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I saw a tweet the other day that shared and important insight. It read, “The only filter that matters anymore: vitality and beauty. People who create, move, laugh, build. Instant yes. Complainers, debaters, whiners. Low energy. Instant pass. No ugliness. No low energy. Me and the homies are vitality maxxing. Vitality and beauty should definitely be our goal but the internet we all spend too much time on is full of complainers, debaters, and whiners. In the past you could avoid this by simply logging off and living in the real world, but the plague has gotten so bad that these low energy behaviors have leaked into real life and they revolve around the same topics as they do online.
A month or two ago I couldn’t spend more than two minutes on the internet without coming across someone whining about AI, data centers, or Flock cameras and I couldn’t go a day in real life without hearing someone reference one of those topics. I got sick of it, partially because I had been aware of all of those things long before the general public started discussing them so none of it was new or interesting to me, but mostly because nearly everything being said about AI, data canters, and Flock cameras was incredibly stupid, uninformed, and tribalistic. Many people would state their opinion based on wildly inaccurate claim then say that if you disagreed with them you had to be a satan worshiping pedophile or something like that. The level of mass psychosis I was witnessing was unlike anything I’ve ever recognized.
Thankfully the outrage over data centers and flock cameras has died down but I still see lots of uneducated complaints on AI and I fear many of you may still be suffering from symptoms of the AI Derangement Syndrome many people in the world have been experiencing. I’d like to calm your fears about AI or at least give you enough information on the topic to approach it with a level head. I may even convince you to leverage the power of AI in your life because AI is good for more things than the creation of the slop that has unfortunately filled the internet. I don’t want any of you to be one of the low energy complainers, debaters, and whiners that fill the world today, the world needs you to create, move, laugh, and build, don’t let AI, or any other dumb topic, be a stumbling block preventing you from doing those beautiful things.
It is okay to use AI
My first encounter with something one may call AI Derangement Syndrome happened a few years ago. By this time Chat GPT had become a household name and had become great at text-based tasks. It could write you an essay, it could summarize an article for you, and if you were desperate enough it could be your girlfriend. This was the point in time when AI based cheating in schools became a huge problem, AI detection software for grading papers didn’t exist yet and LLMs hadn’t been around long enough for teachers to be able to recognize any obvious signs of AI generated writing. If you were lazy and unprincipled this was the perfect time to be a college student.
I found myself talking to a liberal-arts major who was halfway through her degree. She talked about the AI based cheating that was going on, she preached about the importance of human emotion and experience, the important struggle the creative process provides to the soul and how it shows up in a finished piece of writing. The act of reading was also something she talked about, “We need to read,” she said, nothing good will come if we replace reading. She ranted about how terrible it was that AI robbed individuals and ultimately the world of these fundamental parts of life. She wasn’t wrong about any of that, but her ultimate conclusion on the topic of AI was. She believed that because AI makes it so you don’t have to read, write, or think it is evil and there is no scenario where it would ever be appropriate to use AI. I had to push back on that false belief.
Keeping our conversation within the context of education, I explained that AI could be used for more than just cheating. I told her that I would have loved to have had Chat GPT when I was in college because I could have fed it a PDF containing a chapter of my textbook and asked it to generate a one hundred question multiple choice test based on the contents of that chapter and within minutes I’d have study material that would last me hours. I explained that after writing an essay I could give it to Chat GPT and ask for feedback and I’d soon be given a different perspective on whatever points I was arguing or a new idea on how to structure my information. If I had to give a presentation I could give Chat GPT an outline of it and ask it for ideas on how I could get the class to participate.
Would AI replace my reading, writing, or thinking in any of these scenarios? No. I’d still have to read that chapter of the textbook if I wanted to pass the test, I’d still have to write that essay it would also ultimately be up to me if I wanted to make any of the changes Chat GPT suggested for it, and I’d still have to stand in front of a class and give a presentation while knowing what I was actually talking about. To me it was clear that these were all not only appropriate uses of AI, but excellent examples of how it could be used as a powerful learning tool. I had multiple friends who had benefited from using AI in these ways but no matter how I explained it to this liberal-arts major she could not shake her AI Derangement Syndrome. AI is evil, AI is cheating, AI makes it so you don’t have to work, AI should never be used she still believed.
But that was years ago, surely these people have figured out that there are appropriate ways to use AI. Right?
The fitness YouTuber Mike Israetel recently published a book and a video titled, Mike Israetel Admits His Book Is AI” came across my feed. I clicked on the video because it is fun to watch people make fun of Mike Israetel. The video of course talks about how terrible it is to have AI write a book for you to claim as your own. We all agree that is bad; I didn’t come for that lecture I came for the confession, but I was disappointed when it came. The confession was a tweet that read, “I 100% used AI to smooth over some of the prose for my upcoming book.” The video’s presenter viewed this as the smoking gun proving that Israetel was a fraud who should never be trusted. I viewed the tweet as a nothingburger and the whole video as an overreaction, Israetel was clearly just asking AI to help him edit his writing. I couldn’t believe that someone who appeared as smart as that video’s presenter still couldn’t comprehend the difference between asking AI to write something for you and asking AI to suggest changes to something you’ve already written.
Is it possible that Israetel let AI make his book a little too smooth? Yes, but we don’t need to care about that, I don’t think either of us were planning on buying his book anyways. The important thing to consider here is that a professional editor costs thousands of dollars and could take weeks to help an author perfect a manuscript. If a $20/month piece of software can help an author accomplish something similar in a matter of hours then that author would be stupid not to use it. AI enables people to do things that they normally wouldn’t have had the time or money to do.
Leverage AI
A few months ago I found myself whitewater rafting with the owner of a local business. Whenever you find yourself around a successful business owner you should talk to them about their business, these people don’t think the same way the rest of us do and it is interesting to see how their brain works.
AI was one of the things he brought up and he was excited about it. About six months before our conversation he had decided to try seeing if AI could fill up a calendar for his business, he gave it the calendars from previous months as a reference and asked it to create a schedule of events for the next month. In no time at all the program gave him a perfectly useable calendar, he was amazed by this. He told me that that particular task was something that would have taken a person a day to complete. If we read between the lines there we see that he had to pay for someone (probably a manager of some sort) to spend an entire day on that task, when we consider the salary of that employee (assuming she makes close to the median US individual income) along with the taxes and insurance associated with employing her a day of work costs over $300. Turning that one reoccurring task over to AI frees up the time of that employee to do more important things and saves our business owner friend thousands of dollars a year. It would be dumb for our friend not to use AI to accomplish that task, and it would be dumb of him not to look for other ways to take advantage of AI in his business. If AI can save him thousands of dollars by doing just one thing, imagine how much money it would save him if it could do twelve.
To quote the bestselling finance author Robert Kiyosaki, “Throughout history, the people who have fallen behind are the people who fail to utilize the new tools of leverage created during their lifetime.” [Retire Young Retire Rich pg 36] To borrow Kiyosaki’s words, AI is a new tool of leverage, if we don’t want to fall behind we need to learn how to use it. When used properly AI can help us learn more effectively, work more efficiently, and even create things we otherwise would not have had the time, money, or skills to create.
Jake Kilgore is the host of my favorite podcast, he also self published a book that is worth reading (especially if you find yourself stuck somewhere you’d rather not be). Unfortunately people don’t really like reading these days, most people would rather listen to a book. For years friends would ask Kilgore to record an audio version of the book but this was not something he had the time or motivation to do, it would have taken him multiple days and cost him a lot of money. An audio version for Trial Running was not something coming any time soon.
But then an audiobook suddenly didn’t require that much time to produce anymore. Some software company released an AI based program that perfectly mimic a person’s voice given it had enough sample data. By this time Kilgore had recorded several podcast episodes so he plugged them into that software and gave it the transcript of his book and in no time at all Kilgore had an audio version of his book presented in his voice. Kilgore stated that the program mimiced his voice so well that his friends and family couldn’t tell that the audio was AI generated. AI allowed Jake Kilgore to create a product he otherwise would not have been able to sell.
Looking back at the tweet I started this article with, many of the low energy complainers, debaters and whiners of the internet look at the stories I’ve shared from a different perspective. They’ll say that AI is stealing jobs, they’ll look at my business owner friend and complain that if he finds enough tasks that AI can do he could start eliminating employees. This is certainly possible but look back at that tweet in my first paragraph; in scenarios like this I would rather side with the people who use AI to create value than the low energy people who just complain about it and create nothing. If you don’t want AI to replace you then you need to become irreplaceable, or you need to be the one who uses AI to create value.
For various reasons many of you may be hesitant to use AI in the workplace. Consider this story from one of my college professors, we’ll call him Dave. When Dave was working at his first job as a computer hardware engineer his company was putting together some sort of prototype. Dave was put in charge of the case for the prototype. The first thing Dave did was look through the parts catalog for a suitable case, he found one but he thought the price was too high so he spent the day designing a cheaper case. The next day Dave went to his boss expecting praise for a job well done but he left his boss’s office with a lesson instead. Dave’s boss explained that the time Dave had spent designing a new case cost the company a lot more than the money Dave thought he was saving them by designing a cheaper one.
The company you work for does not have the same priorities you do. If you can use AI to accomplish your job efficiently but you insist on doing your job slower without AI how can you expect to keep your job? Remember AI is leverage, and the people who fall behind are the people who fail to utilize leverage. If you want to get ahead you need to figure out how to use AI to create value.
Notice that I have been emphasizing the word value. Too many people have been using AI to generate slop, the internet is full of AI generated slop, we don’t need any more slop and you certainly don’t need to consume any more slop. Because of the prevalence of AI slop many people don’t realize that AI is capable of producing things of value. A few months ago Tim Pool made a video reporting on the state of AI content I recommend watching it. He spends most of the video talking about AI generated music, Pool explains that nearly all of the AI slop songs are coming from random people who don’t know anything about music asking an AI to make them a song and they’ll just publish whatever the AI gives them, they could do that 100 times. The slop artists are throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. Fortunately platforms like YouTube and Spotify are getting rid of these slop artists.
But Pool also asks, “What happens when you get an actual musician, who wrote a real song, and then asks an AI to render it in real time into a high production?” You’re not going to get slop out of that, you’re going to get a good song, you’re going to get something of value. Pool tells us that almost every day he and a friend will spend some time writing lyrics and composing melodies and they’ll hand them over to an AI program which, with a bit of trial and error, will render the song perfectly performed in any genre they want. Pool will then play that music in the background when visitors are around and they’ll often be shocked when they learn the music is AI because it isn’t slop. The people who will make good music with AI are the people who already know how to make good music, AI technologies just enable them to make it faster.
Now, I’d like to re-emphasize a point, it is okay to use AI, in fact you probably should use AI, but you cannot let AI replace your reading, writing, or thinking on meaningful things. Look at the examples I used. Tim Pool and his friend still wrote their music, they just let AI preform it. Jake Kilgore still wrote his book, he just let AI create the audio version. Mike Isratel (as far as we know) still wrote his book, he just consulted with AI as one would do with an editor. My only example where a task was handed over completely to AI was that of my business owner friend using AI to fill up a calendar, something like that is just time consuming busywork, it is okay to let AI do your busywork. In fact if you want to start using AI then your busywork is the first thing you should figure out how to automate so that you can spend more time reading, writing, or thinking about meaningful things.
This is the part of the article where it would make sense for me to share all the ways that I have used AI to benefit my life, but I haven’t incorporated it into my life at all. I, like many of you, fall into the category of people Kiyosaki would say are destined to fall behind because I have failed to take advantage of this new form of leverage. In my defense there isn’t anywhere AI could fit into my life at the moment, there is nothing AI can currently do that would make me more efficient at my job, AI doesn’t really have a place in a blog like mine, and all of my other current hobbies are physical. AI use does not flow with my current lifestyle.
But I haven’t sworn off ever using AI, it is an amazing and powerful technology, there are scenarios I’ve recognized where I could see myself using the leverage of AI in the future. For example, photography is something that is beginning to interest me, I occasionally find myself tempted to buy a nice camera. The thought of going out somewhere beautiful with the intention of capturing a piece of God’s creation to showcase sounds very fun to me. But the process of sitting behind a computer endlessly tweaking the contrast and saturation of the files I collect in a piece of photo editing software to turn my pictures into something worthy of hanging in a gallery does not seem appealing to me. That is not a skill I possess nor is it one I have the motivation to develop, but it is a task that could be handed over to AI which would allow me to skip over the part of the hobby that I find boring and focus on the part that I find fulfilling.
Similarly, writing music sounds fun to me. I have a few friends who have released music and I think it would be cool to be able to publish a few songs of my own at some point. I wouldn’t AI generate a song, I’d want the composition and voice to be 100% my own, writing all of that is the fun part. But mastering an audio track so that it actually sounds good on most speakers is a process that looks frustrating, tedious, and could easily take a novice like me days or weeks to finish. If I hand that task over to AI I could skip all of that struggle and disappointment and actually release a piece of music.
In the video I mentioned earlier Tim Pool said, “There are many people who in their minds have a creative body, a creative work that they cannot express [but through AI] it will be amplified.”
It is also important to remember that AI can’t just be used for content creation, it can be an excellent consultant. I quoted Robert Kiyosaki earlier and in that same book Kiyosaki recommends everyone to hire and meet with a bookkeeper monthly. Kiyosaki tells us that a bookkeeper, among other things, will help us recognize and correct problems in our spending patterns. He compares a meeting with a bookkeeper to getting a report card from school that shows us where and how we can improve. Kiyosaki argues that a bookkeeper will help you gain control of your financial life, something we all should want to achieve. But bookkeepers are expensive, they could cost you hundreds of dollars a month. AI is cheap and you could easily upload your financial statements to a private locally hosted AI model which could quickly give you a similar analysis that a professional bookkeeper would. Will AI do as good or better of a job than a human bookkeeper? I don’t know, but that isn’t the question you should be asking. Your question should be, “Will I be better off using AI as a bookkeeper than I am currently without a bookkeeper?” The answer to that question is yes.
I see too many people across the internet asking the wrong questions about AI. “Is an AI bookkeeper better than a human one? Can AI edit something better than a human can? Is AI better than a human graphic designer?” I don’t know the answer to these questions, but for the sake of argument lets say the answer to all of them is no. Now what? You can’t afford a bookkeeper. You can’t afford an editor. You can’t afford a graphic designer. You can’t afford to pay a human to do all the things that AI can do for you so whether or not AI is better than a human at any of these things is irrelevant to your life. But you can afford AI. That is the leverage of AI, you can use AI for services that were previously only available to the rich. Remember what Robert Kiyosaki said about leverage, “Throughout history, the people who have fallen behind are the people who fail to utilize the new tools of leverage created during their lifetime.”
Now, the thing you and I should really figure out how to do is use AI to make money rather than just save it. There are probably thousands of people out there who have created some sort of online AI based side hustle, hustles that don’t feel like hustles because with very little investment of money and time AI can almost run the whole thing. I don’t imagine there are many of these people who make enough money to quit their day job but an extra $10,000 a year is a life changing amount of money for most people. That’s less than $850 a month, I think it is entirely feasible to create some sort of AI-run online business or product that can generate $850 a month, I need to do look into that and you should too.
There are lots of ways that AI can benefit your life, I could list more but a draft of this article has been sitting open on my computer for far too long so I’m afraid this is the end of the article. I hope I have given you enough information for you to stop being a complainer, debater, or whiner about AI. Yes, it is true that there are plenty of ways that AI can harm you, stay away from that crap while recognizing that AI can also be a powerful tool for good. We want to be the people who create, move, laugh and build, as the tweet that I opened this article with states, vitality and beauty are the filters that matter and that is what we should strive to create. You are free to leverage AI in that quest, you probably should to some degree, but you are also free not to, but you might fall behind if that is your choice. Whatever you do don’t be a low energy whiner.