The Last Generation That Remembers a World Without AI

I think of those arguments around a barbecue that could last half an hour because nobody agreed on who had scored a goal. One person was certain. Another swore it had happened in a different match. A third got up to reenact the play. The uncertainty could keep us talking long after lunch. Today someone takes out a phone, finds the fact, and the conversation moves on. We gain an answer. Sometimes I wonder what happened to everything we used to do while we did not have it.

Those of us who grew up before the internet and reached adulthood before we could talk to artificial intelligence carry several worlds in our memory. The one with an encyclopedia open on the table for a school assignment. The one with a paper map that never folded back the way it had been. The one in which we waited for something without being able to check, minute by minute, how much longer it would take.

When I think about the last generation that remembers a world without AI, I think about being witnesses. About those of us who can compare a substantial part of our lives with this new habit of asking a machine to help us write, think, or decide. That change arrives at different speeds and does not erase earlier ways of living overnight. But it is already changing what we take for granted.

I remember the place boredom used to occupy. An afternoon could feel endless. A great idea did not always come out of it: often we were simply bored. Other times, after complaining for a while, we invented a game, found a notebook, or ended up talking to someone we had not planned to listen to.

Now I can fill that gap almost without noticing. My phone is nearby, and all it takes is the movement of a finger. Boredom still exists, of course; what has changed is how easily we can interrupt it. Sometimes I wonder how many thoughts I never get to have because I hurry to fill the space in which they might have appeared.

Getting lost had a procedure, too. You had to admit that you did not know where you were, roll down the window, and ask. A stranger would point toward a corner and say, “After the bridge, turn right,” as though there were no possible way to mistake the bridge. For a few minutes, finding your way depended on a conversation.

I use the help we have today, and I am grateful to reach my destination. I do not romanticize an address written down incorrectly or the time spent driving in circles. But I remember that some detours brought something unexpected: a place, a conversation, a story to tell when you arrived. That possibility is still there. What has changed is how much room we leave for it.

Perhaps the hardest experience to explain is remaining unsure. Having a question and carrying it for days. Looking for a book, remembering someone who might know about the subject, waiting to see them. The answer arrived intertwined with the story of looking for it, and that story was part of what we learned.

Today I can get an explanation in seconds and keep asking questions. That is extraordinary. Speed, however, can make me confuse an available answer with an idea I have understood. I find that I have to stop and return to something, try it in my own words, discover which part still does not quite make sense. That work is still mine, even when nobody makes me do it.

Many of these changes began before AI, with the internet, GPS, and smartphones. I bring them together because they have accumulated within a single lifetime. First our access to information changed; now I can talk to a tool that suggests how to organize it, what conclusion to reach, what to say next. That is where the question starts to feel more personal to me.

When I write, for instance, there is a moment when I do not yet know what I think. A sentence comes out wrong. I delete it and try again. Sometimes I discover what I wanted to say while trying to say it. An immediate suggestion can be a great help. It can also lead me to abandon too soon a search I needed to follow through. I want to learn to recognize the difference.

None of this makes our childhood a superior era. There were also questions that remained unanswered because access was limited, opportunities that never arrived, and distances that were hard to bridge. It would be unfair to ask those who come after us to give up a possibility simply because we never had it.

Besides, there is something rather comfortable about missing the slow world with all the advantages of the instant one at hand. I can miss a letter while being grateful to speak with someone far away. Both feelings can coexist. The problem begins when I use my memories as the measure of everything that ought to matter to everyone else.

I would rather think about what we can pass on. Archives will preserve an enormous amount of information about life before these tools. There will be photographs, films, letters, and personal accounts. But knowing that a record took a month to arrive is one thing. Hearing someone describe what they did during that month, how often they asked about it, and how the first song sounded after all that waiting is another.

In many families, the stories of those who came before us brought us closer to places we never knew. A voyage by ship, a house that no longer exists, the first night in a city. Sometimes we remember a tiny detail from those stories, and through it a person becomes more than a name beneath a photograph.

It is our turn to do something similar. To describe waiting for a phone call with no notification to announce its arrival. How we found a friend. What we did on an afternoon with no plans. How an argument could continue without anyone being able to settle it by holding up a screen. Those scenes say something about time, attention, and the ways we needed one another.

The difficulties are worth telling, too. Waiting could be agonizing. Getting lost could be frightening. Not knowing could shut us out. If we are going to pass on an experience, we should include all its parts. Those listening deserve more than a polished version of our youth.

A child who hears that someone was happy without instant answers gains a possibility. They may choose to go on using every tool available to them. But they know that leaving a question open for a while does not necessarily mean something is malfunctioning. They have something to compare it with. And that comparison can give them a little more freedom.

I would like us to preserve more of those conversations. Record our parents, if they want to, telling us how they met. Write down a scene we can still remember clearly. Let our children ask about things that seem obvious to us. Often what surprises them most is precisely what we would have left out.

We can also pass something on by making room to experience it today. A conversation without rushing to look up the fact. Some time without filling every silence. An attempt to write a page before asking for help. These small choices remain available, even in a world that offers shortcuts at every turn.

Those who come after us will have discoveries, losses, and stories of their own. We can leave them ours. I like to imagine someone, one day, finding a sentence we wrote and recognizing in it an experience they had thought belonged only to another time.

A person's memories are not passed down automatically. We have to find a moment, sit down, and tell the story. Perhaps that is one of the simplest things we can still do for the future: leave it something of what it felt like to be here.

Christian Ruggeri