Say Goodbye to Free Will

When was the last time you had an original thought?

I’m serious…can you remember? 

Okay fine, I’ll dial it back a notch. When was the last time you sat still, without looking at your phone, computer, or TV screen for more than 45 seconds? 

The chatter about the impact of AI — on individuals, on corporations, and on the world — has grown into a swell recently. And it got me thinking…

If we’ve already been trained to rely on devices to gather information, maybe we’ve made it too easy for these companies to reprogram our brains to let them think for us. Is AI really that inevitable? 

I’ve been making an effort to be more aware of my screen time lately. My new rules for no one who asked: no looking at my phone when I’m waiting for the elevator, DND while writing, laptop is only allowed on the couch after 5pm and on weekends. I think a side effect of these rules is that my awareness has increased, and now I’m noticing some of the weird little ticks that have become ingrained parts of my behavior without me realizing. 

And there was one that really blew my mind…

I open the comments on videos before I’ve even finished watching them. 

Anyone else? Surely this can’t just be me. 

In fact, I’m absolutely positive I’m not alone in this because Queen Kylie Kelce popped up on my FYP making a very relevant argument. In the video, she talks about the “right” way to doomscroll on TikTok. Which, she argues, is not to simply idly scroll through videos, but instead to sprint to the comments so fast that your hair blows back (her words). Because that’s where the real comedy gold is. 

And she is totally right. About the hilarity of TT comments, that is. The way social media is designed these days offers an entirely new avenue of “content” — and comment dwellers are the improv comics of the modern age. All you have to do is check out the top comments on this video…in it, a dad has fallen asleep in his toddler’s crib (relatable), and now the kid is busy scrolling on his dad’s Apple Watch while daddy dearest snores next to him, blissfully unaware. A few choice comments for your giggling pleasure: 

But sometimes it’s not all playful roasting and hilarious stories from people with similar experiences in the comments. Sometimes there are hateful trolls. You’ll catch quite a few brands chiming in to try to get attention. And I’ve noticed there’s even a level of “crowdsourcing” that takes place in the comments section. Like an audience vote about how much they agree/disagree with the poster, whether it was a good idea to post this particular embarrassing story for the world to hear, or — one I’ve found particularly enlightening — if a video is actually made by AI or real humans. 

As someone whose FYP is largely populated by puppy videos, I’m saddened that I now have to question my own eyes when deciding if a kangaroo really did carry its own boarding pass down the jet bridge (come on, that one was obvious…right?). 

You know what else I’m always suspicious of? Ads. But sadly this is the necessary evil to keep this thing free, so here’s a note from today’s sponsor:

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Now back to our regularly scheduled AI-doomsday programming…

I’ve gotten in the habit of quickly popping into the comments on any particularly charming animal videos, because more often than not the commenters have already done the dirty work of digging into the origin of the video before I arrived. That means that I can quickly see if the video in question has been deemed to be AI-created or not with a simple click of a button. 

And honestly, it’s kind of nice? It’s sort of like Wikipedia level crowd sourcing that enables we-the-people to actually benefit from groupthink rather than fall victim to it. But lately I’m starting to think it isn’t quite as beneficial, or even as harmless, as it seems. Even in the instance of puppy videos. 

If the first thing we do the moment we encounter a video that gives us a split second pause is rush to the comments, then we’re denying our brains the ability to think for themselves. How can I expect to be able to identify artificial content on my own if I rely on internet dwellers to figure it out for me? 

Suddenly I realized how much deeper this problem might go. Because it’s not just about identifying AI, deep fakes, or farmed content. That alone would be scary enough. But it’s expanded to encompass the entire universe of our opinions. 

Let me give you a different scenario. And let’s make this one hypothetical. Think about a public figure you adore. Maybe it’s a celebrity whose movies you loved as a child. Or a singer whose music got you through a difficult time. Or an influencer who makes you believe that living in NYC really is as glamorous as everyone told you it would be as you wait for the L train on a Saturday night to get home from Brooklyn. 

Now imagine a video emerges of that person doing something questionable. Not like murder level questionable. But definitely not okay. You cringe. You hate to see someone you admire doing something so obviously unacceptable. But like…it’s not a fully “cancellable” offense……..is it? 

We can get into the politics of cancel culture another day. But what I want to ask you to think about is how you react when you see a clip like this come across your feed. Do you find yourself wanting to talk to a friend to see how they feel about it? Maybe scrolling IG to see if anyone you follow has posted their take yet? How about opening the comments on the video to see how the world is reacting before you’ve even fully processed how you feel yourself? 

Maybe you’re not sure. Like me, perhaps you never even realized you’re doing this. So I’m asking you to pay attention next time. To really observe your own behavior. 

Let’s take last weekend when the shooting occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Did you read any comments on those clips? I sure did, and here were some of the top responses on the more popular scenes making the rounds: 

• Why was JD Vance swept away before Trump was? 

• What kind of unchivalrous gentleman abandons his wife to flee the scene without her? (cough::::RFK::::cough) 

• Why did there appear to be so little security? 

• This was obviously staged, right? 

• See, this is exactly why we need to build a ballroom at at White House…

Yep, within minutes, the comments were filled with claims that this latest incident was clearly staged. By whom, you may ask. Well that depends which comment section you might be living in these days. Staged by the libs, perhaps. Or maybe by DJT himself to boost his numbers. Or to tank them. Again, it depends which corner of the internet your particular algorithm has relegated you to. 

The point I’m making here isn’t that any of these questions are inherently bad to be asking. It’s that the speed with which certain comments sailed to the top immediately makes it appear as though those are the most “correct” responses. Without realizing it, we’re allowing our opinions and judgements to be massively influenced by something other than our own brains. 

You might be sitting here thinking I’m insane. You’ve never done this. You’re a free thinker. You’d never let your opinion be swayed by something as ridiculous as a TikTok comment section. But I want you to start paying attention. The next time you’re confronted with a piece of information that makes you pause, what do you do? Do you sit in that discomfort — alone, quiet, without reaching for your phone? Do you spend actual, measurable time (in more than seconds) parsing through the unsettling feeling to ask yourself why you’re having that disconcerting experience? Or do you instinctively reach for Chat to ask it for “the answer”? 

I was in Vienna a few weeks ago and attended the symphony. I noted as I took my seat that I hadn’t been handed a program by the usher. This bummed me out. Because not only do I collect playbills (my zoom background is legendary, but you’ll have to schedule a meeting with me to see it), but I genuinely love to read about a piece of classical music while the piece is cascading over me in an elegant concert hall. I contend that that’s what the Philharmonic intends when they leave the house lights partially up throughout the concert. But my friend in Vienna told me that unfortunately they don’t provide show notes to everyone in Austria. Only those who choose to purchase a program. Cue Pathétique by Tchaikovsky.  

A few minutes into the concert, I realized I wasn’t even sure how many movements this particular piece had. This is a critical piece of information at the symphony. Clapping in between movements is a major faux pas. You’re supposed to wait until the end of the piece. But maybe more serious orchestra attendees keep an encyclopedia of pieces in their mind and actually know this information offhand. Or had the foresight to look it up ahead of time. But I fall into neither of these categories…I guess I would just have to wait and see when the rest of the audience clapped, I told myself. But then I noticed a familiar glow out of the corner of my eye. The woman next to me had slid her phone onto her lap. And I could clearly see that she was asking ChatGPT the very question I had just asked myself. How many movements? 

Four in Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, for those who are curious (none of you, I know). 

That concert hall is stunning, amirite? But more to the point…why couldn’t this woman stand the idea of just waiting to see how the piece unfolds? Why did she feel the need to sneak onto her phone in the middle of the concert to ask Chat? I don’t think she was intending to be disruptive or disrespectful. She may not have even really thought it was disrespectful at all. The hall is still half-lit, after all. 

It’s because it feels like the answer is always within reach these days. Ask Google. As Gemini. Ask Chat. 

What happened to asking ourselves? To weighing the options with our own mind? Or, god forbid, to just waiting and seeing how things unfold? 

I contend that by giving us the illusion that all the “correct” information — and opinions, and outcomes — is just waiting there at our fingertips, we’re doing ourselves a major disservice. We’re removing all the friction from our lives. But some friction is necessary. Dare I say it, even beneficial. Sure, it’s incredible that we can order groceries and books to our homes if we want to. And sometimes we really are just looking for a simple fact that will allow us to go about the rest of our day. But should it really be that seamless to conjure up a seemingly fully formed opinion? 

It will surprise no one that I firmly believe this is bad. That the side-effect of a lot of this artificial intelligence on individuals is a material decrease in our own actual intelligence. A legitimate smoothing of our own brains. I’m sorry to say this to the people reading this who actually know me (hi bbs), but a lot of the people in my own life who are using AI regularly for individual tasks have quite frankly become boring. 

Not all of them, of course. There are those who are figuring out how to leverage the true value of AI to build unique agents that accomplish complex tasks and enable them to do their own individual problem solving more effectively. And I love talking to those people about how to harness the power of this new technology in genuinely productive ways. But the vast majority? They’ve just outsourced their own thinking. And now they’re incapable of having an interesting conversation. 

Maybe this feels benign to you. What’s so wrong with letting AI create an optimized travel itinerary for you? Or to order your groceries. Or to figure out where you should go to dinner tonight. Making plans is difficult. It feels so freeing to be able to reduce the number of decisions we make in a day. My 70 year old father, in fact, uses “reducing decisions” as his literal mantra as he navigates entering his retirement era. 

I’m not here to tell you to uninstall ChatGPT from your phones. Or to stop reading the comment sections online. I’m certainly not going to stop. I’m just going to stay vigilant, too. 

There are so many genuinely beneficial ways these tools can be harnessed — AI, social media, and everything in between. And beyond that, quieting the noise and reducing mindless decisions can absolutely have real benefits. Especially in today’s age when we’re constantly bombarded with so many more inputs and requests on our time and attention than ever before. But where’s the line between “reducing friction to free up my mind to do things that are real” versus “reducing friction so that I’m relieved of the burden of thinking about anything or even feeling”… 

Making everything in our life simple feels lovely at first. Efficiency is exciting! The absence of friction is calming. Efficient. Smooth. Just like all our brains will be. 

So start paying closer attention to just how you use these tools. And how maybe you shouldn’t. When are they genuinely adding value. Making your life more fulfilling. Freeing up time and space for you to truly live. And when are they trapping you in a prison of your own making. Preventing you from experiencing the serendipitous joys of being a human being. 

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