Shortcuts

These thoughts were drafted during a night, a few months ago. I didn’t want to publish them then because they felt like an emotional take on something that still seemed remote. Today, I found the notes again and realized they don’t feel remote anymore. They feel like the present.

I’m not a Luddite; quite the opposite. But I am convinced that in the long run, we stand to lose far more than we gain unless we strictly regulate AI and educate the public (and our children) on how to use it. I realize I’m not exactly an original voice when it comes to these doubts, but my concerns are genuine, and they come from a different place.

They aren’t just rooted in fears over my own job security, although I do think about that sometimes. It’s more of a constant, creeping feeling of helplessness, as if I’m witnessing the Götterdämmerung of the programming world I once knew. And not just the programming world, but every world where learning a hard skill takes decades. I’m starting to feel the futility of even trying to learn those skills anymore.

By natural design, humans are inherently lazy. Mother Nature programmed us not to waste energy on anything that isn’t vital to our survival. While there are exceptions and nuances, for most of us, sitting on a couch and consuming cheap entertainment simply “feels right.” The inner primate is happy; biology considers this a win. The brain evolved a cynical reward system, dopamine, to make us feel good when we find a shortcut. In the natural world, a shortcut means survival. In our world, the shortcut is more complex, but the biological mechanism is identical.

In theory, having AI draft our emails, build our presentations, solve our math homework, and write our code should lead to a golden age of abundance. In reality, I doubt that will happen anytime soon, given whose hands this technology is concentrated in.

But even if true abundance does arrive, I believe we are ill-equipped to manage it. We would be like lottery winners who burn through a fortune in a week because they don’t have the discipline to handle sudden wealth. We simply aren’t prepared for it. There are deep flaws in who we actually are compared to the “hero” or “maiden” archetypes we like to think we represent.

Biological animals love to cut corners to survive, and AI is the ultimate corner-cutting device.

I see it in myself. I consider myself disciplined, yet since I started using ChatGPT to fix my English, I’ve stopped putting effort into my syntax or hunting for typos. The same goes for coding: I think less, I navigate less, and I’ve become superficial. I’ll just say it: since the rise of these tools, I have become lazier.

As a person who has fought laziness my whole life, I feel the ammunition laziness has now is more than I can handle. Talking to an LLM and asking it to solve your problems is a Siren’s song for my ears; my laziness wants my mind to fall asleep on that island’s shores.

There’s a common refrain that within a decade, AI will automate our drudgery and free us to solve the world’s great mysteries. But let’s be real: do you honestly think that’s how we’ll spend our time? I have my doubts.

I’m not a “doomer.” I just believe we weren’t ready for what is happening. We are caught in a historical echo, much like when idealists and sycophants alike tried to force a communist utopia on Eastern Europe before the people were ready for it. It didn’t end well because the people didn’t actually want communism; they just wanted what the rich people had.

We are the same. Deep down, we aren’t really about information or summarization. We are naturally hooked on the dopamine of the shortcut.

I don’t have a single study to support these claims. I thought about finding one, but the Siren’s song of my couch was just too loud to ignore.