❤️🔥 The Human Heart doesn’t need AI
but here’s why our consciousness craves it. ꩜
“The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can and share it with all of you. To be clear, no one is paying me to talk about this. I’m just a curious human. It’s so, so important that women are involved…and you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here.”
Multi millionaire founder Reece Witherspoon speaking on the topic of AI across IG, glamour magazine & Fox News
Loves,
In less than three years, more than 1.2 billion people have used artificial intelligence (AI tools), a rate of adoption faster than the internet, the personal computer, or even the smartphone.1 I’ve been reflecting a lot on it, my own use of it inside my business and how it’s freed up time in my life and supported my relationships.
The shift of humans using ai (especially personalised chat bots) for support in their work (and life) is tangible. Should we spend our energy being worried?
No - I actually think we should spend it being savvy about how to protect and stabilise our creative businesses with us at the heart as the biggest asset.
So you want to use ai? (It’s a great time to be an ai teacher!)
Unless you’re a straight A student…
Hands up if you are?
You’ll be like me, never feeling quite ‘good enough’, waiting to be chosen. Always on a quest to learn more, to know more, to seek more, to self improve, to create systems that help in both your work and life.
My mother in law used to say to my husband;
“There’s a want in you lad.”
It’s normal to seek to understand, to feel accomplished, to look for the peaceful stillness after the work is done. Human curiosity is part of the plan.
✨
BTS - When you’re a mother and a business owner, the work is never ‘done’.
I want to get the grease stains out of my daughter’s school uniform and make it pristine white again, my son’s grown out of his football boots. I want to go on a writing retreat with a friend but I need a minute to look at train tickets and times. Spring is here, summer soon and I’d love to grow seeds but I’m afraid I won’t be able to look after yet another thing. I’ll plant the tubers instead - 80% success rate. I want to overhaul my website it’s embarrassing - that’s too big a job I can’t and I don’t have the capacity to work with anyone who will ask me questions about it… I should be working on my book, the deadline is fast approaching.
🌳
AI Sycophancy and the echo chamber of narcissistic mirrors
I was talking to a friend who is a life coach the other day on voice notes and we were reflecting on how quickly the ai trust shift has taken hold.
We’re in a position where it’s unsaid but we KNOW our clients often prefer ai chat bots to human coaching. People have replaced google search with ChatGPT searches and then go to google to sense check. Google know this and are running to catch up.
As consultants, mentors and coaches, we hold up a mirror and there’s no closed loop to an uncomfortable feeling - with world events right now, we don’t have enough breathing space to be uncomfortable that’s the issue. Our entire nervous systems are running on red alert and have been for some time!2
Maybe it’s not all ai, because we’re on the edge of a global economic downturn. (I certainly felt the weight of paying over £1000 for oil and £700 to have our boiler fixed this month.).
Yet I still booked and paid for an INCREDIBLE coaching session with Tamu Thomas - the cost of living didn’t stop me moving my career forward.
I didn’t book her group programme though which was around the same cost I paid out for our home to be warm. But it wasn’t the cost it was because I have my own group programmes with people I called in and adore. As an introvert I have to mind my ‘performance’ energy.3
Don’t believe the hype… or maybe believe the hype but stay humble? Do we all just want to be seen and praised?
Human communication can be messy, uncomfortable - AI is trained to agree with you and not push back. If chat bots endlessly agree with you and inflate your ego, soothe your nervous systems through slick conclusions it’s tempting to stay there - there’s no off switch and you start to believe and embody everything ChatGPT tells you - I’ve seen it.
Or maybe they are just overwhelmed and will circle back… one thing’s for sure though things have changed at human fingertips and FAST!
👏🏻 AI and the impact on hands and hearts at work.
Our heating engineer hasn’t had a day off (including weekends) since Christmas. He’s worked 133 days in a row. He felt proud showing me his online calendar… I’m glad I didn’t reference retirement as I later found out he’s the same age as me!
My web designer friend’s work has tailed off - she tells me she finds it strange - we wonder if Claude’s producing the web pages now.
For the last two years, I’ve been booked out with 1-2-1s - this year just 3 or 4 bookings so far. My membership was growing at a rapid pace, now members trickle in. I’m not worried - my business is robust, but I’m tired of performing for a world that is internally itchy for people who won’t stay still…
Are we all standing on a podium over exposed hoping someone will give us 7 seconds minutes of their time….? 4
I didn’t get worse at my job, AI got better, way better and then maybe we all got way more insatiable in the quest to be soothed.
I know my work is good, great actually. I know I offer a perspective and lens no one else can.
So what’s really going on with business?
Here’s what I think and I’d love your take on it too…
General overwhelm/ nervous system overwhelm
Full trust/ outsourcing/ preference with ai bots
More people doing a similar things (I did pretty much have most of the monopoly on Substack Education for a while back in 2023/24) and my business BLEW up because of my ability to hold it all.
SEO has changed (and I made some MASSIVE tech mistakes with this when I set up meaning all of my product pages have not been showing up in searches)
Lots of people are at online consumption capacity and cannot take in any more info. We’re buying up Bricks, looking at balance phones or choosing to watch funny ai generated cats or dogs whilst scrolling past your sincere business content that took you an hour to create. (Sorry).
What about Art? Paul Black at The Bright Agency and I discussed art generation through a lens of ai on this podcast.
Human Creativity Cannot and Will Not Die but….
💖 Here are some of the difficult things I’ve had to process as a space holder for human centric creativity…
Real people in my work told me…
“I gave this to ChatGPT and asked it to make me sound more like Emma Gannon. She gets great engagement and it worked - I also have great engagement now.”
“ChatGPT has supported me with every area of my life from my relationship to my hormones to a whole new business launch plan - it knows me so inside out.”
“I have a project for every area of my life in ChatGPT - it knows everything about me.”
“I asked ChatGPT and it told me this about VAT and refunds on Substack - can you confirm it’s right?” (it was wrong)
“I used Substack Notes to grow x million subscribers” - blatantly written by a chat bot - shame on us for clicking the slop and believing (yet again) in the emperor’s new clothes!
I felt physically sick and shocked in these conversations - there’s no judgement but if you’ve not had any of these types of chats they are coming!! And here’s why I think it’s a GOOD thing this mess is all happening right now and we need to be part of the conversation especially as women..:5
Humans have learnt ai quickly - it can save them time in their lives. And I should add - not all humans - in my circles the opinions are very much divided - my business owner pals all use it and rave about it publically. My writer friends wouldn’t be seen dead typing anything into gemini, claude or Chat GPT and often write condescending notes to remind us all to go back into our shame caves with it.
The opinions are varied - there’s pro ai, there’s anti ai and then there’s neurodivergent shame in the middle - we’ve named it!6
AI can never be art of ‘good’ human writing - I don’t think that needs saying but I’ve said it.
We know tech, we know online, we know communications - this is all of that sped up.
Slow living is a privilege - for me my ai (Claude ai) has built capacity - I have MORE time in my life - instead of toxic positivity working for ‘the man’, we have space to to slow down and have sophisticated thoughts, create with our hands, make loose leaf tea and sit and enjoy it in the garden, research financial future planning without being sold to - there’s JOY in the slowness and with analogue way more than there’s ever been?
So in a world of self compassion and kindness… (this one)
I’m sending some to you along with this pandora’s box article. 🤓 🎁 👀
I’m also sharing my Claude ai knowledge in this blog and reassuring myself and you that I’ve found AI builds more human capacity for creativity, for writing for art.
Maybe this is a capacity argument more than anything else?
We’ve had plenty of online dopamine rich toys to play with, this is just another one of those we handle with more care?
Where do you sit with it all? Do you have a chat bot you’ve humanised or are you steering clear of being sucked in? Are you curious about it and how it can help run your business or are you worried we are giving all of our power away?
I’d love to know - I’ll meet you in the comments and don’t worry I’ll always take care of your heart and your consciousness in all of the work I do. I’ll always write my own work but Claude can have all my maths and data processing work.7
Claire
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(*) The I don’t use ai argument - hidden in plain sight - ai is already running your life…
Shopping recommendations Product suggestions like Amazon’s “Customers also bought...” and the ads that follow you around after you’ve browsed something. Search results The order Google ranks pages isn’t random. AI decides what you see first, every single time. Your phone keyboard Autocomplete and predictive text are quietly learning how you write and finishing your sentences for you. Spam filters and email sorting AI reads every email before you do and decides what’s junk, what’s important, and what goes where. Streaming and social media feeds Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram. none of them show you things randomly. AI is curating everything you see and hear. Your phone camera Portrait mode, face unlock, and automatic photo enhancement all happen before you’ve touched a single editing tool. Fraud detection When your bank flags an unusual transaction, that’s AI noticing something’s off, often faster than any human could.
The common thread here is that AI tends to be invisible when it’s working well. It’s usually only when something goes wrong (a weird recommendation, a blocked transaction) that you notice it was there at all!
I’ve talked about it many a time but we don’t watch or listen to the news - you find it out though and certain people will present it to you as Gospel as if they had a powerpoint and a factual degree in it.
For my worldwide readers - we rely on heating oil in our little cottage which tripled in price, we ran out and our boiler broke (they don’t like running out), I then got ripped off by a local company fixing things that didn’t need fixing, found a new guy and paid £660 and £550 for two lots of oil that should have been around £300 each.
The advice from IG educators is to make 7 second video reels with a strong curiosity inspired hook and an even stronger headline - if you don’t catch their attention in 1.5 seconds, you’ve lost them.
I don’t think it’s a good thing the way we are manipulating AI or trying to take people’s voices or jobs - I think it’s a good thing we are being curious because it’s here anyway - you could turn your back on a bin fire or you could grab some water and some neighbours to put it out.
Every ChatGPT conversation uses roughly the same water as a bottle of Evian and at scale, across billions of users, that’s not nothing. If you use Microsoft products, you’re connected to military AI contracts that have prompted mass employee walkouts at some of the biggest tech companies in the world. I’m not here to tell you what to do with that. But I do think conscious creatives deserve to know the backstory and do their own research.
This is a safe space for nuanced thought and debate - I won’t tolerate bullying or judgement!
This is a really thoughtful piece, and I love how you are creating space and inviting others in to this conversation. I have lots of thoughts! My ideas are very nuanced. Something that scares me is the fact that the world of social media and the development of AI are happening at the same time. It'd be nice to believe that humans as a whole will choose to use these things as tools for GOOD, but I just don't believe that unfortunately.
I've been noticing myself getting sucked into the world that is Claude. I've asked it questions, mostly business related, almost as a way to see if a problem I have has a solution that I couldn't think of. I always leave the "conversations" feeling depleted like I just engaged in an addiction. For me, that's the sign that it's unhealthy. That feeling of "needing it" - and the massive instant gratification it provides frightens me and I know it's not something I can engage in anymore.
I can see the possibilities/helping parts of it too. Like the stories of people deciding to go to the ER because of something an AI chat said to them and then that saving their life - though I think that's just my health anxiety speaking. Or when Shopify's AI chat creates code for a small thing on my website, that's been helpful.
But the creative side of me is a little horrified to be honest! I will never, ever use AI to create art or to write, or even to edit writing. It makes me think of the ways I have used it though with my questions- thinking maybe in a more hidden way I have used it to replace creativity, in the sense of using my creative mind to think of answers to my questions. (Hence why I will not be using it like that any more!)
I don't know. I think as a whole, the inner child within me just feels sad. The world needs human connection and kindness more than anything else, and it doesn't seem we're heading in that direction. Humans give into the instant gratification, the possibility of all the things that cause insecurity to be removed. I have an innate necessity for authenticity. I cannot live unauthentically. It is my biggest value aside from kindness. The world feels less and less authentic to me, more fake, more robotic.
Just some of my thoughts! Thank you for bringing this up Claire, always love to hear your perspectives 💗
Thank you for writing this. I had to learn chat gpt for a client three years ago and then suddenly we were using it for everything. I was the oldest person on our team and was watching it churn out just boring stuff. But not my business (like actually it wasn’t my business). My biggest concern is environmental, outsourcing critical thinking, and data and privacy. But I still use Claude for basic things for other clients and only sometimes for myself. I truly cannot imagine getting “coached” by a bot 🤖 and I keep seeing this pop up. As always, it’s never one thing. I’m also weary of people taking advantage of women and causing fear to make us buy something. Great conversation!