I just read We Won’t “Just Hang Out,” which suggests that an AI utopia won’t look like a permanent vacation with our friends. Rather, ASI will make work and school pointless and leave us all sitting alone in our rooms choosing endless digital entertainment over each other because we have nothing left to talk about.
I can kinda see it.
Almost every close friend I’ve made has come from being stuck in a similar boat: sharing the trials of college, surviving a brutal stretch at work, building something together, etc. Friendship has been the sideways consequence of what happens to us when you’re looking for something else.
Now, when I spend all day building with AI, I don’t really have to care how its day is going. It doesn’t have an ego. When it pushes back on my ideas, it is still completely in service of what I want. I’m getting a lot of daily practice at being the center of my own little universe. So by this logic, when you pair frictionless AI companions with supercharged entertainment feeds designed to consume attention, it is possible to see how being around real human beings feels like a chore.
Where he loses me is the jump he makes pointing out that people themselves will become uneducated, dull, and not worth talking to in this “AI utopia.” Are we supposed to be resumes or have personalities? Even if ASI can out think us at everything, a machine knowing something on my behalf doesn’t do me any good. We don't just learn and struggle to get a paycheck, we do it because wrestling with ideas, relationships, and our own limits is how we figure out who we are. Yes, I recognize “work” is today’s traditional conduit for this. But god forbid there be other means!
In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. — V. 20
Almost a hundred years ago, in In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell argued that the whole point of “better machines” was to buy back our time so ordinary people could actually enjoy being alive. Sometimes hanging out is just sitting on the porch talking about whatever the heck you want to and the fact that our AI’s can write code (and soon do much, much more) doesn’t make these type of afternoons worth less.
Can we actually bear the delight and luxury of sitting on the porch?
I'll be honest, it's tempting. Some days it's easier to talk to AI than to real people. It doesn't get tired of the topic, and neither does my brain.
But I spend a lot of time using it for introspection, and I think it sharpens me rather than isolates me. I can't burden my friends with everything going on in my head. Working it through with AI first means I show up with the part that's actually worth sharing.
The difference for me is intent. I come in with questions and I'm looking to get something out of it, not to be agreed with. The real test is what I do afterward. If it turns into a better conversation with a friend, a post, or an idea I take to work, it's doing its job. If it starts replacing those, that's the warning sign.
There's a place for both. I'll take the porch.