Against — and For? — Optimization

One poet's opinion about AI, technology, and the ever-optimizing world.

As of a few weeks ago, I am famously the new owner of an iPhone 16 Pro, equipped with Apple Intelligence. The Geniuses at the Apple Store told me that this was very exciting — very coveted and important to have. I agreed with them because they are Geniuses and I am a regular person who writes at least half of my words on a typewriter from the 1960s, so it felt appropriate to defer to their expertise.

I didn’t know that one of the features that would come along with this enormous technological upgrade was that my texts, emails, and notifications of all kinds would now be summarized for my convenience by a little robot that lives in the brain of my phone. When I first saw it, I was confused — why did a group chat with old friends suddenly feel so formal? Who is using a semi-colon in casual text? Did I sign something that said I was OK with living my entire digital life through the optimized and efficient lens of AI?

What a genuinely strange way to receive information!!!

Of course, we don’t have to sign anything anymore. Or we did, once, agree to something in some Terms and Conditions section and the rest is history. Good luck, chuck. The bots are here to stay and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Granted, the summaries sometimes make me laugh. But most of the time, they feel like one more wall that’s being shouted through as we attempt to communicate with someone we love. I recently received a long text from an ex that he likely was nervous to send, that I imagine he carefully worded. The summarized version of it was cold; impersonal; completely devoid of nuance or history or love — nothing like what he’d written. That added element made the entire thing extra heartbreaking, somehow. A person I used to sleep beside and now only occasionally text is removed even further; a robot mediates our conversations. There is a third party, it feels, in the room.

I wonder to what degree we erode some essential element of our humanness when we continue to add these layers of convenience into everything we do. We can order just about anything we could possibly desire online, delivered anonymously and immediately to our front doors. We can drive around in our speedy metal tubes, listening to playlists of music that an app generates based on what it knows we’ll like. Writing? Who cares? The bots have all of that on lock. Google it. The world’s at our fingertips.

Of course, the spirit of optimization is not cordoned off just into the world of screens. The other week, I went to a workout class at my local YMCA that I deemed about halfway through was “not hard enough.” Why aren’t we moving more? I thought, frustrated. I could be using this time better. I caught that thought mid thigh-raise and wondered at it. Woah, woah, woah! Since when am I so obsessed with efficiency? The real answer is: always. I’ve always been an over-productive, over-achieving, stressed-out person. I’ve spent the majority of my 20s trying to ease my foot off the gas pedal of these traits and hit the brakes. What if I slowed down? What if I did nothing? What if I just appreciated the moment, the gentle investment in myself and my wellbeing, rather than bemoaning the fact that I never broke a sweat?

The point of living, as far as I can tell so far, is not to do it the best. Or the fastest. Or the most optimized. It actually has nothing to do with any of those things. In fact, I think that the farther we can get away from this kind of thinking, the more grounded and happier we will probably feel. In San Francisco visiting friends last week, I felt wholly alive for 72 hours just talking and walking and marveling at sea lions and antique arcade games. Overhead loomed large the billboards touting tech language that none of us understood while self-driving cars whizzed past on the streets.

And call me a Luddite, but I think that one of those versions of San Francisco is eternal and rich — has a there, there — while the other feels empty and fleeting. And sure, both can exist side by side, but in my own life, I want every time to choose the quarter slotted into the 1914 machine with a fortune teller inside and receive a silly slip of paper that tells me what a kind person I am. I want my correspondences with friends to be most ideally in person, beneath sunshine, where the robots can’t even hear us. If we must text, though, I want to know what it is they said, really. I have enough time for that. We should all have enough time.

Perhaps the fact that we don’t is part of the problem. Or, at least, that we perceive that we don’t — so much so that Apple spent likely close to $20 billion developing early Apple Intelligence and has committed another $500 billion over the next four years to advance it. Are most of us using the extra time afforded us by all these optimizations to spend more moments with the people we love, connecting in person, filling our human cups? Are we laying in the grass eating berries? Making collages? Helping our neighbors? Or are we just working harder, just lending even more of our precious hours to our devices until the blue light burns our eyes?

I don’t know. What I do know: my favorite series of songs have never been presented to me by Spotify. All the heavy-hitters in that category were burned for me onto a CD by someone who loved me at the time of burning. I feel most joyful when I try to tuck away the need for rush and perfection. I feel most human when I am indeed moving at my slowest possible pace, savoring everything, soaking it up. The flower smells and the sunshine and the way you can eavesdrop on anyone in New York City.

And I also know that a lot of life is lived in the line-standing part. There are so many details to look at and notice and cherish. The whole thing is a practice in curiosity and quelling impatience. Reframing. Shaping the self.¹ Where else can this be done? Probably not from the couch as the groceries are delivered. Definitely not in the skimmed-over bullet-point summary of a text message sentiment my mother is trying to express.

Maybe there’s a world in which the technological advances of today actually lead to a freer, softer, easier tomorrow when it comes to how we spend our time. For every second I save reading my emails, I suppose I could spend another second reveling in sunlight. Perhaps the Geniuses really just want me to have extra time for being a little human creature scuttling around and doing my little human things. Maybe. I shouldn’t demonize, or assume, I suppose. I can make a personal choice — like I do, when standing in line — to get upset or to look for the shimmery bits. The interesting stuff. The funny.

This one really made me laugh — the tonal difference between this summary and the actual conversation I was in the middle of having was WILD

And in that way, I guess the human part really is in everything. The line can be anything. My phone, after all, is still a phone. It can summarize every text that’s ever been sent to me and still it offers a side door out of that cement room. Duck through it and you’ll see a wide field called: 10 digits stitched together and pre-saved in one button. Touch it and you’ll hear a ring, then a voice. Oh, there it is. It will all be all right.

1. My favorite reflection on this topic is an interview that Kurt Vonnegut gave in 1996 about why he always buys an envelope from the store instead of ordering them in bulk online.