Reflections on Adam Neely's "Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future"

09 Feb, 2026

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A lot of us who love digital technology, grew up with it, got into it professionally, we were motivated by some belief that it's truly capable of enhancing and advancing humanity. Kind of the same way analog technologies do. The digital equivalents of screwdrivers and knives - spreadsheets and word processors - advance us as a species and make life better in so many ways. And we're tool creatures, making and using new tools are kind of our thing, so wanting to do that with computers, it makes sense to want to do that all the time, and for a living.

For those of us who resonate with that idea of computers doing helpful things and making life better for everyone¹, I see some of us making a really fundamental error when we consider how LLMs integrate into that vision of the future: LLMs make us worse at inventing because it distances us from other people.

How do you square wanting to leverage digital technology for humanity when using LLMs makes the act of creating more lonely? LLMs are convincing enough for some of the ways people support one another in the process of inventing, but I'm concluding it's simply that some of us want so badly for LLMs to function the way we hope they do that we're willing to lie to ourselves about how much we're enjoying the process. Confusing a gambler's high with deeper fulfillment, ignoring LLM weirdness or non sequiturs because sometimes it's helpful enough.