Invisible contracts is a sharp way to bring this into awareness, Jasmine. The insight hit me in the truest possible way--the thing that was hiding in plain sight, a structural pattern emerging across different domains simultaneously. I'll be sharing this widely. Such a useful framing.
“Anything reversible that could have been typed into a prompt is already discounted on arrival.” This is the cultural argument underneath the analogue revival, the cigarette, the concert, the pottery wheel. We’ve been sensing the depreciation of the costless signal for years. Now we have the language for it.
I appreciate your thoughts. We have indeed broken the social contract (again). What was once a handshake is now a notarized signature. What was once an unspoken social norm is violated by AI. But the most wonderful thing you wrote is that this opens a door for the rebirth of gifting - sharing our time, attention and genuine effort. Relationships are not built on efficiency; they are built on investment of sincerity, time and integrity. Thank you for your post!
I can see the utility in describing these things in terms of contracts. But for me, it all falls down when we subsume an idea like that of marriage ( and its association with mutuality, growth, and intimacy) under the idea of contracts.
We are all overly used to instrumental thinking, and one of the worst aspects of AI is that it further encourages and makes us complicit with the instrumentalization of everything.
So there is some irony here.
Anyway thank you Jasmine I always find your words interesting and provocative.
“The only difference now is who you are as a person.” this is really uplifting.
I agree with you, there is much work to be done in shaping the new social contracts we hold so dear, but there is also a huge amount of opportunity now to build, within yourself and around you. Great piece.
I keep coming back to this, and I think it's a fantastic way of encapsulating a thousand different disconnects into an overall cultural shift. Super smart. I also think this mass scale breaking of social contracts is highlighting how many were already broken; ideas like class mobility, social progress, even mutual benefit in sectors like banking or B2B have been replaced by a more predatory, winner take all mentality. It's not shocking that culture leads to AI usage that's inherently anti-social. The efficiency-over-all argument has become scripture.
Brilliant and fresh take - feeling so cheated right now everywhere I look - social, Linkedin, emails and texts from people you know who shouldn't need to outsource their words to string a sentence together.
Really good way of looking at the AI issue. The broken social contract explains the feeling of disillusionment and lack.of thought in receiving an automatd response instead of a human interaction.
Jasmine, this was such a cathartic read. I've been writing about power and language for a while now and everytime I get to the AI lens it's so eye-opening.
The AI narrative focuses so much on the computational work, the technology but what's not being discussed is how this technology is impacting humans.
And it's not like we don't already know. There are so many lessons that we've learnt from contemporary history. Post-colonial language planning and policy looks and feels a lot like sovreign AIs, for example.
My sociolinguistic work revolves around epistemic justice and my latest post steers more to where you're headed: epistemic rebellion. Noticing how we shift our language, our inferences, our expectations when we interact with LLMs is going to be an important skill to cultivate.
I love to read anything you write. But this post in particular feels very resonant, and gives me hope that others also see (and are wrestling with) the social contracts breaking... I tend to spiral when I think about the way our culture is shifting. The unknown of it all. But we're already in the unknown, and wasn't it [life] always meant to be this way? This newest frontier feels like "the biggest", but I imagine everyone before us who has experienced a revolution (industrial and onward) has felt the same.
As for the rewriting of social contracts, it's so very heavy and uncomfortable to deal with this (and maybe that discomfort probably scales with one's privilege). It's almost too open, too unfocused, too broad... But there is hope, too, like you mentioned. And for that I'm grateful. My favorite part of this article is probably the following, because it's the type of world I want to live in:
Anything reversible that could have been typed into a prompt is already discounted on arrival. Anything that costs the giver something real is appreciating.
And that goes way beyond the “human-made”. Proof of care doesn’t mean something was made without machines. It means it was made with intention and a hard emotional cost. It was created for connection, whether that be in work, in love, in business or in art. It was produced through someone’s sacrifice.
Very refreshing perspective and insightful post. Thank you.
Invisible contracts is a sharp way to bring this into awareness, Jasmine. The insight hit me in the truest possible way--the thing that was hiding in plain sight, a structural pattern emerging across different domains simultaneously. I'll be sharing this widely. Such a useful framing.
“Anything reversible that could have been typed into a prompt is already discounted on arrival.” This is the cultural argument underneath the analogue revival, the cigarette, the concert, the pottery wheel. We’ve been sensing the depreciation of the costless signal for years. Now we have the language for it.
I appreciate your thoughts. We have indeed broken the social contract (again). What was once a handshake is now a notarized signature. What was once an unspoken social norm is violated by AI. But the most wonderful thing you wrote is that this opens a door for the rebirth of gifting - sharing our time, attention and genuine effort. Relationships are not built on efficiency; they are built on investment of sincerity, time and integrity. Thank you for your post!
I can see the utility in describing these things in terms of contracts. But for me, it all falls down when we subsume an idea like that of marriage ( and its association with mutuality, growth, and intimacy) under the idea of contracts.
We are all overly used to instrumental thinking, and one of the worst aspects of AI is that it further encourages and makes us complicit with the instrumentalization of everything.
So there is some irony here.
Anyway thank you Jasmine I always find your words interesting and provocative.
I like this framing. It also speaks to how transactional everything has become.
These contracts that get broken by AI, isn’t this just another (or inverse?) case of where the act mattered more than the intimacy?
Hey Jasmine lovely piece but a side question: are you also a HardFork listener? 😆
Super interesting take! Great ideas to ponder in this article… thanks:)
“The only difference now is who you are as a person.” this is really uplifting.
I agree with you, there is much work to be done in shaping the new social contracts we hold so dear, but there is also a huge amount of opportunity now to build, within yourself and around you. Great piece.
I keep coming back to this, and I think it's a fantastic way of encapsulating a thousand different disconnects into an overall cultural shift. Super smart. I also think this mass scale breaking of social contracts is highlighting how many were already broken; ideas like class mobility, social progress, even mutual benefit in sectors like banking or B2B have been replaced by a more predatory, winner take all mentality. It's not shocking that culture leads to AI usage that's inherently anti-social. The efficiency-over-all argument has become scripture.
Brilliant and fresh take - feeling so cheated right now everywhere I look - social, Linkedin, emails and texts from people you know who shouldn't need to outsource their words to string a sentence together.
12 year olds on phones texting ai apologies broke my parenting contract. Superb take though, sitting with it today.
Really good way of looking at the AI issue. The broken social contract explains the feeling of disillusionment and lack.of thought in receiving an automatd response instead of a human interaction.
Jasmine, this was such a cathartic read. I've been writing about power and language for a while now and everytime I get to the AI lens it's so eye-opening.
The AI narrative focuses so much on the computational work, the technology but what's not being discussed is how this technology is impacting humans.
And it's not like we don't already know. There are so many lessons that we've learnt from contemporary history. Post-colonial language planning and policy looks and feels a lot like sovreign AIs, for example.
My sociolinguistic work revolves around epistemic justice and my latest post steers more to where you're headed: epistemic rebellion. Noticing how we shift our language, our inferences, our expectations when we interact with LLMs is going to be an important skill to cultivate.
I love to read anything you write. But this post in particular feels very resonant, and gives me hope that others also see (and are wrestling with) the social contracts breaking... I tend to spiral when I think about the way our culture is shifting. The unknown of it all. But we're already in the unknown, and wasn't it [life] always meant to be this way? This newest frontier feels like "the biggest", but I imagine everyone before us who has experienced a revolution (industrial and onward) has felt the same.
As for the rewriting of social contracts, it's so very heavy and uncomfortable to deal with this (and maybe that discomfort probably scales with one's privilege). It's almost too open, too unfocused, too broad... But there is hope, too, like you mentioned. And for that I'm grateful. My favorite part of this article is probably the following, because it's the type of world I want to live in:
Anything reversible that could have been typed into a prompt is already discounted on arrival. Anything that costs the giver something real is appreciating.
And that goes way beyond the “human-made”. Proof of care doesn’t mean something was made without machines. It means it was made with intention and a hard emotional cost. It was created for connection, whether that be in work, in love, in business or in art. It was produced through someone’s sacrifice.