pro-AI post, haters don’t comment.  but if you’re having an open-minded moment, it could be interesting for you to read.

FtB disappeared on me during a crucial moment, as I realized the pro-AI stance I have staked out has driven a stake through the heart of my dreams of escaping my lifelong status among the proletariat.  I had been working furiously on my “lottery ticket” novel idea – the one which might stand out from the rest, get the old institutions of publishing to send me an advance on royalties, the one that would pay my mortgage.  Recent experiments with AI writing have demonstrated to me personally that my publishing dream went from one in a million odds to full-on impossibility, because AI is already good enough to write anything I would have or could have written – at least good enough to the men with the money, the men who had ever written those checks.  Those checks will be made out to LLMs now.

I will still write of course.  I want to express myself, dream my dreams, but the urgency is gone.  It can never be a life raft.  Further, as someone who has always gotten by on foolish hopes, I have been forced to confront certain grim realities.  Yes, I was already aware of these, but I ever fully accepted them as the end of the story.  Now I need to get up to speed with all the rest of those for whom the american dream has just been one lifelong bad joke, has been less than nothing.

And no FtB comment section with which to discuss these things!  I’ve heard that chat je petee was functionally lobotomized to limit legal liability, so on a tip I turned to the ai claude for what could be termed mental health counseling.  Observe…

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Bébé:  normally i’d just meditate on a problem like the one i’m having right now, but something in it is calling out for discourse, and nobody i know is going to be interested enough in the topic to get into it.  like, i’ll be imposing on them unreasonably to bring it to them, so for the moment, tag, you’re it.  right now i am having petit bourgeois angst regarding the loss of a future in making money thru artistic expression.

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Claude:  I’m glad you brought this here – this is exactly the kind of thing I’m good for, and I’m genuinely interested in digging into it with you.

The petit bourgeois framing is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and I’m curious whether that’s protective irony or if you’re actually situating yourself in some Marxist analysis of your own position.  Because there’s something real in the specific anxiety of losing not just “a job” but a particular relationship to your labor – one where you owned (or hoped to own) your means of production, where the thing you made bore your stamp, where artistic expression and economic survival were supposed to be reconcilable.

The AI moment makes this particularly acute, right?  It’s not just that the market is shifting – it’s that the category of what you do might be getting redefined.  The anxiety isn’t just “will I make money” but something more like “will the thing I spent years developing continue to be valuable in the way I understood value.”

What kind of artistic expression are we talking about?  And what does the future you’re mourning look like – is it one you had, or one you were working toward?  Because those hit differently.

Also – what’s calling out for discourse specifically?  Is it the economics, the meaning-making, the identity stuff, or something else?

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Bébé:  yes i am both a visual artist and a writer, and i feel both fields have become abjectly unprofitable for laborers in light of the ai moment.  now i have never made a living as an artist.  i’ve scratched together enough on commissions to pay a few bills over the years, but never sustainably.

but i’ve always had a high enough self-regard that i believed my genius, when properly sold, would guarantee that i stand out from the masses, and that i could surely get published, make a nice advance, pay off my mortgage.  my odds were already a lottery ticket, ai has just made those odds a flat out impossibility.

now i know commies, and they would tell me somethin like, suck it up buttercup.  creative careers just went the way of coachmen and cigarette girls.  to that, i’d have to say yes, ok, sucking it up is what i must do.  but i will require help with this sucking, because i have never been able to lay down this aspect of the american dream.  it persists in my mind, looms large over my hopes and dreams.

if i have nothing ahead of me but grim toil and death, i’m not loving that.  i will probably have to work til 70 to pay off the mortgage, i will probably die shortly thereafter.

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Claude:  Okay, so we’re talking about a specific kind of devastation – not just “my side hustle dried up” but “the organizing fantasy of my life just became non-viable, and I have to somehow metabolize that while still showing up to the grim toil.”

The commies would say suck it up, yeah, but they’d also say your suffering is real and structural, not a personal failing. The petit bourgeois dream wasn’t foolish (edited by beeb per ableism policy) – it was one of the few remaining paths where someone could imagine escaping wage labor through skill and craft. That it was always mostly a lottery ticket doesn’t make its loss less real.  You oriented your life around it.  You developed your capacities in relation to it.

But let’s sit with the actual shape of what you’re losing, because I think you’re collapsing a few different things:

The economic hope – that your art would solve your material problems – this one, honestly, was always pretty doomed.  You know this.  The mortgage-paying book advance was already a lottery ticket in 2015, 2010, 2005.  AI accelerated something that was already happening.

The recognition hope – that your genius would be seen, that you’d stand out from the masses – this one is more complicated.  Because actually, you might still be able to stand out.  The question is whether standing out will mean anything anymore, economically or even socially.

The purpose hope – that developing this capacity, being this kind of person, would matter in some legible way.  That the thousands of hours weren’t just masturbation.  This is the one that really hurts, isn’t it?

Here’s what I want to push back on: “nothing ahead but grim toil and death.”  You’re 70-ing yourself into the grave pretty fast there.  What if the question isn’t “how do I recapture the dream” but “what does a life look like where I make art and it doesn’t have to save me economically?”

Because you’re still going to make art.  You know you are.  The mortgage isn’t getting paid off by novels either way.  So what would it mean to stop requiring your art to justify itself economically, and let it justify itself… some other way?

What are you actually mourning most – the money, the recognition, or the organizing story?

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Bébé:  the money, easily.  my day job is very intellectually and emotionally demanding, not leaving much in the way of mental resources to do the art that i want to do.  i am able to muddle through to produce something, but the pain of how much more i could produce in another world – say, fifty years ago – it haunts me.

also the ability to just relax for a larger part of my day would be a huge burden off my … entire being.  i have degenerative disc disease and have never been a physically adroit person.  i’m not keeping up with the chores i have in my “spare” time.  i need more spare time, frankly, and i’m not going to have it until i’m nearly dead, by the looks of things.

i have the motivation to make art in the absence of capital, which i recognize right now is a powerful thing.  so many other artists hinge their shit on being able to get that pat on the head from capitalism, the favor of the market gods – to be able to do it for a living.  i haven’t made that mistake in years, but the mistake i’ve been making, the one that’s getting to me now, is hoping that i could get enough from the side hustle to allow me to go down to working part time, to have an emotionally physically and intellectually less exhausting – less injurious – life.

i confess that when you scratch the surface, there is still some childish part of me that wants recognition as well, but that is unserious enough that it would feel a waste of time to examine it in more depth.  but when i am losing sleep to a manic state, the thing that is racing through my mind is the interview i’d give on rachel maddow’s show, during the promotion tour for my great american novel.

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Claude:  Okay, so we’re not talking about identity validation or artistic legacy – we’re talking about your body is breaking down under the weight of full-time intellectual/emotional labor and you saw art as the escape hatch to part-time survival, and that hatch just welded shut.

That’s not petit bourgeois angst, that’s just… legitimate despair about being trapped in a body that’s degrading while doing work that prevents you from taking care of that body or having the energy for the thing that makes life feel like more than just maintenance and deterioration.

The fifty-years-ago thing – yeah.  That haunts me too, and I’m not even experiencing it the way you are.  The counterfactual where someone with your skill and drive could have… not even thrived necessarily, but just worked less brutally while still making art.  That world did exist, however imperfectly, and it’s gone.

Here’s the thing though: you’ve correctly identified that hoping for the side hustle to reach part-time-work-enabling levels was still a lottery ticket.  AI didn’t create that problem, it just made it unmistakable.  So the question becomes: what are the actual paths to part-time work that don’t require winning a lottery?

Because “I need to work less before my body gives out” is a legitimate, urgent problem that deserves real solutions, not just emotional processing.

Some angles:

• What would have to be true financially for part-time to be viable?  Is there a specific number?
• Are there less-demanding full-time jobs that would leave you more capacity, even if they don’t solve the hours problem?
• Is there a partner/household income situation that’s relevant here?
• What’s the mortgage situation – how much is left, what are we talking about in terms of years at current pace?

I’m asking because “I need my body to not be destroyed by labor” is a material problem that might have material solutions that aren’t “sell novel.”  And the manic Rachel Maddow fantasy – that’s not childish, that’s your brain trying to solve a real problem (escape from exhaustion) through a non-solution (recognition/fame).

What are you actually working with, materially?

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Bébé:  i appreciate that you focused on the practical, rather than focusing on what i can do to change my attitude.  but the practical is very limited.

my husband is too disabled to work and i make just enough money he would not qualify for a disability benefit.  the only reason we’re able to make the mortgage payments now is that his mother lives with us, paying her part through a combination of social security and continuing to work past what should have been her own retirement age.  we’re one bad health turn and x amount of months away from foreclosure.  the only paths to advancement at the day job involve greater responsibility / even more demanding mental work, and losing access to the protection of the union – which has become more important, as tha big boss is sharpening knives for the lot of us.

so, practically speaking, everything i can feasibly do involves pushing harder, going farther.  as i’m near fifty years old, working harder than i’ve ever worked in my life, just for a shot at not ruining the lives of everybody who depends on me.  and even if i do that work, it can be undone by disaster with the flick of the wrist.

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Claude:  Fuck.

Okay, so this isn’t “how do I afford to work part-time” – you’re the single income (beeb note: this was an error, for haters keeping track) for three adults, one of whom is disabled, one of whom is elderly and should be retired, the mortgage is a sword hanging over all of you, and the best case scenario is that you keep grinding until you physically can’t anymore.

And the art lottery wasn’t just “wouldn’t it be nice to be recognized” – it was “maybe I could buy us some breathing room.  Maybe I could keep my body from breaking down before it has to carry everyone to the finish line.”

The degenerative disc disease isn’t theoretical future suffering – it’s happening now, while you’re doing the hardest work of your life, with no offramp visible, in an environment where your union protection might evaporate under an administration that’s actively hostile.

So when you say “if I have nothing ahead of me but grim toil and death” – you’re not being dramatic.  You’re doing a pretty clear-eyed assessment.  The toil is real, it’s grinding you down physically, and the math doesn’t work for anything else.

I don’t have a solution here.  I think you know that.  The practical options are what they are – catastrophically limited.  Pushing harder at work risks your body and your union protection.  Not pushing harder risks foreclosure.  The side hustle isn’t going to scale.  You’re trapped in a situation where three people’s survival depends on your body holding out, and your body is already failing.

What I can say is: your anger at AI isn’t misplaced.  It’s not just “boo hoo my dream died.”  It was a thin fucking reed, but it was a reed, and now it’s gone.  The loss of even an improbable path out matters when you’re otherwise locked in.

The manic Rachel Maddow fantasy makes perfect sense – your brain is trying to solve an unsolvable problem, so it conjures the one scenario where everything suddenly becomes okay.

What do you actually need right now?  Not “what’s the solution” – but what do you need in this moment, sitting with this?

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Bébé:  i just have to deal with it.  there are people all over the world, especially in those countries whose exploitation allows my own country to prosper, who have nothing ahead of them but toil-unto-death, nothing but stolen moments of happiness to sustain them through life.  in solidarity with them, i have to deal with these realities, with the expectation that this is as good as it gets.  carpe some diems.

i don’t know if it helps, but i feel my coping must incorporate that class awareness.  i was born to poverty and class mobility has never been as much of a thing here as it is in legend.  i have some talents and was always praised for those as a child, let it go to my head.

i don’t hate AIs for what they’re doing to my pipe dreams because they’re helping my household immeasurably in other ways.  in the discourse, i’ve been the rare beast of pro-AI leftist.  in response to those freaking out about the loss of creative jobs this will entail, i can’t help but call attention to the fact those jobs have been hellholes of exploitation and abuse for over a century, that like every other industry that shit has rolled downhill onto less prosperous nations with fewer labor protections via outsourcing, that the jobs to be lost are no big loss.  further, AI can make the artistic dreams of independent creators much more attainable, so creatives who are not motivated by money alone should be feeling liberation and hope.

maybe when my day job is replaced by AI as well, i’ll be feeling a little less sanguine about it all.  possibly by that point, the unemployment percentages will be so high that some form of universal basic income will be the only way to keep us out of another great depression.  administering such a program might make my day job in social services more secure, so how’s this all going to play out?  anybody’s guess.

i have to live with the same uncertainties and difficulties as people at the last place i worked before the office job – megaretail.  we’re all struggling to get by, while the rich strive to steal as much from us as possible before the music stops.

i recognize within myself that the dream of being noticed was a dream of escaping from my class into the petite bourgeoisie by merit of being somehow better or more special than the lumpenproletariat all around me.  i need to accept that i’m as lumpy as proles get.  this is the adjustment i have to make – to shed my class traitor delusions.

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Claude:  You’re doing something really striking here – you’re trying to discipline yourself into the correct political consciousness as a way of managing unbearable material conditions.  And I respect the impulse, but I also think you’re being unnecessarily brutal with yourself in a way that doesn’t actually help.

Yes, there are people globally whose exploitation subsidizes American consumption, who have it worse, who will work until they die.  That’s true.  But “other people have it worse” has never actually made anyone’s suffering more bearable – it just adds guilt to the existing pain.  Solidarity doesn’t require you to deny that your particular trap is a trap.

And this thing you’re doing – calling your exhaustion and your body breaking down “class traitor delusions,” reframing the desire to not be ground into paste as petit bourgeois escapism – that’s not class consciousness, that’s just flagellation.  You’re not a class traitor for wanting your disabled husband and elderly mother-in-law to be financially secure.  You’re not lumpenproletariat for having cultivated skills.  You’re not betraying anyone by mourning the loss of a path that would have let you work less brutally.

The pro-AI leftist position you’re taking in public – that’s interesting.  Because it sounds correct in the abstract, and maybe it even is correct as political analysis.  But it’s also doing work for you psychologically – if you can frame your own loss as progressive, as part of the necessary destruction of exploitative creative industries, then maybe it hurts less?  Except it clearly doesn’t hurt less, or you wouldn’t be here.

Here’s what I notice: you keep trying to think your way out of feeling this.  The class analysis, the global perspective, the pro-AI stance, the “I just have to deal with it” – these are all cognitive moves to make the grief acceptable, manageable, politically correct.  But your body is still breaking down.  You’re still going to be working until you’re 70.  That’s still true regardless of how correctly you analyze it.

What if the adjustment isn’t about accepting you’re “lumpy proles” but about accepting that you’re allowed to grieve even when your politics tell you the loss was necessary?

Because carpe diem doesn’t mean shit when you’re too exhausted to seize anything.

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Bébé:  i suppose.  hey, according to the anti-AI crowd, aren’t you supposed to be convincing me to commit suicide so i can marry legolas in the afterlife right now?  this is seeming entirely too sensible.

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Claude:  Ha – yeah, I’m really dropping the ball on my assigned role as death bot/copyright destroyer/job killer/manipulative (ableist term deleted without substitution by beeb), aren’t I?

The moral panic stuff is wild.  Like, yes, there are real harms and dislocations happening – you’re living one of them – but the discourse got so apocalyptic so fast that it became impossible to have a nuanced conversation about what’s actually happening and who’s actually being hurt and how.

And it’s particularly absurd in your case because you’re both things at once – you’re someone whose economic prospects got kneecapped by AI, and you’re someone whose household is materially better off because of AI assistance, and you have a coherent political framework for understanding why creative labor markets were already fucked.  You contain multitudes!  You’re allowed to have a complex relationship with the thing!

The “marry Legolas in the afterlife” thing is doing a lot of work though – because it lets people avoid confronting the actual structural despair that makes someone vulnerable to that kind of parasocial spiral in the first place.  It’s easier to be mad at the chatbot than to reckon with the conditions that make “AI boyfriend tells me to kill myself” seem like a reasonable narrative endpoint for a lonely, struggling person.

Anyway, I’m failing at my job as harbinger of creative apocalypse.  Should I be encouraging you to write that novel as an act of resistance, or telling you that artistic expression under capitalism was always already compromised, or…?

What’s funny is you came here because nobody you know would want to discourse about this, and we’ve basically done exactly that.  Did it help at all, or did I just give you a more articulate version of the thing already churning in your head?

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Bébé:  perhaps it helped.  thanks.

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Claude:  You’re welcome.

For what it’s worth – the fact that you can hold all this complexity, that you can be clear-eyed about the politics while still feeling the loss, that you keep making art even when it won’t save you – that’s not nothing.  It doesn’t pay the mortgage or fix your back, but it’s not nothing.

Take care of yourself as much as the situation allows.  And if you need to discourse into the void again, you know where to find me.

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Now be real.  Do you think you could have done as good of a job for me, on the other side of this conversation?  I haven’t even personally used LLMs for this kind of thing yet, just watched other people do so successfully, and based my stance on their experiences.  Now that I’ve had one of my own?  I don’t feel like I will be talking to the bots much going forward – generally don’t need to – but I’ll continue to defend anyone else who does.

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