“The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that people were not meant to live at the speed of light.”

- Marshall McLuhan, in The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (Slight change in cursive from ‘Man was’ to ‘people were’).

The rapid technological pace we inhabit promises efficiency, productivity, and constant connection. Yet this very pace often leaves us more distracted, burned out, and unable to focus. Slowing down is not about rejecting technology, but reclaiming the time and space to reflect, to notice, and to live fully.

There is no denying that AI systems can arrange words and ideas with remarkable fluency. Yet this raises a deeper question: is faster necessarily better? When output becomes instantaneous, what happens to reflection, hesitation, and care? The qualities that shape a deeper understanding rather than mere production.

In recent years, the idea of slow living, moving at the right speed rather than the fastest one, has been gaining renewed attention. Often gathered under the umbrella of the Slow Movement, this cultural shift challenges the assumption that acceleration is always progress. Before exploring what slowing down might mean for thinking in the age of AI, it is worth briefly examining where this movement came from.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

- Lao Tzu

The Slow Movement

In language, we often encounter proverbs that reflect a “take it slow” philosophy: slow and steady wins the race, patience is a virtue, and hasty climbers have sudden falls. Such sayings endure because they express a recurring insight: speed is not always aligned with wisdom.

The modern Slow Movement began in the 1980s when Carlo Petrini protested the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome. In response to the spread of fast-food culture, Petrini founded Slow Food as a defence of local traditions, craftsmanship, and attention to quality over convenience. What began as a culinary protest soon grew into a broader cultural critique of speed as a dominant value.

In the digital age, a similar logic applies. Philosopher Matthew Dennis refers to the “McDonald’s model of digital wellbeing,” describing how technology companies often deny responsibility for the harmful effects of their platforms, arguing that users alone are responsible for how these tools are used. This mirrors earlier arguments made by fast-food corporations, which ignored the fact that their products were intentionally designed to be addictive.

Slowing down, in this context, becomes a quiet form of resistance. Not a rejection of technology, but a refusal to let speed dictate attention, judgment, and care.

Growth of the movement

Since Petrini’s initial protest, the idea of slowness has continued to gain traction. In 1999, Geir Berthelsen founded the World Institute of Slowness. Their mission is to help the world slow down and create healthier, happier and more productive people. They promote a culture that values balance, attention, and presence. It’s about how we spend our time and what we pay attention to, the two spiritual currencies. So we can spend time on what truly matters: time for friends and family, time for reflection, time for creativity,... On their website, they write that “slow living is all about balance”. Slow living does not reject technology, but encourages a deliberate relationship with it, preserving space for reflection, creativity, and connection.

In 2004, journalist Carl Honoré further popularised these ideas with In Praise of Slow, challenging the belief that faster is always better. As Honoré writes: “The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed.” In this sense, the Slow Movement can be seen as a countermovement against living life with a timer, against trying to rush and force our way through life. Slowness is not inertia but intention.

“In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.”

- Guttorm Fløistad, Norwegian Philosopher

Towards Slow Thought

More recently, the conversation around slowness has entered the realm of thinking itself. In 2018, psychiatrist and philosopher Vincenzo Di Nicola published the “Slow Thought Manifesto”. A call for Slow Thought, which is a porous, playful and deliberate way of thinking.

Slow Thought is porous in the sense that it remains open. Rather than rushing to conclusions or forcing experience into fixed categories, Slow Thought allows ideas, impressions, and doubts to pass through and reshape one another. It makes room for contingency and contradiction, resisting the urge to decide too quickly what something is or what it means. Slowing down the mind in this way creates space to think things through, rather than merely react.

Slow Thought is also playful. It values thinking as an activity in its own right, not merely as a means to an end. Instead of jumping to conclusions, it allows meaning to emerge gradually, giving ideas time to unfold and ripen. Like play, it is exploratory rather than instrumental, more concerned with discovery than with immediate usefulness.

Finally, Slow Thought is deliberate. It is thinking with intention, care, and restraint. In a culture that rewards speed, confidence, and instant opinions, deliberate thinking chooses hesitation over performance and clarity over urgency. It accepts being uncompetitive and even indecisive, not as a weakness, but as a necessary condition for judgment.

While the Slow Movement and the idea of slow living may appear as a contemporary response to acceleration, the intuition behind slowing down is far older, appearing across philosophical traditions.

The Philosophy of Slow

From aligning with the Tao, to cultivating right mindfulness (sammā sati) in Buddhism, to recognising natural rhythms in Hermetic philosophy, slowing down has been valued across cultures and eras, not merely as a reaction to modern speed. It is a recurring insight woven into philosophical traditions across time and cultures.

In these traditions, slowness is not framed as passivity or withdrawal. Rather, it is understood as a way of aligning perception, action, and judgment with the deeper rhythms of life. To slow down is to attend more carefully to oneself, to others, and to the world, so that action emerges from clarity rather than impulse.

Across these philosophies, speed is associated with distraction and fragmentation, while slowness creates the conditions for presence, discernment, and ethical action. What differs are the metaphysical frameworks; what remains constant is the recognition that wisdom requires time.

Slowness as alignment (Taoism)

In Taoism, slowing down is a way of aligning oneself with the Tao, the underlying course of nature and life. Lao Tzu writes, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao,” suggesting that the deepest aspects of reality cannot be fully grasped through concepts or language alone, but must be lived and felt. While AI operates purely at the level of symbolic and intellectual manipulation, human understanding extends beyond words into intuition, sensation, and embodied awareness. Yet even humans lose touch with this deeper knowing when life accelerates. To listen carefully, feel deeply, and perceive what is subtle, we must first slow down.

A central Taoist concept is wu wei, often translated as “non-action,” but better understood as “not forcing.” Wu wei does not imply passivity, but action that flows naturally in harmony with both inner and outer circumstances. Like water, which moves effortlessly while always finding its way, human action aligned with wu wei emerges indirectly, through understanding, experience, and attentiveness, rather than through compulsion or overexertion. Slowing down restores proportion, allowing action and meaning to arise naturally. Lao Tzu also notes, “The sages manage the work of detached action and conduct teachings without words,” reminding us that not all understanding can be optimised or automated through words — a point that distinguishes human insight and action from AI computation.

Slowness as attention (Buddhism)

A similar insight appears in Buddhism, where slowness is essential for cultivating right mindfulness (sammā sati) and right concentration, two elements of the Eightfold Path. Mindfulness is not simply awareness, but a quality of attention that is steady, patient, and non-reactive. It requires pausing long enough to observe thoughts, emotions and sensations without acting immediately. In a distracted or accelerated state of mind, such awareness is impossible; slowness gathers and stabilises attention.

Thích Nhất Hạnh captures this simply: “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” Slowness is not an end in itself, but a condition for presence, allowing insight, responsibility, and compassion to emerge. Unlike AI, which produces instant outputs, mindful awareness depends on duration — staying with experience long enough to understand it. In this way, slowness cultivates judgment and clarity that cannot be automated.

Slowness as rhythm (Hermeticism)

In Hermetic philosophy, slowness appears through the Principle of Rhythm, which holds that all things move in cycles: rise and fall, expansion and contraction, activity and rest. Nothing exists in a constant state of acceleration. To live wisely is to recognise and cooperate with these rhythms rather than resist them. Applied to human life, this means knowing when to act and when to pause, when to speak and when to remain silent, and when to push forward or wait.

Modern life, increasingly shaped by AI-driven systems, tends to flatten rhythm into continuous productivity and availability. The Hermetic insight reminds us that ignoring natural tempo leads to imbalance. Slowness restores rhythm by reintroducing variation, rest, and timing into action, allowing judgment to mature and decisions to be made in season rather than on demand. In this sense, slowness is not opposed to action, but to mechanical repetition, offering a model of intelligence that is responsive rather than relentless.

The Inherent Morality of Slowing Down

Slowing down is not just practical or philosophical. It can also be a moral act. Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz highlighted this insight in her 1970 book The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Studying hundreds of tales from different cultures, she found that fairy tales often teach contradictory lessons. Some stories encourage courage and confrontation in the face of danger, while others advise flight or avoidance. This mirrors real life, where there is rarely one single correct choice for every person and every situation.

Yet across these tales, one rule almost never changes. The helpful animal, a creature that aids the protagonist, must never be harmed. Symbolically, this figure represents our inner voice or conscience, the quiet and intuitive sense of right and wrong. Jung viewed conscience as a deeper psychological knowledge, an inner truth that guides us beyond social norms, external expectations, or conditioned behaviour. Obeying this inner guidance is crucial, even when it conflicts with what others expect or what seems convenient. Ignoring it can lead to guilt, regret, shame, or the sense of living a life that is not fully one’s own.

There is, however, a caution. The inner voice is not always reliable. False conscience can arise in the form of urges that feel compelling but ultimately mislead us. Impulses driven by fear, pride, resentment, or imitation of others can appear moral or necessary when they are not. To discern true guidance, Jung suggests taking time, avoiding haste, and reflecting deeply before acting. Conscience cannot speak clearly in a state of rush or distraction. The helpful animal, the subtle guide within, is easily drowned out by speed, noise, social pressure, and constant stimulation.

Modern life is full of pressures to move quickly. We make snap decisions, react instantly, and constantly consume information. Yet moral discernment, ethical judgment, and authentic choice require slowness. When we pause, we create space to notice subtle feelings of unease or alignment, recurring thoughts or symbols, and bodily reactions that signal something important. Acting too quickly increases the risk of following false conscience. Many moral failures arise not from ill intent but from acting before our inner guidance has had time to reveal itself.

The lesson is clear. The most important rule is not simply to listen to your conscience, but to slow down enough to actually hear it. To move deliberately, to pause and attend, is to give morality its proper time and space to emerge.

Slowing down and AI: beyond the hype

If slowness is essential for judgment, conscience, and human insight, what does it mean in an era dominated by AI systems designed for speed, efficiency, and instant results?

Generative AI models can produce content in seconds — from social media posts to presentations, podcasts, and articles. The promise of speed has become irresistible. But does faster always mean better? When output becomes instantaneous, what happens to reflection, hesitation, and care — the qualities that shape understanding rather than mere production?

Recently, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, historian and technocrat Yuval Harari fueled AI hype with statements such as “AI already thinks better than many of us,” predicting that AI will take over religion, literature, and legal institutions. This view assumes a mechanistic, Cartesian model of human thought, reducing intelligence to the manipulation of symbols. It overlooks what makes humans unique: intuition, reflection, ethical discernment, and slow thinking.

Human intelligence is more than speed or raw processing power. It combines intellect, the ability to reason and analyse, with intuition, the capacity to sense, feel, and understand subtle or unspoken dimensions. AI, by contrast, only possesses the intellect side of this coin. It can process data at incredible speed and recognise patterns, but it cannot truly understand, feel, or judge. In this sense, it may be more accurate to call AI “Artificial Intellect” rather than intelligence.

Stefano Quintarelli has suggested the acronym SALAMI: Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences. This highlights that current AI is mathematical and data-driven, not human-like. Recognising this helps reduce hype, dispel the notion of sentient AI, and focus attention on how we use these tools responsibly.

Given this context, the lessons of the Slow Movement and Slow Thought are more relevant than ever. Thinking first, AI later. Taking time to reflect before adopting AI systems, or before letting them influence our judgment, preserves human autonomy, ethical reasoning, and deliberate action. Blindly embracing speed risks eroding the qualities that define humanness: attention, presence, conscience, and intentionality.

Modern life pushes us to move quickly. Decisions are made in haste, attention is fragmented, and information is consumed nonstop. Alan Watts asked: “Is technological progress a disease, symptomatic of being unable to be centred in and to enjoy the present?” While provocative, his point is clear: in an era of constant stimulation, we must pause, ground ourselves in the present, and cultivate awareness. Slowness is not a retreat from progress; it is a path to focus, insight, and ethical action.

By slowing down, we reclaim our ability to notice subtle feelings, recurring thoughts, and bodily reactions. We create the space to discern between false impulses and genuine guidance. Slowing down allows reflection to precede action, giving conscience, judgment, and creativity the time they need to emerge.

The acceleration of our world invites us to slow down and rediscover what ancient traditions have long emphasised: the benefits of attentive presence, reflection, and rhythm. Slowing down is not stagnation; it is a deliberate choice to live fully and authentically. In a future shaped by AI, we have the opportunity to cultivate our uniquely human capacities: to think deeply, to act morally, and to connect profoundly with one another. By embracing slowness, we can create a world where technology serves human flourishing, and where presence, care, and connection are not casualties of speed, but the very foundation of a more meaningful life.

DISCLAIMER: The content of this article is my work. ChatGPT only helped tidy the language a bit. All photographs used are my own.

In this post, I share some thoughts on why generative AI models will never be truly creative.

Creativity and originality

Some scholars argue that Generative AIs have reached human-level creativity (Haase and Hanel, 2023), following the psychological definition by Plucker that a creative product is “both novel and useful as defined within a social context.” (Plucker et al, 2004) However, there is debate about so-called weak artificial creativity versus strong artificial creativity. Weak artificial creativity means AI models only imitate creativity. Where strong artificial creativity points to AI models which are genuinely creative.

Looking at originality and spontaneity (Kronfeldner, 2009), rather than solely novelty and usefulness, the view that generative AI has reached human-level creativity falls short. Maria Kronfelder (2009) states that something original does not mean it needs to be new. For example, Newton invented calculus independently from anyone else, even though Leibniz already invented it. Hence, Newton’s discovery wasn’t new, but it was still original since he came up with it on his own without knowing that Leibniz invented calculus before him during that time. Originality is an essential ingredient for creativity. Concerning artificial creativity, this raises the question: is generative AI original or does it only make novel things based on the data it’s been trained on?

The following example shows how conditioning can lead us to be less original. In ideation workshops, I often ask participants to draw a flying horse to get in the right mindset for generating creative ideas. They almost always draw a Pegasus. When asking DALL-E-2 it also generated Pegasus images. Both people and AI are conditioned by the previous information they consume. However, when asking children to draw a flying horse, they draw a horse with rocket launchers for feet or a horse with balloons attached to it. The children’s answers seem intuitively more creative. This is because they have not been influenced by previous conditioning and can still make original associations, although the idea of a horse with rocket launchers for feet isn’t something new (it’s probably been drawn before).

Being VS behaving creatively

I find it immensely important that we still have a sense of what it is to be human, as creative beings, and gain more clarity on the role of generative AI in society. Only then can we find the right way of relating to these technologies. With generative AI evolving at a rapid pace we have to reconceptualise what creativity means, also looking at what it is to be creative rather than to behave creatively. To understand what it is to truly be creative as human beings, we can shine a light on our relationship with generative AI, which seems to only behave creatively.

I am deeply inspired by Taoism, which holds a radically different perspective from our Western way of thinking about creativity. The latter often sees creativity in terms of a mechanistic process which can be reduced to certain conditions. A Taoist vision of creativity, developed by David L. Hall (1978), sees the characteristics of creativity as freedom and reflexivity. Hence, creativity is something which arises in an effortless state or without deemed action. Chang Chung-yuan finds that “the creative process of the universe is also the creative process of the poet, who has transformed his ego into self and thus has become part of the universe.” (Chang, 2011, p.200)

From conditioning to divine inspiration

Indeed, from a Taoist perspective, the creative and spontaneous activity of Tao, often translated as the way or course of nature, mutually arises with human creativity. Similarly, we find this view in the works of Plato (4th century BCE) where Socrates observed great poetry as arriving through divine inspiration. Creativity can be regarded as being interrelated with the concept of self-realisation, to go beyond the ego and transform as human beings into a genuine self. The goal of self-realisation is “to be free from the confusion of external conditions” (Chang, 2011, p.93).

I propose we all start to look at how conditioning, both in training generative AI models and learning in humans, is related to different types of creativity. To become truly creative and be divinely inspired, we must go beyond the individual ego and mechanistic models of creativity. I wholeheartedly think generative AI models will never truly be creative, but they will remain tools that can behave as if they are.

DISCLAIMER: This blog post was written without generative AI technologies.

References (in order of appearance)

Haase, J. and Hanel, P.H., 2023. Artificial Muses: Generative Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Have Risen to Human-Level Creativity. arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.12003.

Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A. and Dow, G.T., 2004. Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational psychologist, 39(2), pp.83-96.

Kronfeldner, Maria E., 2009, “Creativity Naturalized”, The Philosophical Quarterly, 59(237): 577–592. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.637.x

Hall, D.L., 1978. Process and anarchy: A Taoist vision of creativity. Philosophy East and West, 28(3), pp.271-285.

Chang, C.Y., 2011. Creativity and Taoism: A study of Chinese philosophy, art and poetry. Singing Dragon.

Cooper, J.M. and Hutchinson, D.S. eds., 1997. Plato: complete works. Hackett Publishing.