Sal's

Nose deep in AI

Well, I’ve gone from initial, curmudgeonly reluctance, to shruggy acceptance, to full-blown, guns-blazing, AI mania at work. I’m writing skills, shipping agents, thinking through internal distribution logistics. I think I’ve used about $100 of tokens in the past few days, and that number is growing rapidly.

I’ll repeat: at work. Despite going-all in there, I still have 0% interest in using AI for anything related to this blog. Except perhaps to help me with my ancillary tooling.

Gotta say, I’m beginning to see how it would be difficult to go back to the old way of working now that I’m really integrating this stuff into my day-to-day. And that makes me approximately 7% excited and 93% worried.

Edit: Here’s a good and related post I just happened to stumble upon from Stephen Turner, who tried and failed to go without AI for a month: AI Dry July: Aborted.

So where does this leave me? Not as an abstainer.

There used to be a time when intelligent people could make a defensible argument that these tools aren’t useful, they make too many mistakes, or that they’re just worthless next-token predictors. That point has passed, and these arguments are no longer opinions. They’re just factually wrong, incorrect statements. Driven by identity more than evidence.

…

These few weeks of self-experimentation didn’t change my mind so much as sharpen what I already knew. AI does result in deskilling. Some things I’m okay deskilling in, and others I’m not. I’m going to be more intentional with what I hand off to the LLMs, and I’m no longer handing over wholesale the work I’d miss if I forgot how to do it, or anything I’ll ever need to understand, defend, revise, and own.

Sounds like a smart and balanced take to me.

#Ai #Work

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