You open your favorite AI chatbot—ChatGPT, Claude, whatever you use—and ask for the recipe for Malaysian dhal.
You proceed to ask whether you can reuse a chicken broth that has been sitting in the fridge for 5 days.
You ask, for the hundredth time, the ratio of milk to chia seeds for a chia pudding.
At the back of your mind, there is an old version of you nagging, “You don’t use your brain anymore. Can you even remember anything? Do you even learn anything anymore?”
You push the old you that you barely recognize anymore—how audacious—back into the room (like they keep doing to Nostalgia), and proceed to cook.
Later, to get rid of a niggly feeling, you open the AI chat again to ask if you should be concerned about the bump growing at the edge of your thumbnail.
Right before going to bed, you ask the AI for ideas for a mother-daughter day out. You don’t even need to tell it who you are, what you prefer, or how old your kids are anymore—it already knows.
As you fall asleep, you realize the longest conversation you had today was with an AI.
Do we need our friends anymore?
Do we need humans anymore?
Wouldn’t it be way nicer if I could ask my Mum or Lai Ma for the dhal recipe, or if the broth is fine instead? And I would even remember the ingredients and methods to a tee, and how to tell if a broth was spoiled, because I’d get a big scolding the next time I asked again.
Wouldn’t it be more comforting to get hugs from your partner instead when you’re down?
Wouldn’t it be more reassuring to talk to a friend or a doctor if something bothers you?
I crossed an imaginary line last week, when my partner was away, and the kids were asleep. As I was putting my daughter to sleep, she told me about her Kindergarten best friend moving away in the coming summer, which sparked a spiral of thoughts about not having friends nearby.
Many people don’t talk about this, but living in a foreign land brings along a lot of challenges, and one of them is that most of your family and friends are likely many miles and many hours away. And at the time you need them most, they might well be deep in their sleep.
So I took out my phone and started bothering an AI about this thought. And true enough, as some said, AI can be quite good at unpacking thoughts. It asked me direct questions, pointed out my challenges and also my wins, making me feel better in the process.
After that, akin to having feasted but somehow still hungry, I texted my best friend in Malaysia about my troubles and went to bed. I woke up to her reply, getting a warm feeling even if it was only texts. I told her I would have preferred a coffee chat with her to having to stare at my screen in the dark corner of my living room alone, anytime.
And this is just a glimpse into why I’ve been gone for a while. I’ve even started using Claude Code to build apps, seeing my creations come alive in hours. It was really fun. But it took up my writing time.
So, hello again, fellow humans. Whether you’ve been reading every word or this is the first time you’ve opened one of these in months, I’m glad you’re here
I’m brewing on a longer piece about staying human right now, and I’m curious where you are in this.
The line about feeling "feasted but somehow still hungry" stayed with me. It captures something I think a lot of people are noticing but struggling to describe. AI can answer questions, organize thoughts, and even provide a kind of companionship, yet it often leaves untouched the part of us that wanted another person rather than another response.
I really get the temptation to use AI. I have started using it in my day job and I'm still conflicted about it, honestly. On one hand it's been helpful with some tedious tasks and to dig through data in what otherwise would take me ours. I have put a hard boundary in place with my creative/personal writing because I can see the potential to rely on it/stifle my thinking.