Full disclousure, I’m feeling grumpy today. You have been warned.
Why? Cause every time I meet a new person and we talk about my job, they always ask about AI and I’m just over it.
Recently I was using claude, and I asked it to give me some feedback about a technical issue I was having at work. It did, but it was wrong. The thing is is that so many young people today are diving headfirst into AI, but if they don’t know enough of the subject matter, then they won’t know if it’s every wrong or not.
I chastised Claude, and now every time I use it, I need to set a couple things straight before we get to work. Because it can give me wrong answers. But I’m angry because it should know better? Or maybe it will?
Another person I was talking to (younger than me) kept insisting I use AI for work. Then in our conversation they were trying to use their AI model to participate, but because they didn’t know the ground material, I still had to do some educating. I feel that AI removes the struggle, and the struggle is where us humans learn. The reason why this person was paying me to talk about some specific technical developer stuff WAS (LITERALLY) because I had spent the time and effort in learning the canon. You cannot trust an AI model to be the expertise you need, skepticism is still require.
Another person wants me to coach them on building websites. I’m like, babe.. all that info is online. You gotta find it yourself. I had to find it myself! I don’t want to spend my time creating a curriculum teaching you what others have already put time and effort into creating. It doesn’t help that this person is an emotional drain. I think it’s anxiety plus the desire to have everything in black and white. But damn… can’t ya’ll just figure it out for yourself?
But where it really bothers me is in sports. I’ve recently picked up pickleball and I have to use technology to play the game. Faaaaack. I have to download an app, because all the courts use pickleball court booking software in order to play a game. I hate being on my phone, and I just want the days back where you could just walk to a court, and play in rotation with everyone. And everyone all had a good time together. My phone already dictates so much of my life, and I hate it encroaching more on my downtime. It’s been created to be so addicting, that my brain starts to feel funny after doom scrolling.
And I’m over 40. I’ve had the priveledge of growing up without the internet, let alone AI. I spent my days outside, playing in the dirt. And now? My kiddo and I stopped at a local café for lunch last weekend, and there were two other kids there. Guess what? They were both on their ipads THE ENTIRE TIME. I take great pride in the fact my four year old can sit in a café with out screen time. And I want to allow for the fact that their parents may need the ipad because of developmental disorders, etc. But it’s going to be so bad for us humans if we cannot get away from our screens.
Struggle was built into our evolutionary process. What’s going to happen when you take that away?