Take The Long Way

When people talk about AI, I often think of Chuang Tzu’s story of the Great P’eng Bird, who could fly thousands of miles with a single flap of his wings, but flew too fast to notice anything about the world below. A little quail, on the other hand, who could hop just a few feet, truly understood the distance he was traveling.

So it is with technology. An amateur typing keywords into ChatGPT doesn’t create a painting. Paintings come from painting, from taking the long journey of acquiring skills and mastering materials. To think you can bypass the journey is like trying to experience a piece of music by skipping to the last bar, or experiencing Paris by leaving it as quickly as possible. Don’t take travel tips from people who hate leaving home.

There are no shortcuts. Our society peddles the illusion that, with the right hacks, you can “do more,” but no one in the history of the world has ever done more, because no one has ever found more than twenty-four hours of experience in a day. You can speed up, but you’ll just see less. You can give yourself a diploma for a program you didn’t attend, but that doesn’t mean you learned anything.

Notice, then, how badly you want to rush your healing, how badly you want to get rid of your anger or jealousy or sadness, how badly you’re waiting for someone to tell you you’ve made it. What do you think lies at the end of the way, besides death? The tempo of your life may feel slow, but you won’t improve the beat by fighting the drummer.

Our life’s work is for just this purpose: to learn to be in time and in tune. The question isn’t whether robots will one day be conscious, but whether, in that future, humans will be. Consciousness isn’t something guaranteed. In fact, we lose it a little each time we delegate the work of paying attention. You have to resist this. Climb the steps to your apartment carefully, one by one. Dry the dishes carefully, one by one. This is all the living there ever has been, or will be.

Vincent Van Gogh, "Fishing In Spring" (1887)