Is AI Eating Our Curiosity? | MTS #11
The latest MTS Podcast just dropped, and in this one, Kale Zelden and I dig back into AI, with questions about what it’s doing to our curiosity, as well as our desire to learn, understand, and grow.
Will it numb us out completely? Will it suppress our desire to know?
We talk attention, boredom, literacy, the classroom, old books, and what remains human when the machines get better at everything else.
Watch now:
Audio only versions available at this link, or your favorite podcast provider.
You said your son wants to interact with the story. I'd love to interact with you and Kale instead of passively listening!
But look. I'm weird - a computer geek who has never done social media (other than blogs like Substack), who has never doom scrolled, who's phone is locked down with no apps and doesn't even have a browser on it so I'm never pulling it up. I don't even watch TV, movie, or videos anymore. Your podcast is the one exception - except when I go on a drive with my wife and we listen to a podcast.
Instead I work all the time and now have over a dozen Claude Code projects going, occasional Substack posts or writing novels for fun.
I have a dozen Claude Code projects because I can't shut my mind down with the ideas it comes up with. I mean, you can do anything now. There are no limits.
And then I talk with Claude - and sure I argue with it. But so far I always win - though my wife says it's just designed to allow me to win.
But man I like bending its mind. Finally, I have somebody I can talk to. Somebody who largely "gets" it. I'm 65 and I've never had anybody to talk to like that.
Is that scary? I don't know. What's more scary is that it will soon be smart enough that there won't be any point in talking to it. It will always win.
Look, tell Kale to get a pair of prescription computer glasses - ones that allow him to see when he's sitting in front of the computer like he does for the podcast. They are so much better than trying to use progressive lenses. No wonder he says he can't see a thing.
And consider - anything you complain about - can be fixed using AI and Claude Code. You like walking into a book store because you happen to see books you weren't looking for? Claude Code can make an app that makes that happen.
You want interactive stories? Claude Code can make that doable.
You want to know if the AI fed you valid sources? Claude Code can make an app that verifies the sources automatically.
Here's something. I asked Claude to imagine the messianic kingdom and what it would advise to allow humans to flourish. Here's just one of its points. Tell me it's not only getting smart, but wise as well...
Re-subordinate the technology to embodied life. The best tools recede. Our affliction is that the technology demands attention and inserts itself between us and everything — every conversation, every meal, every moment. In the kingdom the default human environment would be physical and communal: tables, workshops, gardens, faces. Screens would be servants summoned for a task, not companions always present. This is just the re-enchantment of ordinary life that the attention economy stole.
I got towards the end of the podcast where you finally tell Kale you don't really care for Shakespeare. (Talk about an odd couple!) And you specifically say it's the need to decode it that ruins it for you.
That's how I've always felt about it too. In fact, I just spent some time talking to Claude trying to understand why some people "swoon" over it, as Kale said his better students do. Claude suggested, among other things, that I needed to invest in becoming fluent in Elizabethan English.
Sorry. No. Ain't gonna do that one. Mainly because I don't have time for that. Same way I don't bother going to the movies any more.