“An artist friend of mine got me an AI-generated painting as a gift. I can see she tried to personalize the concept, and it’s nicely framed, but part of me still feels a little cheated. Is that fair?”
—No Returns
Dear No Returns,
There’s something implicitly paradoxical about feeling “cheated” by a present. A gift is, by definition, something that comes into your possession at no cost or effort, an object that exists outside the economic concepts of debt and fair exchange. But the fact that these offerings do often leave us feeling shortchanged suggests that there is a shadowy economics of gift giving, one whose rules are tacit and loosely defined.
→ Continue reading at WIRED
