Subject: "AI & I: The Real Problem"
The past 3 years have been really boring for technological innovations. I’m sure anyone eagerly waiting for CES coverage would like to share their collective disappointment at the sheer number of devices having AI marketing. AI has been on a pretty steep rise in development for the past 3 years and it’s pretty impressive software no doubt, but I think it has brought about a paradigm shift in society. Generative AI is the fastest adopted technology in the world till now, with ChatGPT garnering over 100 million users within just 2 months.
I’ve been thinking about AI and the wider tech industry for quite some time now. Every company has been shoehorning AI into their products and to me, a lot of the innovation and quirky ideas we would see with the tech space has been largely killed off. Every company just wants to join the AI arms race and raise capital. Billions of dollars have been rotated around the entire industry, with stock charts weaving up and down. As a consumer, it’s quite hard to not feel like we are being vilified.
Beyond that however, I think I’ve noticed a trend that worries me more than the environment and economic prospects that AI has and it’s not one that gets talked about a lot.
Skill Death
I think with the most recent advancements in AI, it has become cheaper to access and more capable than ever. AI have come to the point where even I’m struggling to tell fakes apart. AI has lowered, or outright removed the skill barrier needed for creative workloads. Want to code an application? Just ask ChatGPT. Have a vivid imagination? Prompt away with Stable Diffusion. There are AI tools being released everyday that are slowly replacing things like art, which in my opinion, are uniquely human.
More and more people are choosing AI to do simple tasks over just doing it with a regular old tool and it’s making us that much more complacent. We are losing the ability to learn and perform new skills. Using AI to assist you in whatever task you are doing has scientifically shown that it can lead to stagnation in development and erode away at your own skills. This is not necessarily an AI problem but ultimately a problem with the way our human brains function. Our brains always prefer to choose the path of least resistance when we have to do *anything*. I’m sure not everybody wants to perform the same grueling task over and over again and I also agree that some level of automation is necessary.
However, when done enough times, our brain reinforces those neural circuits making us more and more dependent on AI tools instead of being able to work without it. With time, this will eventually lead to skill decay. So why is it so bad? In my opinion, I think relying on AI too much will make it harder to learn new things. The greatest artists took time to practice and get better at what they did. They knew it was hard but still endured to create amazing works of art that hold value in the hearts of many. That appreciation is why art still thrives today.
When you don’t learn new things, you are essentially handicapping yourself in a world that is moving forward rapidly. Employing skills and solving problems with aid from our own lived experiences is what makes everybody different. Using AI excessively just makes you outsource your thinking, harming your brain’s way of processing problems and working creatively. When companies and colleges are looking for skillful people, the biggest crime you can commit is being normal. Normal isn’t inherently bad, but it’s boring. It’s not what people want and it makes your creative output have less value.
Silver Lining?
Maybe I’m a bit too harsh on AI. I don’t want to sound really biased so I’ll say this, AI in moderation can be helpful. It can help overcome small roadblocks and can be used to build out or expand thoughts. There are many a times when I’ve actually learned things from AI and it can also help simplify some advanced concepts in a way that is understandable. It’s a powerful tool, no doubt about it. Things in the field are moving really fast and it’s getting hard to catch up.
AI is a need-to-know in this day and age. Companies want competent workers who are ready to use any new tools that assist with their work. They want to squeeze out maximum productivity and it’s obviously not good to stay behind the curve in anything tech-related. With the way technology develops, I predict that AI is going to become a necessity more than a luxury.
There’s a new AI powered tool releasing everyday that is making our lives easier. It could be an AI agent that can help you code or a bot that can perform your routine tasks. It’s important to know that there is a very fine-line dividing normal and over-usage. It’s time for each one of us to make a conscious decision - a choice between enhancement and replacement. It’s not an easy decision to make but the ball is in your court.