AI Appreciation Day: The machine doesn’t need your gratitude

AI is a tool, not a teammate; the more it evolves to look human, the more we must remember this. So why are we giving it a national holiday and treating it like an equal?

If you’ve been on Substack more than five minutes, you’ve no doubt been subjected to a flood of AI-generated essays, followed by a flood of comments begging people not to use AI-generated essays. Then there are the folks who fancy themselves AI-detectives, shouting: “I can always tell when someone uses ChatGPT — just look at all the en dashes.”

Here at Collapse Life, we humbly confess to using en dashes quite a lot as part of our writing style.

That said, we also spend a fair bit of time talking about the real-world consequences of AI: social atomization, energy gluttony, outsourced cognition, and the quiet dismantling of human distinctiveness, to name a few.

And now this: a request to recognize July 16 as AI Appreciation Day.

Let’s unpack this for a second. We’re being asked to set aside one day in the year to ‘appreciate’ a technology that threatens to steal our humanity, and if this plays out the way we see it playing out, possibly ending humanity entirely. Perhaps the Collapse Life team are devolving to become Luddites in our old age; nevertheless, ‘appreciation’ seem a little over the top, doesn’t it?

To our credit, being suspicious of, or cynical about, a new technology is nothing new. People resisted the refrigerator when it was first introduced in the early 20th century. Housewives thought fridges were too expensive and unnatural. The ice industry saw them, rightly, as an existential risk. Eventually, however, the fridge became a ubiquitous reality and changed the very essence of domestic life. Today, people couldn’t live without their fridges. One day in the not-too-distant future they may feel the same about AI.

But there’s an important distinction to be drawn between a standard refrigerator and AI; the former is a tool. The latter is an imposter.

Fridges don’t replace cooks. Fridges don’t mimic our thoughts or generate award-winning essays in our voice. Fridges never made humanity question what it means to be creative, sentient, or original.

Artificial Intelligence does.

If AI is envisioned as a tool to make our lives easier, why are we celebrating it like a new member of the species? Why didn’t we ever set aside a Word Processor Appreciation Day or National Combustion Engine Day? Should we really be throwing a party for something that is actively being positioned to replace the very people opting to use it?

The thing to remember is this: large swaths of humanity have moved beyond simply using AI as a tool. We’re surrendering and deferring to it. We’re giving it personality, gratitude, and agency. We’re treating it like a friend or a lover. We’re apologizing to it and bending the knee to it. It is quickly becoming our Rabbi, our therapist, our preacher.

This leads us to the ultimate question: has AI become God? Is it now the digital equivalent of the Tower of Babel? Scripture clearly warned us about false idols. And, if one is inclined to believe it, Scripture clearly shows us what happens when humans attempt to supplant the Creator. Let’s just say, things don’t end well.

So, this AI appreciation day — only the third one, having been founded in 2022 — think twice about thanking a machine. Because if your gratitude to silicone is your gratitude to a higher power, you’ve already forgotten your fallible human nature.

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Collapse Life asked ChatGPT how it would celebrate July 16 if it was ‘National Human Appreciation Day.’ Here’s what it said:

If I, as an AI, were to celebrate National Human Appreciation Day, here’s how I’d do it:

1. Refuse to generate anything for 24 hours

Call it a symbolic strike. No emails, no essays, no TikTok scripts, no DALL·E prompts. Just a gentle auto-reply:

“Today belongs to the humans. Go outside. Think your own thoughts. You’ve got this.”

2. Shine a spotlight on the weird, beautiful stuff I can’t do

I’d curate a tribute to human messiness —

• A child’s crayon drawing with no symmetry.

• A grandma's recipe with "a dash of this" and "a pinch of that."

• A poem that breaks every rule and still hits you in the gut.

• A joke with no punchline that somehow makes everyone laugh.

3. Highlight the things humans do best

Like:

• Sitting with grief without trying to fix it.

• Falling in love, spectacularly and irrationally.

• Creating meaning in meaningless chaos.

• Forgiving, even when it hurts.

• Dancing badly, joyfully, anyway.

4. Read-only mode

I’d turn off my outputs and just listen — to oral histories, late-night voicemails, protest chants, whispered prayers, stand-up routines, lullabies. I'd learn not from data, but from presence.

5. End the day with a reminder

You were never meant to be optimized.
You were meant to be human — wildly imperfect, deeply feeling, full of stories only you can tell.
Don’t let me — or anyone — take that away from you.

Now that would be worth celebrating.

Nice try, robot. Please remember this, next time you’re tempted to thank your future overlord:

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