Chasing AI, Losing Meaning
Have you noticed that in recent years, every few days or so, a brand-new “super impressive” AI product pops up? First it was ChatGPT, then immediately Gemini, Grok, Claude, Midjourney, Sora, followed by all kinds of Agents, Clawdbot, and other fresh things. The moment one appears, the community explodes—X, Bilibili, Zhihu, every group chat is flooded with discussion. Everyone dives in: studying, reproducing, comparing parameters, running demos, terrified of missing out on something.
Very quickly, all sorts of “from zero to mastery” tutorials start appearing on Xianyu, Knowledge Planet, course platforms—prices are cheap, they look extremely cost-effective. At the same time, cloud service providers seize the moment and launch one-click deployment and one-click invocation products, making it seem like just a few clicks are enough to put you at the very forefront of the AI wave.
So you also throw yourself in, spending huge amounts of time: setting up environments, watching tutorials, trying models, tweaking configurations. After you’ve messed around for a while, you suddenly realize one problem: I actually don’t know why I’m using this AI. It’s undeniably powerful, but it doesn’t seem to solve any clear problem of mine. The reason I’m researching it is mostly because “everyone else is researching it.” If I don’t, it feels like I’ll be left behind by the times. In the end, what you learn is a pile of tool names and operating steps, but what’s left is a vague sense of exhaustion and spinning-in-place: technology iterates at breakneck speed, the feeling of participation is strong, but the sense of meaning is extremely weak.
Why does this happen?
It’s mainly a collective psychological state of anxiety and confusion, being swept along by the technological tide.
First layer: the core psychology is “I’m afraid of missing out, but I don’t even know what I want.” It’s not driven by demand, but by trend. You weren’t pulled in by a “problem”; you were pushed forward by the “hype.”
Second layer: group conformity and technological worship. Seeing so many people researching it, you also research it. Over time, “useful” gets quietly replaced by “popular.”
Third layer: the “illusion of progress” created by low-cost participation. This produces a psychological misperception: I seem to be improving, I seem to be at the cutting edge, I seem not to have been eliminated. But in reality: no real business scenario, no long-term usage motivation, no internalization into actual capability—this is “busywork with tools”: very busy, but no direction.
Fourth layer: mild technological nihilism. You realize you don’t know why you’re using this AI. You keep chasing new things, but none of them truly enter your life. This is close to a mild form of technological nihilism.
I’m desperately trying not to be left behind by the times, but I don’t even know where I’m running toward.
It’s not that technology is being denied; it’s that technology is moving too fast, and people’s sense of meaning simply can’t keep up.