on AI and the cost of convenience
I was never deeply worried about AI taking my job.
Not really. I have a quiet belief that humans will always be necessary, in one place or another. So if anything, I thought, it might just change the way I work. Maybe that viewpoint is naive. Maybe I just let myself refuse to believe it could affect us in any deep way.
But that's not what this is about.
What I never saw coming was that it had been coming for my skills all along.
At some point I found myself unable to finish a thought, let alone write a proper email. I found myself needing reassurance from something that had been in my life for barely two years.
It's like a one-sided, codependent relationship. AI lured me in by making life easier. I didn't have to search for the right word for hours, read emails out loud to friends to check if they sounded okay, or scroll through dozens of websites to find that one piece of information. And it was encouraging too. It improved my work without criticizing me.
And for a long time, nothing seemed to be wrong. It was genuinely great for brainstorming, for writing emails in a foreign language, for composing sentences when my brain was ready to go to sleep. I didn't have to try as hard. I didn't have to wait.
I should say here that I love writing. I always have. There is something about getting lost in words that always felt like disappearing into another world entirely. So what happened next felt particularly strange, because it happened to something I really cared about.
It started with a university assignment.
The professor told us not to use AI. Fine, I thought. I had completed countless essays before any of this existed. What could possibly go wrong.
Everything, as it turned out.
Why couldn't I finish three simple pages? The topic wasn't the most exciting, I'll admit that, but most of my school assignments hadn't been particularly thrilling, and I had finished all of them without much trouble. This was different. I couldn't hold a thought long enough to follow it anywhere. I kept reaching for something that wasn't there.
And then I started looking for signs of it elsewhere, and found it everywhere.
Group partners who couldn't begin a brainstorm without opening their laptops. Architecture students who didn't seem to have a single idea that didn't start with a prompt. We had looked away for a moment and something had quietly shifted. It felt a little like coming home to find the furniture rearranged. Everything still there, but nothing quite in the right place.
What I think got lost, somewhere in all of it, was the joy of composing something. The small, specific satisfaction of finishing a thought on your own. The patience to be bad at something long enough to actually improve. The ambition you develop in the process.
AI is a useful tool. It can be a great one, once its environmental impact gets under control. It makes sense for looking up wall thicknesses, or building restrictions, or how to phrase something in a language you're still learning.
But I do think we should be careful about what we hand over to it.
I started reading books again. Cover to cover, forcing myself through the slow parts instead of abandoning them the second my attention drifted. And slowly something came back. Writing felt easier. Thoughts stayed longer. I started sending emails I had written entirely by myself, imperfect ones, and found that I didn't actually mind.
I think people might start to appreciate a small mistake here and there. Some proof that a human made something. A slightly strange sentence. A paragraph that sounds lived in, not generated.
I hope this is a small wake up call. For me as much as anyone.
And I really do hope AI doesn't come for our jobs too.
But more than that, I hope we don't let it come for the parts of life that bring us joy, the things that were always supposed to belong to us.
The slow thinking. The doubt. The sitting with something until it becomes yours.
Those parts were never the obstacle.
They were the whole point.