Hurry up and . . .what?

I was in Maine late last month, just in time for a big snowfall. I had a couple of excellent crisp, quiet walks, crunching through the snow. Not all the roads were plowed, so I had to walk at a more measured pace. It got me thinking, again, about the value of slowing down.

I have also been reflecting on the recent lawsuit against OpenAI filed by the New York Times in federal court in January, as well as the big one filed in September by the Author’s Guild and Many Famous Authors. I’m still not a huge fan of this technology, for reasons enumerated here. But even if I weren’t a writer, I wonder if I’d jump on the bandwagon.

Because I am not at all sure what the point is. I am told AI will help us beat the clock by accomplishing in ten minutes what it now takes hours to do. But then I wonder: will we make good use of all that extra time? If we work for others, surely our workload will increase accordingly. If we work for ourselves, what will we lose by speeding it all up?

I have some tedious tasks to do (bookkeeping, bill-paying) and I’m thankful for my technological helpers. But to race through everything else? To outsource your thinking? To trust even your first steps, bullet points and rough drafts—which are often where the real drilling down happens—to an intelligence that is not only external, but so very “other”? We already have formulas for creating television scripts, screenplays, popular songs. I give my clients templates for writing speeches. These aids are fine. They help with getting started. Then it’s up to us to fill in the meaning.

Of course that takes time. But what is so awful about that? Does doing it faster always mean it is better? The people I know who embrace AI seem enthralled by the novelty. But they can’t assure me that speed equals quality. When I ask what they are doing with all their extra time, they are either checking for hallucinations, or moving onto more work. They are still engaged in labor.

I’m all for labor-saving devices: ask my family how grumpy I was over Christmas when our washing machine broke. But when it comes to thinking—reflection, rumination—Ideas unfold and develop over time. The labor of thinking cannot be rushed. This is what our amazing human brains have evolved to do. And we should celebrate every time we use them, even for the slog of getting those first thoughts on the paper or on the screen. No other species can do that. We should slow down and savor our exceptionalism!