Frank Chimero Beyond the Machine

Listen, I’m not naive. I know how little room there is to move inside these systems. It’s 2025, and I’m tired. I don’t believe words like these will change much. The people who could change things aren’t listening, and the incentives are too strong to keep the machine running.

From Frank Chimero's beautiful essay about AI https://frankchimero.com/blog/2025/beyond-the-machine/

Another item:

I used to like technology. The only reason it frustrates me is because I secretly believe it can satisfy me. Perhaps it once did, but the machine is not enough. Is that technology’s failure or my own growth? There are better things to suffer for.

The full section is worth quoting in full:

The lesson for AI might be similar. Its danger comes because it operates inside systems with no sense of “enough.” AI needs boundaries, and so do we. The question isn’t just “what can this machine do?” but “what should it serve?” and, most importantly, “when should we stop?”

Listen, I’m not naive. I know how little room there is to move inside these systems. It’s 2025, and I’m tired. I don’t believe words like these will change much. The people who could change things aren’t listening, and the incentives are too strong to keep the machine running.

So I look for something smaller: incremental progress, unexpected benefits, minor redirections, small refusals. I am not sure how to feel about it, which is why I am trying to be articulate in my confusion. I want to carve out a small creative place for myself in everything that is happening. Is it possible?

The optimist in me remembers Chihiro, the girl who brought the devouring spirit back down to size with her refusal. The pragmatist in me remembers Miyazaki, the artist who made her, still caught in the machines he tried to resist. The realist in me knows that whatever I see in them is coming from me.

There’s a quote by the philosopher and writer Simone Weil that I keep with me. She says:

“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, ‘I am suffering,’ than to say, ‘This landscape is ugly.’” Simone Weil In other words, it is better to stay with your own experience instead of projecting it outward.

Spirited Away was released in 2001. It has nothing to do with AI. If I gave this talk at a different time, No Face could have been crypto, could have been Google, could have been social media. Allegory has its limits. Simone Weil might say that what all these interpretations have in common is that I’m the one making them.

I used to like technology. The only reason it frustrates me is because I secretly believe it can satisfy me. Perhaps it once did, but the machine is not enough. Is that technology’s failure or my own growth? There are better things to suffer for.

Maybe writing this is my own version of finding some small work to do at Zeniba’s cottage. The wheel spins and I put another few lines down on the page. And I think, “the machine may know everything, but at least I know where to stop.”