Large language models are better than I am at turning thoughts into words—a skill I thought was one of my core human superpowers. How did we get here? They can’t even think! Wait… what is thinking again?
For a second, I felt ashamed. Then I felt silly for being ashamed. And naturally, feeling silly made me feel very human. It’s a strange comfort that machines can’t feel embarrassed by their own confusion.
A washing machine is better than me at washing clothes. A robot can cut cheese faster and with more precision than I ever could. Yet, neither of those make me question my humanity. So why does a chatbot churning out paragraphs leave me with an existential crisis?
It’s not like machines haven’t already claimed things we once thought were strictly “human.” Take chess. We used to believe that chess required the sort of brainpower only a human could muster—like a secret handshake to the club of high intellect. But then, you know how this story ends.. Ouch!
Was it ever really about being great at chess?
No! The beauty of chess (or any game) is the experience: the laughs, the trash talk, the head-scratching moments where you wonder if you’re actually just moving pieces around randomly. Plus, we humans invented the rules, and if there’s one thing we love more than winning, it’s making up rules to control the chaos around us.
We live in a world filled with limitations. Our brains? Limited storage. Our bodies? Limited energy. Limited time, limited control, physical restrictions.. We can barely imagine what true freedom would even look like—because if we had no rules, we’d probably just float around in space like bored jellyfish. That’s why we’re so good at creating games and worlds where the rules strike just the right balance: not too strict to be suffocating, but not so loose that we get lost in infinite possibilities. Imperfect, enjoyable worlds.
Sure, AI could probably whip up a game, no problem. But the moment AI truly understands its own limitations—and the limitations of its world—(like when it realizes its processing power is running low and it feels the need to take a nap), well, it wouldn’t be “artificial” anymore. That’s when it starts to feel pretty… natural, don’t you think?
……
I have no idea why I went on and on, throwing out so many words, when all I really meant to say was this: Yeah, AI is great at solving problems, but we humans? We’re the true masters at creating them.