I have a complicated relationship with AI. And I wish I didn't.
I'm not a fan. The ethics are a mess, the energy consumption is obscene, and it's concentrating power in the hands of a small cluster of tech billionaires with openly fascist ambitions. That's not hyperbole. That's just where we are.
And yet.
I have AuDHD. Autism and ADHD combined. I'm also likely mildly gifted, which sounds like a humble brag but mostly just means my brain runs on its own logic, at its own pace, in directions most people can't follow. The wall I kept hitting wasn't a lack of capacity. It was a mismatch between how I think and how the world is set up.
Getting thoughts out of my head and onto paper has always been a battle. Learning through repetitive material hits a wall fast. And collaboration is hard in ways that are difficult to explain if you haven't lived it. The kind of patient, technically sharp thinking partner I actually need has always been rare.
Not impossible. Occasionally I'd meet someone in tech who would actually think with me, follow the thread, push back in useful ways. Those moments showed me what was possible. But they were rare, and they depended entirely on chance.
I'm mid-career, retraining into IT after years in post-production. Building a homelab. Writing study documentation. Finally getting past the wall of complexity and tech elitism that kept me out.
Not because I couldn't handle it intellectually, but because the way in never fit how I work. I'm writing actual tools now, things I always assumed were locked behind a door I'd never open. AI didn't unlock it. But it made the door something I can actually push.
For me it functions less like a productivity tool and more like a medical aid. Nothing else, no coaching, no support structures, no accommodations I've ever been offered, has come close. I know that sounds dramatic. I mean it literally.
And that's exactly what makes it so hard to sit with.
Because I know what it costs. The energy and water consumption is real and bad. But more than that: the infrastructure I rely on to function better is the same infrastructure making certain people untouchable. I don't have a clean answer to that. I'm not going to pretend I do.
I wish this had come from somewhere with cleaner hands. But it didn't. And opting out isn't neutral either, not when the alternative is struggling alone with a brain the world wasn't built for.
I'm sitting with that. It's uncomfortable. It should be.
#AuDHD #TwiceExceptional #AI #HumanPlusAI #neurodivergentHealing
Paul Asadoorian