The Temptation of A.I.

And other cartoons

An illustrated poem about breakneck technological change with generative A.I. and nostalgia for a slower pace of learning. A cartoon girl is playing with colorful building blocks and overcoming the struggles of learning. Titled "Simpler Times Haiku" by Connie Sun, 2025.

This week, I'm sharing an unpublished illustrated poem I drew last year when I started considering what is at stake if we lose our ability to learn and evolve at a human pace. Maybe it's the loss of the kind of slow wisdom that we only come to know in our bones.

I find myself grasping for reassurances these days. So much of the news is plain bad and, for all the billions being spent on the A.I. race, none of it seems to helping make any of the world’s problems better.

I could just say, not my circus, not my monkeys, but the impact of decisions being made on our lives has been real.

The second comic strip is more recent. Six months after drawing the first one, I’m confronting harsher economic and social realities, as many of us are. The constant flood of change and disruption (to say nothing of the destruction) is overwhelming and a lot to process. It’s tempting to look for easy outs and to “outsource” the hard stuff elsewhere or to the machines.

Or maybe...to be human, to err and to learn, is the most important thing we can do right now.

A 2-panel illustration of an elephant napping and a girl with a bun seeking comfort and reassurance that things will be okay. Titled "Rest Before Worry" by Connie Sun, 2023.

I don’t have the answers, I’m just living through it, as we all are. I believe it’s important that we take care of ourselves and each other.

“Rest before worry” is what I tell myself; otherwise, I will not have the strength to do the work. And none of us are machines.

Thanks for reading, for your humanity, and for being here.

A 4-panel comic strip about the anxiety and overwhelm of having to deal with a flood of change and disruption all at once and the impulse to take the easy way out and have A.I. do the real work for us. A cartoon girl shares her anxieties with an elephant. Titled "The Temptation of A.I." by Connie Sun, 2026.

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To new subscribers, thanks for joining! This is where I share new comics and pep talks each week while I work on new projects and my longer graphic novel. You can also find my entire cartoon archive here, all the way back to when I first started teaching myself to draw comics 15 years ago. Against all practical odds, I still haven’t given up the dream.

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