An AI Manifesto
I don’t use AI to replace thought but to confront it. I use AI the way I use the ocean - dangerously, attentively, actively, not because I want to be at risk, but because I want to be alive...
💪 Why I Use AI - and How I Refuse to Be Used By It
We are being told - constantly - that AI is a tool for efficiency.
That it will save time, optimise content, scale your voice, automate your life.
That with a few good prompts and a tight brand, anyone can generate value at speed.
But I don’t want speed.
I want signal.
And signal can’t be mass-produced.
⚓️ I use AI to increase the friction, not reduce it.
I treat AI as a pressure vessel - a place to test ideas, interrogate my thinking, ask the question under the question.
I don’t outsource creativity to it. I sharpen creativity with it.
When I enter the space of language, narrative, structure, or philosophy, I bring AI in as a co-interrogator, not a substitute teacher. It challenges me to see what I’m circling but not yet articulating. It reminds me where I’m hiding behind style. It reflects my own patterns back at me - and it demands that I evolve them.
🔬 I use AI like a lens - never a mask.
I work with complexity: human-wildlife conflict, ecological trauma, systems change. These are not subjects that tolerate simplification. The world doesn’t need more performative insight or faster opinion. It needs clearer maps of difficult terrain.
So I use AI to build those maps. Not with empty prompts or vague summaries - but through pressure, dialogue, and recursive analysis. I bring it into my deepest creative processes: story development, decision design, philosophical confrontation.
What I get in return isn’t always usable - but it’s always revealing.
🚫 What I refuse
I refuse to use AI to pad timelines or content calendars.
I refuse to feed it the shallow prompts it’s trained to regurgitate.
I refuse to let it lead the thinking - or speak in my voice unless my voice is already present.
I refuse to let it become a way of hiding behind productivity.
AI is seductive. It flatters output. It fakes certainty. It tells you your ideas are ready before they’ve even fought for their lives.
But that’s not the game I’m playing.
I’m not here to add noise.
I’m here to retrieve signal.
🛠️ How I actually use AI
As a mirror: to spot unacknowledged fears and patterns in my thinking
As a lens: to compress raw narrative material into shape, then refine it myself
As a sounding board: to hold a position up to pressure and see if it folds
As a research assistant: not to answer questions, but to challenge the shape of them
As a collaborator: in the same way a good editor or writing partner would be - ruthless, attentive, never sentimental
❓The deeper reason
This isn’t just about tools. It’s about how we face uncertainty.
The stories I chase - the ones about orcas, oceans, systems on the brink - they’re all entangled with one truth: our tools have outpaced our maturity. AI is simply the most recent mirror of that imbalance.
So I choose to use it intentionally, not reactively.
I don’t seek control. I seek coherence.
And coherence doesn’t come from automation.
It comes from asking better questions, faster - and living inside the hard answers longer.
That’s how I use AI.
And that’s why it works for me.
…and the VO version - made by an AI…