The gates of hell

A haiku on Artificial Intelligence

Vibe coder fumes
Thirty prompts for one output
Behold, peak progress.

···

Analog still wins

I’m in a café writing, think-ering.

Opposite me sits a twenty-something vibe coder. In the one hour I’ve been here, his face has gone from confident swagger to grimaced and flustered.

He’s spoken and typed thirty different iterations of the same prompt into his AI assistant. More context. Less context. Friendlier tone. Sharper tone. Simpler. Smarter. Higher pitch. Agitated. “No, that’s not it.” Run it again. Again. The machine is not delivering the clean little miracle he had in mind.

The result is dissatisfying. For him, and for anyone else with ears in this café.

I’m not here to make a fool of him. Doing so would make a fool of myself too. I’ve been in his position, and when the seduction of “better and faster” lures me to the black prompt box, I meet my mirror. Time and again.

But I’m growing weary of using AI as an outsourcing tool. And I’m not alone.

There’s a growing unease around the true productivity of AI. We don’t need to argue its value for machinery and systems. Algorithmic machine learning has an obvious and important place in everyday technology.

I’m referring to the let-me-store-your-personal-information-and-all-your-thoughts-and-feelings-and-processes-in-our-privatized-servers-and-feed-back-mediocre-answers-so-you-keep-using-us kind of AI tools.

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, offered the following:

”AI will not replace you. AI can improve 20% of your tasks sometimes 2-10x better. It can not improve all you do. The people who learn to optimize that 20% with AI are the ones who will replace your job.”

Coming back to the fellow opposite me. If this is an illustration of him trying to improve the 20% of his work, then I fear for the costs he incurs on his other parameters: nervous system, colleagues, and his keyboard.

We treat ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and the rest as miniature gods, outsourcing more and more of what we are and what we do just to cut through the ambiguity of existence. When we are no longer required to think critically, we stifle our intellectual development, our innovative prowess and thereby our agency. That’s a dangerous precipice. Especially when we’re increasingly uncomfortable with how rapidly our independence decreases.

We’re tied to monthly subscriptions for things we used to own. We’ve got the WEF with their doomsday phrase: “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. And we’ve got politicians carrying out personal agendas instead of acting on behalf of the people.

Recently, a Dutch coalition plan proposed accelerating the rise of the state pension age, pushing it to 70 years. For people born later, the horizon moves further.

We’re sold by tech companies on the promise that our lives will become faster, smarter, more productive if only we subscribe. But the flip side has governments asking ordinary people to work longer and longer.

Something doesn’t compute here. Swimming in the mainstream of modern society starts to become a fast-track to feeling hollowed out.

So yes, I find it ludicrous that in the middle of all this we are willingly outsourcing our thoughts, our dreams, our aims, our intelligence.

Dante and Rodin’s gates start looking less like a metaphor.

Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My Maker was Divine authority,
The highest Wisdom, and the primal Love.
Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, who enter here.

- Dante Alighieri, Inferno, The Divine Comedy - entering the gates of hell

Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell (Detail: The Thinker), 1902

I’m inviting you to the Rebellion of the Real. Let’s come back to critical thinking and critical feeling. Sit in silence. Make art. Bake bread. Plant gardens. Use a pen. Sharpen your wit and your agency. Be analog.

For the love,
Roel

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I’m Roel W.T. Cruys. Writer. Dad. Poet. Narrative architect.
Founder of Voices Unleashed a global community for expression.

I work with people to articulate who they really are and how they serve the world.
(Without the need for a prompt box).

To own your positioning, learn more about Ethos.
To connect on a larger vision, find me here.

Tea for the Curious is my exploration on human, nature, art.