Summary of Key Points
This article explores the sense of disillusionment within the tech community: amidst the wave of AI, professionals who once found meaning in their work are discovering that their tasks have become increasingly mechanical, devoid of human warmth and true value. While they create AI, they are also driven by it towards anxiety, to the point where they need to engage in “touch grass parties” (activities that avoid discussing AI to reconnect with reality) to affirm their existence. The article delves into the underlying trap of “workism”—the belief that work is a religious commitment, yet it overlooks the emptiness of the job itself. AI further exacerbates this issue by stripping away processes that involve collaboration and exploration, leading people to question: if work hasn’t disappeared, why have we already lost the sense of being human?
1. Tech Community’s “Touch Grass Parties”: A Collective Breath of Fresh Air in the Age of AI
The popular “touch grass parties” in Silicon Valley are a form of resistance to the overload of AI. With AI everywhere—conversations about it at meetings, during meals, and even while on vacation—the pressure from machines is overwhelming: engineers work overtime until dawn, founders bring their always-on computers to pick up their children, and intelligent systems remind them every ten minutes to take the next step. They create machines that never tire, yet they themselves have become like machines.
The only rule of these parties is “no talking about AI.” It’s like people who have been underwater for too long needing to emerge onto land to touch grass and confirm they are still in the real world. Behind this is a dual anxiety: fear of being replaced by AI (missing out on the “ticket to the new world”) drives them to start businesses or become internet celebrities; fear of losing their identity—despite possessing cutting-edge technology, they must prove they are human through these absurd activities, leading to collective depression.
2. Workism: The Trap of Treating the Office as a “Church”
“Workism” is a new term that describes the phenomenon where knowledge workers regard work as their spiritual sustenance—the office becomes a church, PPTs are the bible, and quarterly goals are their faith. For example, a commuter may be expressionless when discussing EBITDA (a financial metric) but brighten up when knitting a hat for their niece: the former is a performance of workism, while the latter represents true happiness.
However, much of the work is meaningless—creating PPTs for projects that won’t succeed, debating features of unused software, optimizing advertisements that no one will see. These tasks maintain their importance merely because everyone else is doing them. Workism is like opium, providing a self-deception that “I am changing the world” while masking the emptiness within.
3. AI Pops the Bubble: The Last Bits of Human Touch in Work Are Taken Away
The advent of AI has stripped away even the remaining human elements from work. In the past, even if a job was meaningless, it was still something you did personally—debating with colleagues, staying up late to revise PPTs, enduring the chaotic middle stages of collaboration. These processes, though exhausting, gave a sense of participation.
Now AI does everything for you: writing emails, formulating strategies, building websites, even generating entire marketing campaigns. You become an “administrator” of AI, yet you drift further away from the actual work itself—proposals are not your ideas, reports are not your words, and even the thinking process is replaced by AI. It’s like using AI to paint a picture; you only provide keywords, and no matter how beautiful the result, you lack the satisfaction of creating it yourself. Work has become “AI output + your signature,” leaving behind a sense of emptiness.
4. The Value of the “Chaotic Middle Stages”: Slowing Down, Being More Disorganized Is the Soul of Work
The “chaotic middle stages” refer to the inefficient but meaningful moments in work—arguments with colleagues leading to consensus, trial and error before finding a solution, or even casual chats about trivial matters. These seemingly wasteful times are actually the essence of work.
Just as misjudgments in sports make memorable moments, AI can maximize efficiency, but without collaboration and exploration, work becomes a cold assembly line. Research shows that creativity is highest when people do things out of interest and challenge—something AI deprives us of.
5. The Dilemma of Escape: Can We Really Break Free from Surface-Level Efforts?
Many want to escape this situation by learning pottery, farming, or living offline, but can they really? The article mentions the “landscape society”—where everything becomes a superficial activity. You may start a farm and make videos, only for the videos to become commodities, drawing you back into another cycle of artificiality; or you may start a business, yet still have to create the illusion that “we are important.”
However, there are small steps you can take: using no AI, having in-depth conversations with colleagues, allowing yourself to work at a slower pace, exploring inefficient methods, or doing something truly meaningful (like knitting a hat). The key is not to treat work as the entire meaning of life; focus more on people and relationships. No one will remember your PPTs, but they will remember you as a warm, genuine person.
The article’s ultimate question is: in the age of AI, how can we regain the sense of being human? The answer may lie in those meaningful, inefficient experiences—even if it’s just knitting a hat.
This article doesn’t merely discuss how AI threatens jobs; it delves into the fundamental nature of human existence. When work is no longer about “what you do” but about “who you become,” what AI takes away is not just our roles but also our understanding of our own value. The disillusionment in the tech community is a warning for all of us: let’s not let machines define our lives.