A day in the life of my post-AI world
A day in the life of my post-AI world
A fictional glimpse at my life five years from now.
I wake up and put on a pot of tea, the soothing sounds of Endel AI fill my home.1
As I enjoy an almond croissant, I get ready for work. Today, I need to write an essay about the future of AI—I open up my Substack AI and ask for all the research I need. It pulls up a few case studies about how the technologies are advancing and I read through the most salient points so I can come to my own conclusions about them.2
Once I have some idea as to my arguments I start writing, but the page knows what I want. I have only to type in a few bullet points and the AI fills in the rest. It has been trained on my writing style, so it knows what I’m going for. I spend half an hour editing the draft and adding some personal anecdotes it couldn’t have known before readying it for publishing.3
We no longer have meetings, email, calendars, Slack, or even text messaging. Once AI started sending us a summary of everything that happened in all of those channels, we realized we could just reply to everything in the same tool. Now my whole team—and everyone I know—uses Notion AI to communicate.45
Ok what did I miss, I type in.
Today, The Elysian gained 1,000 new newsletter subscribers including the economist Brad DeLong, want me to reach out and see if he wants to collaborate?Yes, please.
“Also, you’re still waiting to hear back from Edison House about hosting your August literary salon, want me to re-ping them?”That’s a yes too.
“Finally, Curt Roberts agreed to join your salon discussion in July, I’ve put it on your calendar. And a reporter from the New York Times mentioned The Elysian on Twitter, you can reply to that here.Thank you. Anything from friends or family?
“Your sister @Sarah wants to see if you want to go to Mallorca this summer.When are we free this summer? And can you make a list of Airbnb’s we might like?
You and your sister are free June 5-18. I’ve tagged @Sarah to confirm. Here’s a list of Airbnbs that align with your preferences.
After lunch, I want to get outside, but I need a new album to listen to. I ask Spotify AI to write me something—maybe by Lizzo. “But make it high-energy because I want to feel pumped up while I hike,” I type. Spotify AI puts together a new Lizzo album for me and I head into the great outdoors.
As I listen, I can’t help but reminisce. I saw Lizzo in concert last year—she even sang the most streamed Lizzo AI song on Spotify in person—it was based on a prompt by one of her biggest fans. Laughing, she thanked her fans for all the extra royalties she earned for a song she didn’t even write.6
When I get home, I decide to spend my afternoon on a passion project. I have an idea for a fantasy series and I already know how I want it to go. I type in the setting I’m looking for (“a post-Asian utopian archipelago”) the character notes ("a redhead with amnesia, an existentialist brother who is the love interest, and his epicurean sister who is a scientist”), and elements of surrealism I want to incorporate (“I want it to feel like it’s a dream”). Finally, I write a paragraph about the plot including where I’d like it to go and how I want it to end.7
It’s less than one page of text but it’s enough—the whole book populates in a couple of minutes. It’s been trained on my writing as well as the writing of my influences (usually Victor Hugo, though I added some utopian novels, Buddhist texts, and a dash of Everything Everywhere All at Once for this one). With the book completely built out, all I have to do is tweak the parameters to my liking (“make the brother an undersea archeologist with a longing for the past,” I edit). I also want to deepen the philosophy a bit—I want it to feel more aligned with what I’ve been studying. I read through the book, adding personal thoughts as I go. I’ll take another pass at it over the next month or two before I publish it.
I don’t know what to make for dinner so I ask Amazon AI to put together a menu for the week. I want to keep my grocery bill under $150 so I set those parameters. And it’s starting to feel like spring so I’m craving something light—maybe ceviche and a salad night? It autogenerates a menu and sends the grocery list to Whole Foods. They’ll deliver it to my door by 5pm.8
At night, my husband and I are in the mood for fantasy. We open our Netflix AI and enter our request: “An epic romance starring Anya Taylor Joy and Timothée Chalamet,” I say into my remote, “only they’re elves from The Lord of the Rings and it’s set in the city of Lindon.”9
“We should have asked for a musical score by Hans Zimmer,” my husband says as we watch, and he’s right. The John Williams one feels a bit dated for the setting, we’re looking for something a little more modern. Netflix takes notes so it can be more tuned to our tastes next time.
Before we shut down Netflix, we see some of our friends’ prompts. One asked for a spin-off of Always Be My Maybe starring the Keanu Reeves character—they rated it highly, and it looks like several of our friends did too. Actors can spend a couple of days in a motion capture suit and license their likeness out for endless adaptations, and Keanu movies are always in high request. We add it to our queue for next time.10
At bedtime, I want something to read. I open my Kindle AI to find five new stories in my queue by writers I follow. AI has helped those writers produce a lot faster too and now I always have a good book to read. I’m delighted to find another book added to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind series—I’m so excited to learn how it ends.
“Turn the lights out,” I whisper to my Nest AI as I tuck into bed with my book.
Thanks for reading my (not so) hypothetical near-future world.
This is my first post in a series I’m writing about automation and the future of work and leisure. This is also my first post for New Capitalism, a weekly newsletter I’ll be publishing in
every Monday. Thank you so much for being here and for joining me in thought-provoking discussions about the future!
Elle Griffin
I already listen to Endel all day long. The AI-generated soundscape is tuned to my location, the weather, my circadian rhythm, and my heart rate to produce the most contented music I’ve ever heard. Whether I’m writing, doing yoga, or going to sleep, the music is always perfect.
You can already listen to this post using Substack AI if you have the Substack app.
I am so excited about Lex.Page by Nathan Baschez—it’s like Google Docs but with AI built right in.
Slack recently announced an AI that will sum up everything you missed on Slack. Imagine when all of our communications are summed up this way!
Notion AI is already fascinating to play with.
This already almost exists. Now imagine if Amazon added an AI to help me fill up my cart.
Two former co-stars asked ChatGPT to write a new episode of M*A*S*H*—they performed it.
Already, Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg have licensed their voices to Speechify, which will read you anything on the internet in their voices, while they earn royalties when you do. Grimes has licensed her voice out to anyone who wants to make music with it, earning 50% of royalties on published songs. And with so many movies, like Avatar, using motion-capture suits to record the entire thing, it won’t be long before a filmmaker can simply license the likeness of an actor for their film.
The newly released Kingkiller Chronicle novel made me laugh.
Overall though, do you worry there is a sort of emptiness here? You mention a passion project, for example, but the passion seems stripped from it: the process of creative writing reduced to something similar to ordering a meal. Not to mention, human "writers" seem to serve the role of prompt-giver, in this world, but if we have already gifted so much of the process to AI, why would it not also claim ideation as well?
I'm no Luddite, nor am I totally against AI assistance in creative endeavors, but there is a balance to monitor: is the machine assisting us, or are we assisting the machine? Incentives push us toward the latter, which scares me. It feels like the erasure of humanism, while simultaneously being carried out in its name.
EDIT: I've read a bit more of your work (and enjoyed it very much) and learned this is an older post ported over without previous comments included. So, apologies if I've retreaded familiar territory here!