Before You Post That Hot Take: “PASS.”
Four pitfalls that send a hot take from "thoughtful" to "yikes" — starting with the AI + Friction debate.
For months I’ve been seeing hot takes about how using AI removes the helpful friction humans need in order to develop our critical and creative thinking.
Whew. Y'all. I'd love to live in the world where "letting AI write some emails" would leave me without enough friction to grow into a creative, thoughtful human.
— I tease, I tease.
Listen. I get the arguments. Some are great. But tbh, some will cause harm.
So I've gathered up 4 common, harmful pitfalls — via the acronym PASS. As in, "hard pass.” They are:
Paternalism, All-or-Nothing thinking, Same-ifying, and Settling.
I'm applying PASS to the AI + Friction debate, because it's rife with these pitfalls! But PASS shows up in all kinds of hot takes… and once you name them, you'll see them everywhere.
Watch out for these:
P — Paternalism
The argument that "difficulty is good for you" can go really wrong, really fast. It's been used to justify ignoring or perpetuating suffering. It's been used to portray wellbeing supports as harmful coddling.
Of course, serious takes about "friction" know this. They're full of specifics and caveats.
The hot takes are not. Unexamined, they can slide into paternalism and inequity. Slow down.
A — All or Nothing Thinking
A lot of AI+Friction discourse portrays a binary:
Either (a) people use AI to create EVERYTHING for them — thus never encountering helpful friction, or (b) they never use AI at all. 🤔
This binary is... silly. Let's do better.
S — Same-ifying
Many friction posts imply that "everything you ever need to write is equally worthy of your unique creative power."
Recently, a fab colleague said, "AI is damaging because it's important to sit with the blank page — to go through the messy, difficult process of figuring out what to say."
My response: "Which blank page?"
My point WASN'T: "Her concerns are unfounded."
It WAS: "This person's too thoughtful to actually believe every blank page is the same. So why talk as if she does?"
Distinctions matter.
💡 If our capacity for creative thinking is valuable and limited — and it is — then what should we spend it on?
And crucially: who decides which spending is worthwhile and which isn't? When? For whom?
These^ are the kinds of questions we need to ask and answer, iteratively and creatively.
Which leads us to the last letter of PASS:
S — Settling
Hot takes often settle for easy answers and initial impressions — skipping the questions that critical thinking requires. Like these:
Which type of friction is necessary? (When? For whom?)
How much of it is necessary?
Who gets to decide?
How will disability be considered? (Most "friction" posts don't mention it — an indefensible oversight.)
The AI+Friction discourse is rooted in concerns that AI will diminish humans’ thinking skills. Ironically, many related posts display diminished thought. That’s what happens when we Settle.
Wrapping Up
This post is about AI. It's also not (just) about AI.
It's about power, agency, creative thought, equity.
Friction can indeed be helpful. The way it's discussed re: LLMs often has red flags all over it. "PASS."
No one has to like or use LLMs. Problems abound. Critiques are crucial and valid.
AND. Positioning oneself as an arbiter of which difficulties other people need to embrace for their own good is tricky territory, y'all. Think twice or three times. Be careful out there.