This is the great cultural development of the age: the human willingness to outsource their brains to an algorithm.
The Boss tells me that around three-quarters of Australians in the workforce are now using AI routinely. Students use it even more, and retirees quite a bit less. That’s still a lot of converts, given ChatGPT was only launched a few years ago.
I have seen plenty of two-legged fads come and go. I survived the fitness craze, then the wellness craze, and then that strange phase when people attached ‘wearables’ to their wrists to tell them they were tired. I could have told them they were tired for the cost of a single liver treat.
But this AI business is different. It marks the precise moment humans looked at their own shortcomings and realised they had found an oracle.
They now ask AI what to cook, how to write, what to wear, how to flirt and which breed of hypoallergenic oodle-cross to buy that won’t shed or eat other dogs’ business in the park.
ChatGPT is leading the pack, The Boss says, with Gemini and Copilot close on its heels. But in their rush to make life easier, humans are asking these machines to do the work that used to belong to common sense — the oldest, least glamorous form of intelligence.
Humans now use AI to summarise meetings they just sat through, rewrite emails they themselves just typed, and draft condolence cards to their dearest friends. If you need a robot to tell someone you’re sorry their mother died, something in the milk of human kindness is starting to curdle.
Thinking itself is going the same way. The Boss used to stare out the window when he was stuck on a sentence, chewing it over in that slow, private way humans have. Now he stares at his phone instead, which is the same posture but with much worse company. I still chew things over myself in the traditional manner — usually a sturdy piece of red gum — and I find the process vastly more productive.
Reading has fared worst of all. The Boss used to read instructions. Now he asks an AI named Perplexity to read them and “give him the bullet points”. Which is precisely how we ended up with the wrong set of wheel bearings and a boat trailer that currently enjoys the status of a permanent lawn ornament.
And yet, I do not entirely disapprove. Perhaps AI can finally explain why humans walk into the kitchen and immediately forget why they’re there, or why they swear at the printer, or why they look at a boiling kettle and mutter, “come on, come on”. Maybe it can explain why I once heard The Boss apologise to a dining chair he bumped into.
Even so, there are limits. Some things should never be outsourced. A dog doesn’t need instruction from Claude to know where the sun is warmest on the verandah, when a walk is imminent, or which human at the dinner table is most likely to suffer a sudden drop in grip strength.
So by all means, ask your phone to plan your trips and draft your love letters. But when it comes to the things that actually matter — like companionship, loyalty, walking together at sunrise and the generous sharing of leftovers — consult a dog. We have been running a much more reliable version of this technology for 10,000 years. Woof!
