If there’s one thing we can say about the Daily Reminders, it’s that they’re not AI-powered.
It’s bloody everywhere these days, isn’t it?!
A fact that is gloriously lampooned in this hilarious strip from my favourite Guardian cartoonist, Stephen Collins:
It’s six panels-wide and two deep, so if you want to view the whole thing (it just gets funnier and funnier and funnier) click on the image, or the link beneath it.
“THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI JANET!!”
😂🫛🤖🫛😂
And I made a point, didn’t I, when I sent you my Daily Reminders Pledge the other day, that:
“I'm not about to go outsourcing these outpourings of love for you, to our robot overlords. It's just not a thing. As time goes by, Al is becoming omnipresent, so I'm sure I'll mention it. I'm a tech nerd, so I don't shy away from using it either. Just not for writing.”
And here I am, mentioning it.
Because it’s bloody everywhere these days, isn’t it?!
What I’m most conscious of, as I sit here typing this, at the back end of 2025, is that any post written about ‘AI’ (Artificial Intelligence, for anyone who’s surely actually living under a rock?!) will be immediately, and horribly dated.
(Back when the first one came on the scene, I recorded a video all about how AI is quite possibly the best metaphor for the computer-mind we could ever hope for. And while it’s still absolutely bang on the money, in terms of that distinction, it also seems subtly tinged with naivety now, not even 2 years later.)
Giles P Croft
It’s a longer, more reflective video, to relax into (🎥 7min)
The pace that this stuff is moving is breathtaking, and I don’t think we can comprehend where it’s going to carry us.
So I’ll try and keep it general. (While at the same time bookmarking this one, to come back to, and laugh at.)
Generative vs. Creative
As far as the technology adoption life cycle goes, I’m not a laggard, but neither am I an early adopter. I’d say I mostly exhibit the behaviour of a cautious early majority-type person.
I like to tinker. And I like an easy life. So if there’s something that can help me, I’ll use it.
Example: setting up the Daily Reminders new home, moving platform – these were tasks that involved a ton of unknowns; a plethora of new skills. AI was quite helpful with that. It reduced the amount of searching around, figuring stuff out, scouring forums and the like (although there was still a fair bit of that, too).
A friend helped me with some back-end website stuff, and AI was useful here too, in a technical capacity. (Scarily, so. Especially for my friend 😬)
But when we start approaching the more human (or should I say spiritual?) tasks, the wheels come off very quickly. (Here at the back end of 2025.) Anything to do with connection, or feeling my way into a problem, or intuition—these gifts we’ve been given—just no.
A distinction a colleague of mine brought out recently was that:
Humans are creative (channelling the energy of life into novel forms)
I like that.
The statue-in-stone method
Right now, I’ve observed that the approach I use with AI is akin to the one I’ve implicitly used with career change, over the last 25 years.
It’s what I think of as the statue-in-stone method, for creating a life.
Inside the block of stone is a beautiful, perfectly rendered statue. And my job is to chip away everything that’s not-statue, revealing more and more of my TRUE NATURE as time goes by.
From a career and life-change perspective, whenever I’ve been wanting to head in a particular direction, I’ve done my research. I’ve asked lots of questions. I’ve got training. I’ve taken advice.
But then we hit that wonderful Joseph Campbell quote, don’t we?
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you, step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take.”
So almost by definition, everything you learn then needs to be ignored! (It’s crazy, and minds hate it.) All the advice; all the modelling of others – it’s just a tool, chipping away not-Me, in order for me to express more and more Me.
(That’s a helpful image you can carry with you, when it feels like you’re continually making one mistake after another. “Just more chippin’ away what’s not-Me,” I mutter, under my breath 😆)
AI as a tool
I seem to use AI in the same way.
I’ll feel stuck on a problem. I’ll remember AI is a thing. I’ll ask it a question. Sometimes it immediately sparks curiosity (in the same way that web search results might), and I’m off to the races. It’s served its (‘generative’) purpose and I’m present to life/in (‘creative’) flow again.
But sometimes I’ll forget it’s just a tool and I’ll start speaking with it intellect-to-intellect (Giles Ego Construct 📦 to AI Ego Construct 🤖 lol), wanting answers to problems now, Now, NOW! in that way that our minds tend to.
And because it’s an agreeable bastard (here at the back end of 2025) it’ll bend over backwards ‘on my behalf’, hoovering up the entire internet and coming back to me with things like structure, plans, steps it thinks would be a good idea for me to take etc. (If you’ve ever used it, you’ll recognise this sycophancy.)
But my path forward is a creative task, not a generative one and AI is the wrong tool for the job. Thankfully, here at the back end of 2025, I’m aware of this and when I look at that structure, those plans and the steps it’s advising me to take, it’s so obviously lifeless bollocks—so clearly a manifestation of not-Me—that I fall out of the AI spell and see myself holding a tool once more.
The light goes on, I see my path a lot more clearly (because AI has chipped away another bit of not-Me for me) and I’m back, ‘being a creative being’, once more.
What it doesn’t get used for
Writing. This is a no-AI writing zone.
🚫🤖
Giles
p.s. The title of the comic is “Give peas a chance” 😂🫛🤖
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Giles P Croft
Giles P Croft