Artificial Intelligence and American Decline

Something very disturbing is happening with the proliferation of artificial intelligence

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I left academia a few years ago just as the deluge of AI-produced writing was coming over the horizon. It didn’t factor into my leaving, but I knew the consequences would be dire. Since, I’ve talked to plenty of former colleagues and peers who have suffered the brunt of it. In their work they have been continually exploited, overwhelmed with ballooning classes, worsening responsibilities, and through it all they have been pressured by administrators to both welcome AI into their teaching in order to carry some of the weight and to accept their students using it in their work.

So, when New York Magazine published this article on how radically AI has changed higher education, I was disturbed but less than surprised. The gist is that an entire generation of students are relying on the tool almost completely and have been doing so for years, beginning in high school and moving through receiving their diplomas. The allure is too much. Rather than spending hours drafting essays or completing assignments, they can log into an AI chat program and sometimes have it done in seconds.

This is much more than a higher-education problem, although it is most certainly that. From kindergarten through PhD programs, American education is fundamentally broken. Decades of wealth class assaults have left our schools criminally underfunded, devoid of resources, our teachers have been demonized and targeted, and, when you get to the college-level, schools have been turned into profit-seeking mini-corporations helmed by some of the most dangerous and destructive administrators you would ever hope to meet. It’s no coincidence that these same people have been so quick to fall in line with Donald Trump after spending the last few years terrorizing their own students and, eventually, handing them over to be disappeared in the middle of the night.

The larger picture is more existential. AI is, perhaps, the most quintessential late-American Empire invention imaginable. It barely works, yet presents its information as an expert. It gobbles up others’ knowledge and achievements and refuses to give credit. And, to this point, it exists almost solely to nurture a sense of entitlement while creating destructive cycles that remain just below the surface but inescapable in their ramifications.

I will not bore you with a treatise on the merits of taking an education seriously. It does need noted, however, that we are a culture where such things are considering boring and absolutely toxic when it comes to keeping an audience. This is why cable news spends so much time on political personalities while also ignoring the very real and very troubling material conditions at the root of our problems, including education, housing, healthcare, climate change, and rampant exploitation. But I will say this: it is telling that, as America declines and becomes more and more embroiled in authoritarian ideology, that the emerging tool of choice minimizes active and engaged participation in learning and growing and developing a personal sense of curiosity and critical thinking.

That is at the heart of this problem. As Americans, we have a tendency to avoid discomfort at all costs. (

Danielle Moodie

and I discussed this on the latest episode of The Check-In for more on that subject). Our culture of consumerism is built on distraction. Our collective mythology of exceptionalism is meant to smooth out the more disturbing aspects of our privilege and what took place to bring us to power and privilege. The entire MAGA Movement is predicated on a deep-seated need of millions of Americans to collectively band together and violently oppose self-reflection or vulnerability in favor of self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement, and violence as a means of removing anything challenging their comfort. And AI as a technology, though it has use as a tool, is an innovation that offers a very, very simple thing.

The freedom of not thinking.

That offer is built on convenience. At the collegiate level, sitting and composing a research paper is actually hard work that takes time. There are so many things that would be immediately more enjoyable, or at least less taxing. Outsourcing that task might be seductive, but what is getting lost in the mix is the essence of learning and growth, which is time and energy and focus. And in an increasingly exploitative, Neoliberal environment where we are all feeling rushed and overwhelmed and beaten up on all sides, the idea of reclaiming some time here and there is incredibly appealing. It just so happens that here and in our luxury-ridden culture, what is happening is that we are being separated from the actual activities and focuses that would grow us as people and change us for the better.

In this case, AI is being positioned in day-to-day use to “liberate” us from a complicated and often uncomfortable human experience. It is not a coincidence that this is also the appeal of a strongman or authoritarian. For those of us who study authoritarianism this is often communicated as the “freedom of unfreedom,” which seems strange and contradictory. But it is personal regression. Being an aware, conscious human being is hard work. Being an adult is taxing and stressful. And, for many, regressing to being a child and having a parent, or an authoritarian stand-in, can be a relief.

You can hear this in authoritarian rhetoric where they can’t even stop themselves from referring to Donald Trump as “daddy” and fantasize about him using paternal violence to “set the home right again.” This is borne out of a background of deep familial trauma that, if left unobserved, can manifest in authoritarian ideology. Here, faced with American decline and worsening conditions, the Right regresses into children who not only can avoid self-introspection or growth, which are difficult and uncomfortable, but they can rally behind a foster father who will handle everything.

AI’s allure lies in this concept. Rather than doing the work of thinking and creating, people can choose to hand over the hard work and agency to a program. Navigating the world feels smoother this way as you don’t have to grapple with cognitive dissonance, learning new facts that might run contradictory to what you already believe, or engaging in the labor of becoming a fully conscious individual. To make it worse, the very deep dynamics I’ve touched on are wrapped in the illusion of “progress” and technology solving human problems. And, like handing control over to a parent, it doesn’t matter if the answers are wrong or bizarre or dangerous. Because regression revolves around not questioning your parents or realizing that they are human beings as well and often wrong about many, many things. It’s blind, religious faith because that faith feels better than sitting in that discomfort.

It isn’t hard to see where a full embrace and submission to AI will lead us. These are programs that are controlled by the oligarchical class, so doubtlessly the information and perspectives run through the machine will be twisted in their favor, creating a bizarre lens through which human interaction and thought will contort according to their agendas. The reliance on the technology, paired with this regression, creates the perfect conditions for authoritarian growth as critical thinking declines, submission increases, and, as we’ve seen with MAGA, a culture of regression and selfishness expands.

I am admittedly a Luddite, but I do not contend that there is no usefulness for this technology. As a person with autism, I’ve found it incredibly helpful to use AI as a corrective lens in terms of looking at my thought processing and structures. It’s been very valuable for me in this regard. But handing over thought and growth and culture creation, allowing it to cannibalize everything and regurgitate meaningless driven while replacing our agency and aiding the wealthy and their pet projects, all while consuming more and more resources and hurting our environment, that is annihilation in motion.

We must reinvigorate so many things in order to defeat this crisis. Democracy itself. Social programs. A feeling of interdependence. A renaissance of meaning and purpose. But we must also prioritize human agency and a revitalization of growth. We need to free art from capitalistic influence and destruction. Recognize that there is something inherently special about creation but also introspection. What we see now isn’t a tool of liberation. It’s a tool of oppression and wrecking the things that make life and being a human special.