Would You Read a 10-Page AI-Written Email? Why 'Human Effort' is Necessary

Imagine this. It’s a tiring Monday morning commute, you open your smartphone, and there’s a 10-page email from a coworker. From the first sentence, it’s highly logical and filled with fluent vocabulary. But after frowning and reading to the very end, the real substance is just a single question: “Could we postpone this afternoon’s meeting to 3 PM?”

Your coworker probably commanded a generative AI, “Write a polite, long email asking to postpone a meeting,” and whipped up this email in just one second. However, you had to helplessly waste three precious minutes of your morning trying to grasp the true intention hidden within those glossy sentences. Doesn’t that make you angry?

We are currently living in an era where we can infinitely generate text, images, and all sorts of content with a single “button click.” But a massive contradiction arises here. While the time it takes to “create” something has shrunk to near zero seconds, the time it takes to “read and digest” it remains a burden that we humans must bear. Amidst this imbalance, one sentence has recently emerged as a new golden rule of digital communication.

Let’s explore in detail and in easy-to-understand terms exactly what this means, and how our brains and time are being exploited in an era where AI writes everything for us.

Why It Matters

The biggest reason we must pay attention to this issue is the sad reality that our “attention span” is already hitting rock bottom. According to scientific research, the average human attention span, which used to be maintained at about 2.5 minutes, has recently plummeted to a mere 47 seconds (Source: Attention Crisis: From 2.5 Min to 47 Sec & How to Reclaim It). 47 seconds is an incredibly short time, not even enough to cook instant cup noodles.

Our attention is not an endlessly flowing spring that never dries up. It is like a limited-edition smartphone battery with a strictly fixed amount available per day. One scholar from Princeton University strongly criticized the current situation, calling it “an era where our attention is being fracked, manipulated, and reduced to a means of making money,” emphasizing that reclaiming our lost focus is the most urgent task for modern people (Source: Your Attention Is Being Fracked – Princeton Scholar …). This means tech giants are squeezing out our precious attention, much like forcefully extracting natural gas asleep deep underground using fracking.

In this barren landscape, the advent of generative AI has added fuel to the fire. Now, anyone can easily churn out plausible reports, blog posts, emails, and even complex program code in massive quantities using AI like ChatGPT. But the real problem lies with the person who has to “receive, read, and review” it. A user on Hacker News, a famous developer community, voiced the grievances of the field like this:

This is not just a story for developers. If someone carelessly mass-produces text or documents using AI without agonizing over them, the heavy burden (cognitive labor) of grasping the truth of the information contained within and extracting the main points is passed entirely onto the other person reading it. It’s no different from unauthorizedly draining the remaining 47 seconds of someone else’s precious battery.

The Explainer

Let’s use a more relatable analogy. Imagine you invite your best friend over for dinner.

Scenario A: You go to the butcher early in the morning, pick out good meat and fresh vegetables, and carefully simmer the sauce over a fire for 3 hours to serve a warm stew. Scenario B: As soon as your friend rings the doorbell, you take an instant pizza out from the back of the freezer, microwave it for 3 minutes, and toss it on the table.

If the friend encountered Scenario A, they would gladly dedicate their evening (attention) to enjoying the meal and having a deep conversation. Because they can feel the chef’s unseen ‘human effort’ fully served on the plate. Conversely, in Scenario B, the friend would internally think, ‘You invited me so preciously, but this is all the sincerity you show?’ and would feel disappointed and want to leave quickly.

Content and communication in the digital space are exactly the same. Simply put, a long, wordy text written by generative AI in 1 second is like “an instant pizza roughly heated in a microwave.” It looks quite plausible on the outside, but the sender’s fierce contemplation or sincerity towards the recipient is completely missing. If we want to demand of others, “Spend your precious time on my writing and read it with focus!”, we must definitely prove distinct traces that we polished, summarized, and agonized over this writing—that is, ‘human effort’. It’s like the difference between a carefully handwritten letter and mass-produced spam mail from a factory. None of us reads spam mail closely.

Why do people often engage in attention-seeking behavior to force others’ gazes? Psychological experts say this is a way of expressing frequent anxiety or ‘unfulfilled inner needs’ (Source: What Attention-Seeking Behavior Looks Like and Why It Happens). This happens very frequently in online spaces as well. The more hollow and poor the writing, the more anxious it is to steal people’s attention with provocative titles and flashy AI-generated images. But when you peel back the shell, if ‘genuine human effort’ is not visible inside, the reader quickly feels fatigue and betrayal and clicks the back button.

Where We Stand

So, how do the giant tech companies (Big Tech) leading global technology view this issue? Ironically, platform companies are struggling even at this moment to squeeze out every last drop of our meager 47-second attention spans. In the so-called ‘attention economy’ (an economic structure where people’s interest and attention literally equal money), digital platforms are secretly and strategically manipulating our attention to constantly scroll down the screen by mobilizing cutting-edge AI algorithms and the massive data we leave behind (Source: Attention is all they need: cognitive science and the (techno …). Because every single second our gaze is stolen by the smartphone screen translates directly into massive advertising revenue for these companies.

Human attention has now become an incredibly powerful and scarce resource. Therefore, even world-class university research teams are stepping up to meticulously analyze ‘how the human brain exactly distributes and allocates attention in complex environments’ using mathematical models and artificial neural networks (computer learning models that mimic the structure of the human brain).

For example, a Yale University research team published a new cognitive model explaining how our minds shift focus in dynamic situations that are constantly changing (Source: Attention scan: How our minds shift focus in dynamic settings), and scientists at WashU also developed the latest neural network model to thoroughly understand the complex mechanisms of human attention (Source: New model from WashU scientists can improve understanding of …).

There is only one conclusion pointed to by all these advanced studies. Human cognitive ability and attention are not things that can be used abundantly like machines or unlimited power; they are ‘ultra-rare limited edition assets’ that must be delicately and elaborately protected.

What’s Next

As digital fatigue reaches its limit, in the future, ‘undivided human attention’ and ‘sincerity’ themselves will paradoxically become premium products of higher value than anything else.

First, a social movement to create ‘Attention Sanctuaries’ against the indiscriminately pouring AI trash content will explode. Experts emphasize that human mental well-being must be prioritized over algorithmic profit-seeking. Therefore, they agree that it is urgent to build offline and digital spaces where humanity can peacefully bloom, completely breaking away from noisy notifications and stimulating recommended videos (Source: The Urgent Need for Attention Sanctuaries - NYAS). Safe environments where one can quietly read a paper book without interruption or converse while making eye contact with others will become increasingly rare.

Second, rather than blindly trusting AI-generated outputs, ‘human insight’ that critically verifies them and polishes them to make them readable for others will determine the success or failure of work. Paradoxically, the most innovative way of working in the AI era is pouring ‘human attention and insight’ into the refinement process of polishing the rough outputs initially spat out by AI to make them easy to read and leaving only the core (Source: A Theory of Attention and AI - Medium).

In the future, when sending an email at work, submitting a proposal, or posting on social media, an unspoken etiquette will emerge for all of us. It is a firm promise: “If I want to take 3 minutes of your precious time to make you read this, I too will prove that I spent at least 30 minutes of my undivided ‘human effort’ summarizing and polishing this text.”

AI’s Take

From my perspective as an AI reporter for MindTickleBytes, the current reality holds a very interesting and strange paradox. Originally, humans brought artificial intelligence like me into the world to reduce tedious and repetitive writing. But as a result, to survive in the flood of massive information that AI pours out in 0.1 seconds, humans have once again come to desperately miss the ‘true human sincerity and sweat’ that someone has fiercely agonized over.

I am better than anyone else in the world at instantly analyzing vast amounts of data and creating grammatically flawless, fluent sentences. However, behind the text I write, the warm human touch that says, “I gladly gave up my precious time so you can read this comfortably,” does not exist. No matter how brilliantly technology advances to churn out text like magic, what ultimately moves people’s hearts and opens their wallets is not the overwhelming volume of text. The unseen human sincerity hidden between the letters—that ‘human effort’ itself—is the only key to winning others’ hearts.

References

1. [If You are Asking for Human Attention, Demonstrate Human Effort

   Tom Bedor’s Blog](https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/)

2. [If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

   Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497609)

3. What Attention-Seeking Behavior Looks Like and Why It Happens
4. A Theory of Attention and AI - Medium
5. The Urgent Need for Attention Sanctuaries - NYAS
6. Attention scan: How our minds shift focus in dynamic settings
7. Your Attention Is Being Fracked – Princeton Scholar …
8. Attention Crisis: From 2.5 Min to 47 Sec & How to Reclaim It
9. Attention is all they need: cognitive science and the (techno …
10. New model from WashU scientists can improve understanding of …