I am in an abusive relationship with the technology industry

Yesterday morning, I clicked on a link to the Official Folk Albums Chart Show. I love folk music, especially the modern fusion stuff. Listening to this very specific genre of music reminds me of my early twenties when I, too, played in a modern fusion folk band. I flicked through the show a little. I think I was only searching for information, but what I found was something more profound.

I landed on a live studio recording of Seth Lakeman performing Rollback the Years from the 2025 album The Granite Way. I’m a sucker for raw vocal harmonies, and when they kicked in toward the first chorus, I felt tears in my eyes. When I heard the line “Roll the years back to a life we once knew”, I felt something more.

Coming from an organic oral tradition literally meaning “of the people”, folk music is one of the most raw and human-centred genres of music. Folk music has always served as an expressive way to tell stories, share ideas, or protest. When people couldn’t read or write, folk music was a way to communicate. Folk music is about community, hardship, adventure, love, heartbreak, the human condition.

Skipping ahead in the video, I found an excerpt of a track Lonesome Woods by Hannah James and Toby Kuhn. The opening of the recording features voice, cello and body percussion. There was something very profound that struck me about this track. The arrangement was so simple, yet Hannah’s bare feet on the wooden board and the sound of her hands on her own skin coupled with her silky voice and a single cello made the whole experience feel incredibly raw and real. I felt like I was there with them in the forest clearing. And then the opening lyrics of this track started to make a lot of my feelings make sense.

Through lonesome woods I took my way. So dark so dark as dark could be. The leaves were shivering on every tree. Oh don’t you think that griefs me.

And then, nearing the Golden Ratio of the track, Hannah and Toby are on the top of a hill. Hannah has an accordion now and she's playing her wooden board with shoes on, and they’re playing together, facing each other, and smiling infectiously, fully enjoying this moment of human-centred expression in the sun and the wind. And I wished I were there with them to experience it. And then I cried.

And then I thought for a while. I took myself on a walk. And I thought some more. And then I was able to put into words what I was feeling.

After clicking on this random link shared on the internet on a normal Thursday, I had uncovered a deep grief. A deep grief about how the technology industry has become so abhorrently hostile to the human experience that it has inadvertently distracted me from real and true humanity held deep within art and music; a deep grief borne from realising I thought I’d lost one of the founding concepts of my identity since I first touched a piano at the age of five. I felt all of this even though I am actively engaging in playing music every day.

I think I am in an abusive relationship with the technology industry. Yes, this is probably about AI. Stay with me.

Last week I spoke to a very good friend of mine who works as a senior software engineer. They told me that they don’t really write code anymore as part of their job; they only talk out loud to Claude. This surprised me. They also said that now they feel like an administrator rather than a software engineer — someone who merely assigns and reviews tasks — and, despite feeling “more productive”, they also don’t feel that good about the whole thing.

But I felt something weird during this conversation. Given I was surprised that this friend had seemingly embraced using AI day-to-day, and given how much I respect them, I suddenly felt like I should be doing the same. I started questioning my worth, my value, my productivity. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried using AI in my day-to-day activities, albeit very lightly. Given the type of work I do, it would be remiss of me not to explore the options. But there’s a deep discomfort that comes with me reaching for generative AI, not least because I have never been able to generate very good results.

Anyway, here’s where the abusive part comes in.

You simply cannot breathe without seeing, hearing, or engaging in any kind of technical conversation about AI. AI has dominated the Zeitgeist so catastrophically that the only way to escape is to turn off the WiFi and delete all the apps. Every single piece of fucking software has some kind of shitty AI add-on, forced into your face at regular intervals whilst you’re trying to go about your life or do your job or check your email or write an email or read an email or talk to a human support agent or read a recipe or open an issue on an open-source project or watch a YouTube video or open your IDE or do a fucking internet search. The cognitive overload of AI trying to Make You More Productive™️ whilst you’re actually trying to be productive is so shockingly absurd. And yet, we are being made to feel like we are stagnating, being left behind, not good enough, that we are luddites should we not adopt this imposing technology. We are being told we’re missing out, even though we’re probably doing just fine. The technology is gaslighting us.

This week, I spoke to another friend about how their company is now mandating AI usage for all employees. There is no reason for this mandate, only that someone who knows someone said that at another company where everyone adopted AI they were able to fire all the software engineers and make bank. So if I’m reading this correctly, the message is: “You must adopt this tool, or you will be fired. But we’re going to fire you soon anyway. Good luck.”

I do not enjoy using generative AI. Not only because have I seen few benefits for me personally. Not only because has it ruined the experience of trying to search for accurate and reliable information. Not only because of the way the chat-bot-style LLMs are built to project some kind of sickening quasi-human personality. Not only because mandated generative AI use is burning out my friends. Not only because this technology has caused numerous people to die. Not only because AI is draining water from areas that need it most. Not only because billions of dollars are going directly to AI organisations whilst millions of humans exist in poverty. Not only because using AI is an incredibly lonely experience where human collaboration and conversation has been replaced by weird conversations with computer algorithms. Not only because of the implicit bias generative AI displays as a result of the data it was trained on. Not only because people are doing some really weird things with AI like trying to sell apps that keep your dead relatives “alive”. Not only because apparently AI performs better when you threaten it. Not only because the pivot to AI has wrongly centred the worker value conversation around how much an individual can do rather than what they can contribute (not much has changed since I wrote this article almost a year ago).

I just enjoyed my work better when I wasn’t bombarded by a single piece of technology 24 hours a day seven days a week, that seems to have very, very bad implications for humans and the planet, actually. I'd rather go back to the era of the JavaScript framework debates.

What’s even more personally terrifying: what if I need to find a new job in the near future? There are seemingly no non-generative-AI-centred options left for someone like me. I’m afraid that every opportunity will either be for a company building some kind of generative AI experience, or one that mandates the use of generative AI in your daily responsibilities, or one that refuses to use AI at the expense of their financial success and the stability of my employment. At this point I cannot escape. I am at the mercy of the profession I chose. I have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. Retraining is not an option right now. I must force myself to adapt.

And what will the future look like when this time comes? Will the industry’s mass cognitive decline be so far gone that none of this will matter anyway?

Through lonesome woods I took my way. So dark so dark as dark could be. The leaves were shivering on every tree. Oh don’t you think that griefs me.

Anyway. All of this is to say that I would like you to go and listen to some folk music today.