Skip to content🌞
Back to Garden

Thoughts on Generative AI

Planted on: January 2, 2026

Recent growth on: March 20, 2026

Let me start this note by saying that I find it hard to grasp all the things about generative AI in one cohesive note, so I'm breaking it down in bits and pieces. There is currently so much changing, and it feels like we're in this AI bubble, but this time every opinion and thought is shouted about on social media which makes all the echoes even louder.

What the hell even is AI these days? Some people use quotation marks around the term "AI" since it is so out of context these days. AI is a pretty broad category, which has been around for decades, and basically just means any computer program trying to look like intelligence. The way it is used these days is a marketing term above all. Even household appliances all have AI now, and are marketed as such.

Generative AI is based on large language models that are trained on so much text data to recognize patterns and produce human-like responses. In the following text, I will be referring to this specifically even though I am only mentioning "AI".

There are a lot of feelings and fears around the subject at the moment: there's undeniably a big hype by both tech people and everyday technology users because of either the rapid innovations and promises as the way it makes everyday tasks easier by eliminating manual and labor-intensive tasks. There is also fear of AI taking away jobs, taking away creativity and/or critical thinking. Of course, there are also valid concerns about how it impacts environment, politics and our culture as a whole.

I want to unpack some of these bits by diving into parts, but before I want to highlight this philsophical view of AI I came across.

There’s this great essay by Hannah Baer in the latest issue of Artforum, where she unpacks why we are so afraid of AI becoming more intelligent than humans. If you look at this historically, humans have positioned themselves as the most intelligent species, even though that’s not true. As the “most intelligent species,” we’ve used this power as an excuse to dominate other people, religions, nature…things that are seemingly “less intelligent.” If we continue this thought process, it makes sense that we might fear a more intelligent AI, as we could only imagine that it would try to dominate and extract resources from us. It’s not about the tool, it’s about how the tool is used; it’s not about AI itself, but rather how AI will be used for big business, widening the class divide, etc. (Mindy Seu in Passerby Magazine)

Diving into Baer's essay, she mentions how we are very quick to think about all the negative consequence that the popularity of AI has right now, while AI also raises philosophical questions about what it means to be able to draw, write and think. People in the creative industry have always struggled with the question of authorship. If AI is our creation, do we also control it?

Isn't it the case that because we as humans, especially in Western society, always want to improve ourselves, that we feed data into LLM's that match these narratives. Isn't the output of what we dislike from LLM's exactly what we are afraid of ourselves because of our feelings and values? The fact that quite some people are having relationship with chatbots right now, isn't that a mirror of the loneliness epidemic?

Impact

Challenges

  • The impact of AI on language
  • The impact of AI on the education system - very big thing.
  • Anti-intellectualism
    • As an outsider or a student, you might not notice that a large part of text is written by AI and is therefore a cheap imitation. "It sounds good", you might say. However, the teacher might disagree.
    • Less critical thinking
  • People wrestling with loneliness and isolation are turning to AI-powered apps. Same goes for (mental) health issues. The risk could be high.
  • Data sovereignty. Privacy. The fact that a few big companies can gain LOADS of personal data from LOADS of people.
  • The Gender Gap in AI - and what this means for women and other minorities

Questions

  • How harmful is Generative AI on the environment?
  • How much impact will AI have on the labor force?
    • This is a double-sided sword. We need to do things more efficiently, especially in high-income countries because of the aging population. However, there are some things that might be argued are better off if humans do these things. Such as a psychologist being present in a conversation, offering you non-verbal empathy, and trying to figure out how what you are saying and what you are displaying say about the things you might need.
    • When AI prophecy fails
  • What will the future be of these big AI companies? AKA: The race for a profitable revenue model for AI companies
    • Digital colonialism (look for paper that belongs to this!) (tiktok video of Syed Faizan Raza): Generative AI is a loud solution searching for a problem, in many cases. (The toaster comparison! Load factor problems. Appliances needed to be invented to keep the grid running 24/7. Induced demand or better said: supply side desperation). AI companies have built massive data centers, and they need you to keep the meter running, because they are not generating profits yet. The fact that Whatsapp rolls out AI-generated summaries for private messages feels unnecessary and intrusive, because it is. Generative AI is being inserted into our daily lives, such that our habits will mach their financial projections. Software is no longer a tool, waiting in a shed until you need it, but you can now compare software to territory: AI agents are actively moving into our house. It is a sovereignty issue.

Reference

Back to Garden