Opinion: Beer vs. AI - Why Beer Is Better For Productivity Than AI Chatbots

Remember Clippy? “It looks like you’re writing a letter,” observed the anthropomorphized Microsoft paperclip. “Would you like help?”

At that time, Clippy was mocked. Letter writing was still worthy of one’s time and effort. Same for picking up pennies. In 2024? Both communication and currency have devalued to the point that we prefer not to bother. We pass by pennies while letting AI generate, spellcheck and autocorrect our thoughts.

Here’s my two cents: These small sacrifices are adding up “bigly”. Screw Clippy, get sippy. Ditch generative AI and let beer be your writing aide.

Proven Results

“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy,” quipped 20th century poet Dorothy Parker, perfectly encapsulating our dilemma. Outsource the creative work to a machine, or lubricate one’s mind and let it hum?

A drink or two does wonders for the creative process. Van Gogh generated “over 2100 pieces of art, including over 800 oil paintings, in about a decade” on a diet of “bread, coffee, alcohol and cigarettes.” Churchill won the war while using whiskey as mouthwash. General Grant kept a barrel in his tent during the Civil War. Stephen King “barely remembers” writing Cujo. For Thomas Jefferson, beer was a founding principle of American life: “Moderate consumption of beer soothes the temperament, uplifts the spirit and enhances well-being.” Drinking can be quite pro-creative.

Done properly, walking into beer’s canny valley can loosen one’s inhibitions, making us a little less robotic, a little more human. The rule for beer consumption mirrors the rule for its production: Quality outweighs quantity. Anything less leads to inflation, overextension and devaluation.

Inversely, scarcity makes everything desirable. Mass production is inherently destructive and reductive. Remember the alchemical magic of Heady Topper?

Brain: The Original Heady Topper

The average adult brain weighs about three pounds. Yet it uses around 20 percent of a body’s energy. Chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories in one day. Thinking is a surprisingly physical act.

America, for all its riches, is a surprisingly unphysical nation. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are obese, a number which has tripled in the last 60 years, and we are record-setting sitters. Sitting for 11 hours a day increases mortality by 30 percent.

Now you know we are all fat and going to die due to how we are living, we can get down to brass tacks.

Beer: The OG GPT

A 100-word Chat GPT response uses “a full bottle of water and enough power to light up 14 bulbs for one hour", per Washington Post. That’s 519ml to be exact. 18.2 ounces. A pint plus a sample taster. Making a pint of ale requires about four pints of water.

It costs the same amount of water to generate 400 words as it does to make your favorite beer. Your choice: Sam Altman or Sam Calagione? Red pill or Brew pill?

If you’re on the fence, consider that by 2026, AI energy consumption is expected to have doubled from where it is now, using about as much as the country of Japan. Our Nipponese neighbors are currently the fifth-largest energy consumer in the world. Those vending machines don’t power themselves.

Even the alt-man, Altman, sees the writing on the wall. In January 2024, he warned that “future AI would consume so much electricity it would require an energy breakthrough – say, nuclear fusion – to power it.”

Or you could just have a beer.

The Case For A Case

I understand that AI promises a world of good and isn’t pure evil. With that disclaimer, I think that AI represents the death of humanity as we know it. Here are a few other reasons.

Our techno-bubbles are leading to growing isolation. Beer is the people’s drink, a social lubricant that fosters connection. It is important to do things for oneself, rather than cede one’s autonomy to an outside source. What we outsource, mentally, leaves our shores. The products returned are Temu versions. Hollow as bird bones, but without the song.

And lest we forget, America (in its highest ideal) is a nation of individuals who joined together to fight for the right to be individuals, rather than hosts for a parasitic other. Remember that large language models (LLMs) can only draw upon existing creative works. The human brain is the fount of creativity from which AI suckles. Taxation of human creativity without true representation.

Let The Accused Speak!

Feeling generative, I evaporated a water bottle with the following prompt:

“Please write 100 words on whether it is better for a human to write their own work, or to use generative AI.”

Thirst quenched, GPT responds:

“It’s generally better for humans to write their own work because it fosters creativity, critical thinking and personal expression. Writing yourself allows for authenticity, capturing the unique perspective, voice and nuances that machines might miss. On the other hand, generative AI can be a valuable tool for brainstorming, enhancing productivity or overcoming writer's block. It can speed up mundane tasks or provide suggestions, but it lacks the depth of understanding and emotional context humans bring. Ideally, a balance of human creativity and AI assistance can lead to richer, more refined results, leveraging strengths from both sides.

Well, that was easy. Perfection in a dazzling 96 words. Perhaps humanity was wrong to judge the paper clip. He was just doing his job and doing it well.

The Paper Clip Maximizer

A few years after Clippy’s birth, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom postulated the infamous Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment, illustrating a potential existential risk of AI.

Bostrom describes an advanced AI tasked with manufacturing paper clips. “If such a machine weren’t programmed to value living beings, given enough power over its environment, it would try to turn all matter in the universe, including living beings, into paperclips or machines that manufacture further paperclips.”

The idea is enough to drive one to drink. And perhaps we should, lest we be drunk up.

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” So says Aldous Huxley.

Have a beer, write your own words. Minimize the paperclip.