Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox
Richard Golian

Article

I feel emptiness. First impressions of generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 5 245 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.

ChatGPT is a good helper, but...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to utilise so-called artificial intelligence to generate an SQL query, which would have otherwise required hours of manual effort. While it saved me a significant amount of time, it had an unintended consequence: it reduced my motivation to improve my coding skills (Read more: I Was Wrong: AI's Unexpected Role in Enhancing My Coding Skills).

In a related vein, I have been experiencing motivation challenges lately, such as when it pertains to composing content for my blog.

Furthermore, I find myself losing interest in consuming content altogether.

Fake content generated by AI

One of the reasons is the increasing difficulty in detecting fake content and misinformation. With the rise of artificial intelligence, creating realistic fake content has become easier than ever before. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to distinguish between a video of a politician saying something and a deepfake video.

How to distinguish human-generated content

Another thing that concerns me is that I cannot be sure if something (for example the book) I am reading was written by a human or a machine. You could argue that it does not matter. However, it does matter to me. I admire exceptional people who do extraordinary things. In a world where everything is available with a few clicks, and even better stories than Lord of the Rings can be generated by AI, I feel a sense of emptiness.

I am afraid that most people will settle for mediocrity and will not have the drive to develop themselves spiritually and do remarkable things.

The world may appear to grow wealthier and more abundant, but not in my experience.

A year later I changed my mind: AI's unexpected role in enhancing my coding skills.

Common questions on this article's topic

Can AI tools reduce your motivation to learn new skills?
In the article, using AI to generate an SQL query that would have taken hours to write manually saved significant time, but had an unintended consequence: it reduced the motivation to improve coding skills independently. This tension between efficiency and personal growth is a recurring theme in early AI adoption. The convenience of instant results can undermine the drive to develop deeper understanding through effort.
How can you tell if content was created by a human or by AI?
By early 2023, this had already become extremely difficult. Research showed that human detection accuracy for deepfake video hovered around 55 to 60 percent, barely above random chance. The article raises the concern that when we can no longer distinguish human-made from machine-made content, something fundamental changes in how we value creative work and the people behind it.
Why might AI-generated content lead to a sense of emptiness?
The article describes a paradox: as AI makes content creation effortless, the perceived value of that content diminishes. If stories better than Lord of the Rings can be generated with a few clicks, the human effort and talent behind creative work loses its distinctiveness. This connects to the broader paradox of choice described by psychologist Barry Schwartz, that abundance can paradoxically lead to less satisfaction, not more.
What is the deepfake problem and why does it matter?
Deepfakes are AI-generated videos or images that realistically depict people saying or doing things they never did. By early 2023, creating convincing deepfakes had become accessible and detecting them had become unreliable. The article highlights this as a threat not just to trust in media, but to our ability to distinguish truth from fabrication, a foundational requirement for informed decision-making in a democratic society.
Could AI discourage people from striving for excellence?
The article expresses concern that when AI can produce high-quality output instantly, most people will settle for mediocrity and lose the drive to develop themselves. If exceptional work no longer requires exceptional effort, the incentive structure for human growth changes fundamentally. The world may appear wealthier and more abundant on the surface, but the experience of personal achievement and mastery may diminish.
Is it possible to feel worse despite technological progress?
Yes. The article describes exactly this experience. Despite AI saving time and increasing productivity, it produced a feeling of emptiness and reduced motivation. This aligns with research on the paradox of abundance, the idea that having more options and capabilities does not automatically lead to greater fulfillment. Meaning often comes from effort, and when effort is removed, purpose can disappear with it.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.

Related articles

How to tell human-made content from AI-generated content online

It cannot be done with 100% certainty. When I wrote about the dead internet theory, I wrote that we will no longer have certainty online and that for every verification tool there will be a tool that fools it. This is still true.

15 October 2026·421 reads
The AI fatigue I see around me. A colleague is leaving her job, and this is what she says.

I see a lot of AI fatigue around me, loss of motivation and burnout. One example is a colleague who is leaving her job and says she plans to leave the digital marketing industry altogether.

12 October 2026·514 reads
How a small business, creator or politician can be independent of big platforms in the AI age

Are you a content creator playing by the rules of YouTube, Instagram or Google? Are you a small business owner whose business model depends on how often Amazon recommends you, how expensive Facebook ad impressions will be or how expensive Google Ads clicks will be? If all or most of your contact with your audience or customers depends on a big platform showing you to them, you are not in a strong position.

11 October 2026·864 reads

More articles

What should I study in the age of AI? What should I major in? Does a degree still make sense?

The development of artificial intelligence changes how we look at which paths in life make sense. Which studies and which profession to choose.

4 October 2026·524 reads
I Left My Job for Several Months to Read Philosophy

It was Thursday, 31 March 2022, when I handed over the last of my responsibilities to my colleagues, closed my laptop and went to the library. I left my job for several months and immersed myself in philosophy. And I am immensely grateful for it. Today I am, like most people, on a merry-go-round, and it is hard for me to stop and think about the fundamental questions of my own life.

28 September 2026·850 reads
How I Fell in Love With Her, at First Sight

It was September 2023. My life, my work, everything was completely different from now. It was simpler. I owned almost nothing. I needed to film an advert, I went up to a floor inside the company where the product I needed for that advert was, and there I noticed her for the first time. She laughs at me when I describe it like this, but at that moment the universe told me, that is her.

20 September 2026·846 reads
How to stop depending on social media, and what the IndieWeb is

How and why I am gradually leaving social media and the big platforms. When I read that Meta is testing a new way to charge for organic posts that link outside its platform, it confirms how right I was to become steadily less dependent on the big platforms and on social media. It does not mean I have left them completely. It means that whether or not I stay in touch with my readers depends on them less and less, and today almost not at all.

9 September 2026·927 reads
How to Start With AI in a Company

One of my family members described a firm that has its data in several different tools, and its employees still join it by hand, in spreadsheets. That is the ordinary state of firms. When somebody tells such people not to do it by hand and to use AI, they will not understand. Most firms do not even have the basic connectors between the tools they use. These firms need help with AI transformation.

12 August 2026·1 006 reads
Fable 5 vs Opus: the cheaper model won

The same task, two models. Fable 5 against Opus 4.8. On paper Fable is the better model, with a larger context and stronger specs. And still it lost. Opus handled the task with a single round of checking for 721,000 tokens, while Fable needed nine rounds and burnt through 2.78 million tokens. The difference was not in the model, but in how I set the task. And I know it, because I measured it.

22 July 2026·1 279 reads
I Ran Object Detection on My Laptop, and Saw Everything Is Possible

A few weeks ago I installed a small local AI model on my laptop that watches a live camera feed. I turned the webcam on in the dark, and in near total darkness it recognised me and the objects in the room. That such things exist, I have known for a long time. What opened my eyes was the accessibility. I installed it in one prompt, free, and it runs entirely on my machine, sending data nowhere.

15 July 2026·906 reads
My blog is full of bots and AI agents

I once wrote about building my own privacy-friendly analytics tool. It had bot detection from the first version, yet it was not enough. Direct visits took a strangely high share of my traffic. When someone claims that 20% of their visits are bots and 80% are humans, I used to think the same. Today I would say the opposite ratio is closer to the truth. This is how I got there.

6 July 2026·2 654 reads
Dependent on AI: Are We Still Masters, or Slaves?

I have Heidegger and my notebook beside me. I am asking where all of this is heading, where artificial intelligence is taking us.

21 June 2026·1 600 reads
Everything with AI agents, or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·1 924 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.