There was a time when effort and reward moved together, intertwined. You put in-you get out. You could climb a hill and be paid back with the view from the top (metaphorically, we can still do this!!).

A solved problem came with an internal sense that you had earned it. That relationship, between process and outcome has shaped not just economies and careers, but our identities and given our lives meaning.

Now imagine those experiences collapsing into a single beat, a brief moment. What happens then?

With the rise of artificial intelligence, we’re stepping into a world where results can appear almost instantly. What once took days, months, even years, can now be generated in seconds. The friction is gone. The waiting is gone. Increasingly, the process itself is all but optional.

At first, it does feel like progress. I mean, of course it does—getting more done with less effort has always been the goal. We all strive/hope to be more efficient, but the more I think about it, the more something feels slightly off. If things come too easily, they don’t seem to last in the same way. You don’t remember, value, or even feel that satisfied by them. And I can’t tell if that’s just nostalgia talking, or if there’s actually something important in the effort.

So, when outcomes are detached from effort, what happens to the meaning we assign to them?

There’s an old phrase—“easy come, easy go.” It’s usually said nonchalantly with a shrug, but it hints at something deeper. We instinctively value what costs us something. Time, energy, attention, struggle—these aren’t just obstacles; they’re part of the magic that transforms an outcome into something meaningful. Remove them and you risk removing the emotional depth from our lives.

This is more than just philosophical though, it’s biological.

Human motivation is tightly bound to dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical. It’s often misunderstood as the “pleasure molecule,” but it’s more accurate to think of it as the driver of anticipation and effort. Dopamine spikes not just when we achieve something, but when we work towards it. The journey matters because the brain is wired to make it matter.

When rewards become instant and ubiquitous, does this system break down? If everything is easy, nothing feels particularly valuable. Not because the rewards themselves are diminished, but because the pathway to them no longer demands engagement. Over time, this can dull motivation, making longer, more demanding pursuits feel disproportionately difficult or even pointless.

Instead of investing in deep, time-consuming work, we gravitate toward what delivers quick hits of stimulation. Why spend years learning to play an instrument when a machine can generate something polished in seconds? Why wrestle with a blank page when completion is always one prompt away?

It all sounds efficient. It even sounds exciting. But with that, uncomfortable questions emerge: if the reward is no longer tied to the process, why would we bother engaging in the process at all?

This isn’t an abstract concern. It becomes personal very quickly. Imagine spending years developing your craft—music, writing, art, only to watch AI-generated alternatives outperform you in speed, reach, and even reception. The comparison seems unfair, and occasionally it’s existential. How long do you keep going when effort itself seems devalued?

I think about this so much, asking myself almost daily, how can I compete? Do I still want to? And yet I’ve been doing it so long it’s hard-wired into me. GOOD WORK TAKES TIME. Things that have depth and meaning can’t be created out of thing air. Can they? You may have noticed there’s lots of questions in this post. Here’s more.

So what is reward in these situations? Does it need redefining? There’s no easy answer, especially when even to me, someone who’s spent a life creating, I can see why it’d be so tempting, desired or ultimately preferred.

If outcomes are cheapened by abundance, then perhaps value shifts back toward experience. The act of creating, learning, struggling—these might become ends in themselves rather than means to an end. Not because they’re efficient, but precisely because they’re not. In a world of instant results, the process could become a rare commodity or what we again in time, see as the important part. I’m trying to stay positive in believing that this will be highly valued once again.

Another possibility of course is less optimistic. We may drift further into cycles of passive consumption, chasing smaller and more frequent dopamine hits while avoiding the discomfort of sustained effort. Over time, that could erode not just how we feel, and in turn our productivity, but a deeper sense of purpose.

The truth is, as with so many aspects of our current situation, we’re transitioning into a world with too many unknowns. Yes, that can be scary, but it’s also totally fascinating!

The old model, input equals output, effort equals reward—is being rewritten in real time. Whether that leads to liberation or disorientation, utopia or dystopia, may depend less on the technology itself and more on how we choose to relate to it.

Because even if the world no longer requires us to struggle for results, something in us still might.

So, what do you think?

P.S. For the sake of clarity (though it’s blindingly obvious given the keyboard above has four black notes in a row), the images at the top are AI. I spend all my time making music to test the theory that “real music is still better than AI”. I spend time writing down thoughts as they come into my head that will one day become an article. I spend time in the real world with my kids and cook food that has not come from a vending machine, so please allow me to take one short cut and not see me as a hypocrite. I BEG YOU!! Thanks.

Just a reminder to you (and me), who am I and what am I doing?

True Being is a musician trying to understand and interpret this world through music and visual explorations, keeping a balance on truth, depth and meaning as we head into a more technological future.

This year has started very positively scoring the music to a documentary about Courtney Love. It was a pleasure and a privilege scoring music to intimate letters and scenes between her and Cobain who I’d modelled my look on as a 15 year old boy. Everyone seemed to love the film (even Courtney), however, at the the very last moment she decided not to come. I can only presume her artistic self doubt and insecurity got the better of her just moments before release. I couldn’t possibly know how she feels. A chance to hang with the queen of Grunge passed, but the overall experience with the premiere at Sundance in Utah certainly made up for it.

GREAT SEGWAY COMING!!!

That brings me to my own insecurities. I released my latest single last month, and did I tell anyone? Did I F#@k. Something strange happens between creating it, getting excited by it, releasing it and then hating it. I’m hoping by the time I’m 60 to have got a handle on this chain of events. However the passing of time (like with the death of a loved one) has diminished the pain sufficiently enough for me to now tell someone so here it is if anyone is up for it. 21st Century Flux.

https://linktr.ee/truebeing. Just click “latest song”.

Relevant world news you may/may not have heard-

Within the sphere of subjects relevant to True Being, there was some great news in a much wider context. Meta and YouTube have been ruled to have consciously created addictive products that caused negative effects and depression of a young girl in America. It’s a landmark ruling.

We all knew of course, but now it’s been proven and we can’t understate the importance of this.

It’s about accountability that’s all, as they’ve prioritised engagement over health and now they’ve rightfully been caught out. This gives me optimism for the future that just maybe after all, some tech companies will have to put welfare of users further up the list. There are little pockets of resistance bubbling all over and this is just part of a broader movement.

My wife’s film Molly vs the Machines also aired on Channel 4 last month, which is at the forefront of this discussion and an important doc is available on More 4.

Newest Merch- The True cap. Nature confined in a graph! You could say it’s a metaphor for Big Tech not being happy until they’ve successfully confined us all to digits and data… or, you just say that I liked how it looked.

https://truebeing.co/en-gbp/products/rainbow-logo-cap

Well that’s all for this one. I hope everyone is feeling the positivity that Spring brings.

Speak soon

Nikky - True Being

P.S. If for some reason you’re still receiving this and you unsubscribed then apologies, I’m still working out the system. Just press unsubscribe at the bottom.

I hadn’t intended for these articles to include film reviews, but this film hit me hard, so I’m making an exception. It’s not really a review anyway, more a “how It made me feel”. That feeling was one unexpectedly relevant to the world we’re living in now, despite being wrapped in a story more than 400 years old. Having said that, whilst reading Seneca a couple of years ago I was struck by how similar everyday situations and concerns were in Roman times to our own, and so it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Hamnet—the name of Shakespeare’s and his wife Anne/Agnes Hathaway’s son—is thought to be the inspiration for the title of Shakespeare’s most famous and powerful play, Hamlet.

At its heart, the film deals with loss: the devastation it brings, and the ways we learn to endure it and carry on.

The performances are extraordinary, from the child actors to the remarkable Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. And while there is, of course, a strong connection to Shakespeare, you don’t need to be a devotee to appreciate the film. Its focus on his wife, Agnes, only strengthens this, offering a perspective that feels both fresh and powerful.

I think there’s a growing sense that what is meant to connect us in modern life can sometimes do the opposite. Without consciously thinking it at the time, the film seemed to quietly affirm the importance of human connection, and I suspect the director, Chloe Zhau, was well aware of this during the filming process. I believe this is why the film strongly resonated with me, and why I felt there was some kind of link to my music and writing about this time that we’re all living through. Certain paths of innovation, however well-intentioned, can erode things that are fundamental to us.

The power and beauty throughout are spellbinding. Still, it’s the climax that lingers most, culminating in a final scene that is nothing short of breathtaking.

I won’t describe that final moment, except to say that the director’s approach to conveying loss and deep human connection is so profound it’s impossible not to be moved. I would dare say that only a psychopath wouldn’t feel a tear welling up. I can’t recall another moment in film that has affected me as strongly. Even weeks later, simply thinking about it makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.

This is a film that deserves to be seen in the cinema, not only to fully immerse yourself in its beauty and darkness, but because the shared environment only deepens the experience and augments its emotional power.

An amplification that perhaps can only be achieved through shared presence. In that sense, it reminds me of live music at its best: performer, audience, and environment feeding off one another to create something greater, almost magical.

So what did I take from it?
That love, loss, and grief are timeless, inseparable from our need for connection and hope, and perhaps what make them stronger.

There is an advantage in getting ChatGPT to write your essay or job application: It saves time, it boosts your chances, and it frees you from spelling and grammar. It is understandable; why wouldn’t someone give themselves an edge with the least effort? The issue only appears when the job you land actually requires you to know what you are doing. Passing an application is one thing; making life-or-death decisions because you tricked HR with a neatly phrased paragraph is something else entirely.

How many bridges might fail, how many planes might start behaving like experimental art pieces, and how many systems may collapse because applicants let AI do their homework? No one can know. We may soon need to rethink how we assess competence: perhaps fewer written submissions, more practical tests; perhaps fewer assignments that can be completed at 2 a.m. by a large language model whilst we sit with a glass of red watching Terminator 2. How we acquire this information and put it to work is really just smart and opportunistic; the problem comes further down the road, when you realise the system collapses in on itself.

Technology overuse already causes cognitive decline and intellectual atrophy. We forget how to think; we only remember the answer. How can any of us adapt the end result fully or effectively if we have no idea how it was created? Much like using GPS for ten years and then realising you no longer know how to get to your own house unless a satellite tells you. If we lose understanding of processes, how can we rework or improve anything when it breaks?

As a musician, I have always believed that meaningful work comes from lived experience. For a long time I assumed deep and emotional music could not exist without a genuine human life behind it. To my concern, this may not hold true; many people do not seem to hear or feel the difference between real and AI-generated music that once read a Wikipedia page on heartbreak. Apparently the process matters far less than we’d like to think (currently).

This is troubling, yet there is a second problem with a sense of tragic comedy. People increasingly turn to AI for information because it conveniently pulls from countless articles and studies. But if readers no longer support those articles and studies, or the AI companies don’t pay for where they get their knowledge, the system breaks down, as the writers cannot afford to write them. It is the intellectual equivalent of everyone expecting to get coffee out of a machine without putting any beans in! The more we rely on AI summaries, the more we risk starving the very sources that feed them; eventually the models may get dumber, not smarter, as will we.

Meanwhile, academics are streaming into AI companies and who can blame them? It’s an exciting new world and makes perfect sense for the individuals involved as the salaries are irresistible; university budgets are not. It’s a problem with no easy solution. I love the fact that all the info I search for is neatly herded up and presented clearly, and wouldn’t want a return to trawling multiple sites, So how do we ensure the illuminated minds that feed us continue to be fed?

There is always the possibility that AI companies do indeed reach artificial general intelligence: a system so capable that it no longer depends on human input. At that point, it will think faster than we can blink and understand more than a room full of Nobel laureates. This is also the moment where my understanding collapses; it may be the moment where many things collapse. Something new will begin— something powerful and unsettling.

By then, we become oblivious to what is happening as AI pulls the strings. Much like someone who slips into a coma after a severe accident. Perhaps that is a fitting metaphor for what may happen to society: a kind of collective cognitive nap; our capacities dulled, our experiences simplified to something primitive. Maybe, in a strange way, that would even feel like a relief, but it doesn’t sound like progress though does it?

P.S.

There is another side to this that came to me after completing this article that is worth a ponder. If AI systems start to stumble or slow as they reach the upper limits of available intelligence, it may continue to grow its emotional intelligence. As we confide more, pour our hearts out and bare our souls to it, this may become its real strength. I’m not sure if that scares me even more, so whilst I write these thoughts down for another article, I will fight the urge to crawl into a very dark hole and pull the lid over. Thanks.

Not long ago, it was natural to believe that presidents, prime ministers, and elected officials were the ones shaping society and steering our collective future. Governments passed laws, set policies, and decided the course of nations. But that belief no longer holds much weight. The uncomfortable truth is that the true architects of modern life are not our political leaders, they are the unelected, unaccountable emperors of technology. The trouble is with our current leaders, neither option is great; caught between a rock and a shit place.

So how did we get here? Somewhere along the way, power shifted. We handed it over willingly like a digital offering, click by click. Our increasing dependence on technology (and for many, our addiction to it), has placed tech companies in an unprecedented position of authority. We gave them what every ruler craves: attention. In return, they built empires from our habits, our data, and our desires. The result is that these corporations now wield more influence over our daily lives than most governments ever could.

Recently, the line between political and technological power blurred in full view, when Elon Musk, arguably the most visible of today’s tech moguls, found himself entangled in the upper echelons of U.S. government discussions. The ease with which he entered those circles, and the chaos that followed, was a glimpse into a future where corporate and political bum-chums collide in dangerous ways. Only the clash of personalities and egos on this occasion prevented an even more alarming alignment of interests, but it also revealed just how fragile democratic boundaries have become.

Emboldened by our constant consumption and unquestioning adoption of every new app, platform, and device, the tech industry has grown wealthier than the very governments meant to regulate it. And while governments are bound by public accountability, corporate giants answer only to shareholders — if that. Their products shape culture, communication, and even thought itself, yet they operate with minimal restrictions and seem motivated by profit not principle. That would be similar to many businesses, but for the fact they’re being steered by bosses with a moral compass Adolf Hitler would be proud of.

Attempts at regulation are met with fierce resistance. The industry’s standard defence is as predictable as it is effective: any restriction, they claim, will stifle innovation and allow China to dominate the technological landscape. It’s a convenient argument, one that preys on geopolitical fears while keeping regulators at bay. And so, rather than reining in tech’s growing dominance, most governments tiptoe around it — terrified of appearing anti-innovation, or worse, irrelevant. Politicians still influence some areas but the over-arching direction of humanity is being shaped by tech.

This raises many questions. If the institutions that once safeguarded public interest are now beholden to corporate power, who is really governing us? And what happens when the algorithms that shape our perceptions, also influence the very decisions of those we elect?

I don’t pretend to have easy answers; China may well dominate if we regulated those in the West. That this may be a better option than where our Tech Titans are taking us, only proves the problem. But I do know this: the balance of power has shifted too far, too quietly. If governments continue to shrink in authority while tech empires expand unchecked, we risk losing not just control of our data, but control of our destiny. Reclaiming it will require more than regulation — it will require remembering that technology was meant to serve humanity, not the other way around.