Kevin Frazier is an Assistant Professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University. He previously clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.
New AI tools, like ChatGPT, threaten that horrible, wonderful process of trying to find the right words. Even as I typed that sentence, words suggested by my phone danced above the keyboard—passively steering me but directing me nonetheless.
These simple tools save time, right? And, they assuredly reduce typos, correct? Maybe they even help us communicate with one another by increasing the odds of everyone using similar phrases, that’s a good thing?
Soon AI tools will offer to replace our critical thinking in other contexts too. Need to decide who to vote for? In the near future you may engage with AI chatbots trained to emulate political candidates -- rather than go door to door, these candidates will develop and release bots that aim to persuade you to vote a certain way. Who needs the Iowa State Fair to evaluate a candidate in person when you can just ask “the candidate” any question you want by “talking” with their bot?
AI tools also shape what news we read and social media comments we see--in fact, they have done so for several years. And, in some cases, AI tools have taken over the “boring” parts of our jobs. Some lawyers, for instance, have turned to ChatGPT to conduct legal research and review documents.
Are these gains in convenience worth the loss? No. In fact, it’s the sort of deal that the playground bully would offer - trading you the basketball with a leak for your spot on the best swing.
The lesson is that convenience always comes at a cost.
So what are we unwilling to give up for a little more convenience? If we don’t identify the skills, tasks, and activities that are fundamental to being human, then there’s a chance that AI will not only address those core parts of being human but actually reduce our ability and willingness to do the very things that distinguish and define us. Folks in the AI safety space call this “enfeeblement” -- I prefer to think of it as a loss of our humanity.
Our willingness to embrace the added seconds or minutes or, god forbid, hours to do something without the aid of ChatGPT and other AI tools may soon fade. After all, tools of convenience have ruthlessly killed other things--like the joy of sending and receiving a handwritten letter.
So to protect our humanity we have to proactively declare what we regard as fundamentally human endeavors and fend off the urge to outsource those endeavors to tools of convenience.
This humble (and short) column will not try to list those endeavors. My hope is instead to start a conversation about the spaces we want to remain AI free--or at least to the fullest extent possible. Given the significance of the upcoming 2024 election, I think starting that conversation on the use of AI tools in democratic activities makes a lot of sense.
Should, for example, candidates be able to use AI chatbots to impersonate them? If so, should they have to provide a disclaimer that the bot is, in fact, not the candidate? May political parties release ads informed by AI tools to appeal specifically to you based on the mountains of data it has compiled about you?
I know my answers to these questions, but I want to know yours. We need to debate what makes us…well…us, if we are going to have any chance of developing norms, regulations, and laws that shield fundamental human endeavors from the dangers of convenience. What would you declare "AI Exclusionary Zones" and why? Such zones may seem like an odd thing to discuss but if we don't shield it, convenience will conquer.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.