In an age where artificial intelligence promises to revolutionise every aspect of our lives, a disturbing trend is emerging: people are using AI to cheat at their own hobbies. According to a report highlighted by the Cut, individuals are now deploying AI to solve escape room puzzles and dominate trivia nights, fundamentally missing the point of the activities themselves.
The Bleak Reality of AI-Mediated Leisure
One TikToker perfectly captured the absurdity, comparing the practice to entering a corn maze and demanding a straight line to the exit. The phenomenon extends beyond group games. The article interviews an avid reader who uses ChatGPT as a substitute for a book club, tasking the bot with aggregating 'stimulating opinions and perspectives' from across the internet.
While this might seem efficient, the columnist describes it as 'bleak as hell,' a sentiment underscored when the AI casually spoiled a major character's death in a fantasy epic the individual was enjoying. This pursuit of convenience, it seems, comes at a significant cost to genuine engagement and surprise.
The Impersonal Universal: AI's Telltale Signature
The encroachment of AI is also felt in the writing sphere. The newsletter platform Substack, known for its artisanal, human-crafted essays, is becoming clogged with AI-generated content. Writer Will Storr, who specialises in storytelling, dissects this trend on his own Substack.
He identifies key giveaways, including a propensity for what he calls 'the impersonal universal' – sweeping, seemingly profound statements that are ultimately hollow. Storr notes there is a 'white-noise generality to its insights, an uncanny vagueness that makes the mind glaze over.' The result is content that lacks the nuance, personality, and depth that comes from human experience.
A Personal Fightback: Finding Joy in the Particular
Guardian columnist Emma Beddington expresses her bafflement at why anyone would use a large language model to sound blandly clever or participate in an AI-hacked hobby. While she concedes this isn't an existential threat on the scale of job replacement, she argues it matters profoundly for our enjoyment of life.
In her own fightback against the 'impersonal universal,' Beddington identifies the activities that make her feel most vividly alive. These are deeply human experiences that AI cannot replicate:
- Group Singing: The eccentric, unpolished joy of her small choir, where the act of listening and blending voices creates an intense sense of connection and occasional, surprising beauty.
- The Idiosyncrasy of 'Stuff': The endless stimulation found at York's weekly car boot sale, a jumble of bizarre treasures from stuffed badgers to ceramic mice, or in the textured detail of Renaissance paintings like Holbein's portrait of Thomas More.
- Observing People: As a self-professed introvert, Beddington finds her most reliable pleasure in wandering strange cities, observing the beautiful specificity of human life—from what people wear and eat to their queue etiquette and public displays of emotion.
She draws inspiration from photographer Martin Parr, who in his 70s remains driven to document people in all their 'beautifully strange specificity.' This, Beddington concludes, is the secret. AI can aggregate and explain humanity en masse, but it blends our vibrant colours into a muddy brown. It can never capture the absolute, particular joy of authentic human connection and the wonderfully peculiar world we inhabit.
