Digital Ontology | Vol. 2025
The Faster AI Gets, The Dumber We Become?
A Late-Night Reflection on “Technological Alienation”
By Mr. Guo · Reading Time: 12 Min
A Quick Note
Late last night, I shut down my frantically running Codex and Antigravity. My brain was buzzing like an overloaded CPU. I processed tons of information, yet felt an unprecedented emptiness.
Right then, I scrolled past that long-circulating meme. It hit me like a slap, waking me from my immersion in “false productivity.”
We thought we were AI’s masters, but reality is: AI stole the creative work we most wanted to do, leaving us the most tedious review work. This article, I want to use this dark humor to discuss Heidegger’s warning, and the “agency” we’re gradually losing in the algorithmic age.
01: AI Writes Poetry, I Wash Dishes — An Absurd “Reversal”
“I wish AI could help me do laundry and dishes so I’d have time for art or writing…”
This is the image that broke countless people. Science fiction writer Joanna Maciejewska’s quip is both funny and ironic:
“I wish AI could help me do laundry and dishes so I’d have time for art or writing. Not AI doing my art and writing while I do laundry and dishes.”
This “inversion of ends and means” is the epitome of our current predicament. We outsourced the most “human,” most flow-inducing creative work (painting, writing, programming logic design) to AI; while keeping for ourselves the most tedious, mechanical, anti-human work (reviewing AI hallucinations, cleaning data, correcting Prompts).
We thought we were the boss, AI the secretary. Turns out, the “secretary” is writing poetry and painting, enjoying creative joy, while the “boss” follows behind correcting typos and washing dishes. This isn’t liberation — it’s cyber-era hard labor.
02: Agency “Requisitioned” by the “Gestell”
If Heidegger were still alive, he’d surely sigh at ChatGPT. Half a century ago, he proposed that technology’s essence is “Gestell (Enframing)” — it reconstitutes everything as “Standing Reserve,” resources on standby, ready to be requisitioned and optimized.
The horror isn’t the Rhine becoming a power station. The horror is humans themselves becoming an “interface” in this vast technical system.
The Gestell metaphor: We don’t control the interface — we’re woven into the system by the interface.
Think about your work state: Holding API Keys costing hundreds monthly, you force yourself to run AI 24/7 at full capacity to “not waste money.” You run Cursor coding while watching Agent process data.
In this moment, you’re not using tools — you’ve been “requisitioned” by tools. You’ve downgraded from a “creator” with free will to a “review node” that must constantly respond to AI generation speed. The faster AI is, the faster you must be; the more AI outputs, the more you must review. Your agency has been completely hollowed out by the system’s pursuit of efficiency.
03: Multitasking — A “Regression” Toward Animality
Computer Logic (CPU)
Multi-core, multi-threaded, high-concurrency. Can run 10 processes simultaneously, efficiency stacks linearly.
Human Brain Logic (Human)
Single-threaded, high-focus. Every task switch (Context Switch) consumes enormous energy.
Multitasking isn’t acceleration — it pulls humans back to vigilance instincts, consuming deep thinking.
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han pointed out sharply in “The Burnout Society”: “Multitasking isn’t civilizational progress — it’s regression.”
This state of constant vigilance, rapid attention-switching, is more common in wild animals. For survival, animals must simultaneously track prey, predators, and mates. What enabled human civilization was precisely our ability for “deep boredom” and “contemplative focus.”
When we try to match AI’s GPU speed with human brains, we’re actively abandoning humanity’s most precious trait — Deep Work — regressing to a primitive, anxious, merely “information-processing” animal state.
AI Can’t Compute “Dasein”
Why can’t we completely let go, wash dishes, and let AI rule the world? Because AI still has one fatal shortcoming: It has no “embodiment,” nor “pain.”
Every person, every product has unique “Context.” On a deeper level, AI lacks what Schopenhauer called “Will to Live.” It generates code not because it wants to create, but because it’s executing probability predictions. It has no pain, no desire, thus no true value judgment.
Those intuitions born from real physical experience, those irrational decisions made through painful trade-offs — AI can never simulate these. This is our final fortress as “humans,” and the reason we shouldn’t be “washing dishes” but should insist on “doing art.”
03: Digital-Era Stoic Practice
This article isn’t telling you to become a machine-smashing Luddite. It’s urging a digital-era Stoic practice — reclaiming control.
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Reclaim Attention (Serialize): Close extra windows. Converse with only one Agent at a time. Treat AI as an intern sitting across from you, not 10 simultaneously clamoring slave-drivers.
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Rebuild Contemplation (AI-Free Time): 2 hours daily, take out paper and pen. Think about product core logic, business model gaps. This work — don’t ask Claude, ask your own brain.
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Refuse Dish-Washing (Value Return): Really throw mechanical work to AI (via Workflow automation), but clutch tightly the power to “define beauty,” “define value.” Don’t review AI’s mediocre output — use your Prompt to force it to produce excellence.
“Efficiency is what tools pursue; existence is humanity’s privilege.”
Don’t let tools’ rapid operation mask your stagnant thinking. In this accelerating era, consciously “slowing down” is the highest form of speed.
We’ve grown accustomed to marveling at one “GPT moment” after another, one “Nanobanana moment” after another, at AI’s clumsy imitation of human art. How long since we’ve cheered for breaking through our own limits?
Mr. Guo
Philosophy / Strategy / AI
“Only when we have the ability to refuse technology do we truly possess technology.”
If you’re also wary of technological alienation, welcome to give it a 👍, let’s stay lucid.