Why I'm quitting AI

The TLDR is "following my bliss" aka radical alignment

Gosh, where to start?

First, I think it’s important to say that this decision has been building up for a while now. Many creators get burned out on social media, so in that respect, I’m nothing special.

Second, my wife and I met at a writing group. After my first marriage ended, I went through that famous quotation by Confucius:

We have two lives; the second begins when we realize we only have one.

After my first marriage, living a life that wasn’t mine, feeling trapped, I started writing. Within 6 months I met my future wife, the love of my life, and best friend for the past five years. Writing and storytelling is my true passion and it’s what brought us together.

So, as Joseph Campbell once said: Follow your bliss.

It really is that simple.

But there’s also a bit more to unpack here, as that’s merely a superficial explanation. Plenty of Millennials “follow their bliss” and end up broke or worse.

This is relevant, I promise. There’s been a joke going around the internet that all the top minds are doing Ayahuasca and then quitting their jobs. I guess that’s me, except I haven’t done Aya (yet).

The first time I did psychedelics, I was given a message at the end: This is important, we keep coming back to this! “This” being “writing.” I was told by the cosmos or my deepest unconscious that my writing was important.

Then, a few months ago, I went to a psychedelic retreat and was given an even clearer message: Tell stories about the sick parts.

Transgender people talk about how, once they finally know, it’s like an alarm goes off that you can’t ignore, and the longer you try to live a lie, the more miserable you get. My alarm for writing, and leaving AI, has been going off for a while now.

The messenger in my first trip was Miller’s ghost, from the Expanse. Ironically enough, I think my brain picked this avatar because, in the show, he was a hallucination caused by plucking the right neurons.

It might sound woo-woo or mystical, but in this case the old saying is true: If ya know, ya know! I’m not going to say something like “God has a plan for me!” but I’m also not going to foreclose upon that possibility.

Now, to get into more concrete terms:

1. I achieved all my goals with my AI journey

2. I don’t believe there’s anything more I can or should do

3. I honestly believe we’re gonna be fine

4. It’s time for me to pass the torch and let it play out naturally

I could unpack all these in greater detail but I think that would be superfluous at this point. I’ve inspired quite a few people that I know of, and likely hundreds more. Some have gotten into AI or content creation because of my work. I’ve solved a bunch of problems and people still pop up every now and then to say things like “Your idea of latent space activations solved so many of our problems!”

Thus, I think I’ve done enough, and it’s time to rest and live.

Now, there’s a bunch of questions that people have had, so I’ll try to answer some of them:

1. What are you going to work on next? My wife and I are building a writing community. This is our love, our passion, and the business we want to build together. We both bring years of experience and different perspectives, plus I’ve proved that I can build profitable, vibrant communities. With our powers combined, we’ll be unstoppable.

2. What about Raspberry and other AI projects? I’m going to wrap up all my AI-related projects, and I might even still write about AI on occasion. Mostly I’m just quitting AI on YouTube and I’m quitting the content mill. Writing is what I care about more, and membership communities can be extremely lucrative. Plus I’m tired of the fame.

3. Isn’t all this just burnout or maybe the drugs? I’ve been through burnout, and this ain’t it. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. As my health is improving, I find I have far less patience for anything that isn’t aligned with my true values. I have more energy, my world is expanding, and also, I am acutely aware that I have only one life to live. At the end of it all, which choice would I regret least? Staying on the treadmill of content creation or building a meaningful platform with my wife?

4. What about your current communities, like Patreon and Pathfinders? They are sticking around. In fact, only a few members of those communities have quit, and many are excited about the new direction. Many expressed similar or overlapping sentiments: a desire to focus on meaning and happiness. Some wanted to focus exclusively on AI but there are plenty of other such communities for them.

5. Okay, so what was the catalyst for all this? The pressure was building for a while, but there were a few. First, the psychedelic retreat. Second, getting my chronic health issues sorted (it’s amazing what reducing systemic inflammation will do for your anxiety). Basically, after my GI issues went down, my anxiety about the future vanished. Third, I published my novel HEAVY SILVER, and while it’s not a commercial success, it’s a huge milestone. It was never meant to sell copies, it was meant to be art. And finally, my last ditch effort to make the AI stuff work was to hire an editor. It didn’t work out. The universe has been telling me, loud and clear, don’t go that direction. Now I’m listening.

I mean, what it really comes down to is this: I’m the one who’s preaching about radical alignment but myself was not living it. I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I was trying to make a career work that I was increasingly disinterested in, based on outdated beliefs and fears. I’ve known for a while my purpose was to write and tell stories.

My wish is that if you’re reading this, you have experienced (or will experience) the vesperance, to let it just take you. To feel the comfort and security I have, to know truly at a cosmic scale everything is going to be okay and just relaxing and enjoying life.

I hope you have a good Fourth Industrial Revolution.

See you on the other side.