Perhaps you’ll remember the scene. Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park, Malcom, is resting in the back of a jeep. His eyes open as a deep rumble is heard in the distance. Another rumble, closer this time. In the foreground, a puddle begins to ripple. He yells to Ellie, “We gotta get out of here, right now!”
The jeep accelerates as a T-Rex erupts from the tree line. “Must go faster” he states, as the enormous dinosaur closes the gap on their car.
For whatever reason, my Mom loved this line. So much so that it became a household staple. “Must go faster” has been quietly muttered in my family anytime something needs to speed up for the better part of the past 3 decades.
I’ve been thinking of it a lot lately. Except I’m Malcom, and AI is the T-Rex.
AI Isn’t the Problem
While I wouldn’t object to the idea that AI is a T-Rex level threat, that’s not really my point.
Sure, AI will fundamentally change the trajectory of many careers, mine included. Perhaps for better, perhaps for worse. Many jobs will be eliminated, and many jobs will be created.
In general, my belief is that the algorithm amplifies the extremes. From the pundits screaming “AI will replace everyone!” to “AI will eat itself and never outgrow its hallucinations!”, the truth with the internet often lies somewhere in the middle.
So why is AI making me feel like I’m constantly on the run?
When How Fast You Can Go Is No Longer How Fast You Can Go
I’m an optimizer. Perhaps it’s why I’m in my field.
I can’t stand wasted effort. A wrong turn on a trip is my happiness kryptonite.
For my entire career up to now, there really has only ever been one way to get work done. Me.
Got a presentation to build? Get the story on paper and start putting slides together.
Got a PRD to write? Get my notes and a cup of coffee, and get to writing.
There was no choice here; the work would get done as fast as I was able to get it done. The quality was as good as I was able to make it.
In a way, this way of working is constantly operating on the most optimal frontier. There were no “wrong turns”. Sure, I could use some hotkeys or learn some tips and tricks or leverage templates to make marginal improvements. But in general, there was no way to exponentially increase my output. As fast as I could go, was as fast as I could go.
No more.
With AI available, I never feel like I’m going as fast as I could go. As fast as I should go. It’s like having an endless queue of employees at the ready, if only you could manage them effectively.
Must, go, faster.
Decisions, Decisions
These days when I work, nearly every task has hundreds of moments where I could implement AI to potentially accelerate the work. And every time, I have to decide, should I? Which way will be the most efficient way to create the output I want? (Perhaps I should create an agent to help me decide.)
Being constantly barraged by micro-decisions on the route I take as I try to do work leaves me with a nagging feeling that what I’m doing isn’t enough, a creeping doubt that I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere, that I’ve wasted effort.
I find myself halfway done with a task thinking “Bet I’d already be done if I’d used AI”. Or, worse, using AI for an hour on something and having to scrap it completely because the AI solution just isn’t working.
For me, AI sells the optimizer’s dream, but so far has been unable to deliver.
Damned if I Do, Damned if I Don’t
I suppose the simplest solution to avoid these decisions is to simply always use AI. Take the decision out of it. AI is the default path and should only be skipped when it doesn’t work.
Honestly, it’s not a bad solution.
Benefit #1: It will cause me to learn the most about leveraging AI in my work. That seems like a wise career move (see above re: job elimination). Adaptation to this new way of working is being preached as pivotal to success in my industry, and it likely contributes to my persistent feeling of needing to go faster.
Benefit #2: It’ll help reduce decision fatigue. If AI as the default is just “how I work”, I don’t have to belabor decisions on when to apply it and when not to.
Benefit #3: On the whole, I’ll probably get more done if I do it right. Granted, the first year or so will likely be slower as I learn all the ways to appropriately implement it. But eventually it should be faster… right?
A Leap of Faith
Most signals indicate the above to be true. Eventually, it probably will be faster. But there are some frustrations with the AI-first path that make me hesitate when considering making the jump.
Frustration #1: Checking Work is Less Fun Than Creating Work
Here’s the thing. I like my work. I like creating things. I like crafting stories through data or presentations in a way that people find useful. I like that I worked hard on it, that I toiled away on a presentation, adjusting the positioning to be just so for it to draw your eye to the right information. And when people like it, I feel proud of my work.
With AI, I haven’t learned to feel that ownership. So, instead of feeling like the things I’m doing with AI are my creations, they feel like I’m just checking over someone else’s work.
Frustration #2: Non-linear progression on specific tasks
Historically, when I work on something, progress is mostly linear. There is almost never a situation where work that I do is completely thrown away wholesale. Components can be reformatted, formulas reused, structures altered to meet changing needs.
With AI, this is only sometimes the case. Sometimes, because of the probabilistic nature of AI and the ease of creating ouput, there are large chunks of work that are just…garbage. I’ll go down a path with an agent that ultimately results in something unusable. Once I reach this point, trying to get the AI to unwind the issue often creates even more complexity in the system, so I find myself just restarting from scratch. I would imagine this frustration will lessen as I become more proficient, but still, it’s a pain point currently.
Frustration #3: Loss of Critical Thinking and Skills
This frustration is the one that keeps me up at night. There is an old man inside of me that just wants AI to get off my lawn. A fear that, if I don’t do the work the way I used to do it, I won’t be able to do it anymore.
It reminds me of passage (I’ve abridged it, but the meaning is ultimately the same) from Carl Sagan’s book A Demon Haunted World…
“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”
AI feels like a perfect illustration of this issue. There is a fear inside of me that true learning stops when I start allowing AI to do the hard part. Instead, AI learns, and I simply learn how to use AI.
The Advice
Unfortunately, I don’t really have any. Perhaps I wrote this to find some. Perhaps I wrote it to give more of a voice to the people in the middle.
+ On the one hand, if AI is what its proponents believe it to be, AI will allow me to build things I could have never dreamed of building before at a pace previously unfathomable. This is good.
– On the other hand, it makes my work far less enjoyable. It leaves me feeling like I will never reach the optimal frontier of my work again. “I could always go faster if I could just leverage… X”. It’s a T-Rex can that cannot be escaped. This is bad.
I wonder what AI would do?
For now, we just keep driving.