In this episode, Kimberly is re-joined by Stephen Jenkinson, author of Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse, about the moment we find ourselves in with artificial intelligence and what it asks of us. They unpack the claim that AI is merely a tool; a real tool elaborates the capacities of the human hand just enough to reveal its God-given limits. Jenkinson suggests renaming AI "arbitrary intelligence," and traces how the rollout was designed to anticipate and absorb resistance before it could even form. Kimberly shares her own encounters with AI's creep into branding, self-driving cars, dream interpretation, therapy, dating, and her daughter's experience competing against Adderall and AI-assisted classmates. Together they explore whether willful underachievement might be the truest form of resistance and why the loss of kinship with the world is the precondition for welcoming a machine as your therapist. Jenkinson describes an MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI, and his fully human reply. The conversation closes with Jenkinson's own physical limitation, that unlike any Zoom AI companion, he can't sit any longer; a poetic, human ending to the kind of overflowing conversations that we've come to expect from these two.

Bio

Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a teacher, author, culture worker, farmer, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. He is the author of Die Wise, Come of Age, A Generations Worth, Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson) and most recently Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse. His work explores grief, elderhood, dying, and the deep obligations of being alive in a time of unprecedented consequence. He has a master's degree in theology from Harvard and a master's in social work from the University of Toronto, and spent years as a program director in a major Canadian hospital, where his work focused on the care of the dying. He lives on a farm in the Ottawa Valley with his wife Nathalie Roy.

What He Shares:

– Why AI should be called "arbitrary intelligence" and why the words artificial and intelligence don't belong together

– The MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI and why he said no

– The shift from Lascaux to Turkey: how humans went from small stick figures to the biggest thing that ever happened

– Willful underachievement as the truest form of resistance

– Why he's glad he won't see the future and the two-generation rule for language loss

– The rollout: how AI anticipated resistance and folded it into the code before anyone could articulate their concern

– His own physical limitation as the conversation's closing teaching

What You'll Hear:

– Kimberly's encounters with AI creep: branding, self-driving cars, Zoom companions, Microsoft Word prompts

– Is AI a tool? Why a tool elaborates the hand and complies with God-given limits

– Arbitrary intelligence: renaming the thing for what it is

– The rollout: how resistance was anticipated, folded into the code, and served back as good soup

– The allegation that this has happened before and why he doesn't buy it

– The microwave precedent: how fast something goes from luxury to you're-a-buffoon-without-it

– Slow food, fast food, and what you can't recover from losing

– Kimberly's daughter competing unassisted against Adderall and AI and reinforcing the slower pace

– Willful underachievement and failing to qualify as resistance

– Leonard Cohen: none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace

– The MIT pitch: wouldn't your grandchildren want access to you after you die?

– Love must obey the limits of time and the human frame

– The want machine: why wanting something for someone doesn't make it good for them

– Lascaux to Turkey: from humans as tiny stick figures to humans as the biggest thing

– The loss of kinship with the made world as the precondition for AI

– AI as therapy, dream interpreter, dating coach, prescription writer and the abject loneliness underneath

– Being hurt aloud about what we're willing to submit to

– AI as you riffing on you being true to yourself as the thing that's being sold

– Kimberly on the inescapable attack in nervous system language and whether talking about it helps or feeds it

– SJ's body calling time: people learning from the part of you that you wish wasn't happening

Resources

Website: orphanwisdom.com

Upcoming Book: Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse