The AI moment is presenting a total delegation offer. For much of it, you should accept. But there is a category of human activity where delegation doesn't simply save time and tedium. It costs you yourself.
Reading this was cathartic and as a useful reality check. The more I use AI, I have had the magical feel of seeing what I could make with the right support - also have been missing the useful struggles to get things done with a certain kind of quality, the agonizing moments to communicate my thoughts just right.. It was more than missing.. a sort of dread about something leaving my grasp. Your article captured it for me and I will come back t this often as a reality check. Thank you for writing this.
I appreciate your story, Vidhya. Even the way you raise the bar with a phrase like "agonizing moments". We think we don't want those. But what are they worth?
Love your thoughts on this, the deliberate practice stuff is right on.
As a parent I'm already thinking about this all the time, where is the good struggle for my kids and how can I help my kids grow more capable and resilient.
Great problem to be leaning on right now, and I also think you're right about single purpose software. Good stuff!
Hey Gentry, thanks for reading, I’m glad it resonated. And yes, I think this was always a great problem to be leaning on–but it feels especially urgent right now.
There is something distinctly human about struggle. There is so much that has been written about this, from philosophers like Nietzsche to Disney's Wall-E. Suffering is one of the greatest catalysts to human growth and a necessary emotion; without struggle to contrast against, we become numb to pleasure, and it loses its meaning.
On a professional level, we as humans feel pride in our work because of the effort we've gone through to build our skills or complete a certain task. As a software and data engineer, I understand the benefits that come with using AI, but am wary that over reliance or improper use could erode my critical thinking. Even now, though I ensure I deeply review and understand any code I'm pushing, I feel myself losing the pride I once felt at having successfully toiled over a task. Submitting an output that was generated in two minutes just doesn't bring the same level of satisfaction as spending a couple hours creating a new feature, and along the way discussing best practices with coworkers and discovering new tools or functions or patterns.
As you alluded to, there is genuine joy I feel from doing work in data. The joy doesn't come from the output; it comes from the process. Marx predicted over a century ago that, instead of being a source of self-realization and creative fulfillment, labor will become a monotonous activity in which workers are disconnected from the products they create, the process, and themselves. I pursued a skilled occupation to avoid that fate, but now my skill is being automated away by AI. With our society being so result-driven, and companies pushing AI to the point of incorporating token usage into stack ranking results, how can we avoid this? How can devs who don't use AI to write the product for them remain competitive in our current environment? How can we reclaim the humanity in our work?
"It isn’t easy. And sometimes that’s the point. The struggle is not an obstacle to a good life. It is a good life."
I couldn't agree more. :)
Thanks for sharing! I’ve felt a lot of tension between my optimism and skepticism toward AI, and now I see that the tension itself is part of the work — not something to resolve, but something to stay in.
Reading this was cathartic and as a useful reality check. The more I use AI, I have had the magical feel of seeing what I could make with the right support - also have been missing the useful struggles to get things done with a certain kind of quality, the agonizing moments to communicate my thoughts just right.. It was more than missing.. a sort of dread about something leaving my grasp. Your article captured it for me and I will come back t this often as a reality check. Thank you for writing this.
I appreciate your story, Vidhya. Even the way you raise the bar with a phrase like "agonizing moments". We think we don't want those. But what are they worth?
Fun chatting about this with you the other day.
Love your thoughts on this, the deliberate practice stuff is right on.
As a parent I'm already thinking about this all the time, where is the good struggle for my kids and how can I help my kids grow more capable and resilient.
Great problem to be leaning on right now, and I also think you're right about single purpose software. Good stuff!
Hey Gentry, thanks for reading, I’m glad it resonated. And yes, I think this was always a great problem to be leaning on–but it feels especially urgent right now.
100%
There is something distinctly human about struggle. There is so much that has been written about this, from philosophers like Nietzsche to Disney's Wall-E. Suffering is one of the greatest catalysts to human growth and a necessary emotion; without struggle to contrast against, we become numb to pleasure, and it loses its meaning.
On a professional level, we as humans feel pride in our work because of the effort we've gone through to build our skills or complete a certain task. As a software and data engineer, I understand the benefits that come with using AI, but am wary that over reliance or improper use could erode my critical thinking. Even now, though I ensure I deeply review and understand any code I'm pushing, I feel myself losing the pride I once felt at having successfully toiled over a task. Submitting an output that was generated in two minutes just doesn't bring the same level of satisfaction as spending a couple hours creating a new feature, and along the way discussing best practices with coworkers and discovering new tools or functions or patterns.
As you alluded to, there is genuine joy I feel from doing work in data. The joy doesn't come from the output; it comes from the process. Marx predicted over a century ago that, instead of being a source of self-realization and creative fulfillment, labor will become a monotonous activity in which workers are disconnected from the products they create, the process, and themselves. I pursued a skilled occupation to avoid that fate, but now my skill is being automated away by AI. With our society being so result-driven, and companies pushing AI to the point of incorporating token usage into stack ranking results, how can we avoid this? How can devs who don't use AI to write the product for them remain competitive in our current environment? How can we reclaim the humanity in our work?
"It isn’t easy. And sometimes that’s the point. The struggle is not an obstacle to a good life. It is a good life."
I couldn't agree more. :)
Thanks for sharing! I’ve felt a lot of tension between my optimism and skepticism toward AI, and now I see that the tension itself is part of the work — not something to resolve, but something to stay in.