I Didn't Write This With AI

AI isn't everything — but your internal guidance for it will be.

TL:DR

• People are more secluded and more lonely than ever

• AI is essential as a tool but we need to be clear-eyed on its limits

• Ensure your brand, team or business has internal guidance for AI use and partners are aware of the guardrails

---

I caught up on old magazines while traveling earlier this month, so the cover story from the February 2025 Atlantic, the Anti-Social Century by Derek Thompson, is hardly breaking news.

It’s thesis, though, could not be more relevant. The piece presents unsettling evidence about work, post-pandemic and at the dawn of GenAI.

What It’s About

We’re spending more and more time alone.

This isn’t new.

The book Bowling Alone argued that the automobile and the television chipped away at community groups. It was published 25 years ago.

What is new is our smartphones and even more recently — you guessed it — GenAI.

What It Means for You as a Person

We’re lonely.

Each month, with Character.ai, tens of thousands of people are building relationships with AI personalties, willingly, as a solution for their loneliness. It’s the movie Her unfolding in real time.

That’s troubling (an AI robot will never challenge, develop, or love you), but what Thompson shares next made my stomach flip:

If you find the notion of emotional intercourse with an immaterial entity creepy, consider the many friends and family members who exist in your life mainly as words on a screen. Digital communication has already prepared us for AI companionship […] by transforming many of our physical-world relationships into a sequence of text chimes and blue bubbles.

We feel close to friends and family because, in a way, we are. Their names, photos, words pop up on our phone through the day. That doesn’t mean we know them.

In other words, maybe seeing my name in your inbox each week feels like we’re staying in touch. We’re not.

OK I did use AI to make this image though. But there’s a reason! See below!

What It Means for You and Work

Thompson references a number of studies that consistently prove the same thing, over and over again. People say they want more time alone; they’d rather send an email than make a phone call. Talking to a stranger on the train for 15 minutes sounds more draining than using that time to sit alone and reflect.

Yet, at the end of these studies, the people who made the phone call or talked to the stranger reported being happier, more energized.

As I was reading these and aligning myself with those people (I loathe talking on the phone), I thought about how I’ve discussed GenAI here.

I’m all for it as a tool — just like our phones can be a tool for communication and connection.

But, just like it is for our work, it’s not a replacement for our relationships or our art.

I’m all for using AI for, say, social media / SEO copy, or starting a marathon training calendar — two uses I’ve tapped in the past few weeks. I’m even using it for the imagery here. All of these things make sense as a tool because as a person and a business I’m testing the output. It’s low risk and gives me access when I don’t have the budget or resources for something in simple “test mode”.

When it’s out of test mode — or higher stakes — it all changes.

I don’t really want to watch a commercial, much less one made with AI. I don’t want to read a novel written by AI. I don’t even want to read an email written by AI.

Let me be clear — a :30 second TV spot is not art. It’s a commercial. However, the intent is to capture the top of the funnel with human emotion and move those customers down. You can’t do that with an algorithm alone.

It all boils down to this — in your job, know when and how you’re using AI tools.

Have internal guidelines (or work with your agency to develop them).

Don’t use GenAI for big, important campaigns or communications. Even that SEO copy needs a human review. (At one former job of mine, the company paid multiple millions of dollars for incorrect SEO copy on a sister brand’s site.)

And please, talk to someone, anyone, IRL. Go for two minutes, maybe five. Ask them how their day went. Talk about, I don’t know, the benefits of GenAI as a tool not a replacement for human connection.

I know you don’t want to, but the data says otherwise.

We are, after all, human.