🧠 The AI Revolution’s Hidden Problem

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Welcome back AI prodigies!

In today’s Sunday Special:

• 📜The Prelude

• 🍿Custom Entertainment, Explained.

• 💭Can Boredom Beat Custom Entertainment?

• 🔑Key Takeaway

Read Time: 6 minutes

🎓Key Terms

• AI Agents: Virtual employees who can autonomously plan, execute, and refine their actions.

• Virtual Reality (VR): An immersive, computer-generated environment experienced through a Headset.

• Generative AI (GenAI): When AI models create new content such as text, images, audio, video, or code.

• Default Mode Network (DMN): A group of interconnected brain regions that become active when a person isn’t actively engaged in a task.

🩺 PULSE CHECK

📜THE PRELUDE

To be entertained, you can’t be bored. But can boredom be entertaining? As technology has progressed, so have our entertainment expectations.

Reading was the only portable entertainment that engaged our imagination for most of human history. Later, Radio added sounds to our imagination. Then, Film introduced moving images to our imagination. Next, Video Games added interactive visuals to our imagination.

Now, VR aims to simulate presence within a digital environment, engaging auditory, visual, and touch sensations to create lifelike experiences.

How will AI transform entertainment? In a world of constant stimulation, will boredom become a powerful tool to reclaim our humanity?

🍿CUSTOM ENTERTAINMENT, EXPLAINED.

How AI Creates Custom Entertainment.

In a post-boredom world, nearly endless digital interactions occur. Consider the following scenario:

Conversational Chatbots allow you to communicate with anyone, dead or alive. AI Agents automate your daily workflows, so engaging in everyday duties is unnecessary. Humanoid Robots provide affordable and accessible therapy to help manage your emotions. GenAI creates video games that generate levels, characters, and gameplay mechanics tailored to your decisions.

Though some parts of this description seem dystopian, they reflect the trend of the past 30 years. Today’s GenAI is increasingly capable of creating and doing things on our behalf. It may even elevate living standards by boosting productivity. While GenAI offers personalized solutions to personalized problems, does it risk undermining our capacity to address those problems independently?

Is Custom Entertainment Problematic?

A world filled with GenAI-enabled custom entertainment can feel like paradise, yet it also overloads the mind and drains energy. It addresses immediate desires while making it harder to feel content and whole. Meeting every want with little effort placates the mind in the short term but causes dissatisfaction in the long term.

I can’t pick something to watch—entertain me. I can’t figure out how to learn—teach me. I can’t choose a song—DJ for me. I can’t decide what to cook—find me a recipe. Who doesn’t want their problems solved? The allure is undeniable. Why willingly endure internal turmoil when a free, instantaneous, and effective solution awaits? However, choosing the most straightforward path is often not in our long-term interest.

💭CAN BOREDOM BEAT CUSTOM ENTERTAINMENT?

Why Can’t We Be Bored?

In a world that’s built on the Internet and revolves around smartphones, it’s never been more challenging to detach. Engagement tends to prevail over disengagement, but we must periodically disengage.

In 1654, French philosopher Blaise Pascal highlighted this predicament, observing that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

The art of boredom has been lost. Digital technology was intended to make our lives better; it undoubtedly has. But we can’t ignore its unintended consequences. Perhaps during Pascal’s life, balancing one’s obligations with introspection was more manageable. Yet even he saw the danger of not being bored. Every era brings new challenges, and boredom is one of ours.

It’s not that we’ve become incapable of being alone with our thoughts. Instead, since we don’t need to experience them to go about our daily lives, we’ve inadvertently trained our minds not to be bored. After experiencing a few minutes without external stimulation, nearly all of us have reached for a device. When conscious and purposeful, this isn’t problematic. But when it’s a subconscious urge, it is.

The average person checks their smartphone 96 times every day, or every 10 minutes. Although many smartphone pickups are intentional and practical (e.g., responding to a text or call), many are not; over half of us report feeling addicted to our smartphones. The sheer volume of daily checks inhibits boredom, as every innocent pickup switches our attention between physical and digital contexts.

Benefits of Boredom.

During boredom, the DMN activates. It includes brain areas like the medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) and Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC). The DMN helps guide self-referential and internally-oriented thought processes. Without opportunities for reflection, the brain has trouble integrating new experiences and generating innovative solutions to technical problems. Over time, this can inhibit our ability to cope with stress, diminish creativity, and even prevent us from understanding our thoughts and emotions.

The most essential skill in the 21st century may be practicing boredom. In the past, being bored in productive settings like work or school was considered problematic. Today, it’s the opposite. Mastering mind wandering will improve our day-to-day quality of life much more than AI-enabled productivity gains ever could.

It’s easier said than done. Silence and detachment seem pervasive these days, confined to places without Wi-Fi or cell signal. They may be alien to our day-to-day experiences, but they don’t have to be. Being bored is free—accessible to everyone anywhere, at any time. But it requires intentional withdrawal from some of the most valuable yet addictive products ever made.

🔑KEY TAKEAWAY

Technological innovation is inevitable. The latest creations—GenAI and AI Agents—promise personalized solutions to personal problems. We must focus on reaping the benefits of these immersive technological innovations while protecting ourselves against a hidden downside—preventing boredom.

📒FINAL NOTE

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