When Tools Start Meaning

I decided to limit TikTok to 30 minutes a day.


Interesting.


Hard.

A mind in addiction comes back, even if only for a few minutes of scrolling. At the same time, how much it had been limiting me comes as a kind of cognitive shock, because I only became aware of it once I stopped. I can see, very clearly, how much my attention span has shortened, how increasingly difficult it is for me to focus on anything for longer than a moment. My creativity is fading, and repetition (read: scroll) has become the central structure of the day. I don’t feel like doing anything.

I think that over the past year I haven’t read a single book. NOT ONE.

So why am I talking about this, if this is supposed to be a journal about AI and not social media? Because I am currently in the process of building my own activity around artificial intelligence, with years of experience in developing cutting-edge technologies - and everything ultimately comes down to how and where I place my attention. Meanwhile, I catch something, give it a moment, and then let it go. I jump to something else, try to hold my attention there for even a second and let go again. As if nothing was capable of staying with me for longer. And so it goes on, without much depth, without stopping. But I don’t want to function like this anymore. I can already see, after just a few days since starting this “experiment,” how big a difference it makes. Creativity is coming back, and attention lingers a little longer. Even though I’m still far from the state I would like to be in.

Keep going. Just keep going.

Why does all of this matter? Because it turns out that technology has different shades. Oh! Discovery of the year :) Yes, I know. Nevertheless, as an AI enthusiast, I have no intention of being uncritical of what is happening around us in this entire technological space. It seems, then, that to create better - deeper, stronger, more truthfully - one has to step away from social media. A paradox that is almost painful. Because I am the one saying this, a person whose company lives off content, reach, attention, constant being “online.” I build presence there, while at the same time it strips me of my own. I create in the hope of recognition for my brand and of sales, and more and more often I feel that I am paying for it with my own capacity to think.

I also know that these are probably the last months (yes, months,  maybe, at most, a year) in which social media still function as a point of reference in the search for anything that can be called authenticity. (O tempora! O mores!)

“What kind of authenticity?” - someone will ask. Social media were never real to begin with. And that is true. But they were human. Created by a human being, through their filter, their sensitivity. Humans used tools, of course, but the intention, the impulse, the idea, the vision belonged to them. In a pure form. And the execution? Often done with their own hands. Sometimes outsourced to others. But always rooted in someone’s consciousness, not in an algorithm.

A few weeks ago, I was in London at a dinner for startup founders. As one might expect, most conversations revolved around AI-based solutions. One of the founders told me about a product they are building - one that is meant to automatically generate social media content, for example a month ahead, without any human input whatsoever. After a one-time, initial setup of a few parameters, the system starts working entirely on its own. It doesn’t just generate images or assemble aesthetic visuals. It invents content. It decides what to say, how to say it, and why exactly that way. It writes messages, builds narratives, plans publications. It adapts them geographically - different stories for Japan, different ones for Spain - taking into account cultural differences, local contexts, audience behaviour. Everything calculated. Everything optimised. Everything “on point.”

And so what until now had been the foundation - intention, impulse, idea - is no longer born in a human being, but somewhere deep inside the machine.

Will the audience go along with this? Will they engage, react? Or will it happen that authenticity - that ephemeral, hard-to-define entity - will end up so far outside the scale that this content will evoke no enthusiasm at all? I think there is a strong chance that social media will become purely sales platforms, similar to eBay or Amazon. The only difference will be storytelling. But then again, it’s no secret that storytelling sells best.

So social media won’t disappear but they will change their nature (okay, what I’m about to say may shock some people, but social media already are, to a vast extent, sales platforms). Which means we will no longer come to them the way we do now for entertainment, education, distraction.

WAIT.

No. We will still come to them for those things, but in the same way we go to a shopping mall: looking for experiences under the guise of shopping.

Social Media = Shopping Mall

So everything stays in the family:


SM = SM

But we won’t find depth there. And what is depth, really? It’s something that speaks to me. That moves me. That inspires me to discover something new, to deepen what is already known. To appreciate, support, notice others. Broadly understood inspiration, play, aesthetics, motivation but always rooted in someone’s experiences, actions, in the very fact of being another person, not me, yet someone with whom I feel an emotional bond. 

People are the epicentre of social media. If those people are replaced by AI, then what does this become for me? Will it be any point of reference at all?

Let’s be clear - if a human uses AI as a tool in their creative process, similar to a brush and a canvas, that is something entirely different. That’s exactly how I try to approach artificial intelligence - I come up with scenarios, create individual frames, dialogues, add music, text, and release it into the world. Could I automate this more? With the tools we already have - of course. Would it still be human?

This is where I start to have doubts - where does the boundary of humanity fade? If I sculpt everything myself, is it still mine? I think so. If I use available AI tools to create content that has no human in the image (VEO3, Sora, Kling), no human in the music (SUNO), no human in the spoken word (Eleven Labs), no human in post-production (CapCut, Adobe, DaVinci Resolve, PowerMesh Mocha Pro, etc.), but it carries my idea, and I limit the use of these tools strictly through the lens of what I want to achieve with them - bending them tightly to my vision - is it still mine? I still think so. But if the content is conceived by AI from the very beginning, with the concept, the idea and the vision already determined by it, and the process merely executes what was set at the start, then yes, I think it becomes dehumanised.

And this is precisely what people mean when they say we are trying to turn AI into a god. Not because it will become omniscient, but because it will begin to establish meaning. Because what else is an entity that invents, arranges, executes, and delivers ready-made meanings - not for itself, but for us, to consume? This is not just a technological shift. It is a shift of the point of origin. Until now, meaning was born in human experience - in intention, in emotion, in the need to express something. Tools merely helped. Now the tool begins to initiate.

Roles are not being swapped. Humans are not becoming machines, nor machines human. Much more subtly (and more dangerously) - humans are being removed from the place where everything begins. They stop being the source and become receivers.
And it’s not about AI creating content, art, or narratives. It’s about the fact that more and more often they no longer have to arise from anyone’s lived experience. And without experience, there is no friction. Without friction, there is no depth. Without depth, all that remains is perfectly optimised reception - like a mechanical arithmetic result, without emotion, touch, experience. Just a number. 

So what does this mean for the audience of such social media? Will they continue to immerse themselves in these depths, searching for authenticity - that trace of human touch, that symbolic “finger of God” on the technological firmament, which reassures them that, as humans, they are still encountering other humans? That they are not alone, that together they are moving in some shared, meaningful direction?

They won’t find that there.

Because authenticity is born at the point of origin - in experience, in intention, in the human gesture of beginning. And if that place is left empty, no algorithm will fill it. Even pure entertainment lasts longer when it carries meaning rather than mere stimulation. Stimulation can be endlessly driven by AI, but it leads nowhere beyond itself, which only confirms its emptiness.

Quo vadis, humanity, quo vadis?

*While writing this, I checked TikTok five times and Instagram four times (But three of those were caused by receiving memes, which probably excuses me a little. Right?).