The Perils of Perfect: Why AI Journaling Misses the Point

Article Summary

Victoria Song’s piece offers a critical perspective on the emerging trend of AI-assisted journaling. She argues that the core value of journaling – the act of wrestling with one's thoughts and emotions through a deliberate, often difficult, process – is inherently threatened by attempts to automate or streamline the experience. Google’s proposed Journal app, which leverages on-device machine learning to provide prompts and summarize entries, exemplifies this concern. Song highlights the dystopian potential of an AI that seeks to ‘fix’ the anxieties and discomforts that fuel genuine reflection. Her anecdote about Google’s “helpful” AI generating a milquetoast fan letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone underscores the risk of AI stripping the process of authentic, personal effort. The author draws on her own experiences with physical journaling, emphasizing the value of the struggle, the intentionality, and the cathartic release that comes from confronting one's thoughts and feelings without algorithmic assistance. The act of grappling with difficult emotions, of producing imperfect entries, is precisely what allows for meaningful self-discovery and growth—something an AI is ill-equipped to provide.

Key Points

• AI journaling threatens the core value of journaling: the struggle and effort involved in confronting one’s thoughts and emotions.
• Automated prompts and summaries diminish the intentionality and difficulty that are essential for genuine self-reflection.
• The imperfection of handwritten entries – mistakes, rambling thoughts, and raw emotion – is a crucial element of the therapeutic process.