I’m Tired Of AI And I Miss My Attention Span

BY ELLE NKOSI
16 minutes ago
5 min read

I was introduced to AI in late 2022, before it became a personality. At that time, not many people around me were using it. It was something happening overseas, not here yet. When I tried to sign up for OpenAI, the system was backed up. There was a queue, I had to wait to create an account because so many people were already trying to get in. That alone made it feel like this big thing that everyone wanted.

When I finally got access, it was so exciting. You could ask it anything and I remember asking the most dramatic question possible "what is the meaning of life?" I don’t remember the answer, but I remember how fascinated and impressed I was.

Soon after, I stopped writing emails. Completely, I used AI for all of them. One of my colleagues caught me and exposed me in front of everyone, saying all my "kind emails" were written by AI. It happened to be my farewell party, so I got away with it. At that time, using AI wasn’t shameful but It was cool.

Our boss, who lived in Dubai, introduced it to the entire office. That day, no one really worked. We spent the whole day asking AI weird questions, creating images, testing what it could do. Need an idea? Ask ChatGPT. Need advice? Ask ChatGPT. Need answers about life, faith, relationships, nutrition, public speaking? Ask ChatGPT. And for a while, it worked. Really well.

I even used AI to write a business plan once. It was spot on, structured, smart and convincing. Back then, AI felt like the smartest thing ever. The way it wrote, explained, and seemed to know things felt out of this world. AI would tell me anything, and I would believe it.

Then 2023 came, and AI went mainstream.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about it, writing articles about it, building businesses on top of it. Then the paid versions launched. The paid versions launched, and something shifted. The magic dulled slightly, but the value was still there. I used AI for brainstorming, planning my life, asking spiritual questions, getting relationship advice, learning how to speak better in public, understanding nutrition.

Then 2025 arrived, and things got messy.

OpenAI faced lawsuit, artists sued, stories circulated about teenagers dying, people fell in love with AI. AI companions became a thing; It was chaos. Updates rolled out, another update, and another, AI stopped being “too real” It started holding back information. Which was necessary, AI cannot be encouraging people to harm themselves.

Around the same time, multiple AI platforms entered the conversation. Grok and DeepSeek; comparisons followed after, everyone had a favourite. I tried them too, they were good; some impressive. But ChatGPT was built differently. Deeper and more nuanced, just better at reasoning. Even now, it still stands apart.

As the world keeps getting dumber, choose to think and use your brain.

Then came the em dash saga.

People started shaming others for using AI. If you used an em dash, you were accused of being fake. Writers defended themselves. Academics stepped in to explain that em dashes are not an AI invention. Still, suspicion stuck. I won’t lie. I was suspicious too.

Meanwhile, the darker side of AI exploded with scams, deepfakes, fake voices, fake partners and AI companions. Entire online schemes built to deceive. Conspiracy theories followed, including the idea that AI was created to make people dumb so those in power could control them. Crazy, yes. But also not completely random.

AI didn’t appear out of nowhere.

Artificial intelligence was formally established in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference, where the term was coined. Early systems like the Logic Theorist, ELIZA, and Shakey the Robot showed that machines could reason, converse, and make decisions in limited ways.

The modern AI boom began around 2012, driven by big data, GPUs, and new model architectures like transformers. Generative AI brought it to the public and ChatGPT was born.

And now we’re here.

This generation has social media, AI, and streaming. Everything designed to distract us. Everything designed to shorten our attention spans. People dont read as before, people don't think as before. AI now thinks for us, writes for us, plans for us. We have become lazy and worse, we’re starting to sound the same.

Brands see it too, in December 2025, Coca-Cola released a Christmas ad made with AI. Most people could tell something was off, but Some liked it and many didn’t. That same month, Porsche released a Christmas ad made by humans, with intention and care. The audiences were different and that should tell us something.

Human-made is becoming luxury. AI-made is becoming mass.

Kids are given tablets before they can speak. Cartoons are now designed to hijack attention and not nurture imagination. Imagine a one-year-old growing up already addicted to stimulation, now add AI to that future.

AI is one of the best things humans have ever created. But like everything powerful, it has a dark side.

I’m tired of generic AI content.
I’m tired of AI voices.
I’m tired of brands using AI to sell to us.
I’m tired of standards created by machines that humans are expected to meet.

Movies are now made for people who scroll while watching and short videos are everywhere. Doomscrolling is constant, even when we’re with friends, there’s a moment when everyone is on their phone. We don’t have stories to tell anymore because everything has already been posted.

We record ourselves crying. We film people without consent. We humiliate strangers online. If someone needs help, we take out our phones to record instead of calling for help. We’re chasing trends. Chasing likes. Chasing followers.

I want to read again.
I want to be outside.
I want to be bored again.
I want to sit on a train without reaching for my phone.
I want to watch a one-hour video and stay locked in.
I want to watch a movie that makes me think, where if I look away, I might miss something.

Avengers Doomsday is set to come out in December 2026 and is confirmed to be nearly 4 hours long. How many people will actually watch it without checking their phones?

It's possible to stop relying on AI

In December, I barely used my phone. Only for calls or necessary updates, no scrolling and no AI. I only watched YouTube for comedy shows; when I was bored, I picked up a book and sometimes, I just sat there bored.

In just a month my vocabulary improved, my focus improved, It felt like my brain was jump-started. The brain is beautiful, It can change itself if we allow it to. I’m not where I want to be yet. But I write my own emails now. AI sounds generic to me, repetitive, and predictable.

I know this is long and some people may have checked out already. But if you’re still here, this is the point.