How a vertigo scare changed my AI anxiety
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
Sliding headfirst into the giant maw of the MRI machine, I finally stopped being afraid of AI.
Why it matters: A health scare can be a reset — a reminder to slow down and think about how you want to spend your days. I'd been so consumed by the anxiety economy around AI that I'd lost track of what it was costing me.
The big picture: I love my job. I'm an editor and reporter focused on how AI is changing our lives.
- After two decades of raising kids and writing late into the night once they went to sleep, I finally have full days to dedicate to my work. And I have.
- But on the last Wednesday in January, those years finally caught up to me.
Threat level: On the 22 Fillmore bus in San Francisco, headed to a meeting with a source, I was hit with vertigo.
- I'd never had vertigo before. All I knew was that I was too dizzy to stand up or keep my eyes open. So when the bus stopped, I stumbled out and fell to the sidewalk, where I vomited until a kind passerby called 911.
In the ICU, doctors thought I was having a stroke. They ordered a CT scan and an MRI.
- I thought I was dying. I thought about my kids and my parents and my sister and my friends and my job. I worried about missing the meeting with the source.
And then I realized... I don't want to die thinking about my job!
- Neither the human doctors nor Dr. ChatGPT knew exactly what caused the vertigo.
- Dehydration, a virus, lack of sleep and being a woman over 50 are all factors. Also, stress.
Zoom in: "Do you have a stressful job?" the ICU nurse asked me on my second day in the hospital.
- "Yes, very."
- "What do you do?"
- "I write about AI," I replied. "Which now I feel pretty silly saying it's a stressful job since you're, you know, an emergency room nurse."
Between the lines: I'm not a Pollyanna, and I'm not a doomer. I've written about the pros and cons of using chatbots, and I've even written about AI anxiety related to job displacement.
- Anxiety about the dramatic shifts around us can damage our health if we let it consume us.
- During those three days in the hospital, I decided not to let it.
Reality check: My mother just turned 80.
- She has lived half of her years with multiple sclerosis. But she's never let the diagnosis keep her from a life defined by her own joy and the family and friends who surround her.
- Nearly two months after my hospitalization, I'm still not as steady as I'd like to be. Mostly, it feels like my brain is buffering, taking a second or two to catch up when I turn my head too quickly.
- The doctors say this is just my body learning to adjust to the new messages it's getting.
What's next: I can't let anxiety consume my days. That won't get me to 80.
