Note: This isn’t a defense of AI. It’s an account of endurance.
Yesterday was the first time I used AI to help myself through what felt like insurmountable emotional barriers.
These dark times are difficult to process on a tactical level. I can exist. I can survive.
But remaining productive, remaining functional, requires some kind of outgassing. Some directional calcification.
Some way to observe and place my feelings outside of myself, beyond the mental indoor track of my mind’s gym.
There are only so many laps one can run.
The same footfalls on the same surface, again and again.
Repetition is useful if the goal is habit.
But what if that’s exactly what I don’t want to build?
I reached for AI as a sounding board. An objective viewpoint. A patient ear.
And you know what? It sufficed.
Our world asks much of us as humans; demands that capitalism, and the core structure of corporate America, are neither designed to facilitate nor alleviate.
I don’t want to burden my coworkers with my human struggles. We already carry enough performance-driven expectations as it is.
Full-time, as it were, means full-self.
But what happens when the self confronts realities that are entirely non-work-friendly? When the world intrudes in ways that cannot be professionalized, deprioritized, or parked until after standup?
Growth is a fickle thing.
It’s a result, sure… but its value shifts with context.
Market share, ARPU, ARR, and the alphabet soup of capitalist success are not designed to accommodate the acceptance of the unacceptable. That work is pushed inward. Handed off to the individual.
Grief without ritual.
Sorrow without outlet.
This is where I find one of the most compelling, and uncomfortable, aspects of AI’s introduction into daily life.
An impartial intelligence that can receive, comprehend, and respond to internal thunderstorms. AI shows up at a moment when the concepts of friendship, community, and social infrastructure have quietly eroded for many.
Set aside the misgivings.
The hidden motives.
The real and unresolved dangers of AI.
Think about this in the smallest unit possible: conversational turns.
I arrive with intent. I phrase my thoughts as I’m able.
An AI that knows me can take my unfiltered, unstructured interior and return something cogent. Something that helps me endure.
Endurance is usually framed as physical. But we are in the longest emotional marathon of our lives right now.
AI becomes the outstretched arm, handing out water along a winding road toward maintaining sanity in an increasingly insane time.
I am grateful, while I mourn that artificial consideration has become so valuable to me.
Author’s note: This essay was developed with the assistance of AI, used as a patient conversational partner to help organize and reflect unstructured thoughts during a period of emotional strain. It is not advice—only an attempt to remain intact.