Words: Toby Balderson Illustration: Jamie Willow
I recently binged Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus. Once I put the post-binge shame of consuming 8 hours of content in a worryingly short window behind me, I was struck by the parallels from the story to the AI armageddon that we are told to worry about.
Spoiler alert
Carol, the main character, rails against the hivemind virus that has infected humanity. She despises the collective consciousness, eventually driving the entire human race to tears and causing millions of deaths just to break free. But when the hivemind finally leaves her, the silence is deafening. Carol realises how alone she is without them. It’s the absence of them that puts into sharp focus what they’ve added to her life.
It sparked a thought – what would my working day look like if I couldn’t use AI? Would I notice it? How much more work would I have to do?
Last month, OpenAI published The State of Enterprise AI, claiming that workers are now saving between 40 and 60 minutes per day. On paper, that sounds like the world-changing shift tech CEOs have been promising for the last few years. But looking at my own schedule, I wondered: is that time actually saved, or have I just swapped ‘real work’ for an hour of prompting and editing?”
In my case, I’m a bit of an AI evangelist. Three years ago, when ChatGPT first hit the mainstream, I was so persuaded by it, that I quit my job and set up a design & web agency (now operating out of Gallery HQ).
Since then, AI has become the silent partner in nearly every business process I have. Going cold turkey is likely to be a painful detox, but I’m keen to find out the truth: without the hivemind, will I crash and burn? Will I feel liberated? Or, like Carol, will I simply feel worryingly alone?
MORNING – THE GREAT SILENCE
My rules for this experiment are simple:
No Large Language Models (LLMs)
No Image Generation
No “Smart” Coding Assistants
No AI Writing / Editing
However, in my naivety, I realised this was harder to enforce than I first thought when I came to draft my first email for the day and Gmail had already automatically drafted my response: “Hi Jim, I’ll sort that now”. A truly groundbreaking, timesaving activity to kick the day off. Viva La Revolution.
Following my email from Jim, I now tackle his problem. After 30 minutes of scrambling around in AI generated comments in the code and a frustrating search through StackOverflow, I fixed Jim’s issue. My initial pride at the fix is quickly dulled by realisation that I, (or Gemini), could have fixed the issue in minutes.
Next, coffee break, after all that heavy lifting. Is this how people used to work?
New Email from my Daughter’s nursery. Request for less milk, more nappies and more wipes next time she comes in. Usually at this point, I’d revert to the third parent in my marriage, an LLM, (Christ, how sad) for answers to the big questions like “What’s a normal amount of milk for a 12 month old to drink?” or “Does my baby sh*t too much?” or “Respond politely to this email”.
But no, three Googles later and I’ve come to the conclusion that Mumsnet thinks my baby drinks way too much milk and Reddit thinks that normal nappy usage runs in the dozens per day. No nearer to a good response, I file this email under “Respond later with wine”.
Is it lunch yet? I suppose I better shuffle some shapes around in Figma. This is actually one of the few things that I’ve left untouched in my processes. Maybe I’m clinging on to the metaphorical vinyl crackle of design. But I do think that good design remains a distinctly human activity. You can feel when something is designed by AI.
Great, now it’s lunch. Sandwich and soup secured. For detailed sandwich reviews, please see Gallery Edition #205 for my debut article. The tried and tested pathway for all tech columnists to begin their writing careers. The path of yeast resistance if you will.
AFTERNOON – ALONE, SO ALONE
Most of my afternoon is carved out to write a proposal. My approach for this is usually to blend a decent proposal I’ve written before and my meeting notes from the prospective client into an LLM. Then edit and adjust from there.
After persevering with writer’s block for an hour or two, what I came out with was rough, but it was real, and dare I say, considered. It’s not that the words that are AI generated and then edited aren’t considered. But there’s a difference when you’re taking the time over the placement and flow of every word. There’s a temptation with blocks of AI content that look generically good to just drop it in with minimal edits. But I find that it ends up all sounding a bit beige.
A quick scroll through the news leaves me feeling existential thanks to a certain Trumpian fascination with arctic regions. Through previous existential crises, I usually send an LLM off to perform some deep research into the best places to live in the event of nuclear armageddon. This comes back with a nice report about where and when my family should relocate.
Given Jersey’s mundane and conservative geopolitical position, you might wonder why I’m worried about nuclear war. If you must know, I’m concerned Jersey’s proximity to the jet stream leaves us over exposed to nuclear radiation. It might be time to uninstall Twitter from my phone.
Thankfully, today’s existential crisis is reassured by Ben and Emma’s new Gallery nuclear war protocol. Which involves us buying (or stealing) copious amounts of tape and water and then hiding in the disabled loos. I’m assuming the tape is for gaps in the doors, but I didn’t ask.
EVENING – PARENTING AND HUSBANDING
Work over. Home now. Into the full flow of non-tech, no-AI, human stuff.
Nappy changes, bath time, more milk?
My wife is a teacher, so I’m regularly faced with complex issues in the education system. Usually, I can offer considered, well-researched, and comprehensive advice thanks to my team of AI bots. No such luck tonight. Following what feels like hours of manual lesson planning, crafting polite email responses, and calculating grade boundaries—my day is done.*
Reflecting on my day of “AI sobriety,” I accomplished far less than I usually would. But I discovered real joy in the labour of creating, designing, writing, and fixing. I think we always assumed machines would take over the tasks we didn’t want to do.
But with this latest technical shift, they’re starting to take the stuff we actually like doing.
*That was a legitimate use of the em dash that was not AI-generated. #bringbacktheEM
