Dear Steven,

Firstly, I am a big fan and want to thank you for putting out such high quality work – I watch your podcasts religiously.

Regarding your recent podcast on AI Agents and your remarkable example of conjuring water, delivered to your studio, I wanted to offer some different perspectives to the ones explored by your esteemed panel.

The conversation about AI is often framed around the polar-extremes of the extraordinary potential to serve humanity versus a nightmare of disruption, societal collapse and ultimately, evil wrong-doing.  And, while these two extremes are both plausible, it is the much more banal, everyday impacts which I believe will have a more profound effect on the human experience.

While not wanting to put too much weight on the example of conjuring water (and don’t get me wrong, it is an astonishing testament to the power of this new technology), the questions which do not appear to be adequately asked are, ‘What is the merit or virtue of this?’ and ‘How does this serve us?’

• If we look at the number one factor that predicts healthy aging, it is social integration and micro connections – knowing our neighbours, chatting to people we interact with, having encounters with people who serve us, feeling that we belong to and are valued by people around us.
• Next, if we look at our physical health, we know that being sedentary and not engaging in ‘incidental exercise’ and everyday movement will kill us quicker than smoking.  This is irrespective of doing ‘scheduled exercise’ and speaks to the importance that we keep moving.
• We also know that the aggressive pursuit of convenience and comfort is a shortcut to death; that humans evolved through encounters with ‘stress’ (challenges, difficulties, tough times), which forced us to adapt.  In fact, we know that when we seek discomfort, when we do what is hard, when we demonstrate tenacity and willpower, the mid cingulate anterior cortex grows and we become more adaptable, flexible and capable to meet new challenges.  In short, we evolve and improve.
• We also know now that it is the ‘effort’ of doing something, rather than the ‘outcome’, which best predicts satisfaction and happiness.  It is the effort that matters and when one attains the outcome too easily or without work, it is rarely satisfying and very often, underwhelming.  This is true of a bottle of water or just about any big goal we may have.

When I saw the water delivered to you in the studio, the mundane question I asked myself was: What are people going to do with all this ‘free time’?  Time-saving is constantly spruiked as a triumph of AI, with people no longer having to do the ‘work’ involved in getting to an outcome. But the answer might be even more mundane than the question: It seems like people will spend more time scrolling on their devices or any number of other activities which makes them less socially integrated, more sedentary and far less likely to encounter the unexpected, those experiences which would have forced them to adapt. In short, people are becoming far more passive, less intentional and less deliberate with all this this new ‘freedom’.

While it is sexy to talk about AI’s capacity for cataclysmic destruction or potential glorious for good, it is likely to be more prosaic than either of those extremes.  The very narrative of the debate only promotes the taking of sides and jettisoning of evidence-based debate.  For example, the emotive notion that AI will ‘save us time’ is fallacious.  One cannot save time; we can only use time well and productively or we can waste it.  Standing up, walking to a store, engaging in a conversation, being outside in sunlight, taking an interest in someone else’s life and so on, is time well-spent, quantifiably good for our physical, psychological and social health and wellbeing.  And it is not saving time to eliminate those activities via the use of technology.  The current physical and mental health crisis in our communities (enabled by various technologies), clearly points to time not being used well, even if there was some attendant time saving.  To substitute one activity (walking, communicating, working and so on), with something that is harmful, like doomscrolling, can never be regarded as time saving, even if it was somehow possible.

I am not advocating for senseless labour, but it is in the application of effort, persistence, grit (when applied to something that is worth doing), that there is the potential for growth and increasing capacity for success and happiness.  It is the effort which is enabling of growth.  This is because there is a reciprocal relationship between effort, learning and performance which creates a virtuous cycle that drives progress.  It is the effort that makes it worthwhile and ultimately how we evolve and make real progress, both individually and as a species. It is more than a catchy aphorism to say, ‘life begins at the end of our comfort zone’ or; ‘chose courage over comfort’ – these are real evolutionary imperatives and perhaps more importantly, antidotes to the ‘meaning’ crisis in our societies and the crisis of social isolation and loneliness – the factors which most predict poor health and aging.

As an example, I am forever being told of professional workers saving hours and even days using AI to produce articles for publication.  Apart from how condescending I view this (that the reader is so devoid of imagination that one could not have generated the same article and done so with the same efficiency), it is in eliminating the effort and persistence and grit from producing the article, where there is a real loss and a real cost.  Unless we view the publication of the article as simply a cynical commercial exercise, the author hasn’t done the research, discussion, drafting, iterations and pressure-testing that would be involved in producing a useful primary piece of work.  More so, the author hasn’t learnt anything and this is the real loss.  The author hasn’t saved time, they have simply used time unproductively, when they could have been learning and growing and contributing something new.  This is not progress and certainly not excellence.  This is expedience.  In 20-years of searching for the DNA of performance and success, I have found that it is only when someone puts-in real effort and is ruthlessly curious, when they overcome challenges and understand something more deeply, is there the possibility of enduring happiness.  Curiosity, empathy (learning and understanding) and grit (effort and perseverance) are our performance and happiness superpowers.  More to the point, producing and publishing an article in minutes does not make anyone’s life better but only provides another margin where someone can try and extract money from a public which is hard-wired to take shortcuts, give attention to novelty and maintain a reluctance to call out bullshit.

To get back to my original question of what is the merit or virtue of AI Agents, there is to my mind only one real driver; and it is not virtuous or meritorious.  I am not taking an extreme position here and claiming the impulse is to extract money from consumers and a gullible market or wield unimaginable power and influence in society, though these may be the drivers of those who have created this technology.  No, the driver for us, the consumers of this technology, is the triple curse of our modern life: convenience, comfort, expediency.

Even if the new technology did make life easier, there is no evidence that it makes life better.  To be very clear, I am not advocating for some return to back-breaking, gut wrenching lives of slog.  Nor am I discounting the huge progress that came with the technology fuelled, consumer-product boom of the 1950s and 1960s.  I am old enough to remember my grandmother using a wash-board for hours on end.  But with the previous tech boom and arrival of modern cookers, washing machines, fridges and the like, we did buy-back time which people everywhere, my grandmother included, used wisely to partake in activities which did make life better – dine with their family, talk to neighbours, cultivate an interest in hobbies, engage with their community and so on.

A compounding challenge when talking about this new technology, is that we humans always mistake the ‘novel’ for ‘progress’, that because something is the latest, that it must be progress.  Worse still, the human brain is hard-wired to take short cuts but there is simply no evidence that because something is new that it must be better.  Just like the illusion of saving time, this has always been a fantasy while the evidence points to our lives being busier than ever and our happiness being more and more under theat.

More than anything, it is when we engage in endeavours which are hard, or even unfamiliar, that there is the chance of discovering something new.  Yes, AI will solve problems and do so more efficiently than humans ever could, but it is the very nature of our limitations that characterises real discovery and in this, defines creativity.  Why give this away for some mere convenience; why give this over to a machine to do for us?   Without wanting to invoke an emotional argument (but it seems entirely appropriate in this case), our lives will simply be smaller and less meaningful, no matter how much data becomes available and how many bells and whistles transfix our attention.  This is not good, even if it appears like it is.

If you will permit me a few words on the topic of ‘creativity’; people often spruik the creative ability of these new technologies, claiming that AI can produce, for example, music which sounds as good as what humans can create.  Again, this misses the point – Why would we want to give up the joy and satisfaction that comes from the effort, indeed, the act of creativity?  And, even if the music could ‘sound’ as good, would it actually get made?  Take 10CC’s ‘I’m Not In Love’.   The artists didn’t know what the end point was going to sound like, they were not fulfilling a ‘brief’, like one might give to an AI Agent and, it was the very limitations of the technology that enabled creativity to take place, which necessitated doing something which had not been done before.  It is the mistakes and false starts which give rise to the discovery of something new, something unknown, something potentially better than originally imagined.  Giving an AI Agent a goal and waiting for the goal to be delivered is not creativity.  Artificial Intelligence would not have come up with this song because the instruction to do so could never have been articulated (or even imagined).  This song exists because of limitations, mistakes, compromises and, the amorphous, ambiguous and conflicting ideas of the artists themselves.  The song is the act of creativity, not the end-product.  Not to labour the point, but the artists simply didn’t know where they were going to arrive, nor how they were going to get there.  It is in the work, not bypassing or automating it, that makes it great.  And, it is in persisting to overcome difficulties that makes the effort worthwhile  – remove the ‘work’ and we diminish the greatness.  High ability and intense vision is what we revere; those humans that create something most of us could not, and could not even imagine – humans that show us our best selves, what we are capable of – thinking that a machine can show us this is hubris but more to the point, if a machine ever could, it would be a terrible loss for humanity, not a triumph.

This is not a moral or ethical stance I am taking (as it might be for questions about using technology to advance nuclear weapons).  This is about merit and virtue.  In this sense, I return to the most important question, ‘Does the use of AI improve the human experience?’ To claim that the most recent wave of AI technology is merely a ‘tool’ for humanity is simply disingenuous and naïve.  Yes, AI will make life more convenient and comfortable but this is not a good thing.  Unlike the introduction of so many technologies in the past which removed time-wasting labour and allowed more ‘human’ activity, this latest wave of AI appears more likely to diminish what it is to be human – just because a machine can do something, does not mean it is inherently good.  The trivial example of having a bottle of water delivered to you is a case in point.  It is not a good thing, simply because it means we no longer have to do something we used to do.  In fact, the opposite is often true; there is a loss.  In this case the loss of micro-connections and social integration, of incidental movement, of overcoming laziness and putting-in the barest effort.  There is merit in doing these human and evolutionary important activities and a cost in not doing them, a real physical, mental, psychological and social cost.

I get it Steven, especially when you talk of AI taking care of many activities which you had to sweat through when launching businesses.  But are we better for it?  Clearly we are less happy and less healthy.  Sure, a few people will derive great wealth from the new technology, but on the whole, many more people will be disenfranchised on top of the current cost of living crisis so many people are experiencing.  Orwell would say, in a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. The socialisation and acceptance of AI and AI Agents is not divinely mandated, though it is always the aim of politicians and those with power and influence to make societies believe that the way things are is ordained and inevitable.  But we have a choice. And, while people are certainly entitled to their own opinions and who knows, perhaps also their own truth, they are not entitled to their own facts.  This new technology does not serve us.  It was never designed to.  It appeals to our desire for convenience and novelty and the illusion of progress.

When all is said and done, the real loss is the very last quality and characteristic which defines us – our ability to think, to imagine, to contemplate and reflect.  Why would we want to outsource and automate that, regardless of how efficiently a machine may be capable of doing it; all for the great God of convenience.  It is, at the end of the day, a shortcut to death.

Sincerely and warmly,

Dom