Nihilism in the AI Era: When Claude and Codex Make Creation Within Easy Reach

I seem to have fallen into a kind of nihilism of the AI era. Digital Life Kazik, October 23, 2026, 13:25:34 Updated October 23, 2026, 15:23:29

For a while now, I seem to have come down with some strange illness.

I've started to become easily irritable and even less patient. I'm clearly now able to create and change so many things, yet the joy I get from it seems to be growing less and less.

The most memorable instance was two weeks ago, when OpenAI dropped more than seven hundred mathematical manuscripts overnight. I spent nearly 24 hours studying them and writing, and finally produced that article: AI has made it so that mathematics can never return to that old world.

But actually, after finishing it, sitting there—I very clearly remember it was past 6 a.m.—I suddenly had a very strange feeling.

I didn't have any particularly strong emotional reaction to the matter. I wasn't very excited, and I wasn't very afraid either.

I only felt a kind of emptiness, a kind of, nihilism.

Later I talked with many friends—whether they work in products, write code, do design, create content, or do research—and I found that I'm not the only one like this.

At the dinner table, everyone talks about new models and new ways to play, but as the night wears on and the conversation reaches the end, after everyone has bared their true feelings, they always flush red, raise their glasses, let out a long sigh, and say the same remarkably uniform sentence:

"Everything, it seems, has lost its meaning."

We are using AI to conquer the difficult problems that have troubled humanity for many years, using AI to write code, build products, and handle all our trivial affairs. We have even begun to possess superpowers, starting to reverse-engineer the TVs in our homes and modify those electronic devices we were once powerless over, turning everything unpleasant in this world into what we want it to be.

But in the past, if a person wanted to make a piece of software, they had to learn programming, understand design, study servers, and tinker for months—and might still not be able to build it.

And now?

You only need to open your computer, open Claude or Codex, describe your idea to the AI, and it can complete a considerable portion of the remaining work for you—or even all of it.

And the speed keeps increasing. Many things I once wouldn't have dared to imagine can now be made casually.

By all logic, I should be especially happy.

But here's the strange part.

When many things that were once far out of reach suddenly become within easy reach, I instead begin to feel that many things are no longer so interesting.

A few days ago I became very slack at work. Wanting to rest at home, I opened a game I had previously enjoyed, Baldur's Gate 3, and started over from the first chapter. Then, because the encumbrance system annoyed me—I felt it hurt the game experience—once I got annoyed, as if possessed, I downloaded WeMod and turned on unlimited carrying capacity.

After returning to the game, I felt the experience suddenly became very satisfying. That satisfaction lasted about 10 minutes, and what followed was a kind of nihilism. I suddenly felt that the entire game had become meaningless. What meaning was there left in my character's growth, my equipment, my clever combat tactics? It seemed all it took was one click of a button in WeMod.

Half an hour later, I deleted Baldur's Gate 3.

I used to think that the happiest thing about playing games was winning.

Only later did I realize that what truly makes us happy, much of the time, is the process of constantly exploring, growing, and then approaching victory.

Just like in my favorite game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. From the very beginning, we know our ultimate goal is Calamity Ganon, yet we deliberately avoid that castle.

We greedily explore every piece of land on the map, searching for every treasure chest hidden in a corner. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Sidon in the endless rain of Zora's Domain, walk alongside Yunobo in the blazing flames of Death Mountain, follow Teba into the clouds on the long winds of Rito Village, and accompany Riju into battle amid the thunder and yellow sand of Gerudo.

We turn over every stone in the forest just to hear that familiar "Ya-ha-ha!" We climb one mountain after another simply because we want to know what kind of scenery is hidden on the other side.

We could clearly end this adventure at any time.

Yet I always think: slower, a little slower.

I finally defeated Calamity Ganon on the train back to Beijing from my hometown. I watched the final boss fall before me, watched Zelda emerge from the holy light, watched the story end, and suddenly I felt a little like crying. At that moment, I felt that this joyful journey of mine had ended.

Those 150 hours I struggled through on the continent of Hyrule had ended.

At that moment, I felt a certain nihilism.

I sat blankly watching the scenery rushing past outside the train window, and I watched like that for an hour, until the announcement reminded me that Beijing Station had arrived.

Leaving Hyrule, I threw myself into another game of leveling up, fighting monsters, and growing, one called reality.

Sometimes a technical problem can stump me for days. Sometimes an article takes more than ten hours of staying up, and when I finish it and find that no one reads it, I feel sad for a long time.

But to be honest, at that time, I was still very happy, because I could always feel that I was getting a little stronger.

I knew that as long as I worked hard enough, learned more things, and accumulated more experience, one day I would be able to do what I previously could not.

Sometimes I would also think that one day, when my abilities became strong enough, I would definitely bring to life all those wild ideas that had once raced through my mind.

At first it was ChatGPT, then Claude, then Codex, then ever more powerful models of every kind.

I too have finally gained the creativity I once dreamed of.

There was a time when I wanted to build a product, I had to find a designer, find programmers, find all sorts of people to collaborate with. Now, all by myself, I can turn an idea into something that runs in a very short time.

Even to this day, I still feel that being able to live in this era is truly a stroke of great fortune.

But I also don't know when it started, when many things gradually began to feel different.

In the past, when I discovered a new need and made a new product, I would be excited for a long time. Now, I might just take one look, think it's not bad, and then start thinking about the next one.

In the past, when I encountered a technological breakthrough, I would be so excited I couldn't sleep. Now, even a particularly astonishing research result, I would subconsciously think, oh, that's about it, anyway next month there will definitely be something even more impressive.

This feeling is hard to describe.

It's like when you were a child and flew on a plane for the first time, watching the plane lift off from the ground, watching the city shrink little by little, watching the clouds spread out beneath your feet.

You feel this world is simply incredible.

But later, you take a plane a hundred times, a thousand times.

Even if the scenery outside the window is still so beautiful, you might just pull down the shade, put on your headphones, and fall into a deep sleep.

Miracles have not disappeared, it's just that we have already grown used to miracles.

And in the past, the lives of many of us were built on a very simple logic.

And then, I would gain a sense of accomplishment, gain respect, gain income, gain a better future.

It placed before everyone, all at once, the things that we once needed to strive for a long time to obtain.

At that moment, you can't help but feel a little dazed.

I worked hard for so many years, what exactly was it all for?

This is the nothingness I have fallen into.

I often ask myself, if one day, those abilities that we spent more than ten or several decades of effort to finally master suddenly became no longer scarce?

If the rules of life that we had always believed in suddenly began to fail?

I never had an answer, until yesterday, when I read a story.

A story that happened one hundred and twenty years ago.

On September 2, 1905, the Qing court issued an edict: starting from the following year, the provincial and metropolitan examinations would all be abolished.

The imperial examination was gone.

This system began in the Sui Dynasty, spanning one thousand three hundred years in total, and influenced countless people.

A scholar began his education at five or six, memorized the Four Books and Five Classics, practiced the eight-legged essay, took the county examination, the provincial examination, the metropolitan examination. This might be a family's hope, and also the meaning of their whole life.

In Taiyuan County, Shanxi, there was a village called Chiqiao. In the village there was a juren named Liu Dapeng. He was born in 1857 and passed the provincial examination in 1894. After that he took the metropolitan examination three times, but never managed to pass and become a jinshi.

But it didn't matter. As long as the imperial examination still existed, he still had hope. Next time, and the time after that, as long as he was still alive, there would always be a chance.

In the years that followed, he taught at a private school for about twenty years, farmed, and did a bit of small business. He watched new-style schools being set up one after another, watched the queues be cut off, watched the Great Qing fall.

Scholars who studied him said that in his whole life he never truly adapted to that new world.

By today's standards, Liu Dapeng was a failure, a man thrown off the train by his era.

But this story has a follow-up that I particularly like.

Liu Dapeng began writing a diary in 1891 and kept writing until his death in 1942, fifty-one years in all. No one asked him to write it, and no one paid him for it.

He just wrote: wrote about the weather, wrote about grain prices, wrote about what happened to whose family in the village, wrote about his own grievances and grumblings.

Decades later, this batch of diaries was tracked down by scholars at Shanxi University, compiled and published under the title The Diary of Tui Xiang Zhai. Later still, the British historian Henrietta Harrison wrote a book with him as the protagonist, called The Man Awakened from Dreams. Mengxingzi, the Dream-Awakened One, was the sobriquet Liu Dapeng gave himself.

He spent half his life pursuing official rank and fame, and in the end never achieved it.

Yet those trivial records he wrote down in his daily life became, decades later, precious material for later generations to understand that era.

When we were children, others told us: you must study hard and get into a good university.

When we grew up, others told us: you must master a skill and find a good job.

Later still, we began to compare income, compare job titles, compare how many products we made and how many people recognized us.

Our lives seem always to have an invisible exam paper.

It begins to solve, one by one, those problems we once found incomparably difficult.

And some problems, before we even have time to understand them, it has already written out the answers.

And so, we suddenly raise our heads and discover a frightening fact.

We have worked hard for so many years, always learning how to solve problems, yet few have ever taught us how, when one day all the problems have been solved, we should live happily.

I don't know what Liu Dapeng was actually thinking when he wrote those diary entries.

Everything he had once believed in was collapsing bit by bit in the torrent of that era.

Yet the sun over Chiqiao Village still rose as usual every day, the crops in the fields still grew, and the people in the village still hurried about for firewood, rice, oil, and salt, still rejoiced when their children grew up, still grieved when their loved ones passed away.

Today, frankly speaking, I still don't know how to solve the problem of nothingness.

Nor do I know what kind of incredible world we will be living in ten or twenty years from now.

But I know that I came into this world not just to clear the game.

Just like back then on the continent of Hyrule.

Knowing full well that Calamity Ganon was waiting in the castle, I still wanted to climb one more mountain, find one more treasure chest, and take another look at that grassland in the distance dyed gold by the setting sun.

Perhaps only many years later will we discover that those side quests that seemed so inconsequential are what truly made up our lives.