I am VERY confused about AI

What the hell is even going on? What is a human who wishes to live a sane, grounded, decent life supposed to make of AI? How are we to relate to this technology?

I’ll be real with you. I’ve been flip-flopping on these questions over and over again. One moment I’m convinced that all LLM eoutput is useless for discerning humans, a mere torrent of vaguely smart-sounding bullshit that falls apart on close inspection. The next moment I’m building software and websites for myself that are so impeccably tailored to my idiosyncratic sensibilities that I can hardly believe my eyes. Though I’m certain I want nothing to do with AI writing, I’m feeling more excited about my work, and the entire world of computing, than I have been in years. As someone who never learned to code, building the tools I imagine in my head makes me feel like a freaking wizard.

At the same time, I recognize all the hallmarks of compulsion and addiction in how I, and many others, relate to this technology. My friend Raj, who I’m building Flowstate with, described his sessions with Claude Code as “meth mode.” It’s that state where you’re running dozens of agents simultaneously, jumping between them in a state of euphoric mania, where hours disappear in the snap of a finger, and when you finally come back to earth, you feel a bit hungover and real life has lost its luster. You’re just itching to get back to your computer to build some more, to get your next hit.

At first it sounded a little over the top. But once I started building a native Mac and iOS app for myself, I experienced meth mode firsthand. I normally keep an old-man sleep schedule—up at 5, in bed by 9—but when I first started building my app, I was routinely up until midnight or 1am, adding this or that new feature, then sitting back down in front of my computer right upon waking, completely foregoing my usual routine of prayer, coffee, and reading. I was forgetting to eat and exercise. I monitored my agents’ progress while I was out with friends, not really being present. It bore many of the hallmarks of addiction. As someone who’s spent the past few years deep in the rooms of 12 step recovery, that’s not a frame I take lightly. Anything addictive can utterly destroy a human life.

This technology is clearly useful, and shows great promise for freeing us from a lot of mechanical and routine computer work. It’s also hyper-stimulating and scratches a lot of itches that are better scratched through human connection. I don’t think we’re ready to relate to this stuff in a sane, sober, grounded way. I’m certainly not.

There’s a Wendell Berry quote I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Something along the lines of, “It’s easy to imagine the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and those who wish to live as machines.”

In many ways, the major theme of my life these last five years has been reclaiming my humanity back from The Machine, unlearning the mechanistic worldview that dominated my psyche, and learning to care for the creature I am. And that’s how I want to live out the rest of my days, as a creature of this earth and as a child of God who relates to everything he encounters with grace, curiosity, and the intelligence of the heart. That includes computers and technology and AI. I love these things and find them miraculous at the same time as I’m aware of the dangers they conceal, and the endless series of Faustian bargains they offer us.

I’m neither a neo-Luddite who wishes to live off the grid and sabotage data centers, nor am I some transhumanist techno-utopian who believes we’re conjuring a new god. I’m a secret third thing. I care greatly about protecting and deepening into what makes me human, all the while I genuinely want to use and enjoy technology. Which means I’m likely to remain in a state of confusion for the foreseeable future. I can live with that, though. As we say in the rooms, the only way to do it is one day at a time.

P.S. I’ve been thinking about running some kind of reading/writing club for people who want to deeply explore their own messy relationship to technology. Leave a comment if that sounds intriguing to you. I really wanna explore these questions in community!