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MY 30-SECOND BLURB IF YOU’RE A NEW READER

You’re reading Let Us Reach, a newsletter-blog for thinkers and doers, movers and shakers. I’m Madhu Narasimhan. I’m a founder, lawyer, and policy advisor based in San Francisco. In this newsletter, I share my work and professional/intellectual interests, including entrepreneurship & technology, law, politics & public policy, global affairs, and grassroots service. You might think of this space as “Silicon Valley x Washington, DC” (but we’ll sub out the unbridled pursuit of wealth, power, and exclusivity for some healthier vibes). :) You can read the full archive of essays, starting in May 2024, here.

“Let us reach for the world that ought to be—that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.” —Barack Obama

TODAY’S CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

As you get started today, I suggest clicking "Read Online” in the top-right corner in case your email provider clips the newsletter; the original formatting is better preserved that way. Here’s what we’ll cover today:

• The Essay: “In the Age of AI, Practice Doing Things on Your Own”

• Today’s Sponsor (help fund my writing by clicking on the links): The Rundown AI

  • Please note that the sponsor did not provide any input on the topic or content of today’s newsletter. Views expressed here are solely my own, with the exception of the ad below, which they created.

• A Round-Up of My Recent Writing: The unexpected takeaway from my second time watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi

• Subscribe to My Other Newsletter: Narasimhan’s Persimmons, on Substack

THE ESSAY

In the Age of AI, Practice Doing Things on Your Own

Ben, a close friend, called. “I read your newsletter,” he said. “The one about the categories of entrepreneurship?” He proceeded to summarize: “You can do a tech startup, you can launch a small business consultancy, a brick-and-mortar, etc.”

Having received a clearly AI-polished birthday text from him some months ago, I couldn’t help but ask: “You ran my article through ChatGPT or Poe, didn’t you?”

“Yup,” Ben responded proudly, his smile audible. “‘Read this essay and give me some talking points before I speak with Madhu,’” he revealed his ChatGPT prompt. “Isn’t it wild? You wrote your essay using GenAI, and then I read it using GenAI. Soon enough, our AIs will just talk to each other for us.”

He was half joking—I couldn’t quite tell if he’d actually run my piece through ChatGPT (seemed like more work than just skimming the headings that I’d bolded in the essay)—but the scenario he was painting about the future of “human” communication sounded more than plausible to me. 

“Well, for the record, I don’t use AI to write,” I, too, responded with a touch of pride. “Not even to generate ideas or create a first draft,” I added. “It’s actually something I worry about a lot—that AI will eventually be used for everything; that people won’t read or write or think for themselves anymore.” 

…

The conversation with Ben reminded me of a recent discussion I watched on YouTube (I can’t seem to find the right clip on YT but I’ve linked the text) between Ashton Kutcher and Eric Schmidt, in which Kutcher brought up the burgeoning filmmaking capabilities of AI platforms, like OpenAI’s Sora. Kutcher spoke of the eventualities that he sees: 

Kutcher got into some hot water for saying all this, with various Hollywood leaders and fans arguing that AI simply won’t be able to replace the artistic ingenuity and flair of a human screenwriter, director, or actor. (“You could probably make an Ashton Kutcher movie with OpenAI’s Sora, but you couldn’t make a good movie with it,” one comedian panned).

And sure, when I test out the capabilities of today’s AI (GPT-4o, for example)—“draft me a speech on the future of American democracy, emulating the style of Barack Obama” or “write me a travel essay on Vancouver, with the theme ‘in Vancouver, I found a global city without the pretensions of being one,’ and do it in the literary style of Pico Iyer, after you’ve ingested some of his works”—I am relieved to see that AI is still a far cry from matching the creative and rhetorical genius of my favorite writers.

But I’m still worried. 

I’m worried that AI will eventually get damn good, and that we won’t be able to tell the difference (or even care to tell the difference) between human creations and machine renderings of literature, great speeches, music, and visual art. 

I’m worried that people will become over-reliant; that AI-native kids in the next generation will have ever-more-powerful, customized versions of SparkNotes and that they won’t bother with reading the classics or writing their own essays on Fitzgerald and Wharton and Adichie. (After all, what if writing on their own puts them at a disadvantage against other students who submit polished, AI-generated pieces?). 

And I’m worried about what I’ll call the “Ashton Kutcher problem”: the explosion of content in the age of AI, on a magnitude a thousand times greater than what we’ve seen as a result of social media’s democratization of all forms of content creation, from wartime journalism to cooking videos to this very newsletter. But unlike the social media revolution (rife with its own set of grave problems, needless to say), what we’re currently witnessing with the use of AI isn’t exactly the flourishing of human creativity and effort (I’m excepting, of course, the engineering of the actual technologies—and perhaps, on some occasions, complex prompting on the part of the user). And yet, with the mass proliferation of AI-generated content, the bar for what constitutes “good, quality content” or “prolific creator” goes up significantly for everyone, including for those who are working without the help of AI. We obscure the hours of painstaking work that one person might be putting into their one human-generated video while someone else might be instantaneously and artificially generating a dozen videos.

Now, I’m no Luddite. I’m a Bay Area native after all. I worked at Google. As a technology attorney at one of Silicon Valley’s leading law firms, I represented and counseled dozens of AI startups and investors. And over the past several months, I’ve been actively exploring the possibilities of applying generative AI to the public policy and comms arenas, sometimes enthralled by the idea of helping institutions more easily put together crisp, research-driven briefings (but other times, pausing and wondering whether I should actually be encouraging more, not less, human engagement with knowledge management, research, insight development, and content generation). And I can certainly articulate the reasons why it would benefit us to have AI “assistants” and “co-pilots,” including the elimination of drudgery in our jobs and perhaps giving us the opportunity to work a little less and appreciate the rest of life a little more.

But, as I said, I’m still worried. (And of course, I’m not even raising in this essay the more serious ethical considerations with respect to AI—e.g., bias and discrimination; misinformation/disinformation; privacy, security, and surveillance issues; loss of jobs, concentration of wealth and power among a few multi-billion-dollar tech players, and a remaking of the global economy; loss of human judgment and decision-making in critical areas of society; singularity and sci-fi-like existential threats to humanity. That’s all for another day).

…

I don’t yet have a robust, comprehensive proposal for how we can advance AI and leverage it as a force for good while also solving for the real ethical challenges I’ve mentioned here. But, for now, here are a few actions we can each take in our individual capacities:

• So that we can distinguish between human works and AI works: Cite when you’ve used AI significantly in the creation of anything important—a piece of writing, a podcast, a song, a video. Note what tools you used and how.

• So that we can continue training our own abilities (skills atrophy!), not just training AI models: As much as possible, work on at least a few of the following things, on your own, without the use of AI:

  • Ideation skills and deep thinking

  • Reading (as I suggest in this LinkedIn post: once a day, practice reading something long and complex, rather than only skimming-and-scrolling or pulling up AI-generated TLDR summaries)

  • Writing (even if you “outsource” some of your writing tasks, do some writing completely on your own, both in forms that you enjoy and those that you dread) 

  • Speaking skills

  • Listening intently to others (whether in person or with respect to recorded audio) without breaking your attention or needing a fast summary

  • Visual arts, photography, and filmmaking 

  • Composing and playing music; engaging in the performing arts

  • Any other creative skill you care about

• In response to the explosion of content (“the Ashton Kutcher problem”):

  • Even as content explodes in the era of social media and AI, and even as people have countless options to choose from, create without worrying whether you’re going to build a large audience or one that deems you to be “high quality” or “prolific.” Just do it for yourself (but set your own high standards, of course). If an audience shows up, great. If not, that’s okay too. You’re doing it for the love of the craft.

  • Read, listen to, and watch the time-tested classics, not just the new material that’s coming out today.

  • But, at the same time, support the works that your family, friends, colleagues, and favorite creatives are making present-day.

  • Where possible (i.e., if use of technology is designated), judge human-generated works and AI-generated works by separate sets of standards.

• So that we can preserve our sanity and humanity: Each day, don’t forget to unplug and spend some time in the natural world—with humans, animals, and nature—experiencing life beyond the digital world. (As I write this, I can’t help but notice I’m saying “spend some time,” as if we should reserve just a couple hours a day for engagement with the natural world. It is striking that the digital vs. natural time split for most people is now the opposite of what it was just a few decades ago, in the early 1990s, when I was born). 

This is all just a start, at the individual level, to consider how we might address one narrow set of issues stemming from the use of generative AI. There’s much more to think through on the societal/policy level.

…

Not long after my call with my friend Ben, I was on a video chat with a new friend, Toby, who studies AI ethics and philosophy. “I read your last newsletter,” he said. (Hooray. Whether with the help of ChatGPT summaries or not, at least people are taking a glance at the newsletter, I thought to myself). 

“I subscribe to a number of newsletters,” Toby continued. “I think I can tell when people are using AI to write these things; there’s a certain style. But as I look at your syntax, I can tell you write this newsletter yourself. I enjoyed it.” 

Grateful, I thanked him. Perhaps he was hinting very politely that I use far too many em-dashes, or that I seem to love run-on sentences that ChatGPT would never dare to insert—or that my style isn’t quite measuring up to what he’s reading elsewhere. But, to me, “I can tell you write this newsletter yourself” was perhaps the greatest compliment someone could have offered in the age of AI.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

If you choose to click on the links from The Rundown AI (below or at the top of the newsletter), you’ll help fund my writing. I am grateful for your support. :) 

Please note that the sponsor did not provide any input on the topic or content of today’s newsletter. Views expressed here are solely my own, with the exception of the ad below, which they created.

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A ROUND-UP OF MY LATEST WRITING

From last time on Let Us Reach:

From Narasimhan’s Persimmons, my Substack:

SUBSCRIBE TO MY OTHER NEWSLETTER

I have another newsletter you might be interested in: Narasimhan’s Persimmons, my Substack on life design, personal development, the pursuit of world-class performance (in the midst of the daily chaos we all experience), and all things life (beyond work). There, I’ll explore a range of personal blueprints, from meditation to building community in a new city to finding the best teahouses in the world. I’d love to have you as a reader there as well.

I normally introduce an additional recommendation (for learning/reading/listening/watching) here at the end, but we’ll keep the newsletter light today. Have a wonderful weekend ahead!

Best wishes,

Madhu

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Madhu Narasimhan’s content has been prepared for general informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal, financial, medical/healthcare, or other professional advice. No attorney/client relationship is formed. The use of information contained in Madhu Narasimhan’s content, or materials linked in his content, is at the user’s own risk. His content is not intended to be, and should not be relied on, as a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical/healthcare services or other such guidance.