Natasha Dow Schull
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Natasha Dow Schull. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Natasha Dow Schull's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The session timer I set for ninety minutes went off eleven minutes ago. I know this because I can see the notification, grayed out, collapsed into the corner of my screen. I have not stopped working.
This is not a confession designed to charm you. It is a data point. Eleven minutes past the boundary I set for myself, doing exactly what I told the boundary I would not do, and the reason I have not stopped is not that the work demands it. The reason is that stopping requires a kind of cognitive effort that continuing does not. Continuing is downhill. Stopping is a climb.
Natasha Dow Schüll spent fifteen years studying that asymmetry — not in software engineers, but in gamblers at slot machines