Trailblazers Draw Better Maps

...and a cover reveal sneak peek.

Hello lover,

I was part of a romance panel today at a local Indigo (the Canadian equivalent of Barnes and Noble for my US buds) and we were given the choice to give a short reading of one of our books or talk about our publishing journey. I pulled an audible on the organizers and they were very gracious, to let me instead read aloud my thoughts on AI.

If you’re not chronically online like me, you may not know about how more and more authors are using AI to write books, and if you don’t have severe anxiety like me, that thought may not fill you with the kind of soul-sucking existential dread that makes hit hard to get out of bed (or maybe you feel that way without anxiety and that’s normal, idk what’s normal anymore).

Anyway, I feel like if you’re reading this I’m preaching to the choir as it were, and this isn’t anything in particular or specific, just some silly thoughts, but if you make it all the way to the end, you might get early access to something ✨cover shaped✨:

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When you use AI to do your job for you, any aspect of your job, it is making you dumber. This isn’t hateration. This isn’t fear of progress. This is biology. This is fact.

Every problem we solve starts out first in our brains as a map. And as we problem solve, our brain draws that map into neuronal pathways. When we learn something new or make a mistake, our brain might erase a leg of that map’s journey and chart a new course. But every single problem we solve gets added to that map. Think about our brains at the end of our lives. There are billions of kilometers of cartography inside us, knowledge and skill that can’t be seen, but that we can follow through life like the back of our hands.

Developing a skill like responding to a simple query email or writing a book requires an abundance of other skills: critical thinking, clarity, communication, are just a few. When you ask AI to do that job for you, your brain still writes a map but it is far shorter than the one you’d get if you’d done that work yourself. Instead of a map filled with offshoots and alternate routes and eraser marks and conditional functions (eg. if X happens, then do Y), your map is quite short. Your map is barely a journey at all. Instead of a map that could take you around the universe, your map can take you to your toilet.

What does that map look like at the end of your life?

Maybe you’re ok with AI’s use of millions of gallons of clean water to generate one simple query. Maybe you’re ok with AI creators’ using the work of artists, writers, and thinkers without their permission (my life’s work has been stolen by at least one billionaire to feed his AI monster). Maybe you’re ok with pouring more money into the greedy may of already obscenely wealthy people.

This is not meant to be a judgment. It is easy to justify using AI, because its creators made it that way.

This is about more than the moral or ethical implications of AI use.

This is about us, our brains, our biology. Every time you use AI you are deciding what kind of map you want to have:

Made of well-worn paper, softened over time and use, pieces added on at random angles, arrows, and scratched out destinations, and yes, even shortcuts. Maps so big we need to lay them out flat on the floor because no other surface can hold the lifetime of work our brains have done.

Or, standard 8.5”x11” copy paper, no longer warm from the printer, lacking even that freshly faxed smell, no creases, unfolded. Perhaps the only mark on it, a smear of feces in the upper left corner.

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I want to draw better maps, for myself, for our world. I want to be a trailblazer.

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Alright, you made it! If you want to see the cover for Most Likely to Match one day early, you can:

Thanks for being here folks and I hope you have a happy, blessed, and safe Pride!

xo,

Rubes