When Easy Becomes the Norm

It seems like every time I turn around, an AI “book,” “artwork,” ad, cover, thread, or review gets shoved in my face. I don’t want it. I never welcomed it into my life, yet I can’t escape it. It’s like being allergic to something and having it surrounding you 24/7. A horror movie where the toxic ooze has surrounded your house and you can’t get out.

When did this become the new norm? When did we hand over what makes us human to a machine?

In case you didn’t notice, I am very anti-generative AI. There is no excuse you can give me that supports the use of a machine to do your thinking for you with something sometimes as simple as an email. And don’t come at me with the disability argument or the neurodivergent argument. My son has autism and ADHD, yet he creates fantastic art from scratch and makes his own music. Or look at the artists who paint with their mouths or their feet. I could go on all day with examples to counter your argument.

The impact of reliance on generative AI is terrifying. As if we weren’t already seeing the loss of critical thinking skills and reading skills, it is getting worse. (And I won’t cover how profoundly horrific it is that these programs can generate images of unwitting people and children. It’s too sickening to even comprehend.)

So, how did we get here? I honestly don’t know. Somewhere between changing ways to solve math problems in grade school to removing cursive to adding laptops and iPads into classrooms, maybe? Or a dependency on social media and the internet to feed us with information rather than searching for it in newspapers, libraries, or microfiche? I’m sure there are studies out there that provide a timeline on how we arrived at this place that seems more and more like the setting of a dystopian novel. The Terminator never looked so real as it does now.

Perhaps it was simply a slow progression to transform what was once challenging into something easy. But along the way, easy became the norm. No longer did kids have to write essays by hand in class or suffer through learning how to make a lowercase ‘g’ in cursive. Spending days tediously making curves until they could form their names. Some might argue that we sign everything digitally now, so there’s no need because a computer does it for you, but then we’re back to the same line of thinking as the generative AI movement.

The computer does it for you. But you know what else does it for us? Our brains. Amazing machines that, when pushed and challenged, can do glorious things. They stretch and grow, absorbing and transforming. Yet we’re choosing to let machines do those things for us. To write papers and emails, eulogies and speeches, to make art (and I use that term loosely) and write books (again using the term loosely). Why? Because it’s easy.

Those people who always said I wish I could write a book, no longer must learn the craft. They don’t sit at their keyboards and peck away, learning sentence structure, examining plot holes, and building characters who are relatable.

Those who said I would love to draw don’t cringe at their first sketches that look like something a five-year-old would draw, and after months or years of practice, create stunning art pieces.

There’s no longer a challenge to those things, and that is the problem with AI. Now, I know there are some who may argue that creatives are gatekeeping and we’re just irritated because they burst through the gate, but I don’t believe that. We were never gatekeeping. We simply understood that becoming a writer, an artist, a musician, a movie director, etc., wasn’t something that was easy. We learned from making mistakes. We took feedback and practiced. Honed our skills until we could craft something beautiful and unique. Until it became a passion.

I would argue that those who use AI to write or make art or music don’t have a passion. They have a want but not a desire to reach out and take that want and make it reality because it is too difficult, time-consuming, or because they might fail. But there’s something so powerfully human about failing. It teaches us humility, perseverance, strength. It makes achievement a reward that changes you.

Failure isn’t defeat if you dust yourself off and try again. It’s only defeat if you let it defeat you. And using AI to skip those lessons, to take the easy route, isn’t the right way. It’s the weak way for those who aren’t brave enough to face the prospect of defeat.