Gray Goo - Homogenization Covers the Earth

"And in time” - his voice rose-“there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation ‘seraphically free From taint of personality,’ "

-E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops

A World-Consuming Technology

"Gray goo" is a thought experiment introduced by nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation. Drexler described how self-replicating nanobots could take human commands too literally, causing a world-ending disaster. For example, imagine that scientists deployed nanobots to clean up an oil spill. Imagine that the nanobots are programmed to eat the carbon in the oil and use the consumed matter to make copies of themselves until the mess is gone.

But once the oil spill is gone, the nanobots don't stop. They keep discovering carbon in the life it encounters, and so it continues on with its programmed instructions. The machines devour plants, animals, and people, all while cranking out endless new copies of themselves.

The chain reaction is unstoppable. The world dissolves into an ever-growing, featureless mass of machines. In the end, the surface of the Earth is buried under a thick, lifeless sludge of nanobots, an endless tide of gray goo.

A Fragile System

As AI advances, the pressures of efficiency and profitability threaten to consume and flatten diversity of thought, design, and philosophy, leaving in its wake a uniform, AI-generated gray goo.

Imagine walking into a forest. At first glance it looks wild and chaotic. Every tree is a different height, every leaf a slightly different shade of green. This messiness is what keeps the ecosystem alive. Diversity among species and even individual plants provides greater resilience through different adaptations and approaches to survival. When a storm comes or a disease strikes, some species survive. The forest regrows.

Now picture an engineered forest of cloned trees, each grown to optimal specifications, grown in perfect rows with identical branches and leaves. At first glance, it looks beautiful, efficient, and predictable. But then the first pest arrives, or the weather shifts, and the ecosystem is threatened. And because everything is the same, if the system fails, it collapses all at once.

AI thrives on patterns. It strips away noise to produce the cleanest, most probable answer. That can be very powerful when you want a summary of medical research or the safest route home. But when everyone's decisions are driven by the same predictions, we gravitate toward sameness. Designers start with the same templates. Writers echo the same phrases. Artists chase the same AI-generated aesthetic. The strange, the messy, the eccentric edges that fuel originality get smoothed out and, eventually, forgotten. One prompt at a time, one autocomplete suggestion after another, we forget there was ever another way to see, think, or create.

An over-reliance on AI won't just dampen our creativity; it will hamper our ability to address new and novel challenges. And just like those cloned trees, what looks efficient in the short term may prove fragile.

Innovation Stalls / The Local Maxima Problem

"I was surrounded by artificial air, artificial light, artificial peace, and my friends were calling to me down speaking-tubes to know whether I had come across any new ideas lately.”

-E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops

Since AI is trained on what exists, it isn't much help imagining what could be. AI tends to:

• Prioritize what's worked before (short-term optimization)
• Replicate dominant patterns (safe defaults)
• Disincentivize deviation (risk aversion)

In doing so, it creates a cycle of recursive sameness. In a world driven by AI, products begin to converge in appearance, behavior, tone, and value proposition. This steers companies toward the local maxima.

What's the local maxima? Imagine you’re hiking in the fog on a mountain range, and you can only see what’s immediately around you. You want to reach the highest peak (the global maxima), so you decide to climb uphill wherever the slope rises.

Initially, this strategy feels like it's working. You climb and climb until you reach a peak. As the fog clears, however, you realize that this isn't the tallest peak; it’s just the highest one in your immediate vicinity. You’ve reached a local maxima. You've reached a high point, but it isn't the highest point.

What Can Designers Do?

Use AI as a complement, not a crutch

AI can spark ideas, accelerate drafts, and clear roadblocks, but it shouldn’t replace the messy, nonlinear thinking that makes design human. Let it sharpen your process, not flatten your perspective.

Stay connected to the physical

Keep a notebook and sketch by hand. Make things that don’t live on a screen. Play an instrument, make art (even if you think you're bad at it), and read books outside your discipline. Innovation comes from looking outward, not inward.

Automate the mundane, not the meaningful

Let AI handle the repetitive tasks such as cleaning up documentation and transcribing interviews. Free up your energy for judgment, curiosity, and exploration.

Clarify your vision, faster

Where AI shines is speed. New, messy, and ambitious concepts can be difficult to communicate to peers and managers. AI can help you quickly create an interactive prototype that can get your idea across more clearly and with less effort.

Question the defaults

AI will hand you the most probable answer and push you toward the middle of the bell curve. Your job as a designer is to push past that. Ask yourself: What’s missing? What edge cases matter? What perspectives aren’t represented? Use AI as a mirror, not a map.

Treat AI as a collaborator, not an authority

AI works best when you engage it in dialogue, not when you accept its first answer as truth. Think of it as a brainstorming partner; it's always ready with suggestions, but it's not the one making the final call. When you're working on a new feature, ask it, "What's missing? What else should I be considering?" Question its assumptions. Reframe its answers. Ask it to consider problems and potential solutions from different perspectives. Draw out richer possibilities. Just the act of engaging in this dialogue can widen the aperture of your thinking.

Generate variations

When you're working on a new design, describe the task to an AI tool and ask it to generate something. Continue with your work while AI works in the background. When you reach a natural stopping point, check back and see what it's come up with. This can yield interesting variations that you can incorporate back into your work.