Convenience Has A Price Tag

Everyone is worried about AI coming for their jobs. But no one is talking about AI coming for their humanity.

Do you remember what the world was like before AI tools?

When was the last time you had a difficult task and your first instinct wasn’t to reach for ChatGPT for a quick solution?

When was the last time you sat with a question you didn’t know the answer to, long enough to actually think about it?

When was the last time you wrote something without asking AI to make it sound better?

When was the last time you were bored?

Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t one of those “AI and robots are going to take over the world and turn us into slaves unless we stop using technology” articles.

I don’t believe technology is inherently bad. Infact, I think technology is one of the most beautiful things we’ve created.

It has made information accessible, it has connected people who would have otherwise never met, it has made medicine better, work faster, communication easier and everyday life more convenient.

And that’s exactly why this is worth talking about. Because the problem with convenience is that it feels so good.

We don’t notice what we’re giving up when we’re getting something we want in return.

We give Google our questions, and it gives us answers.

We give Instagram our attention, and it gives us entertainment.

We give Netflix our boredom, and it gives us something to watch.

We give food delivery apps the inconvenience of leaving the house, and they bring dinner to our doorstep.

We give ChatGPT the hard part of thinking, writing, researching, brainstorming, planning and it gives us something that looks like the finished product.

And because all of this makes our lives easier, we rarely stop to ask, what exactly are we losing in exchange?

Maybe it’s privacy or attention or maybe it’s independence.

Maybe it’s our willingness to struggle through something before asking for help.

And maybe, slowly, we’re losing our ability to do some of these things ourselves.

There was a time when difficulty was simply part of being human.

You got lost, so you learned your way around.

You didn’t know something, so you looked it up. Then you read about it and remembered it.

You had an idea, so you sat down and wrestled with it until you could articulate it.

You were bored, so you found something to do.

You had a problem, so you tried to solve it.

You had a feeling you couldn’t explain, so you sat with it.

Sometimes you failed, sometimes you were frustrated or maybe sometimes you spent three hours doing something that technology could have done in thirty seconds.

And maybe that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

Because there are some things we only become good at by doing them badly first.

We learn to write by writing terrible things.

We learn to think by thinking through things that are difficult.

We learn to create by creating things that nobody likes.

We learn to navigate by getting lost.

We learn ourselves by sitting with ourselves.

But we’ve built a world that increasingly allows us to skip the uncomfortable part.

And I wonder what happens when we become so accustomed to skipping the struggle that we forget how to struggle at all.

This is probably what pisses me off the most.

Open social media and tell me you don’t see it.

The same captions and vocabulary.

The same “I’m thrilled to announce…” on LinkedIn.

The same motivational posts, the same AI-generated images, the same corporate language.

The same everything.

And don’t even get me started on advertising.

I remember watching YouTube videos and getting hit with ad after ad that were obviously AI-generated. They were cartoons, and the lip-sync was so bad that it was almost distracting. The character could say “hey,” while its mouth would move like it was saying something completely different. And these weren’t ads from random pages either. Some were from major organizations that could absolutely afford to make something better.

There was a time when an advert could actually tell you something.

There was craft in it.

You could watch an advert and remember it years later because someone had actually thought about what they were trying to make you feel. Honorable mention to the GTB 737 ad!

And I’m not saying every piece of AI-assisted content is soulless.

I’m saying when we start optimizing everything for speed, output and performance. We stop asking, “Is this good?”

Because somewhere along the way, convenience starts eating away at craftsmanship.

Even our creativity begins to look optimized. And our individuality becomes a template.

Even our worship, writing, conversations, or expressions of love gets affected by this. (If you ever wish me a happy birthday using ChatGPT, I could actually block you lol)

So what bothers me isn’t that technology can create.

But that we’re slowly becoming less willing to create ourselves.

There was a period when I was dealing with complex, overwhelming emotions and my first instinct was to open ChatGPT.

I’d pour everything out and explain how I felt.

I’d ask it to help me make sense of what was happening inside my head.

And, to be fair, it helped.

Sometimes it gave me language for things I couldn’t articulate. And helped me organize thoughts that felt like a tangled mess.

But eventually, I caught myself becoming too dependent on it and started moving to chat to tell me how I feel or how to feel about certain things; pasting personal conversations I’d had with people and telling it to help phrase how I ask what each person meant (without even thinking to ask the person themselves lol).

There is a difference between using a tool to help you think and using a tool so that you don’t have to think.

And sometimes that line is so blurry that you don’t realize you’ve crossed it.

I don’t think the answer is to throw our phones away.

I’m not going to tell you to delete ChatGPT, stop using Google Maps and start writing everything with a pen and paper.

That would defeat the point. Technology is here.

And honestly, I don’t want a world without it.

I just think we need to become more intentional about what we outsource.

Because not everything that can be automated should be.

Not every thought needs to be generated.

Not every emotion needs to be analyzed.

Not every inconvenience needs to be eliminated.

Sometimes, sit with the question.

Sometimes, get lost.

Sometimes, write the terrible first draft.

Sometimes, make the ugly thing.

Sometimes, be bored.

Sometimes, figure it out yourself.

Because the danger isn’t that technology will become capable of doing everything for us.

The danger is that we become so comfortable letting it do everything for us that we slowly stop knowing how to do anything without it.

And I think that’s the part we should be afraid of.

Not technology making life easier.

But convenience becoming so addictive that we forget how to live without it.

The things that make us human aren’t the things we can do effortlessly; they’re the things we’re willing to struggle through.

And if we’re not careful, we might optimize the humanity right out of our lives.