All the current hysteria, both positive and negative, around AI/ LLMs reminds of the early days of the web when, as now, we were either entering the promised land or the end of days.

It was ever thus. Take any point in human history and see that we were both making huge progressive strides while simultaneously going to hell in a hand-cart.

The reality is neither. And both. It is multifaceted and nuanced and usually grey and mostly indeterminate as the present absorbs the future in ways that are impossible to predict.

I read very little coverage of AI except for a single lone voice which stands aside from the hysteria and calmly looks at AI from a truly human perspective. Sensitively, psychologically and, dare I say, spiritually.

Robert Saltzman writes regularly on Substack and has written two books on AI (Understanding Claude and The 21st Century Self) and deals with not just the techlogical implications but, and perhaps more importantly, questions concerning what it means to be human in a world shared with LLMs.

He ignores the polarisation of most AI commentary and exposes our all too human behaviour in the face of such a consequential technological development.

Reading him leaves one neither optimistic nor pessimistic but merely melancholic in the best possible way ā€“ when we recognise something deeply truthful about us that contradicts the stories we tell about ourselves.