itself into all kinds of work that we might otherwise enjoy doing for ourselves. But the fact that a machine knows more, or can do more, doesn’t mean we can’t know things and do things. Getting there slower, with more mistakes and restarts, is still getting there. It doesn’t matter if something can be done cheaper/better/faster without us, we still deserve to try to do it. We deserve the experience of doing and making things, the sensation of growth and accomplishment. We deserve to have and be the real deal, and so do the people for whom we do things.