AI promises to free up time. But what if it spares us from learning, writing, painting and exploring the world?

‘The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative,’ writes Joseph Earp. Illustration: Eva Bee

As much as I have the general vibe of a luddite (strange hobbies, socially maladjusted, unfathomable fashion choices, etc) I have to hand it to automation: it’s nice that computers have made some boring things in our lives less boring.

I side with the writer and philosopher John Gray, who in his terrifying work of eco-nihilism Straw Dogs balances the fact that human beings are a plague animal who are wrecking the biosphere that supports them with the idea that we have made our lives easier through technology. Gray, in particular, calls anaesthetised dentistry an “unmixed blessing”.