Let me be clear from the start.
I like AI. Yes, there you go I said it.
I use it to help me track down possible sources, organise files and sort through ideas. It saves me time. It helps me think things through, draft material and organise my thoughts when my brain has already clocked off for the day. It is an amazing place to dump lots of ideas and then ask it to spit them back out as bullet points.
I have also used it to organise transcripts of my own non-confidential creative work, sort scripts from shows and help identify different speakers and their dialogue. Anything involving confidential client information is a completely different matter because confidentiality has to come first.
AI is genuinely useful, and I am not going to pretend otherwise just to seem edgy or contrarian. Some of its functions overlap with tools we have used for years—search engines, translation software and voice-to-text—but generative AI is not simply a quicker version of Google. It works differently, and it can still misunderstand things or produce information that sounds convincing but is completely wrong.
So, yes, I use it. I just do not automatically believe everything it tells me. Hello, Google Translate voice-to-text how you infuriate me.
But I also climbed a hill recently.
And standing up there, looking out over the kind of view that makes your brain go quiet for the first time in weeks, I had a thought.
We are spending an awful lot of time watching other people experience the world.
The Terminator Is Not Coming. Relax.
Before we go any further, can we all agree to calm down about AI just a little?
Every week there's a new headline. AI is going to take all the jobs. AI is going to become sentient. AI is going to decide humans are inefficient and do something about it.
The Terminator is not coming.
I do not think The Terminator is coming. At least not this week.
Current generative AI systems are trained to recognise patterns and produce responses from the information on which they were trained. Calling them “autocomplete” is probably too simplistic, but treating them as thinking, all-knowing people goes much too far in the other direction.
They can be genuinely brilliant at some things and confidently terrible at others. The sooner we make peace with that slightly annoying reality, the better.
AI has its place. Of course it does. The question isn't whether to use it. The question is whether we're using it well, or whether we've quietly handed it things that were actually quite good for us to do ourselves.
Like going outside.
Like looking at something that isn't a screen.
Like being somewhere that doesn't have a notification.
Helsby Hill
A little while ago, I drove to Helsby Hill in Cheshire.
If you haven’t been, it’s not Everest. It is not going to require specialist equipment or test the limits of human endurance. It is a hill. A genuinely lovely, not-very-far-from-anywhere hill with a sandstone ridge at the top and a view that, on a clear day, will stop you mid-sentence.
Some of the walking routes include steep, rocky and uneven sections, so it is still worth checking the route and weather and wearing something more suitable than your favourite slippers.
You can see across the Cheshire Plain towards Liverpool, the Wirral and the Welsh hills. So, for once, geography is actually backing me up.
You can also see the kind of sky that reminds you the world is considerably larger than whatever you were worrying about on the drive over.
I stood at the top and I just... looked at it.
No filter. No caption. Well, I took a photo, I'm not a monk, but mostly I just stood there and let it be what it was.
Remarkable. Ordinary. Free.
It cost me a few quid of diesel and about forty minutes of walking.
Helsby Hill — It is a lovely view and walking trail with fresh air everywhere.
The Cloud — Near Congleton
Then there’s The Cloud. This is a different kettle of fish. It is still a hill; it is simply more than twice as high as Helsby Hill.
Despite what I originally wrote, The Cloud is not actually in Macclesfield. It is near Congleton, on the border between Cheshire and Staffordshire. Geography has stopped backing me up again.
It rises to 343 metres—approximately 1,125 feet—and, on a clear day, provides remarkable views across the Cheshire Plain.
The suggested circular route from Timbersbrook includes rough paths, steps, rocky outcrops and stiles. So it is not Everest, but it may remind your legs that they have not been consulted about the day’s activities.
The view really is remarkable—assuming you are not as scared of heights as I am.
The kind of painting where everything is green and wide and unhurried, and nobody is asking anything of you.
I walked up on a morning when the mist was still sitting in the lower parts, and the top was in full sun. The contrast was extraordinary. Grey and soft below, sharp and golden above, like the hill had its own weather and had decided today was going to be a good one.
There was nobody up there trying to sell me anything.
Nobody asking for my attention.
No algorithm deciding what I should look at next.
Just the view. Just the wind. Just the very simple and increasingly rare experience of being somewhere with no agenda.
Meanwhile, Back on the Internet
Here's the thing I keep thinking about.
There are people, talented, creative, genuinely adventurous people — who have made entire careers out of going to places like Helsby Hill and The Cloud and filming them on Insta 360 cameras and posting the results on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
And millions of us watch them.
We sit on our sofas on a Saturday afternoon, with our phones in our hands while ignoring Netflix or a laptop open, ignoring work, watching someone else walk up a hill in real time, experiencing the view through a screen. We then comment on things like, “Wow,” this is stunning, and I need to go here and then close the tab and watch the next one.
The hill is thirty minutes away.
Not the specific hill necessarily. But a hill. A wood. A reservoir. A canal path. A stretch of coast. Something that is outside and real and three-dimensional and smells like actual air.
It's right there.
And we're watching someone else do it.
AI Didn't Make Us Do This. But It Isn't Helping.
I want to be fair here; this isn't AI's fault. We were doing this before AI arrived. The phone was already winning before the chatbots showed up.
But here's my mild concern, said lightly and without any particular doom attached to it:
The better AI gets at producing content, at answering questions, at simulating experience, the easier it becomes to stay inside. To consume rather than do. To watch rather than go. To ask a chatbot what Helsby Hill is like, rather than just driving there and finding out.
And something is lost in that substitution.
Not something dramatic. Not something that makes the headline AI DESTROYS HUMAN EXPERIENCE.
Just something quiet and important.
The specific quality of light on the Cheshire Plain at 9 am on a Tuesday.
The feeling of your legs working on a slope.
The way your brain goes quiet when there's nothing to respond to.
The conversation you have with the person next to you on the journey.
It’s an adventure.
The view that nobody can describe to you properly because it has to be stood in, not read about.
AI cannot give you that. An Insta 360 video cannot give you that. A very beautiful photograph cannot give you that.
Only actually going can give you that.
The World Is Still Out There. It Hasn't Gone Anywhere.
This is the thing that struck me most, standing on top of The Cloud near Congleton which is even taller than Helsby, with the mist in the towns below.
The world is still as astonishing as it ever was.
The hills haven't moved. The views haven't been updated, deprecated or replaced by a newer version. The sky is still doing its thing with complete indifference to whether anyone is watching.
It's just that we've got very good at experiencing things second hand.
At watching the reels instead of living the moment. Being present.
At being consumers of other people's adventures rather than having our own small, unglamorous, genuinely wonderful ones.
Helsby Hill isn't going to get you a thousand likes, well, maybe it could. The Cloud isn't going to go viral, well, not the way I dragged myself up there anyway. Your slightly out-of-breath selfie at the top with the wind doing something unfortunate to your hair is not Insta 360 content. Although as soon as I write that, I bet it is.
But it's yours. Whatever it is.
And it's real.
And your brain will thank you for it in ways that no algorithm, however sophisticated, has yet figured out how to replicate.
So.
It's almost the weekend.
AI will still be here on Monday. The internet will still be here. Content creators will still be posting their reels and 360 videos. The headlines will still be predicting the end of everything. The content will still be there waiting to be consumed.
But so will the hills.
So what have you decided on?
Please note: This article reflects personal experience and opinion. It is not a substitute for professional mental health support. If you are struggling, please speak to your GP or a qualified professional.
