Why everything feels "pointless" now

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Do you find that life seems a bit pointless now? Things just feels less meaningful somehow. And I'm not talking about some grand human condition like the mass of manly lives of quiet desperation. That's always been true. In a way, humans have always struggled with some crisis of meaning throughout history. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about something more recent. In the last few years, it seems like something important was lost in our lives. Yet we could not articulate what it was. So we went on our days with this vague, eerie sensation of lack following us around like a ghost. Haven't you noticed? What is that feeling? What happened in the last few years that could have caused it? Well, AI happened, but it's difficult to describe how the advent of artificial intelligence could impact our sense of meaning when we don't even have a word to describe it. Fortunately, someone made one. AI induced loss of meaning, ILM for short, is a term coined by writer J Satellac in her essay on the subject. It refers to the reduction in meaningfulness that we experience in the presence of AI generated content that mimics those of human origin. That sounds abstract. So, let's use an example. Take a look at this digital painting. It was created by a human. I happen to know the person who made it.

[00:01:25]So I can personally guarantee the proof of humanity here knowing that how does this painting make you feel? Remember that feeling. Now take a look at this painting. Very similar in style and composition but it's generated by AI. Do you feel differently about it? Perhaps you perceive that this painting is somehow less than the previous one despite their visual similarities. But how could that be? What in the second painting could possibly be lacking compared to the first when the two are so similar? Well, paradoxically, it's not what is there, but what is not there that's making the difference in our experience. You see, as viewers, when we look at arts, we have two separate layers of experiences. The first is what I call the functional layer. This is the direct surface level work the art is doing to us. In this case, it would be the pixels that compose the digital art.

[00:02:20]They shoot lights into our eyes which stimulate our visual nerves. Our brains process those signals causing dopamine release and giving rise to some aesthetic pleasures. Or simply put, me look at picture, picture look pretty, me happy. For the purpose of our discussion, we can say that the functional layers of these two paintings are identical. They're both fully fulfilling their utility. as visual stimulations. So if we feel like something is missing in the AI art, what is missing there is not in the functional layer. But there's a second layer of experience happening at the same time. This one is less obvious because it's often implicit. I call it the human layer. This is the experience that we create in relation to the human involved in the art, which in this case is the artist who drew the painting. For example, when we look at the first painting, we can feel impressed with the artist skill and the amount of labor she put into creating something like this.

[00:03:22]You might think, how long did it take to draw this? How many tens of thousands of pen strokes did it take to make pixels on screen mimic the effects of water and fog and a diffusion of lights? And how much must the artist have practiced to acquire the skills to do this in the first place? You see, we've just created a bit of extra meaning there. And we can keep going. For example, we can look at the art piece itself and think about what message the artist wanted to convey. The subject in the painting, for instance, is making a phone call. She is smiling but also crying. There's something wisful about this, something melancholic, almost nostalgic. Did the artist feel this way while working on the painting? Perhaps she was trying to process these emotions. Look, we've just created a bit more meaning again, but we can go further still. If we look at the caption of our post, he reads, quote, "On my way to school, my friend noticed that a phone booth had been demolished."

[00:04:20]He said, "That phone booth must have carried a lot of memories for older students. I found that idea romantic and drew this piece in response." Suddenly, another layer of meaning opens up to us.

[00:04:32]Now, let's step back and take a look at what we just did. With each iteration of inquiry, we generated more meanings.

[00:04:40]These are new experiences that we would not have had if we stayed only in the functional layer. If you feel that something is lacking in the AI art compared to the human one, what you're detecting there is the human layer.

[00:04:54]Indeed, the human layer of the AI art is entirely absent. You're unable to generate any human meaning with AI content because there is no human there for you to create human meaning with. In other words, human meaning is contingent on human involvement because you as a viewer is kind of having a relationship with a creator through the art. If there is no human creator, there would be no one there for you to have a relationship with. When that happens, the result is AI induced loss of meaning. And this doesn't just apply to digital paintings, but AI content in general, like writings, music, videos, etc. Now, when we consume content, we don't consciously decide to generate human meaning.

[00:05:42]Usually, that happens reflexively like when we listen to a song we like. We habitually begin feeling the emotions of the singer and starting to have this implicit experience with the artist without having decided to do it. Our minds tend to empathetically reach towards the human origin automatically.

[00:06:01]And that's been fine to do for most of human history where all human expressions were created by humans.

[00:06:07]Every piece of content has always had both functional and human layers. So we never needed to decide to only experience one of them. That was until the last few years when AI models began to generate mimicry of human expressions. And now when we encounter content, we're often unsure of their human origin. This is a novel environment for us. We're simply not used to having to separate the functional and human layers in the presence of human expressions. So when you show me this painting and tell me it's AI on some level I don't know what to do with that. The muscle memory in my mind reflexively begins generating human meanings. He wants to be impressed by the artist skill or interpret the deeper message the artist is trying to convey.

[00:06:55]But at the same time the human artist does not exist. So I can't create human meaning. So my mind has to now evacuate itself from the human layer. except that it kind of doesn't know how to do it.

[00:07:08]After all, it never had to do it before.

[00:07:11]This can make us feel uncomfortable. If you ever find yourself feeling uncomfortable in the presence of perfectly good-looking AI content, this is likely the cause of that eerie discomfort. The problem though is that we don't know that this is the cause. We couldn't explain why we felt uncomfortable because we didn't have the language like to explain it. So we might end up dismissing the feeling and almost gaslighting ourselves into thinking that what we felt was not real. Or others might do it for us. Some AI proponents, for example, might even tell us that any negativity we feel towards AI content are AI hate or bias towards technological progress. After all, if AI art can be as good as human art, we shouldn't feel differently towards them.

[00:08:01]But that's only half true. We don't feel differently towards AI content on the functional layer, but we do on the human layer because the human layer is just not there in the case of AI content.

[00:08:12]Now, there can also be a kind of deception involved here where people publish AI content but pretend that it's made by a human. Some of you might remember the first time you encounter something like this. You're scrolling through your feed and stop on a photo or a video or some other content that impresses you. Your mind starts generating human meaning. Maybe you're impressed by the creator skill or grateful for the amount of work they put into the content. Maybe you are appreciating the broader message the creator is trying to convey. But then you notice a comment that informs you that this is AI. Suddenly the bottom falls out. All the human meanings you've worked to create evaporate. It feels as if you're being betrayed. This reaction is appropriate because it's as if I was having a conversation with someone and connecting with that person. But then I realized there was no one there to begin with and I had in fact been talking to myself this whole time like an idiot.

[00:09:12]This can happen to us repeatedly. And when we got burned enough times, eventually we'd have to develop some coping mechanisms to protect our insanity. One common way we do this is to assume that everything is AI until proven otherwise. When we scroll on our phones now and come across impressive content that we would have usually enjoyed, we hold ourselves back from generating human meaning. We refuse to be surprised or in awe or react to the content in any human way until we see proof of their human origin. Only then do we allow ourselves to enjoy the human layer. When this happens at scale, that is when most content consumers in the world began doing this, it leads to a loss of meaning at scale because we lose the human meaning of the content we come across by default. Just a few years ago, we simply enjoy the content we came across and human connections organically arose. That is no longer the case. Think about how much human meanings are lost as a result of this. Now this is not to say that is a problem with every use case of AI. A commodity for example is something where the human layer is not important. Therefore does not matter as much when AI replaces human during its production. This cup for example is what I consider a commodity. It's made by machines in a factory not handmade by humans. Yet, I don't feel like I'm missing anything important while using it because as a commodity, its primary utility exists in the functional layer.

[00:10:50]The human layer is less important. As a normal user of cups, I just want to move water into my mouth. I don't really care about the person who made the cup. I'm not trying to have a relationship with a cup maker while I drink water. In fact, if this cup were made by humans, that human layer might even negatively impact my experience. I might feel inclined to respect this cup a little more while using it. It's handmade after all. And how was it so cheap if it was handmade?

[00:11:18]Do I need to worry about whether it was made in a labor camp somewhere populated by underpaid workers? But I just want to drink water without thinking about all that stuff. So I'm glad that this cup was made by machines and I don't need to worry as much about the nature of its human origin. Now this cup is a physical commodity where machine replaced human labor without causing. In the same way AI can replace humans to produce digital commodities without causing too. For example, powerpoints. I worked as a corporate consultant for a few years and made my fair share of corporate powerpoints. In my experience, powerpoints are a peculiar form of human suffering. People hate making them.

[00:12:01]People hate seeing them in meetings. Yet bosses won't get rid of them. As a result, everyone at the office just simmers in this perfect soup of PowerPoint induced human suffering. Now, before AI, all PowerPoint slides were made by humans. So, whenever I saw a set of well-made PowerPoint slides, I was able to experience both functional and human layers. The functional layers would just be whatever information the slides were trying to communicate. For the human layers, I might be impressed with the slidemaker skill or curious about how they created certain effects, but usually I just felt sorry for whichever other paid intern who had to stay late last night to crank this out and hoping that it wasn't my turn to do it that week. These are human meanings that I would happily give up in exchange for AI automated PowerPoint creation.

[00:12:54]And it's simply gratifying now to look at a set of well-made slides knowing that no interns were heard during their production. Better still, when I know that I don't need to look at those slides in the first place because I'm about to upload them into AI to summarize them for me. The world truly becomes a better place as a result of AI taking over PowerPoints. The same can generally be said with any other forms of digital commodities. The problem of course is that AI is not just coming after commodities. It's also coming after other forms of human expressions where the human layer does matter. I think that is one of the crucial difference between the industrial revolutions of the last few centuries and the AI revolutions of the last few years. Both revolutions occur as a result of technological advancements.

[00:13:42]Both revolutions take people's jobs. But the industrial revolutions mostly went after the production of physical commodities. As a result, people didn't have when machines automated the production of their cars and chairs and cups. But the AI revolution is currently coming after both commodities and human expressions. It's not just taking over PowerPoint slides, but also art, videos, music, writings, where we derive a great deal of meaning from their human origin.

[00:14:13]In fact, many of those things originally existed to bridge human relationships.

[00:14:18]When AI takes over the production of those things, it stripped away their human meaning, leaving only the functional layer. What do we call things that only have a functional layer?

[00:14:29]Commodities, right? In other words, what AI is doing now is the commodification of everything, even things that are not meant as commodities. As a result, we'd have to reconceptualize what it means for many human expressions to be commodities. This is not always easy or pleasant or possible to do. For example, can a piece of art like this really be a commodity? Well, I'd have to think about it. I suppose digital arts still have a decorative function. If I wanted to hang something in my bathroom for the sole purpose of making the space look prettier, I would hesitate to put this painting there because I'd feel like I was desecrating his human meaning somehow and disrespecting the artist.

[00:15:14]I'm not sure the artist would necessarily get mad at me for it, but if she did, I would struggle to explain why her work ended up in my bathroom, but I would feel comfortable hanging an AI image in my bathroom. Since the human layer doesn't exist, there be no further complications. In the same way, if we try our best, we could probably find some narrow use cases where some of these human expressions can serve as commodities. Also, this is not necessarily objectively binary, meaning that they can differ between individuals. What is commodity for some people can be steeped in human meaning for others. Take this very video as an example. Some of you might be watching it as a commodity. You're here for the information this video provides. You don't necessarily care that I am the one that delivers it. I don't know how well I perform as a commodity, though. I take forever to get to the point, and my voice sounds generally tonedeaf.

[00:16:13]Honestly, you might be happier to export a video transcript to an LLM to summarize it for you. In fact, you might have already done it and are no longer with us. But if you are still watching at this point and engaged, then you might be appreciating the human layer, too. Supposedly, you don't just care about the information I'm sharing, but also my perspectives on it. Not just the conclusions I reach, but how I arrive at them. If you enjoy that, then you probably resonate with the human layer of my work. And if my videos were entirely generated by AI, you would experience even if nothing else changes about them. However, just because there's a subjective component to how we determine commodities does not mean that boundaries don't exist. There are some human expressions where the human layer is so central to their existence that they become pointless when commodified.

[00:17:08]Senelac uses the sentence I love you to illustrate this quote. The phrase I love you consists almost entirely of human meaning. So, if a chat boss says it, it's almost entirely meaningless.

[00:17:21]Unironically, there are predictions that people will soon marry AI. I think a few people already did. Assuming technological improvements over time, eventually we will produce robots that are completely out of the uncanny valley and appear perfectly human. I think more people will start marrying AI. Then, who knows, it might even become mainstream.

[00:17:43]But that's also an important time to consider Ryum. Let's say I have a wife.

[00:17:48]What's the point? Why did I marry this hypothetical woman? Is it purely for the functionality of marriage? Now, I'm sure household chores when shared become easier to manage. I'm sure having someone to talk to when I feel lonely is emotionally regulative. I'm sure there are many functional benefits of being married. From a first principal perspective, I see no reason why AI and robots won't eventually be able to provide those benefits as well as humans do, if not better. But here's the difference. When my wife looks me in the eyes and says, "I love you," I know that she loves me. After all, she's the one who said it. But when a robot that looks perfectly human looks me in the eyes and says, "I love you," I'm not sure that she does. I don't think she hates me. I just don't know whether she's the one saying I love you or is the LLM powered by Nvidia chips and 50 gigs of RAM. I'm not even sure that the LLM is actually saying the words. It might have just generated the text and the separate speech synthesizer generated the sound.

[00:18:52]So, is the LLM the one who loves me or is it the speech synthesizer? Or perhaps is the Nvidia chips or the RAM sticks?

[00:19:01]On the functional layer, it looks like a woman telling me that she loves me. But on the human layer, there's probably no one there to love me at all. Now, this video is not about blind AI hate.

[00:19:14]Generally, I'm excited to see technology advances. I use AI personally. It's mostly been helpful, but has occasionally caused harm. When that happens, I tend to blame myself and change the way I use it. I'm not saying every use case of AI is bad, but I do think item is an understated concept.

[00:19:35]Currently, it functions as a hidden cost in our society. It's hidden because most people are not aware of it. If you're buying things without pricing in the hidden costs, you run the risk of getting a bad deal. So, I hope more people become aware of it and recognize it when it happens to them. Now, there are of course many more things I can say on this topic. What if AI were conscious and when it generates content, it was not merely moving data in the dark, but expressing its own feelings and experiences with the lights on. In that case, would an AI content be as meaningful as human ones? How would a concept of fit in that context? And as physical AI and robotics continue to improve, could we one day began to prompt the physical world the same way we prompt the digital world now? What if when you release this prompt, instead of your AI generating an image of a bowl of ramen, your robots acquire raw ingredients from the physical world, process them per your specs, and output a real bowl of ramen? What then? If you're overwhelmed by the amount of digital AI slop online now, what happens when the real world is overwhelmed by physical AI slops? Would touching grass still work if you're no longer sure whether the grass you're touching is AI generated? And will we begin to experience in the real world? And what about AI art? Is that a real thing? Do AI artists deserve the title of artists or are they more accurately referred to as prompters? I won't be able to cover everything in this video. At some point, I need to stop myself from writing a 10,000word paper on the subject, but Settellac has. If you find this topic interesting, I encourage you to read her essay. I think it's actually more than 10,000word long, and she's covered some of those topics I mentioned. I'll link it below. I also encourage you to comment your thoughts on this video if you like to continue the discussion. We had a few debates in the comment section of one of my previous videos that was philosophically dense and that was fun.

[00:21:37]Lastly, if you'd like to watch my videos early and free, check out my community.

[00:21:42]And if you'd like to get the scripts and my video essays, check out my email newsletter. I'll link both in the description. Thanks everyone. I'll see you next time.