Navigating by aliveness

“More subtly, it feels like our own aliveness is what’s at stake when we’re urged to get better at prompting LLMs to provide the most useful responses. Maybe that’s a necessary modern skill; but still, the fact is that we’re being asked to think less like ourselves and more like our tools. It makes you wonder if Wendell Berry had it right when he wrote: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.””

I like the way Burkeman talks about aliveness and how much of what we do in life for ourselves brings us that feeling. On the flipside, AI takes that feeling away. I've largely stayed away from reading a lot about AI because I don't have to deal with it. But I like the framing here, that we may have to deal with it in some fashion, but we should orient ourselves towards aliveness.