The AI wave is here, it’s loud, and it’s surprisingly good at our jobs. Efficiency is up, complexity is down, and the tools keep getting sharper before we’ve finished learning the last ones. Genuinely impressive. Also, a little exhausting.
Which raises a question worth sitting with: in all this optimization, where do we put human connection? What happens to creativity that can’t be benchmarked?
I spent some time last week with a low-level sense of doom. Nothing serious: EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO BE OPTIMIZED, AUTOMATED, AND STREAMLINED INTO OBLIVION. Just a passing Tuesday night thought.
The antidote? Cake. Twelve cakes. Let me explain.
When my sister was getting her PhD at the University of Michigan, one of her friends carved out time annually, while pursuing her PhD, to host a legendary cake party. We’re talking 12 scratch-baked cakes: a cloud-soft tiramisu, a berry cake that tasted like summer, a Black Forest Cake that meant business. I was floored then. I’m still floored now.
An AI could generate 12 recipes in half a second. But could it replicate the generosity of that act, the perfectly non-optimized effort, or the spontaneous joy of 15 megawatt-minded grad students plus one very impressed younger sister visiting from California?
More of this, please. A new language, a physical book, a walk outside for no optimizable reason. You get the idea.
Let AI have the spreadsheets. The PowerPoint decks. The stuff that drains the clock. But let’s hold onto the rest: the acts of generosity that can’t be automated, the effort that doesn’t make logical sense but makes someone’s day. Or their whole year. That's the part worth protecting and I’m gonna try in my little corner of the world! 🍓 🙂
Cake party optional. Highly recommended.
Triple Berry Cake recipe, a delicious rendition of Sweet Lady Jane’s popular Los Angeles cake
Illustrations from one of my favorite childhood authors, Maurice Sendak
