It’s 2025 and big tech is force feeding us artificial intelligence everywhere we look. If an app on the App Store didn’t use AI, it’s considered outdated.

A key reoccurring theme is that of AI integration. The question of how do we integrate AI into our lives?

I attended a Nerd Night - 1st Oct 2025 session where a local film maker reflected on his experience using AI after an insightful boat trip to Alaska. The discourse went something like this:

  1. When in nature, we don’t demand that she gives us the things we want; the breaching whale, the perfect sunset; the calm lake.
  2. We should use this same philosophy with AI. We should demand what we want of it; write me a blog post; reword this email to sound professional; give me a recipe.
  3. Instead we should ask AI to be a guide, a support, a mentor; how should I approach this blog post; help me explore ideas for a more professional email; where can I find inspiration for my recipe?

The speaker continued to tell us how he uses ChatGPT in his everyday life, many times a day. He uses it to help him explore ideas and approach shoots. He had very much integrated AI into his workflow.

My Take

Naturally I disagreed with this approach. I found myself asking these questions:

  1. Why does your workflow need this input?
  2. What is AI doing for you now that you were not able to do before if you’re not using it for efficiency?
  3. How do you ensure you are still adding value if the AI is doing the thinking?
  4. Is AI making you a better film maker and if so why not improve yourself instead of using tools to patch yourself up?

It became apparent to me that in this example, AI was being used to do the thinking. Instead of approaching a situation and calling on past experience and knowledge to inform a path forward, the speaker was using AI to help him explore his own thoughts. This offloaded thinking worries me because it gets at the very core of what makes humans creative; thinking outside the box. By using AI this way, you are outsourcing the thinking.

Generally speaking I think we should be demanding of AI. It should be used to do the mundane tasks so that we can use our human qualities to do human things, like exploring ideas with our own brain.

This is an open ended discussion, there is lots to add.