Yep, I opt out as well. I keep getting told to use it for everything from personal life things to work to creative hobbies, and NO THANK YOU. Thank you for speaking out about it and this horrible article!
It's infuriating how companies are trying to shoehorn AI into every g*damn thing now, whether it makes sense or not (while raising prices, natch). It's all about the tech bros scrambling to get a crumb of the dwindling money pie here in Silicon Valley. I admit to trying out a few AI tools to do things like generate a cover letter or refine an email pitch (I work in PR--not proud), but they always need extensive editing to the point of being a waste of time, and for anything actually *creative* it's a bust, as you point out.
I love technology, but I can balance tech & non tech. I agree with you on the AI LLMs. I am always suss of the AI summary that comes with searches now. I work for a tax firm that does use some AI cautiously. Or as our secretary of education calls it.. A one.
Now I am craving dippin dots. I haven't had them in years. In the late 90s I used to walk halfway across a mall to get them, going in said mall just for them. I think my mall near me now has a machine for them now.
If I had called AI A-One in front of the whole world like she did, I would have burst into flames from embarrassment and then gone and lived the rest of my life in a cave out of shame. I'm still cringing lol
Michelle, everything you say about AI and creativity is spot on. AI should stand for 'Artificial Idiocy'--not even approaching the level of real idiocy. I'm a college professor, and I now design all my classes specifically to avoid using tech at all. All writing--done in class. Just show me what you've got in your mind, not what some machine collected for you.
My beef with AI, among many others, is that I just spent a lot of effort learning the entire Adobe platform and learning Web design. And every day it seems there's another AI-based "helper" in the Adobe platform, so It makes me feel like I have 100% wasted months of study. It has its place, but not at the expense of actual real human creativity in all sectors.
YES YES YES! There is simply no substitute for human creativity. AI is just making poor copies of poor copies of poor copies until it's just slop. It's wasting our time and clogging up the internet with trash.
I LOVED this piece. I watch a lot of cooking shows, and had looked up to Grant Achatz. No more. You hit the nail right on the head about him expecting people to spend hours with him after work only for him to steal their ideas. I can see that happening and a career being ruined if someone speaks up. I miss Anthony Bourdain more than ever right now because I belive he would have called these two chefs out and railed against A.I.
Interesting that both chefs were dudes. I’m “just” a home cook, but I will ask anyone I know who is great at cooking anything specific so many questions that they eventually get tired of me. I also don’t have the ego of some mediocre dude.
I use ChatGPT quite regularly, but mostly as a substitute for DuckDuckGo searches. (I don’t touch Google.) it comes with a usually reliable solution rather than a list of links I have to dig through. It’s usually helpful coming up with the name and author of a childhood book I remember fondly, that sort of thing, but this is also where it hallucinates most often. I never use it for creative things. And I never assume what it tells me is accurate.
You attribute chef Ned’s turning to AI as a lack of curiosity when he won’t ask other chefs. I wager it’s also part ego. It smacks of someone being too proud to ask questions. It’s pathetic to let your ego get in the way of your curiosity. And you absolutely should judge the shit out of that man.
I’m tired of AI garbage. Fake IG videos of AI generated animals doing things. I want to see REAL animals, they already do wonderful and hilarious and interesting things.
It’s just ruining everything. And in removing people’s self-generated creativity we are just breeding generations who lack connection and purpose and fulfillment. Humans need creativity and to make things themselves, it’s what feeds your soul. If I can outsource cleaning my baseboards and laundry so I have more time for meaningful things? That’s fucking grand. But if I’m outsourcing creativity, what the fuck is left?
I have used AI to help me write descriptions for auction items but I am not a creative person and have spent hours staring at a blank screen. Even using AI for that gives me the heebies.
I have used it a few times to help with emails and similar when my brain isn't braining and it does help me get started, though usually needs some editing. As a generator of writing prompts, it can be super useful. It's the folks who take the results as a shiny final draft who are in trouble :)
This quote starts to get at just how bleak it is. Technology has fracked our brains and I’m honestly not sure we can reverse the damage for kids who have never known anything different. The classroom is a very hard place to be right now. 😔
“I teach 18 year olds who range in reading levels from preschool to college, but the majority of them are in the lower half that range. I am devastated by what AI and social media have done to them. My kids don’t think anymore. They don’t have interests. Literally, when I ask them what they’re interested in, so many of them can’t name anything for me. Even my smartest kids insist that ChatGPT is good “when used correctly.” I ask them, “How does one use it correctly then?” They can’t answer the question. They don’t have original thoughts. They just parrot back what they’ve heard in TikToks. They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching. If I were to quit, it would be because of how technology has stunted kids and how hard it’s become to reach them because of that.”
We struggle with this a bit with our teen (17), and we are constantly trying to explain how this stuff doesn’t help, how farming out to chatgpt for story or art ideas (she likes to write and draw) isn’t being creative because the AI will just make some derivative shit and you need to flex your own creativity and go experience the world to feed if.
We have to tell her how tutorials aren’t teaching you anything if all you do is follow the basic steps and never learn the underlying process or rhyme or reason.
My husband, her stepdad, is a huge Hemingway fan, and when she said she wrote a Hemingway essay and made some point despite having only read a few passages, he came close to smashing his face into the table repeatedly, because you can’t draw conclusions about someone’s work from a few passages.
She’s pretty much a straight A student in mostly AP and Honors classes, and it feels horrible to say that some things are just pitiful.
Out of the box thinking? Critical thinking and problem solving skills when encountering new things? If she can’t tutorial it, she sometimes just kind of doesn’t know where to begin or what to do. “I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas.”
I’m also having to teach her to think critically about various online scams that come her way. Fake toll violations in text message, people on Discord pretending to be support and claiming you need to give bank details or your account gets banned. The willingness to help and idea that all people are genuine and kind means that shit can go wrong real fast. As a Gen X growing up with the internet being full of serial axe murderers, I have way more skepticism about anyone wanting anything from me online. Some of it is age and life experience, but I do think social media has warped younger people’s perceptions of danger and all the parasocial shit.
You’re obviously doing a great job by even just engaging her with these topics. “I’ve tried nothing and I’m out of ideas” is exactly how all of this feels to me. Keep up the good fight!
I teach upper elementary, it hasn't quite impacted us on that level yet. However I so agree with you about interests and just being kids. Some can't even tell me about eventful things in their life, or even things they enjoy. It blows my mind and I've only been in education for ten years and the shift I've seen in the students is mind boggling. We kept telling ourselves ok, maybe after all the covid kids we will see the learning gap close a bit. No, no it hasn't and it scares me to death seeing the kids we get now. They just don't have any interests anymore and life is a meme.
We’re letting childhood get stolen from our kids in so many ways and I hate it. It’s happening so fast and it’s easy to put it on the back burner because of the ten thousand other disasters going on right now.
Our educators are screaming out warnings to all of us and most people aren’t listening. I’m worried as hell. That whole article scared the shit out of me.
You are as talented with writing as you are with cooking, Michelle! This is such an excellent essay on the danger of AI -- junk food for the lazy brain.
Do I think you're wrong? Oh hell, I want to kiss you with your mouth full!
I found myself agreeing with you more and more as the post went on, alternating between laughing and shaming my fist at Chef Ego.
Seriously, no one wants to have deep discussion with you? Sure, it could be lack of an insightful audience. Or maybe you're being an asshole and who the hell wants to talk to you anyway?
I'm feeling invigorated and will spend a chunk of my day doing meal and healthy snack prep. Mentally high-fiving you.
Yep, I opt out as well. I keep getting told to use it for everything from personal life things to work to creative hobbies, and NO THANK YOU. Thank you for speaking out about it and this horrible article!
It's infuriating how companies are trying to shoehorn AI into every g*damn thing now, whether it makes sense or not (while raising prices, natch). It's all about the tech bros scrambling to get a crumb of the dwindling money pie here in Silicon Valley. I admit to trying out a few AI tools to do things like generate a cover letter or refine an email pitch (I work in PR--not proud), but they always need extensive editing to the point of being a waste of time, and for anything actually *creative* it's a bust, as you point out.
Exactly. I don't want AI to write emails, I want a robot to fold my laundry and clean my house. The Jetsons made me promise damnit.
I love technology, but I can balance tech & non tech. I agree with you on the AI LLMs. I am always suss of the AI summary that comes with searches now. I work for a tax firm that does use some AI cautiously. Or as our secretary of education calls it.. A one.
Now I am craving dippin dots. I haven't had them in years. In the late 90s I used to walk halfway across a mall to get them, going in said mall just for them. I think my mall near me now has a machine for them now.
If I had called AI A-One in front of the whole world like she did, I would have burst into flames from embarrassment and then gone and lived the rest of my life in a cave out of shame. I'm still cringing lol
Michelle, everything you say about AI and creativity is spot on. AI should stand for 'Artificial Idiocy'--not even approaching the level of real idiocy. I'm a college professor, and I now design all my classes specifically to avoid using tech at all. All writing--done in class. Just show me what you've got in your mind, not what some machine collected for you.
It's so frustrating that you have to change how you run classes due to this nonsense.
My beef with AI, among many others, is that I just spent a lot of effort learning the entire Adobe platform and learning Web design. And every day it seems there's another AI-based "helper" in the Adobe platform, so It makes me feel like I have 100% wasted months of study. It has its place, but not at the expense of actual real human creativity in all sectors.
YES YES YES! There is simply no substitute for human creativity. AI is just making poor copies of poor copies of poor copies until it's just slop. It's wasting our time and clogging up the internet with trash.
I LOVED this piece. I watch a lot of cooking shows, and had looked up to Grant Achatz. No more. You hit the nail right on the head about him expecting people to spend hours with him after work only for him to steal their ideas. I can see that happening and a career being ruined if someone speaks up. I miss Anthony Bourdain more than ever right now because I belive he would have called these two chefs out and railed against A.I.
Hell yes. Bourdain was all about expanding your taste and intellect, not farming it out to a computer.
Interesting that both chefs were dudes. I’m “just” a home cook, but I will ask anyone I know who is great at cooking anything specific so many questions that they eventually get tired of me. I also don’t have the ego of some mediocre dude.
It’s so silly to not ask questions when you don’t know something. That’s humanity 101!
I use ChatGPT quite regularly, but mostly as a substitute for DuckDuckGo searches. (I don’t touch Google.) it comes with a usually reliable solution rather than a list of links I have to dig through. It’s usually helpful coming up with the name and author of a childhood book I remember fondly, that sort of thing, but this is also where it hallucinates most often. I never use it for creative things. And I never assume what it tells me is accurate.
You attribute chef Ned’s turning to AI as a lack of curiosity when he won’t ask other chefs. I wager it’s also part ego. It smacks of someone being too proud to ask questions. It’s pathetic to let your ego get in the way of your curiosity. And you absolutely should judge the shit out of that man.
I’m tired of AI garbage. Fake IG videos of AI generated animals doing things. I want to see REAL animals, they already do wonderful and hilarious and interesting things.
It’s just ruining everything. And in removing people’s self-generated creativity we are just breeding generations who lack connection and purpose and fulfillment. Humans need creativity and to make things themselves, it’s what feeds your soul. If I can outsource cleaning my baseboards and laundry so I have more time for meaningful things? That’s fucking grand. But if I’m outsourcing creativity, what the fuck is left?
Yessss, it’s a ton of ego. No question.
Yeah I can’t imagine a world where we settle for content instead of art. It will break my heart.
AI was against school policy when I was there because students would use AI to write papers. Great essay and so true. What happened to the NYT?
I have used AI to help me write descriptions for auction items but I am not a creative person and have spent hours staring at a blank screen. Even using AI for that gives me the heebies.
I have used it a few times to help with emails and similar when my brain isn't braining and it does help me get started, though usually needs some editing. As a generator of writing prompts, it can be super useful. It's the folks who take the results as a shiny final draft who are in trouble :)
Oh man, that 404 media piece on teaching in the age of AI. 😳
It was a HARD read. So bleak.
This quote starts to get at just how bleak it is. Technology has fracked our brains and I’m honestly not sure we can reverse the damage for kids who have never known anything different. The classroom is a very hard place to be right now. 😔
“I teach 18 year olds who range in reading levels from preschool to college, but the majority of them are in the lower half that range. I am devastated by what AI and social media have done to them. My kids don’t think anymore. They don’t have interests. Literally, when I ask them what they’re interested in, so many of them can’t name anything for me. Even my smartest kids insist that ChatGPT is good “when used correctly.” I ask them, “How does one use it correctly then?” They can’t answer the question. They don’t have original thoughts. They just parrot back what they’ve heard in TikToks. They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching. If I were to quit, it would be because of how technology has stunted kids and how hard it’s become to reach them because of that.”
We struggle with this a bit with our teen (17), and we are constantly trying to explain how this stuff doesn’t help, how farming out to chatgpt for story or art ideas (she likes to write and draw) isn’t being creative because the AI will just make some derivative shit and you need to flex your own creativity and go experience the world to feed if.
We have to tell her how tutorials aren’t teaching you anything if all you do is follow the basic steps and never learn the underlying process or rhyme or reason.
My husband, her stepdad, is a huge Hemingway fan, and when she said she wrote a Hemingway essay and made some point despite having only read a few passages, he came close to smashing his face into the table repeatedly, because you can’t draw conclusions about someone’s work from a few passages.
She’s pretty much a straight A student in mostly AP and Honors classes, and it feels horrible to say that some things are just pitiful.
Out of the box thinking? Critical thinking and problem solving skills when encountering new things? If she can’t tutorial it, she sometimes just kind of doesn’t know where to begin or what to do. “I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas.”
I’m also having to teach her to think critically about various online scams that come her way. Fake toll violations in text message, people on Discord pretending to be support and claiming you need to give bank details or your account gets banned. The willingness to help and idea that all people are genuine and kind means that shit can go wrong real fast. As a Gen X growing up with the internet being full of serial axe murderers, I have way more skepticism about anyone wanting anything from me online. Some of it is age and life experience, but I do think social media has warped younger people’s perceptions of danger and all the parasocial shit.
You’re obviously doing a great job by even just engaging her with these topics. “I’ve tried nothing and I’m out of ideas” is exactly how all of this feels to me. Keep up the good fight!
I teach upper elementary, it hasn't quite impacted us on that level yet. However I so agree with you about interests and just being kids. Some can't even tell me about eventful things in their life, or even things they enjoy. It blows my mind and I've only been in education for ten years and the shift I've seen in the students is mind boggling. We kept telling ourselves ok, maybe after all the covid kids we will see the learning gap close a bit. No, no it hasn't and it scares me to death seeing the kids we get now. They just don't have any interests anymore and life is a meme.
We’re letting childhood get stolen from our kids in so many ways and I hate it. It’s happening so fast and it’s easy to put it on the back burner because of the ten thousand other disasters going on right now.
Our educators are screaming out warnings to all of us and most people aren’t listening. I’m worried as hell. That whole article scared the shit out of me.
Wow what a great and proper skewer Michelle as always a great read. I love Sue’s comment above, “”junk food for the lazy brain”!
You are as talented with writing as you are with cooking, Michelle! This is such an excellent essay on the danger of AI -- junk food for the lazy brain.
Thank you so much Sue!
Do I think you're wrong? Oh hell, I want to kiss you with your mouth full!
I found myself agreeing with you more and more as the post went on, alternating between laughing and shaming my fist at Chef Ego.
Seriously, no one wants to have deep discussion with you? Sure, it could be lack of an insightful audience. Or maybe you're being an asshole and who the hell wants to talk to you anyway?
I'm feeling invigorated and will spend a chunk of my day doing meal and healthy snack prep. Mentally high-fiving you.
Hell yes. These chef’s egos are doing too much. So glad you liked it!
Amen and hallelujah! Thank you for making a proper skewer out of both AI and the NYT, which are inedible kabobs.
I was afraid I might pull a muscle from rolling my eyes so many times while reading that article.
😂🙄😂