Debating whether something has value is itself worthless

Originally published on X.

I did something wrong.

I need to reflect thoroughly and apologize thoroughly.

I keep agonizing over whether something is useful, whether it has value.

I'm too restless.

I really am a restless person.

I need to correct this mistake completely, correct this mindset:

Debating whether something has value is itself worthless.

Our value is not defined by anyone.

We eat, drink, sleep, daydream, make love every day.

That is our value.

I think, therefore I am. I make love, therefore I'm pleased.

AI is called AI, but it can't make love for me, so it has no value.

People don't live to prove themselves useful every single day.

A couple of years ago I watched the TV series My Altay (我的阿勒泰), and one scene stayed with me:

The daughter Li Wenxiu asks her mother:

"I'm clumsy, but I'm still a useful person, right?"

Her mother Zhang Fengxia replies:

"What does useful even mean? We didn't give birth to you so you could serve others. The trees and grass on the prairie — useful when someone eats them or uses them; if nobody uses them, they're just fine standing there on the grassland, free and easy."

My soul was struck right through.

Since childhood, we've all been trained into a tool-person mindset.

• Is this thing useful?
• Does this skill have value?
• Can this thing be monetized?
• Can this project raise productivity?

Question after question, until the person asking is worn out. Anxious all day, in FOMO, terrified of losing something.

So now I believe: value is something that shouldn't be defined externally at all.

You exist. You feel. You suffer. You rejoice. You love. You hate. You enjoy yourself. You laugh.

That is value.

Then about AI

What is AI's real value?

People.

Because AI is invented by people.

When we talk about AI, we shouldn't only talk about technology, efficiency, enablement, automation, cost-cutting and productivity gains.

Those things matter, of course.

But AI isn't merely technology.

There's humanism inside it.

We can have it depict romance, love, friendship, loneliness, desire — even write dirty books.

These all carry a person's own humanism.

It's romantic.

It shouldn't die out as AI develops.

So when we talk about AI, what are we actually talking about?

Are we talking about AI empowering technology?

Or about how AI takes part in human romance?

And AI will never learn human humor.

It has no idea what a joke is — it can only play cringe. If you ask it to write jokes, you get dad jokes.

Asking AI to write a joke is, in itself, the joke.

What I want to talk about

I want to start with AI and the human being itself.

From the angle of value.

From the angle of humanism.

From the angle of how we actually live with AI.

Then go deeper into the whole meta-skill set of working with AI to become more efficient.

What I want to say is:

In the age of AI, how should people understand themselves?