The people selling these tools are doing so with a powerful narrative: Generative AI supposedly supercharges all that it touches, democratizing creativity, eliminating friction, increasing productivity, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Its disruption of the online economy, the boosters argue, is a reason for great optimism. But at the moment, so many of these benefits are theoretical. Generative AI is disruptive, is transformative, and is reducing friction, but the economic incentives for using it are geared far less toward supercharging human potential and much more toward producing abundant slop.
This is tragic. The loss of friction deprives people of something crucial. What happens between imagination and creation is ineffable—it entails struggle, iteration, joy, and frustration, disappointment, and pride. It is the process through which we enact agency. It is how we make meaning and move through the world. To lose that, I fear, is to capitulate on our very humanity.