I get the feeling more than ever. It’s no longer a gentle itch, but a festering scab in my mind.

This feeling that some of our core human traits and our critical thinking skills are being drained from us. Whether it’s the cognitive power we now lean on AI for instead of trusting our own minds, or the distracting dopamine hits that are being blasted at us from all angles and desensitizing us to some of the brutal realities that define our modern world.

We are handing the reigns of our humanity to technology. While this is often quite empowering, are we sure it’s not going to bite us in the ass? We are playing blissfully with a double edged sword that might just sever us from what makes us human in an attempt to cut corners and bypass some of the seemingly dull or difficult work.

Take a look at the state of AI, and how we are using this transformative new tech. We’re not just doing some arithmetic or writing some sales emails. We are taking deeply personal and creative work and asking a machine to churn it out for us. The US president seemingly deep faked his Charlie Kirk announcement video, and his son Don Jr clearly ChatGPT’d his response tweet. A close personal friend was executed live on TV, and they ran to an LLM to help them spin up a public response. That is fucking wild to me.

Then we have the more standard, day to day usage of AI that many people lean on. This is quickly leading to Dead Internet 2.0, a place where all content smells and feels similar, is “optimized” for other AI to consume, and completely lacking of soul or personality. This is turning the internet into a sterile wasteland of robot speak and bot-like content.

But who’s it for? Who’s it benefitting?

If your art, your writing, your story has to pass through an AI middleman just to reach another person…what are we really building?

If you’re getting your news and content recommendations from an algorithm…who wants you to consume that really?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we are sacrificing for the ease of work with AI and algorithms. I see it daily. People trading what makes them human (creating, thinking, discovering)  for speed and algorithmic convenience. That comes with a cost.

A study published in The Journal of Creative Behavior found that people feel less creative when using AI tools, even when the output looks objectively “better.” Why? Because the process gets stripped away. The sense of ownership fades. We eliminate our soul from the process. (PsyPost)

The work is technically yours but you didn’t make it. You prompted it. That’s just not the same.

The music and audiovisual sectors are projected to lose 24 percent and 21 percent of creator revenues by 2028 due to generative AI substitution. That’s billions disappearing from the hands of real people. (CISAC Report)

This isn’t hypothetical anymore. It’s already happening.

A study from MIT Media Lab revealed that people using ChatGPT for essay tasks experienced lower neural engagement, weaker memory, and less originality than those who wrote independently. (TIME)

It’s not just a shortcut. It’s a slow decay.

New research out of the University of Cologne shows that people relying on AI-generated search answers are significantly more likely to accept those answers without question, even when they’re false. That’s not augmentation. That’s surrender. (Nature Human Behaviour, 2024)

We are slowly losing our grip on our internal filter.

Algorithms are designed to keep you engaged. Not informed. Not inspired. Just locked into the doom scroll.

They prioritize what’s proven to keep people scrolling. That means more outrage. More dopamine. More rapid ups and downs and blasts of emotion that keep you hooked. 

We’re not seeing stories because they’re important. We’re seeing them because they generate clicks for a big tech monster corp.

As Prince once said:

“The internet's like a black hole. It uses us, we don't use it.”

And he said that twenty years ago.

Now that black hole is personalized. Optimized. And feeding off our attention at scale.

This is the next trap.

As AI becomes the discovery layer for everything (music, blogs, books, videos) creators will feel forced to optimize for what AI recommends.

That means more SEO. More keyword matching. More predictability. Less personality.

The result? We end up creating content that’s not meant to connect with real people. It’s just designed to pass through another machine’s filter.

That’s the separation. The quiet divide. When people stop talking to each other and start chatting it up with robots in hopes the robots will deliver them to someone else.

It’s a soul-level loss.

Here’s what I’m doing. You don’t have to adopt all of it, but pick something. Try it. Hold the line where it matters.

Write, sketch, or speak before the machine gets involved. Let your raw voice come through. Use AI only to refine, not to originate.

Know your non-negotiables. For me, it’s voice. It’s values. It’s the philosophical questions. I won’t hand those off.

What’s your red line?

Read things that piss you off. Watch films no one recommends to you. Talk to people who don’t think like you.

And now and then, make something that no one will ever see. Just for you. Just for the love of the process.

AI is fast. But not everything should be.

Give time to emotions. Let nuance unfold. Let big ideas breathe. Not everything needs to be a sprint.

Ask yourself weekly: Did I feel like a human this week, or a content machine?

Ask yourself monthly: Which tools do I still believe in? Which ones am I using just to keep up?

Because I’ve felt it. The ghost in the shell. The creeping doubt after using AI too much in a week.

I ask: Is this still me? Or is this just what performs?

The more we rely on tools, the easier it is to lose our taste, our voice, our weirdness. That’s what I’m afraid of losing. We must remain weird, cringe, different, off. 

If founders and storytellers give up our weirdness, if we all become output machines, what are we even building?

AI is a tool. Maybe the most powerful we’ll ever hold.

But the real test isn’t how many tools you use. It’s whether they serve your purpose, or whether you’ve lost your purpose in the process.

Don’t outsource your soul.

Don’t outsource your curiosity.

Don’t outsource your humanity.

We can make beautiful things with tech. But only if we remember why we’re making them in the first place.

Let’s keep creating with conviction. Thinking for ourselves. And standing up for what feels real, not what’s optimized.