On my love-hate relationship with AI

People

AI has become the modern-day litmus test. It's undeniable, the power of AI, but yet even the smartest people I know deny that it is anything more than a fallible auto complete. And why is this question? Why do people have such a visceral reaction to AI?

I think it's because of ego, the root of all short circuits in the mind. Developers cannot give up the fact that their jobs are going to be replaced. They are not nearly as quick, as well-informed, or as hardworking as any kind of frontier model. I had a conversation today with one of my co-workers. It went something like this: Hey coworker! Do you use any frontier models? My coworker replied that he does not, and that AI still "spits out wrong answers." He says that he just checks it line by line and sometimes uses the output to help hone his own thinking.

This is great, I thought to myself. It's great that you're using AI as a tool, as an assistant, as a way to push your thoughts further quickly, and as a way to get concise and accurate answers to your exact or sometimes vague questions. However, this does not mean that your job is justified. This does not mean the work that you put out is better or faster than AI. Just because you choose to use a screwdriver does not mean that an electric-drill does not exist.

And while yes, it is true that AI will not replace humans, but rather humans using AI will replace humans. This does not change the premise of the story, which is that AI does better, faster work in software and soon in many fields.

People will soon be used for their authority and responsibility. I will orchestrate agents, and I will use those agents as my underlings, but I will ultimately be responsible for their outputs and where those outputs go.

The Future

I've been thinking a lot lately about the hedonic treadmill. If you haven't heard of it before, it's the idea that humans become accustomed to whatever we have, and that our joy and overall happiness and dopamine always return to the same baseline level. I think in a lot of ways, life is going to be the same after AI. And I don't mean materially the same. I think materially it's going to be drastically different. I think our software systems will work better. I think our healthcare will work better. I think that our finances will be managed better. I think we will get better advice from AI that will help us live our lives better.

There is only one way to cultivate deep life satisfaction, and that is through honing your mind through slow, consistent struggle. There is a reason that writing is the best way to remember things. It's slow. It's laborious. It provides a tactile experience to each idea you're noting down. And I think at the end of the day, most people are not doing the work they need to live a joyful, satisfied life. I read a book recently from Naval Ravikant. Naval argues that the way to live a happy life is to read. It's as simple as that. He says that it doesn't matter what you read. It doesn't matter if it's fiction or nonfiction. It doesn't matter if it's scientific literature or smut. What matters is that you are reading. If you're anything like me, you feel sometimes like it's too easy to judge a book by its cover or to decide that you have a million things to do better than sit down, slow down, and crack a book. And that's the exact problem with our modern society. They want you to think that everything is pressing, and in some ways it is. But most things are not as important and not as pressing as they seem. Social media just exacerbates this feeling and this sensation that the world is getting worse and that we need to do something about it. This might come as a surprise to you, reader, but you were never supposed to see on your phone a 24/7 reel of every bad thing happening on earth. Bad things have been happening on Earth much longer than humans have been around, and probably long before any mammal on Earth.

And yes, we should care. We should pay attention. We should want the world to be different, but the truth is that we can't change the world by sitting on our phones and watching bad things happen half a world away. You have to get out there, and you have to cultivate yourself first.

Truisms

AI reminds me of the age-old phrase, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." While AI is most likely going to be, or perhaps already is, the most revolutionary piece of technology that humans have ever created, when all is said and done, humans will be just the same.

But what if humans didn't have to be the same? What if we could be better? I believe that there is a protocol. There is a system. There is something that we can create that will make humans truly better, not faster, not more efficient, not just happier or richer, but will make humans truly better. And I think AI is a stepping stone to that.