“Maybe artificial intelligence is not all doom and gloom. For me, it has re-sparked creativity. It has reminded me that tools, no matter how new or intimidating, can bring freedom, not just obligation. In this new era, creativity feels alive again, playful, generous, and unexpectedly friendly (at least for now, it is).”
It’s Not Always Easy Being a Late Adopter
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is oddly exciting, kind of like when I first got my cellphone. I was a late adopter and honestly an embarrassment to my friends. It got to the point where they would introduce me by saying, “Yes, that’s the one who doesn’t have a cellphone.” I really struggled with being constantly reachable. I loved the freedom and yes, the selfishness, some would say, of a life untethered from other people’s needs and expectations. They could reach me when I wanted, not a moment sooner.
Whenever I made plans to meet with friends, I, being notoriously bad with directions, would inevitably get lost. Friends would ask me to pull out my phone and take a picture of where I was, so I could send it to them, and they could guide me to where they were, using my image. But without a phone, that was not happening. For small frustrations like that, and for bigger, life-changing reasons, I finally decided to join my friends in the present and get a cellphone.
Early Adopter, Late Fears
Ironically, I ended up being an early adopter of the Samsung Note II, a phone I still miss to this day. It lasted me for years and had amazing features. By getting it, I became what I had feared most. I became reachable. My landline had made me feel free. The cellphone felt like a tether. Yet over time, I realized something important. I still had the freedom not to pick up.
A New World of Creative Possibilities
Once I got past that fear of the cellphone, an entirely new world opened up. A phone with a camera in my pocket, the ability to tether said phone to my laptop for quick internet access, social media, and endless photos for my blog. With the cellphone, I started blogging and venturing out more, wandering around the city alone with one goal in mind, which was finding new pictures. This meant exploring cafés, bakeries, and quiet corners of the city, always on the hunt for the perfect croissant or coffee shot for my blog and social posts.
Blogging also connected me to writers around the globe. Random online conversations about the most unexpected topics became the norm. I was an early adopter of Medium’s writing community, back when it was still connected to Twitter, when Twitter was still Twitter, not X.
When Online Communities Lose Their Charm
My love of Medium eventually came to an end. I remember the moment that felt like the beginning of the end. A Richard Branson article rose to the top of the Medium algorithm, landing at the very top of the most popular article list. It was suspicious. He was not saying anything particularly insightful compared to the incredible work being produced by novice and seasoned writers alike. Soon after, more celebrities and influencers arrived. Medium stripped away the features that had fostered real community, cross-posting, discovery, and genuine interaction. Creativity slowly drained out.
That is when I left Medium for WordPress, a platform that offered more features and aesthetic experimentation. There was community there too, but eventually it became flooded with people pressuring others to follow them, rather than creating for the joy of it. Ads started covering posts, making them hard to read, unless you paid. So I left WordPress too.
Enter AI and Substack
AI lets you write faster and rework pieces multiple times in a single day. What once took months can now happen in hours. But AI has its quirks.
It is like employing the editorial help of a drunk uncle, brilliant and armed with five PhDs, yet completely misunderstanding your vision and where you are trying to go. You ask for help, and he responds with wild anecdotes, unnecessary embellishments, and a peculiar obsession with certain punctuation. You can’t help but think, What the heck, stop.This often means repeating the same prompts over and over, eventually slowing down to guide him step by step through each revision. Hence why prompt engineering, the ability to give AI effective instructions for good outcomes, is a skill I am actively trying to beef up.
Still, paired with Substack, whose features make online writing easier than ever, AI has been a game changer. Together, they have brought back my joy of writing online.
Taming Algorithms and Rediscovering Joy Online
My relationship with Google and social media has shifted too. A few years ago, I deleted all my older posts, to start fresh, and create new online footprints. Since our activity online tends to train the algorithm, based on what we search for or view, I also stopped feeding it trauma, by avoiding searches, likes, or hovering over upsetting posts. I also use the “not interested” feature on social media, for posts that appear in my feed that I do not want more of, and I try to like the ones I do want to see more of. Most importantly, I no longer spread the trauma, since I do not repost traumatic news or outrage-driven content. Instead, I focus on quiet, intellectually substantive, or comforting, feel-good posts, the kind of content that existed before everything became loud and jarring for attention.
I have also grown to appreciate social media’s “views” feature. People do not seem as communal as before and appear more focused on self-branding, rarely following or liking others anymore. As a result, views have become the only real form of affirmation. Oddly enough, it is a better metric, quieter, less preformative, and more honest.
The Friendly Future of Creativity
Maybe artificial intelligence is not all doom and gloom. For me, it has re-sparked creativity. It has reminded me that tools, no matter how new or intimidating, can bring freedom, not just obligation. In this new era, creativity feels alive again, playful, generous, and unexpectedly friendly (at least for now, it is).
The Middle Slice 