AI might entertain, but humans create memories

Humans vs the Machines

This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about true human connection amidst the growing wave of AI-generated content. 

If you haven’t seen all the AI-generated Sora videos flooding Instagram yet, well done. The tidal wave of AI-generated content is washing across the internet, leaving nothing untouched. It’s there in the formulaic LinkedIn posts, optimized for… something, or someone. It’s there on Substack, where food bloggers are migrating to reconnect with their audiences, but the platform is not what it once was, now awash with social-media-like features that have the lure of being authentic, raw, and personal. It makes me wonder: Do people even remember the early days of blogging? The marketers, their automations, and their AI-written pieces are showing up in droves. 

Raptive is putting up “do not scrape” notices to try to protect creators. The MPAA is calling for immediate action over copyright infringement. Anthropic is paying authors $1.5 billion for training its AI tool Claude on their books. The damage from these waves is being done faster than the laws can keep up. It feels like a preventable catastrophe we are watching in slow motion – like watching the levees break in New Orleans from the comfort of my home, helicopters showing the city’s colorful beauty submerging beneath the muddy waters.

There is a lot of overwhelm, despair, and worry in the world. So this weekend, I read.

One of my kindred spirits in book reviews, Annie B. Jones, highly recommended The Correspondent. It’s a beautiful love story to the art of letter writing, of making human connections with those we love and those that we meet (including even a customer service guy), and how it is never too late to change the way things are if we are willing to communicate. The main character isn’t afraid of writing letters to anyone and has learned that most people write back. 

I came away feeling inspired to write more, reach out more, thank people more, consume less, and create more.  

***

So I reached out. 

I wrote on a Raptive social media post that AI might entertain for a moment, but genuine human stories and connections can create memories for a lifetime. 

I sent feedback on a German “Bee Sting” cake recipe, which I used for the first time last week. It was a friend’s birthday, and she used to live in Germany, and her husband said it was her favorite cake. The recipe worked so well, and everyone loved it. It felt strange to make a specialty cake I’d never even tasted before! It would be easy not to let the recipe author know, but I figured that if a friend had given me the recipe, I would be sure to say thanks afterwards.

In an essay on Noēma, James O’Sullivan writes that these are the last days of social media – built on the romance of authenticity – as we know it. 

“Genuine, human content is increasingly sidelined by algorithmic prioritization, receiving fewer interactions than the engineered content and AI slop optimized solely for clicks.”

Social media is no longer the place for genuine connection. It has become a place for vapid, empty entertainment produced for engagement and consumerism, a mood-regulation device, a form of ambient dissociation. O’Sullivan also uses the water metaphor – saying we are drowning in this nothingness and becoming too exhausted to care.

But he also talks about hopeful signs, new ways of building better digital spaces that are smaller, slower, more intentional, more accountable, more human. Not to go viral, but to find out people. Not to scroll, but to connect. 

I also read an article by Adam Verner, an audiobook narrator, on the importance of voice in human storytelling. He writes about his journey to understanding that narrators will never be fully replaced – a machine cannot pour its whole soul into its art, it cannot have intent. Normally, I skim read, but there was something so very beautiful written that slowed me down. I paused while reading, wanting to soak in all his uniquely human story. I took the time to write him an email in response. 

I’m tired of reading the ChatGPT voice, the formulaic posts. I love humanness.

I love seeing how a friend writes “rediculous” in her messages to me.

Another article from Rosie Spinks this week, titled “Humans are optional and humans are awful,” captures the state of the world right now. She describes the reportedly largest ad campaign in the NYC Subway in history for an AI necklace called Friend. Real humans graffitied the billboards that suggested you can replace the friction and flakiness of real friends with AI. She’s writing a book called “How to Build a Village”. 

“In our current moment, it takes actual effort to prioritize relationships with other people, even people you like. It’s an instinct that has been eroded, slowly and gradually, and then seemingly all at once. 

We need to rebuild and practice these skills, not only because it makes life better, but also so we can use them where it really counts. We’re not going to enjoy every minute of doing this, because unlike sycophantic LLMs, real people are messy, confusing, and challenging a lot of the time.”

This is why we do our Friday night pizzas. It’s a small act of resistance against the waves of isolation and technology that mediate relationships.

I long to see less content optimized for Google clicks and more for human connection. I often think, is this how you would tell me this story if I came to you as a friend? 

Perhaps one day, people will start talking like ChatGPT. I hope not.

I want to stay free, dancing on the shoreline of this new age, feet wet, but not drowning in it.

Let’s reach out more.