The Era of Average

How AI is making everything, including people, so boring

Every time I read copy or a newsletter written by AI, I can feel my soul retreat into my body. As I consume AI’s words I can feel the energetic of average… that this dumb bot was given some direction and just spat out what the average copywriter or writer could create.

When students used AI for writing tasks they found it’s associated with reduced brain engagement and poorer memory / recall. In one published review of the data on smartphone use, the authors found that the greater the smartphone addiction, the greater the association with poorer performance in attention, memory retrieval, and executive functioning, as well as increased mental fatigue, poorer sleep quality, and greater rigidity in real-world adjustment.

Soooooo… you don’t have to take my word for it… the data is leaning to the fact that AI and lots of smartphone use is no-bueno for our brains and hearts.

But, let’s be honest, you knew this in your soul.

“OKAY. BUT THERE ARE BENEFITS TO AI AND TECHNOLOGY MARK!”

You’d be right my friend. This isn’t about throwing it away…

But it is about not becoming a boring, duplicate of everyone else who uses AI for everything and forgot how to think and speak and kiss and bang and write poetry and hold hands and hike in nature and go on adventures and stop burying their head in their fucking phone.

LOOK UP.

Well, read this first. Then look up.

AI has it’s place. It’s great for searching things, solving problems, brainstorming etc. I used it the other day to fix some blinds that I ordered by uploading pictures and asking it some questions… much more help than sitting on hold for two hours and then talking to someone in customer service on the other side of the world.

But when it comes to writing and speaking, it is fucking boring. It is literally the average of everything that has ever existed that AI has consumed.

Can it come close to good? Sure. Is it better than a lot of copywriters or entrepreneurs trying to spit out more “value” and create more content on different channels? Sure.

But it makes me want to puke… Why? Because in an effort to constantly make more and more content, we outsource it to computers and AI, or we subcontract someone to write it and they use AI, and what we’re left with is more bullshit, all without the substance of the soul.

The internet is starting to be filled with more and more noise.

Something like 10-15% of all social media accounts are bots. Eventually they’ll just be having conversations with each other, pushing more division, and flooding our feeds with propaganda… it’s a government’s dream.

Add to that, AI is now creating videos indistinguishable from real videos and that’s pretty freaky. And Dead Internet Theory, which was always just a theory — that most of the content on the internet will one day be created by computers and AI — is soon to become true.

So, how do we trust the information we see? How do we know what’s real and what’s not?

Well, we need to stay connected to our hearts and souls. We need to be embodied. We need to write and read words written by humans.

We need to write love letters to each other. We need to meet people in the wild. We need to stay connected to nature. And we sure-as-shit better not eat any of that fake meat that Bill Gates is trying to get us to consume…

Because processed food and processed words are not so dissimilar. Just like Beyond Beef has no nutritional value, processed words don’t stir the soul. And I think about how people are using AI to write emails, texts, dating profiles… and that we might at some point, according to the founder of Bumble, have our AI agents date one another to see if we’re a match! Wow. Have we become so fucking lazy that we even want computers to relate for us?

DATING IS FUN. GETTING TO KNOW SOMEONE IS FUN. LEARNING HOW TO PICK A GREAT PARTNER IS ESSENTIAL TO TRUSTING YOURSELF.

AI could very well be preventing us from moving through the essential initiatory processes necessary to move us from adolescence into adults… and integration of technology into our lives is walking alongside a continued reduction of our latest generation’s IQ in some categories of testing… hmmm. That’s not good.

Convenience culture, with apps that bring us exactly what we want when we want it to our couch, are making it so that when we relate to another human, who will be anything but convenient, we don’t even have the capacity to hold normal human interactions.

Look, you may not give a shit. You may want to install a chip in your ass and upload your personality to the cloud. This article is not for you… and, despite the words I’m using to describe you, no judgement on your choice.

But for the people who want to truly live this life… and use the tools of technology, but not be enslaved or made more stupid by using it — there is a future you and I must create. We have to put in the reps to be great at communication. We have to decide that we’re not going to let our phones make us get dumber and dumber. We have to continue to remember what it is to be a human with a nervous system and a heart that pumps blood and cells that sing.

While many people will forget what it means to be a soul living in a body… we shall remember.

And we shall rejoice when we meet one another, put our phones on airplane mode, grab a guitar, sit around the campfire, and dance and sing and tell stories… just like our ancestors did.

We’ll talk about our heartbreaks and our triumphs, and our pains, traumas and rejections. We’ll tell tales of glory, and sadness. We’ll explore how our greatest scars have been our greatest teachers.

We will listen to, and celebrate our elders.

These are the moments that make us write more books and more music.

Repeat.

Much love.

P.S. I’m going to be speaking at Eudemonia in West Palm beach November 13-16 this year on similar topics! Are you gonna come hang out? Head here for tickets and use code MGROVES.