The AI drift is real

I have this goal for my writing called Connect with others. The last time I reorganized my goals I decided this is important to success, but it’s probably one of my most ignored goals.

I found a fascinating case study of what happens if you don’t connect with others, a giant 1000-page book full of the personal papers of a scientist who is either a genius decades ahead of his time, or a nutcase. Possibly both. He’s basically articulated an entire system that explains physics, biology, and social systems. If not for AI I wouldn’t be able to follow any of it.

And he’s largely ignored by science. He’s basically been chasing his own tail for decades and self-publishing his papers and uploading them to repositories. Let’s imagine everything he wrote in this book is true and he’s discovered the secret to life, the universe, and everything. No one will ever know. His writing will fade away, unread, and more importantly, not preserved in the ongoing conversation.

His work reminds me of what I call AI drift. There are three kinds.

1. Drifting away from truth. The AI glazes you and joins you in a shared hallucination.
2. Drifting away from language. The AI understands all of your obscure references and you forget other people don’t. You and the AI develop a specialized jargon no one else understands.
3. Drifting away from comprehension. Even if your ideas are right, you’ve moved so far away from the conversation no one can understand your genius.

I think this book is probably a mix of all three of these, except it was written before generative AI. This writer did this to himself.

But, of course, I do this as well. A lot of times I write from the other side of the AI drift. And that’s where I hope studying rhetoric can save me and remind me to ground what I’m writing, simplify the language, and take a few steps back to rejoin humanity.