February 9th, 2026
As a writer and an artist (and enrolled student) I get asked about my opinion on A.I. every single day. I want to share a slice of how I feel about it with you, but I have to start with a shameful admission: I recently missed a deadline.
If you know me, especially the me of today, the me who doesn’t drown his sorrows with wrung rags of wine, you know that I really try to do what I say. If I say I’m going to be there or answer the phone, it’s a safe bet that I’ll show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed or pick it up. If I announce a project or commit to a contribution, you will likely see it or receive it with few exceptions (I promise there is still another volume of Brushfire coming and I could still make my musical film The Visiter! any day now).
For the past two years, I’ve been part of an amazing collection of short stories with some of my favorite writers. I was working on a story for the upcoming collection and I… just could not finish it by the submission date, at least not in a way that was satisfying to me. It killed me, but I had to admit to my failure and commit to try, trying again in the uncertain future.
Between the overwhelming pace and chaos of my personal life and the extraordinary weight and violence of what’s happening in my state, I just haven’t been able to write outside of my immediate self; I was also missing the only ingredient that matters.
Though my books and essays and stories that I’ve shared with you are all over the place as far as feeling and genre and plot go, there is at least one thing they absolutely all have in common: I find joy in writing them.
Not just joy, of course. I find despair and anguish and beauty and hope in writing, too. But I love to write and it’s how I stay in touch with myself, how I know what I really think and feel, and the more honest I am, the more writing loves me back.
Can you see how I’m going to connect this to A.I.?
I was having a conversation with a coworker last weekend and she wants to start her own business. Immediately, someone in her life, an A.I. obsessive, enthusiastically explained how much A.I. could do for her. It could develop a business plan. It could draw up a logo. It could even name her business for her.
But I want to do those things, she said.
We only get this one life, you guys.
We outsource our writing and wonder why so many of us lack a true foundation of sense and morality; when we don’t tend to our own gardens and sharpen our own blades, we wilt and get dull.
We outsource our communication and we wonder why we can’t hold deep or meaningful conversations, or engage in thoughtful and productive debate, or are able to just tell a good story.
We outsource our friction and we outsource our discomfort and we wonder why we’re bored and lonely and stupid.
They want us bored and lonely and stupid.
There is so much more I could (and do) say about A.I. but this is the most important. We are losing our humanity and it’s nothing like the movies warned; the robots don’t want to take over the world and kill us. The robots don’t want anything at all. They lack context and motivation.
The people who built them, however, just want us to not care at all. About anything. Not each other, not the planet we share, and especially not them.
The Den 