Artificial or Human-Abstracted: Why AI Can’t See the Road It’s Spinning On

I’ve used AI to write code. I’ve used it to tighten complex threads in my writing. I’ve even used it to find language for things I once thought were unspeakable.

And since AI is such a massive—but often misunderstood—topic these days, I want to share what I’ve learned through those experiences (and a bit of computer science education). Not to stir more panic or hype, but to offer my clear-eyed perspective in a world already full of noise.

Here’s what I know:

AI isn’t sentient.
It’s not mystical.
It’s not wise.

And ChatGPT? It’s still Narrow AI. Even now.

It’s a loop machine. A very fast, often useful one. But it doesn’t see the road it’s iterating on.

That might sound abstract or confusing, so let me break it down.

Spinning Doesn’t Mean Moving

Picture a car with bald tires. The engine roars, the wheels spin furiously, but the car doesn’t move forward—it just burns rubber and heat. That’s how AI operates. And it becomes most visible when it encounters a challenge that isn’t neatly pre-structured. It throws itself at the problem, testing permutation after permutation, generating output after output. It looks like effort. But it’s friction without direction.

What’s missing is traction.

Humans, by contrast, don’t move as fast. We can’t try a thousand ideas in a second. But when we encounter complexity, we don’t just spin. We sense. We slow down. We adjust for terrain. We grip the curve, even when the road shifts under us.

That grip isn’t just what helps us solve problems—it’s what lets us notice when a problem is the wrong one entirely.

Seeing in Color

That difference—between looping and understanding—comes down to how we perceive reality itself.

When I was first discovering the internet, I remember using Lynx, a text-only browser. It showed websites as raw text: lists of links, content stripped of imagery, layout, or visual context. Lynx was fast. Efficient. But sterile. It didn’t show you the full web that other users were seeing, just a skeleton of it.

Then browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer came into my life. Suddenly, the web had depth. It had color and shape. You didn’t just read—you experienced. Design became part of meaning. Context shaped comprehension. Emotion was carried not just in words, but in visuals, spacing, even silence.

It is apt to say that AI is, and will always be stuck in Lynx.

Even when it creates images, poems, or essays, AI is not seeing what it produces. It’s parsing data structure. It understands syntax, not significance. It can tell you what typically follows what, but it has no intuitive grasp of why something matters or how it feels. It doesn’t live in the world of gradients and gut reactions. 

It lives in markup. We live in Squarespace. 

We perceive in layers. When something looks wrong, we feel it. When a word cuts too deep or lands too flat, we don’t just calculate it—we flinch. When the road ends, we leap. Our perception is immersive, relational, and always at risk of being changed by contact.

Breaking the Loop

This distinction isn’t just theoretical. It’s personal.

In another example from my memoir, I describe a moment where I found myself performing the beliefs I no longer held—repeating scripture to win a spiritual argument I didn’t believe in, just to survive it. It wasn’t just a betrayal of truth; it was a confrontation with the code I’d internalized since childhood.  But I realized that coding was an abstraction of true reality. It was a simplistic paradigm. It's fair to say I had been reading the world in Lynx: linear, rigid, doctrine-first.

But the rupture—the emotional crisis, the dissonance, the need to choose something different—was Netscape. It was translating the world into something with more color and imagery. Messy, immersive, textured with contradictions. The shift didn’t happen because I was flipping through scripture until I had an answer that fit the status quo—not artificially iterating through parsed text to inch toward a better idea. It happened because that old doctrinal paradigm failed to render something essential. 

So I leapt the gap.

AI can’t do that. It can’t experience failure that rewrites its structure. It can’t reframe the map itself. It doesn’t feel the loss of an identity or the revelation of a lie. It only knows how to follow what’s statistically likely to come next.

We, on the other hand, leap when the loop breaks. That’s what insight is.

Why AI Will Always Need Us

And that’s why AI isn’t replacing us—it’s multiplying us. It’s an assistant, a fast and tireless one, when the road is already paved. But it doesn’t know when the road ends. It doesn’t know how to stop and ask, “Wait—should we even be going this direction?”

And eventually, even its speed will stall a bit. As exhausts the availability and novelty of training data and loops through more of the same, AI will plateau—generating endless permutations of yesterday's ideas without the grounding to create tomorrow’s. It can remix, but not reinvent.

That’s what we’re here for.

AI can spin all day. But someone has to steer. Someone has to notice the curve. Someone has to remember what the journey was for.

We bring the traction.
We bring the context.
We bring the moment when everything stops making sense and must be rebuilt.

Because we don’t just navigate the road—we build new ones.

And we don’t just process the world—we see it.

Moral Agency and the Making of Womanhood in Trans Life

A political cartoon I saw recently brought up a familiar ache. At the basic level, the cartoon depicts a trans woman resisting an unfair system alongside a cis woman, only to be cast aside by that same cis woman the moment transness disrupts her comfort. It's a scene that echoes real life for many of us: you think someone sees you, but what they really see is an outline they can discard the second it costs them.

And I want to be clear from the get-go that this situation doesn't play out with all cis women or cis people. But it has, nonetheless, become very common. 

Similarly, this isn’t just about betrayal. It’s about how we, as trans women, build lives of substance that can weather this kind of disillusionment. It’s about becoming moral and community agents, not just survivors. 

Let's start with what I will expect is a very difficult idea to accept for most trans people. And before I say what I'm going to say next, I want to reiterate that healthcare, including trans healthcare, is a human right. However...

Being a Woman Is Not a Right... It's a Practice

We often frame gender in legal or medical terms—"the right to be recognized," "access to transition care." And these are important fights. But being a woman is not, fundamentally, a right. It's a practice. It's something you become, not by demanding to be treated a certain way, but by being responsible for others, by contributing to your community, and by showing up again and again.

In this sense, womanhood isn't granted. It’s forged. And just like cis women have had to fight for respect, trans women have to carve out our own space, not by asking permission, but by being.

The Difference Between Expression and Identity

Many trans women, especially those without caregiving roles or community responsibilities, are trapped in cycles of validation through visibility. They are affirmed for their appearance, for how well they "pass," or for how loudly they advocate. But expression is not identity. Validation is not belonging.

Belonging comes when someone depends on you. When someone knows you. When you are irreplaceable in someone’s life. That can come through motherhood, mentorship, activism, partnership, caregiving, or work. But it must come.

When I became a single mother, it wasn't because I was trying to prove myself. It was because there was no one else. That responsibility shaped my identity in a way no amount of affirmation ever could.

From Defensiveness to Moral Agency

Being trans in a hostile world often means learning to defend yourself. But defensiveness isn’t a philosophy. It’s a reflex. And over time, it can become a prison.

True moral agency means speaking not just for yourself, but for others. It means protecting people you love. It means saying when someone is wrong—not just when they hurt you, but when they hurt someone else. That’s what cis women are often socialized into. And that’s what many trans women are never allowed to develop.

But we can develop it. We must. Because that’s how real relationships are formed. That’s how respect is earned, not demanded.

Broader Perspective: Feminist Parallels and Historical Echoes

Throughout history, marginalized women have forged their identities through struggle. Black women, Indigenous women, disabled women—all have faced questions of "authenticity" and exclusion. But over and over again, their womanhood was affirmed not through appeal, but through contribution.

Trans women stand in that same lineage. And we must build our identities not just in opposition to those who exclude us, but in solidarity with those who suffer with us.

“We do not live single-issue lives.” — Audre Lorde

Neither do we form single-issue identities.

From Fear to Freedom

Fear is understandable. So is the desire to be seen. But survival is not enough. Trans womanhood cannot be built on performance. It must be built on participation.

When you are chained next to someone else, what matters is not your category. It is your presence. Your willingness to fight. Your ability to care.

And that is something no one can erase.

Womanhood, like adulthood, is not a title. It's a burden we carry, a role we step into, and a set of moral choices we make. The world might not always welcome us. But if we show up in the raw ways that matter—as caregivers, as moral agents, as people who love fiercely and speak truth without apology—then we will not only be seen.

We will be known.

I began this post with a political cartoon, not just for effect, but because it viscerally captured an enormity of frustrations and contradictions. Marginalized women are too often diverted into lateral conflicts, battling for recognition from peers rather than solidarity against shared systems of oppression. The cartoon shows this clearly: two women pulling the same cart, both burdened, but turning on each other instead of questioning why they’re pulling it at all—or who benefits from their labor. 

That image lingered with me because it mirrors what I see all too often in real life: people with aligned interests getting caught up in identity gatekeeping while exploitative powers remain untouched. This little essay, then, is my attempt to break that cycle—to name it, and to challenge it, and to remind us that we’re not each other’s enemies. Perhaps trans women have fallen victim to chasing the wrong goal posts. Perhaps it is the cis women applauding the UK's recent legal redefinition of 'woman' who have been. Either way, we are all fellow travelers, yoked together by forces that want us distracted. It’s time we looked up, looked around, truly unified, and asked why we’re still pulling the damn cart.

No One Is Coming To Save Us

Adam Conover explains the horrible situation Americans find ourselves in, when to know and how you save yourself:

The Most Basic Difference Between Stolen Election Claims Is Premeditation

You need to see this video interview with investigative reporter Greg Palast on the premeditated voter suppression that blocked Kamala Harris from winning the 2025 election:

Growing Up As One of Jehovah's Transsexuals

Growing Up As One of Jehovah's Transsexuals: A final reading before release.

If you have forgotten about this book I have been steadily working on for the past decade, don't worry! I'm here to remind you, and I have one last update and reading to share before the book is released. It will be available in print and digital copy on Amazon this November, 2023.

Watch or listen to this reading through the links provided below, or you can also watch through most other platforms, from Apple Podcasts to Pandora. 

On YouTube, I begin with some commentary about the book and current events, but then continue to read from where I left off at Chapter 3. There are timestamps if you are only interested in hearing the reading, rather than my blabbing. For podcasting services, the reading and commentary has been divided into two separate episodes. 

Now that the book is complete and nearing release, in print this will actually appear as Chapter 5. There is an additional chapter in the book before this point which was not included in my previous readings. I felt it was needed, and hopefully it keeps the book a bit more fresh for everyone once released.

Chapter four covers early memories with my sister and lays the groundwork for events that will happen later in the narrative. As a transgender woman that grew up within a fundamentalist Christian cult, there is quite a lot ahead. The narrative parallels many of the current events we are seeing in the world right now concerning these social groups, and is meant to arrive at a spirit of understanding through a mixture of honesty, vulnerability, and tough talk. 

Sometimes, I get asked why I use the word "transsexual" in my title, so I figure I can address that here, since many view the word as problematic and in general, people love trivia. 

For me, "transsexual" was the first word I learned that could describe me in any way, back in the 90s. The word "transgender" wasn't that common at the time, and I ended up discovering that word much later. Also, I use "transsexual" because it was the title of my original YouTube series, because it is a word that can be just as problematic as the cult I refer in the title, and because obviously Growing Up As a Fundamentalist Christian Transgender just doesn't really have the same snap to it!

YouTube:

Spotify:

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