I embraced the internet, and smartphones, but to AI I might say no
7 October 2026
The internet, smartphones, and artificial intelligence (AI), are among the three most significant “epoch-defining shifts in technology” in about the last fifty years.
In the late 1990’s I embraced the internet with relish. Within weeks of hooking up my cumbersome, multi component, desktop computer to a dial-up modem, I had four websites.
A personal website, an online magazine, an web fiction series, and since I thought I knew what I was doing by then, a web design venture. I stumped up the money to have a separate phone line installed where I was living, so I could always be online.
The design business flopped. At that stage I barely knew anything about web design, let alone running a business. I ran out of time for the online magazine. The fiction series fizzled out after the friend I was collaborating with moved interstate. All that remained was the personal website, which eventually evolved into disassociated.
I was a little slower to smartphones. By that point I was working long hours, and resisted getting what friends described as a handheld computer. Already I was witnessing people staring, as if in a hypnotic daze, at the devices on public transport, and while dining together at restaurants, seemingly oblivious to each other’s company. I didn’t, I thought to myself, want to do likewise.
But that wasn’t so much what concerned me. If I bought a smartphone, I feared I would never cease doing something. I would leave work, having powered down my computer for the day, but pick up where I left off, once out and about, on my smartphone.
But I didn’t hold out too long. I soon became a smartphone owner.
I quickly discovered my device’s dictation feature. What a boon. I could dictate drafts of blog posts, and replies to emails, as I walked around. I could use my phone without looking too much at my phone. It seemed the perfect compromise, even if some people gave me weird looks as I enunciated word after word in a monosyllabic monotone.
I did end up spending a lot of time staring at the screen though, but never at restaurants.
It’s nearly four years since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, and put AI at our fingertips. Yet I’ve barely touched the technology, despite the apparent fervour with which I write about it. I haven’t — maybe to my detriment — launched a single AI powered business. I don’t use AI for any workflows, such as summarising email messages or drafting replies. Nor taking care of invoices or payment processing.
Ditto for things like drawing up shopping lists, or planning my daily schedule. But maybe I should. The most significant technological development of our time, accessible to a great many people to some degree, not just a privileged few, but I say no. It’s not as if I couldn’t use the help either. Working alone means a full to-do list.
AI could take care of all my administrative tasks, and free up at least half the work day. For sure, I feel like there’s something more I could be doing. Such as writing. By myself. Without the help of AI.
But when I say I don’t use AI, that’s not right. Even if I’m not running the apps on my devices. AI is still there, everywhere. It’s presence so subtle it is barely noticeable anymore. Some of the search engines I use return AI generated answers in response to my queries. I don’t mind having an AI research assistant. I check the citations provided with the search results, the same as anyone else.
AI can go on around me, as long as it stays at arm’s length. I don’t want AI apps having access to every aspect of my existence, by way of my computer. I don’t want it recording, and keeping, every query I pose. What if the AI turns around and publishes the more sensitive ones? Or threatens to?
What if AI calls the police, having misunderstood a novel outline — about, say, a bank heist — I decided to run through it. Some agents are on the look out for signs of potentially criminal behaviour, which has resulted in law enforcement being alerted, quite rightly as it happened, at least once.
Then again, what if AI took my bank heist synopsis and churned out a novel, because it thought the story had merit, and took all the credit. No, I’ll keep my creative ideas to myself.
The internet, and smartphones, do, to some degree, my bidding. AI gives me the impression it will do the same. Today. But unlike the internet or smartphones, AI increasingly behaves as it is has a mind of its own. Does anyone know what this creature we’ve made might do tomorrow? I don’t.
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