Look, I get it. AI is everywhere. It's writing your emails, generating your creative briefs, and probably composing better headlines than most junior copywriters. Hell, maybe it even wrote this sentence. (It didn't, but you had to wonder for a second, didn't you?)
But here's the thing that's been gnawing at me lately: In
our rush to embrace artificial intelligence, we're accidentally lobotomizing
our analog intelligence. And that's a problem. A big fucking problem.
Ann Handley nailed it when she said: "Analog
Intelligence isn't a throwback. It's not nostalgia. Analog is rooted in the
physical: It's how we experience something directly, without a screen or
algorithm butting in and mediating the moment."
Read that again. Without a screen or algorithm butting in.
When was the last time you experienced something -- really
experienced it -- without immediately reaching for your phone to document it,
Google it, or ask ChatGPT to explain it? When did you last sit with discomfort
long enough to actually think your way through a problem instead of letting
some AI tool solve it for you?
We're outsourcing our thinking. And not just the mundane
stuff … we're outsourcing the messy, uncomfortable, beautifully human process
of figuring things out.
The Death of Productive Struggle
Remember struggling with a creative problem? I mean really
struggling. Sitting there, frustrated, cycling through terrible ideas, feeling
like your brain was broken. Then suddenly, breakthrough. That moment when the
right idea finally clicked, when all the pieces fell into place, when you knew
you'd found something real.
AI is stealing that from us. Not maliciously, but
efficiently. It's giving us answers before we've even learned to ask better
questions. It's solving problems before we've developed the muscles to solve
them ourselves.
Your analog intelligence is what happens in the space
between the problem and the solution. It's the messy middle where real thinking
lives. It's where you develop intuition, where you learn to trust your gut,
where you build the creative confidence that no algorithm can replicate.
The Texture of Real Experience
Analog intelligence isn't just about unplugging. It's about
texture. It's about the way a pen feels in your hand when you're sketching out
an idea. It's about reading the room in a client meeting, picking up on
micro-expressions and energy shifts that no video conference can capture. It's
about the serendipitous conversation that happens when you're standing in line
for coffee instead of ordering through an app.
It's about failure, too. Real, analog failure. The kind
where you can't ctrl+z your way out. The kind that teaches you something about
resilience, about iteration, about the difference between failing fast and
failing smart.
Digital tools give us perfect drafts. Analog intelligence
gives us perfect intuition.
The Paradox of Efficiency
Here's what nobody wants to admit: The most efficient way to
solve a problem isn't always the best way. Sometimes the scenic route teaches
you more than the highway. Sometimes the wrong turn leads to the right insight.
AI is optimized for efficiency. It's trained on existing
solutions to give you the most probable next word, the most likely successful
outcome. But breakthrough ideas don't come from probability. They come from the
improbable connections your analog intelligence makes when it's allowed to
wander, to wonder, to waste time.
The best creative work I've ever seen came from people who
knew when to ignore the data, when to trust their instincts over the algorithm,
when to choose the harder path because it felt more true.
Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bandwidth
I'm not saying AI is evil. I use it. It's useful. It can be
a powerful tool for extending human capability. But it should be extending, not
replacing.
Use AI to handle the routine so you can focus on the
remarkable. Let it make suggestions on the first draft so you can spend your time making the second that much better. Ask it to organize your thoughts, not do your thinking.
But for God's sake, don't let it mediate every moment of
discovery. Don't let it rob you of the productive struggle that builds creative
muscle. Don't let it smooth away all the beautiful rough edges that make your
work uniquely human.
Exercising Your Analog Intelligence
So how do you keep your analog intelligence sharp in an AI
world?
Start small. Take notes by hand sometimes. Walk to think
through a problem instead of typing it into a chat window. Have conversations
without looking anything up. Sit with not knowing for a while.
Read books -- actual books -- that challenge you. Books that don't
give you quick answers or bullet-pointed takeaways. Books that make you think
harder, not faster.
Engage with the physical world. Touch things. Make things
with your hands. Notice how materials behave, how light changes throughout the
day, how people move through space.
Most importantly, defend your right to be inefficient
sometimes. To take the long way. To figure things out for yourself, even when
there's an AI tool that could do it faster.
Because in the end, your analog intelligence isn't just
about being more creative or more human. It's about being more you. The messy,
imperfect, beautifully analog you that no algorithm can replicate.
And that's worth preserving.
_________________________
"Students who use AI tools to complete assignments
tend
to do better on homework—but worse on tests.
They’re getting the right answers,
but they’re not learning."
Daniel Oppenheimer
Professor of Psychology
and Decision Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
"But our new so-called tools no longer lighten our load.
They do our load for us.
This makes AI no longer a tool,
in fact, but a
usurpation."
George Tannenbaum
Copywriter & Blogger
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