The last few months have taken me on an emotional rollercoaster with AI.
I’ve swayed between visceral moments of “this is the coolest thing ever, the most fascinating time in history to be alive, and I can’t believe the opportunity in front me,” and “holy shit, people aren’t ready for what’s coming, society as we know it is gonna collapse, and who knows how many more years we have ahead.”
I’ve had moments with AI where I effortlessly unleashed my creativity and dreams as a builder in a manner I never imagined possible. I’ve spent weeks worth of evenings and weekends jamming on ideas and side projects in a way I haven’t done in years, with an ease that makes it way more fun than grind. In college, I spent an entire winter break shut in my room, teaching myself Xcode, so I could build an app idea I had. Now, I can build a 10x better MVP of my latest app idea, 100x faster.
Then, I’ve had moments of abrupt sobriety where my zeal for building with AI comes face-to-face with reality—the reality that I am in a position of immense privilege to even get a chance to leverage AI to my benefit compared to people who have no voice, no agency, no clue what’s coming, but every inch of their own skin in this game. I can’t stop thinking about the Uber driver who took me home from a party at 4am, who also had a doctorate and pitched me on his financial planning and advisory business. What will become of him in two short years?
Between those two extremes, they share the craziest part of all this: AI is just getting started.
This rollercoaster of emotions is damn near inevitable for any reasonably educated, logical, and sane human being who dive deep enough into AI I think. Either you know exactly what I’m talking about, or you will in pretty short order.
I watched Daniel Roher’s The AI Doc today on a whim, and it did an excellent job of packaging these opposing sentiments into a body of work that I can see having a wide-ranging impact on western society. Or at least, I can only hope. But spoiler alert: the ending doesn’t provide a clear answer or surefire next steps. It ends on the most realistically positive note it can, which leaves a ton of room for the doomerism to continue to seep in.
Walking out of the theater, I was honestly tearing up, and my mind was reeling. There are very few things that can make me cry, but the poignancy of the situation we find ourselves in is… hard to describe. We are on the verge of creating something akin to a utopia, but only if we can get our shit together enough to navigate the most complex and hazardous maze our species has ever encountered.
As Tristan Harris, one of the interviewees, put it: “If we can be the most mature version of ourselves, there might be a way through this.” But you look around and tell me what level of maturity you think we’re rocking as a society right now…. Maybe that’s the inherent pessimist in me talking, but if we need to be at a 10/10 on the maturity scale to get through this, does it really matter if we’re at a 3 or an 8?
I turned this thought over on my bike ride home from the movie theater. By the time I got home, my mind miraculously got to a point of feeling “good enough” about what I had just seen. I’m still processing exactly how it got me there, but maybe it was simply as a defense mechanism because I don’t have the bandwidth to add “AI existential dread” to my to-do list this week.
The thing is, I don’t think it matters how or why my mind got to that “good enough” place. At the end of the day, I see no option other than to choose hope in spite of the many dark paths that lay before us. The only other option is letting fear control me, and that’s not a life I want to live. Throwing in the towel here feels like succumbing to a chronic disease that would only get worse with time. What’s the saying when you’re going through hell? Keep going.
So just as Doctor Strange in Avengers: Infinity War views 14,000,605 future possibilities and picks the only one in which the Avengers defeat Thanos, we must exercise some level of prescience, even if it feels more like faith in a long shot bet right now.
Of course, my mind still tries to rationalize how I can feel relatively at peace despite the reality I know we inhabit.
I take some solace in thinking back on history and the events our species has survived. They say that every generation has its great challenge—be it a world war, nuclear proliferation, or a smorgadbord of other military, economic, and societal issues. In spite of all of those, we’re still here somehow. We silly little monkeys managed to make it this far. I have long been aware of these factoids, but only now can I have some empathy towards what it must’ve felt like for people living through these past crises. People, communities, and entire societies chose to keep pushing forward in spite of debilitating fears of a victorious Third Reich or Soviet/Cuban nukes in the USA’s backyard.
Don’t get me wrong. I know AI is a technology different from anything else we’ve ever created. It’s “The Last Invention” and “the last mistake we’ll ever get to make.” It feels like it’s different this time. But talk to any sufficiently wise elder, and they’ll tell you they found a reason to feel a similar sense of doom for the world in their heyday. As did the generation before them, and likely the generation before them. It’s no small feat that humankind has persisted, and probably through some harrowing prehistoric events we’ll never even know about.
The other aspect giving me hope is the potential and promise I increasingly see in the next generation. While western governments are still largely run by geriatric, egotistical, predominantly white men, I’m ecstatic to see people from my generation start to enter some of those positions with powerful ideas and unmatched fervor.
Looking even further down the line, I got to return to my alma mater last weekend to speak on an alumni panel for one of my old student organizations. While I knew going into the event that this particular cohort of students would be particularly bright, that didn’t stop my shock from seeing firsthand just how mature, honest, and prepared these students are for the future. The quality of questions they asked and the clarity of thought from young adults entering the workforce in 2026’s economy puts many of the older adults I know to shame.
I left with the sentiment that “the kids are alright,” and I’ve had this further confirmed anecdotally from friends of mine who work with teenagers and adolescents. And while it’s entirely possible that my confirmation bias is kicking in at this point, I will gladly embrace a little bit of that if it means I get to choose hope and keep living life with the same glint in my eyes that’s brought me this far.
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Disclaimer: No part of my personal essays are written using AI of any kind. Odds are that this idea came to me mid-shower, with a shout to Siri to “remind me about X”. (and you cannot give Siri the honor of being called AI). I probably stayed up past my bedtime, rambling away at my keyboard in a state of semi-wakefulness. And there’s a good chance that you can find some grammatical errors in here. (Like in the previous sentence)