When the wave of AI hit the internet, I was largely unaware of it. I was preoccupied with other things and dismissed it as just another hype cycle in the tech world. A few months after paying close attention, I realized what I had overlooked.
The realization?
AI’s transformative potential
AI can not only help us write or think better, but it can also replace almost every aspect of our pesky and enjoyable jobs without any hassle. AI can do nearly everything, from creating content to teaching any skill, making movies, co-writing songs, creating a web app, predicting stock market trends, detecting cancer, driving cars, and delivering packages.
I realized that we truly live in a remarkable era of the internet.
With numerous advancements occurring simultaneously, AI has effectively enticed people into celebrating its presence. Many of my social media feeds are filled with content discussing how AI is set to replace human workers. There are stories about companies reducing their workforce significantly to hire AI, concerns about AI eliminating sales jobs, and the notion that a product without AI is becoming as outdated as a typewriter. A few of the renowned tech leaders I follow also mentioned that they have an AI tech stack that does the thinking and creating for them.
AI as a companion
After observing everything, I decided to give in to the hype. I started using AI to help me find answers. I installed the ChatGPT app on my phone. Whenever I had a question, I used the audio note feature to record it and received a swift response. I appreciated how my usage of Google Search decreased, as I could find answers primarily without effort.
My next use case was to hire AI to think and write like me. To achieve this, I explained an idea to ChatGPT and provided prompts for it to expand upon to create detailed, engaging content. I emphasized the importance of mimicking my writing style and tone. In just a few seconds, “The Turn” occurred (a nod to The Prestige reference). I was dumbstruck by the depth of the writing, the compelling tone, and the way it sculpted certain sentences. Truly astonishing.
Detachment from creation
Plot twist: As I started to write more with the help of AI, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable.
At first, I took pleasure in producing high-quality ideas with excellent grammar, punctuation, and choice of words. However, over time, I started to feel detached from the output. Though the final result was a beautifully written piece, I didn’t feel good. This surprised me because writing has always been something I truly enjoy.
That’s when it hit me.
The more we outsource our ability to think and act to AI, the more mundane we could feel about life. While it’s appealing to quickly create a web app in seconds without writing any code or flesh out an idea with minimal thinking, it’s difficult to ignore the nagging thought that whispers, “This isn’t really your work.”
AI is indeed great for automating the kind of work we’re already familiar with and know enough about. Still, drawing the line is essential. The question isn’t whether AI can perform a job as skillfully as or better than humans; it’s more about the meaning we assign and the fulfillment we gain from creating something ourselves.
The value of the creative journey
It’s not just about the end result but the journey of bringing something into existence. Along the way, we gain new insights into our thinking, confront our limiting beliefs, uncover strengths, and find areas to grow. We uniquely experience this kind of growth only when we pour our heart into the work, treating it as a chance to learn and evolve rather than looking for shortcuts to create something faster.
Some might argue that if AI could take over repetitive tasks or tasks with good enough data reference for automation, we’d have more time to create newer things. However, the truth is that even familiar tasks teach us something unique now and then.
Preserving our humanity in an AI-driven world
Applying context-sensitive judgment to moral dilemmas, forming genuine emotional connections with others, dreaming of things that don’t exist, making decisions based on gut feeling, and being self-aware and experiencing existence is possible only when a human is deeply involved in the journey of creating something. The more we distance ourselves from it, the more ordinary our lives will become.
Also, if we stick to familiarity and rely solely on a sea of existing information to get jobs done with AI, there’s a risk of stagnation. We’ll focus too much on efficiency, lose creativity, and miss out on exploring new ideas or questioning what’s already out there. These explorative qualities are what make us uniquely human.
The real question is not whether AI is inherently good or bad. AI is a much-needed catalyst to fill our knowledge gaps and empower us. It’s about whether we’re willing to let it replace the joy, growth, and meaning we find in creating.
Ultimately, we must ask ourselves: Are we using AI to enhance our human experience or to bypass it?
Akkshaya Varkhedi 