The Intimacy Economy
California poppies blooming in a NE Portland sidewalk strip
A friend asked if I was concerned about how AI would affect my future as a writer. I’m not worried, I said, waving her off. AI might be able to churn out text, but it can never replace actual human connection.
I didn’t think anything more of it.
Well, It’s been about a year since that conversation. We now have AI-generated Substack bestsellers and people are snuggling up with their AI boyfriends.
No one ever called me a futurist. 🤷🏽♀️
Needless to say, it’s taken me longer than most to pay proper attention to ChatGPT, et al.
I’m working with Claude.ai right now to see if it might augment my life as opposed to hollow it out. The ethical boundaries seem straightforward enough: suggest three push exercises for my upper-body workout, yes; draft an essay, no. But after a few focused hours with an AI agent, it’s obvious — even to me — we’re living in a brave whole new world and there’s no going back.
I’m using Claude to help me set up my personal website (the one that’s been “coming soon” for years). You’d think setting up a basic website would be easy enough given how long I’ve been on the web (I used to write how-to books about web design software, for God’s sake), but I’ve been stuck behind a couple technical and conceptual roadblocks for years.
But no longer! Iterating with Claude has gotten my stalled project moving again. It’s pretty exciting, actually.
But here’s the weird thing: using Claude feels totally different than doing Google research.
Google searching is akin to looking something up in a dictionary whereas working with Claude is like having a conversation. Not a reciprocal human conversation, mind you — I don’t say thank you, for example — but on a deep level, my brain responds as if it is.
For example, as I think back on a day’s work on the website, what comes back is my back-and-forth with Claude, as if I were recalling a chat with a person. Intellectually, I know it’s software, but somewhere more visceral, my conversation circuits light up.
I assume this is because my brain, evolved as it is to prioritize social connection, can’t process or store interaction with an AI agent much differently than it would an actual human conversation.
To say this gives me pause is an understatement.
I listened to an excellent conversation between Yuval Noah Harari (author of Sapiens) and Ezra Klein about the ramifications of AI. Harari predicted the attention economy will evolve into the intimacy economy, in which the simulacrum of connection becomes the coin of the realm. The idea chilled me to the bone.
I’m not ready to throw my hat in with those who insist the sky is falling. I believe AI is changing things in ways too big to predict. But I can see my place in the online ecosystem and my role as a community-oriented writer is changing along with it.
Are you an AI user? An AI avoider? Something in between? I’d love to hear your thoughts. My kids hate pretty much everything AI. What are your kids saying?
Related links:
Here’s the Ezra Klein/Yuval Noah Harari conversation. Heads-up: it’s wide-ranging. The AI talk is near the end.
I was moved by Amy Stewart’s heartfelt defense of language in this Substack post: AI Is the English Language’s Uninvited Guest.
Have you read Pope Leo’s powerful encyclical about AI? Here are the main takeaways (New York Times gift link)
Rebecca Winthrop’s NYT opinion piece is especially relevant: What 370,000 college essays tell us about AI’s effects on creativity (another gift link)
