Kimba's Living

Artificial Intelligence seems to be one of those topics that can divide a room very quickly.

Some people are fascinated by it. Some are quietly incorporating it into almost everything they do. Others are deeply uncomfortable with where it might lead.

And then there are plenty of people somewhere in the middle.

Personally, I embrace AI.

Not because I want it to think for me, write everything for me or eventually replace everything I do. Quite the opposite. I think AI is at its most useful when it takes care of the mundane, repetitive and ridiculously time-consuming tasks that used to eat up hours of our day.

To me, using AI sometimes feels like suddenly having multiple interns working for me.

I can say, “Research this. Sort that. Give me some ideas. Organise these notes. Summarise this. Resize this concept. Help me get started on this thing I’ve been putting off.”

And suddenly, I have somewhere to begin.

It’s wonderful.

But the thinking? That’s still mine.

The vision is mine. The prompt is mine. The direction is mine. And, importantly, the final review is mine too.

The Problem Isn’t Necessarily AI. It’s What We Do With It.

One of the criticisms I completely understand is the rise of what people have started calling “AI slop”.

You’ve probably seen it.

Generic articles that say a lot without really saying anything. Strange images with six fingers and nonsensical text. Social media captions that all sound suspiciously alike. Content churned out in seconds and published without anyone apparently stopping to ask:

“Is this actually any good?”

AI can produce something incredibly quickly.

That doesn’t automatically make it good.

For me, that is where the human part becomes even more important.

If I use AI to help create something, I still need to review it. Question it. Correct it. Rewrite it. Fact-check it. Add context. Add personality. Tell it when it has completely missed the point and make it try again.

Sometimes repeatedly.

AI might get you from a blank page to a first draft incredibly quickly. But getting from that first draft to something thoughtful, accurate and genuinely useful still requires human judgement.

Perhaps the danger isn’t that AI can create mediocre content.

Humans have always been capable of creating mediocre content.

The difference is that AI allows us to create an enormous amount of it very, very quickly.

Haven’t We Been Here Before?

Whenever a major new technology arrives, there tends to be a familiar cycle.

Excitement.

Fear.

Resistance.

Adoption.

And eventually, normality.

When calculators became widely available, there were concerns that students would stop learning how to do maths.

When computers entered workplaces, people worried about jobs disappearing and traditional skills being lost.

When the internet became mainstream, plenty of people questioned why anyone would need it at home.

When online shopping arrived, many people were reluctant to enter their credit card details into a website.

Digital photography threatened film. Streaming disrupted DVDs, CDs and television. Smartphones combined cameras, maps, calculators, calendars, music players and countless other devices into something we now carry around without thinking twice.

Even Google changed how we accessed knowledge. Suddenly we didn’t necessarily need to remember where information was stored. We needed to know how to find it, evaluate it and decide whether the source was trustworthy.

Some of the fears surrounding those technologies turned out to be exaggerated.

Some absolutely did not.

Jobs changed. Industries disappeared. New industries emerged. Certain skills became less important while completely new skills became valuable.

And that, I think, is worth remembering when we talk about AI.

History doesn’t necessarily tell us that every technological advancement is good.

It tells us that technological advancement tends to change things whether everyone is ready for it or not.

So Why Are People So Resistant to AI?

There are plenty of valid reasons.

People are worried about their jobs.

Artists, photographers, writers, designers and other creatives are concerned about how their work may have been used to train AI systems and what happens when machines can imitate styles or generate work in seconds.

There are concerns about misinformation, deepfakes, scams, privacy, copyright, bias and people becoming unable to distinguish what is real from what has been artificially generated.

There is also a much simpler concern:

What happens if we stop thinking for ourselves?

If every email is written for us, every decision is suggested to us, every idea is generated for us and every problem is solved before we have properly thought about it, do some of those skills eventually weaken?

I think that’s a fair question.

Because there is a big difference between using AI to assist your thinking and allowing AI to replace your thinking.

And Why Are So Many People Embracing It?

Because, when used well, it can be incredibly useful.

AI can help someone turn messy thoughts into an organised document.

It can summarise enormous amounts of information.

It can help small businesses do things that previously required much larger teams.

It can automate repetitive administrative work.

It can help brainstorm ideas when you’re staring at a blank screen.

It can analyse data, identify patterns, translate languages, organise information and accelerate processes that once took hours.

For someone like me who works with ideas, content and digital marketing, it can remove a huge amount of the repetitive groundwork.

That gives me more time for the things I actually want my brain involved in: strategy, creativity, decision-making, communication and figuring out what we’re actually trying to achieve.

That’s the distinction that matters to me.

I don’t want AI to replace my brain.

I want it to give my brain more time to do the interesting stuff.

Prompting Is Thinking Too

Something I’ve noticed since using AI more regularly is that getting a genuinely good result usually requires knowing what you actually want.

You need to explain the objective.

Provide context.

Set limitations.

Describe the audience.

Recognise when the answer isn’t right.

Ask better questions.

Push back.

Refine.

Sometimes the first output is great. Sometimes it’s hilariously wrong.

The quality of the result often depends heavily on the quality of the direction.

And perhaps that will become an increasingly valuable skill in itself.

Not simply knowing how to “use AI”, but knowing how to direct it while retaining enough knowledge and critical thinking to recognise when it is wrong.

Because AI can sound remarkably confident while being completely incorrect.

That alone is a very good reason not to switch our brains off.

But What Happens If We Refuse to Use It?

This is the question I find particularly interesting.

Nobody has to embrace AI.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons someone may decide they don’t want to use it, or only want to use it in very limited ways.

Ultimately, that’s a personal choice.

But if businesses, governments, industries, schools, universities and individuals around the world continue adopting AI, does completely avoiding it eventually become a disadvantage?

If someone can accomplish in two hours what previously took eight, what happens to the person who insists on doing everything the old way?

Does the traditional method become more valuable because it is human?

Or simply less competitive?

Perhaps both can be true depending on what we’re talking about.

Handmade furniture still has value even though factories exist.

A handwritten letter can mean more precisely because sending a text takes seconds.

Film photography still exists despite smartphones taking extraordinary photographs.

Technology doesn’t always completely destroy what came before it.

Sometimes it changes why we value it.

Maybe the Answer Is Somewhere in the Middle

I don’t think our choices have to be:

Reject AI completely.

or

Give AI everything.

There is a huge amount of space between those two extremes.

We can use AI while questioning it.

We can automate repetitive work while protecting the parts of our work that require judgement, creativity, empathy and experience.

We can generate ideas without outsourcing our opinions.

We can use AI to create a first draft and still spend time turning it into something distinctly ours.

We can teach children how to use these tools while also teaching them how to function without them.

We can enjoy the convenience while remaining cautious about privacy, misinformation, copyright and over-reliance.

And perhaps most importantly, we can continue asking where the line should be.

Because I don’t think that line has been settled yet.

Which Side of the Fence Are You On?

I’m firmly in the camp of embracing AI as a tool.

Give me my little army of digital interns.

Let them organise the notes, summarise the information, crunch the repetitive tasks and help me turn the jumble of ideas in my head into something I can work with.

But I still want to be the one sitting at the desk deciding what we’re actually doing.

I want to question the output.

I want to recognise when something doesn’t sound like me.

I want to catch mistakes.

I want to have the original idea.

And I definitely don’t want to contribute more mindless AI slop to an internet that already has plenty of content competing for our attention.

AI is moving forward whether every individual chooses to participate or not.

So perhaps the more useful question isn’t simply whether AI is good or bad.

Maybe it’s:

How do we use something this powerful without slowly handing over the very skills that make it useful to us in the first place?

I don’t know that any of us have the complete answer yet.

But I’d genuinely love to know where you sit.

Are you embracing AI?

Avoiding it?

Using it cautiously?

Or are you still standing at the fence, watching the rest of us argue about it?

P/S: I’m sure you’re wondering, did AI write this for me? The short answer is Yes, AI helped me write this. But it doesn’t take away the fact that I fed it all of my thoughts and ideas, in a less organised, jumbled way, and AI gave it structure. I reviewed this blog post and made changes as I go, to make sure I am happy with the end result. As for the stickers, it was just to lighten the mood lol. Why so serious? We can have an open discussion about these things without getting too defensive or aggressive about it. Ok cheers!